Val  0:06  
Hey, it's time to crank up the truth. I'm Val Selby. And over the decades of working online, I've learned a most important lesson. Mindset owns your business. It procrastination, imposter syndrome and a lack of focus have been blocking your biz. And I'm here with powerful volume ready to help you see choices that you're making. Get ready to own your personality, and use your expertise to create the business of your dreams. Now is the time to make changes and live your best life. So let's get to it.

All right, everyone. I can't just start every single one of these with, I'm super excited to have this conversation today because you'd hear it every single time. But I do have to say right now I'm a little bit fan girling. And especially now after we just had this conversation of how much we have in common. I'm just like feeling like Did we just become best friends? Today, I have exciting email marketing for you with Liz Wilcox. And Liz, thank you so much for being here. And if you would tell my guests a little bit about yourself, that would be fantastic.

Liz  1:19  
Oh my gosh, yes. Hello, friends. Before we hit record, we were just gossiping and gushing over reality TV. So if you're into reality TV, hit me up in the DMs cause I love unscripted television. Yeah. Anyway, what's up? I'm Liz Wilcox, and you know that feeling you get when you know, you listen to an amazing podcast like Val's and, you know, there's some wild woman that jumps up on the screen, and she's screaming at you about email marketing. And for every dollar you spend with email, you get 40 bucks in return now go go. And so you know, you probably open up MailChimp or ConvertKit, whatever the heck you're using, and then you feel kind of dumb, because you have no idea what the heck to write. I help eliminate that problem. I truly mean it when I say I want to make email writing really simple and very effective for you. And I'm sure we'll get into that today. Oh, absolutely.

Val  2:15  
And I can vouch for this 100% Because I am in her yearly membership. And I don't always open the emails all the time. But anybody on here knows that I always have things happen for a reason. And they're probably going dove out. Of course, that happened when you went and opened your email. I've been wanting to email to like test my market for the last couple of weeks. And I've put it off, put it off, put it off. And then I opened up the email from this week. I just opened it up. I opened it up. And here you are talking about it. That exact topic with your swipes in there. Oh my gosh.

Liz  2:54  
I love that, y'all. So I have a I have like a $9 a month membership. And I send out weekly templates. And it's I love love, love to hear that. Because there's always there's almost always like one or two people that they're like, this is the exact thing I was just thinking about. And I'm like, Yeah, that's called Magic. You know, you getting a deal. But it's it's so fun. And yeah, we were talking this week, it was about gathering customer research and asking people what they wanted from you. But I just find it so fun. I just love newsletters. And that's actually how I got started. I was an RV travel blogger, y'all, like I did not come out of the womb, knowing about email marketing. And every you know, everybody in their mama was like, you gotta have email, everything you do is for to build the email list the email list, and I just got really good at that. And then I was like, oh, other people aren't good at that. Let me just create this membership. Let me do it for you or whatever, right?

Val  3:59  
I know, there's the times that I've really not been good about it. And I mean, even now I'm still there's times that I'm falling through. I'm not following through with what I want to be happening. And it's because I get really stuck in my head of Who do I want to be in my emails? I'll start second guessing my personality. Am I too much, you know, all of that. And that leads me in so many clients when we're talking down Well, I don't know what to write. It's like you have to bring your personality back into it. And of course, you don't know what to write if you don't.

Liz  4:37  
Yeah, let's talk about that. So I love the bow. Just use the word personality for me in your emails. I'm going to split this into two parts. So like, here's kind of what to put, especially at the beginning and to bring out in those newsletters in the future. And then we'll talk about like what actually you should write about. So the first thing you need, of course, is a little bit of personality, right? We all get those email marketers where it's just super dry. I'm thinking of like E commerce or if you sign up for, you know, you buy something from like National Football League or something, you know, and then they it's just not personality. Even I'm on. I don't know if you guys are familiar with this guy Marshall Mathers m&m, Slim Shady, I'm on his email list. And I mean, luckily, he's so huge. You know, he's like the number one rapper in the globe. He doesn't have to have personality, right? He can just send the shop link. But you and I, you know, we're not the real Slim Shady, right? We're not standing. So we need to have personality, we need a way to distinguish ourselves. The second thing is to share your vision, what is that thing you want for your readers? For your ideal clients? For me, it's make money with email marketing, right? I don't care about your social media, I don't care about your podcast, no offense. You know, I don't care about anything. I'm only invested in making email work for you. And I share that constantly, hey, let's make this email thing work. Right? Especially in my membership, almost every email I send out Monday morning, I'm like, I believe in this for you. I believe in this for you, you're gonna figure out email marketing, right? Whatever your vision is, constantly saying that in your emails, sharing that vision. And then the third thing, our values, right. So, you know, this is not put out a press release that, you know, every, every time something catastrophic happens, because you know, we'd be sending 20 million emails a day nowadays. But it is there are certain principles, certain values that drive the way you do business drive, the way you create offers, and sharing those, especially in the welcome sequence or in your newsletters. Like for me, one of mine is affordability. When I started I had, you know, negative $0, so to speak, right? I really didn't have any money to invest. I didn't have anybody telling me Yeah, you should spend money on that. That's a good idea. Liz. Yeah, you're right. You know, everyone was like, when that's another crazy idea. And so, you know, I keeping things affordable is really important to me. So that's something that I share often. And I know there are certain principles that drive the way you do business, and sharing those with your email list is really important.

Val  7:22  
You know, one thing that I was looking at and even know where it was on your site, when I was looking on there, that really struck me, and I really want you listening to feel this? Because I had never thought of it that way before is if you're paying for the email software platform. And how many times are you emailing? How much is that platform costume?

Liz  7:46  
Yeah, Amen. That's right, on my homepage. It's like something like raise your hand, you know, if you gave ConvertKit 100 bucks, and you didn't send one day email, right? And we're talking about earlier, you know, I mentioned Oh, for every dollar, you can get 40 bucks in return. But that's when you do it. Right. So focusing on that personality, vision and values, that's going to help you stand out in the inbox. Oh, I know who val is. I know what she stands for. You know, I know a little bit of her personality, and I know what she wants to help me with. Right? And so then what the heck do we put in these newsletters? How do we make sure you know, we are working towards that, you know, one to $40 ratio. For me, I again, this right on my homepage, I take a follower, I call it the email staircase. So take a follower, get them on your list turned him into a friend. And when you have a list full of friends, you can turn them into customers, basically because you know them. Hey, I know you guys constantly ask me questions about newsletters, oh, I have this newsletter membership topic. And that it's not it's not actually magic. Like I said earlier, it's just learning more about your subscribers. So you can create products, or tweak your current offerings and sales messages, so that people actually know Oh, this is going to help me with that vision. This is going to help me get where I want to go. So inside of those emails, making sure number one that people know you are invested, right invested in your business and invested in that vision for them saying something like, Oh, I just spent an hour listening to a podcast about email marketing. Now I'm gonna write less crappy emails for you, you know that, that shows you're invested, right? That shows you're invested in them and it shows you're invested in your business. You might not think your subscribers want to hear about the new laptop you bought, but that shows you're invested in the business. You know, and nowadays, especially if you're an online service provider, or a course creator or even e commerce or whatever, you know, no events are a dime a dozen. Right? You know, there are 1,000,001 people trying to grab your subscribers attention that are doing something similar to you. So if you can show you're invested in your business Hey, I just bought this new laptop, I just spent three hours creating this offer, that I that I that they're going to invest back into you, but you have to show your investment first. Number two is just be relatable. And notice I didn't say interesting. Okay, let's leave the interesting to celebrities. And okay, Val and I were just talking about reality TV. Is that in essence, very interesting. Mostly not, but it's very relatable, right? It's like, you know, it's these average people like, I'm a huge survivor fan. So for me, it's like, obviously, going to an island isn't relatable, but the people on the cast are the people they bring their school teachers, then they had like a custodian one time a lunch lady, a flight attendant, you know, people like you and me, I think last season, they had a tick tock creator, that was really really I was like, suddenly, I was like, she was my favorite out of the gate. Right? These are relatable characters. That's what casting does. So in your email newsletters being incredibly relatable, and no, you don't have to be interesting. You don't have to tell the stories every but every other email marketer tells you to say, you can say, Hey, I just got done watching Sister Wives. I said that to vouch she was like, Oh, my God, actually. I like that show, too. That's not very interesting. It doesn't tell you anything about Liz Wilcox. You know that she watches reality TV, but it's incredibly relatable. Right? So what are those relatability pieces. And then the third and last thing is just to stay top of mind. And, you know, most people say oh, that means I have to email daily or weekly. I can't do that. That's too much less. But honestly, if you show how invested you are in the vision for your people and your business, if you become very relatable to them, staying top of mind becomes much easier. Y'all I didn't email my list last week, I had just gone through lunch. I was tired. I got really sick. My nephew came into town. I was like, I'm not No, I'm just not doing it. I need a break. Nobody forgot about me. That's because I've spent so much time becoming relatable investing, that staying top of mind actually becomes easier for me. Yes.

Val  12:11  
And I definitely noticed that because for quite a while I've been telling myself over and over again. I mean, not even quite a while for like two years, I was telling myself, you know what, we're going to set a commitment. We're going to email every day, we're going to see how this works and check stats. And I never did it never did it. And I finally got to the point where I was tired of hearing myself in my head saying this. So I was like, Okay, you have to do it now or you have to shut up. And I did that. And it was wonderful. And it worked great. And I pulled stats from it. And I got a ton of people communicating with me. But then I felt that little bit of burnout. Like I said, I was like, this is not sustainable for me. Because now it felt like work. And then it's not fun. So setting in a place that I have related with these people now, like you said, if I go a few days without emailing, it's okay. Because they're still going to open it up. They still remember who I was. That said that's because we've done some work before. Before we stopped email.

Liz  13:12  
Absolutely. And you know, people when you email daily, or even weekly, or even once a month, you show up once a month and somebody is on your email list for a year. They see that you are invested. Right? Oh, here comes lists again, you know, and in the inbox, we want to we want that familiarity, right? We want to be familiar, but we don't want to be predictable. Right? So it's the same as the mailbox. When we got to the mailbox, I've got three pieces of mail. Oh, that's junk, I automatically throw that away. Oh, this is a bill. I know, I don't need to open that till next week. It's gonna go over here and the junk drawer, whatever. And oh, my gosh, Val sent me something I have to open this right away. Right now. Val sent me the same thing every single day, every single week, it was the same package, or it was the same thank you card. Eventually. I know what's in there. It's gonna go with the bill. Right? I'm gonna set it aside. Oh, I'll open that next week when I get to it. But in the inbox, we know, you know, once it gets to page two in a bit, I haven't. We want to be familiar. I know. Oh, that's Val. But we don't want to be predictable. So we vary that content, maybe vary the speed, you know, oh, I'm going to send a few this week. I'm going to send one next week. Oh, I'm gonna go from once a month now I do twice a month. We want to be unpredictable in that content, not in like a chaotic way. Where you know, I'm talking about email and then I'm talking about you know, react my favorite reality stars and I'm talking about this. You know, we want to be familiar but not predictable in the best way.

Val  14:47  
Yeah, yeah. Awesome. So I've got unpredictable down everybody you got y'all know that. I'm predictable. No, I know. One thing that I do Lean into is you know what, I'm constantly Thinking of my email list as part of my community. And I know that that was a nice mind shift change as well, instead of just my marketing venue, you know, as it is that you know, it's the most beautiful marketing venue. I agree with Liz. It's the best connection. But I had a switch click where it was like, You know what, I can use this more to have a one on one conversation with people.

Liz  15:26  
Oh, my gosh, absolutely, y'all. Not only do replies help you build community, it's good for deliverability. If Val replies to Liz, and Liz sends an email the next day, guess where that thing is going, it's going straight to the inbox, because Val just sent up a green flag to the internet gods that says Liz's emails are important. So then let's say Roberto joins, lists his email list a couple months later, because Val kept throwing up those green flags. Guess where it lists is emails gone? It's gone in the inbox. So it's really good for deliverability. But it's excellent for community emails, for lack of a better term, it's an intimate space is way different than social media. The email is sitting there waiting for a response, right? We just act different in the inbox. And you know, given your topic, you can go really deep with people, you know, of course, start off asking simple questions simple yes, or no questions. But as your email list evolves, as you start getting those replies, you can get a pulse for your email list. And you can ask those deeper questions like, Val, at the top of the hour said, Oh, this template was perfect. If we could spend a few hours together, what would we do? And then they click A, B, or C, you know, you could even just get people to reply, what would we do? Here are some of my ideas, ABC, hit reply. And let me know if any of that feels good to you. Or if you had another idea, and getting that one to one connection, while emails one to many turning it into one to one is so fabulous. And that's what I mean by friends. And that's what I mean, when I can, you know, at the top when I said, Oh, yeah, you just have a list full of friends, you can basically say, Hey, I know you want XYZ, so I created XYZ. But you can't do that. If you don't have that pulse. If you're not getting active replies. You're not seeing people click on the surveys, and I love love, love email for that. Yeah,

Val  17:23  
me too. Yeah, I absolutely adore it. And in fact, I mean, listeners know, I'm huge into collaboration. And one of the things that's my top thing for collaboration is replying to other people's marketing emails. When they ask a question, I reply to the email and start the connection. And guess what happens? You guys, I get people like Liz on my podcast, because that is 100% How this came to be. I was replying to switching carts, because you switched carts back. And, you know, a while ago, and I was replying to that, that. Yeah, it had already happened. And I saw that in there. You're looking to be on podcasts? And I'm like, Well, hell, I'm just gonna ask what's going to hurt I'm asking. That goes, right.

Liz  18:09  
Yeah, I love that so much. And y'all when you look at your emails, you know, my I only have 100 people. First of all, I had 100 People in my house right now, you wouldn't be able to hear me even with this microphone, right? That's a lot of people. And second, I don't look at it. Like let's say, I get this podcast and you know, a few people come over and join my email list, right? I'm looking at those individuals like, oh, look, Kendra signed up. Now who signed up? Oh, there, here comes Roberto again. Right? And I'm like, Oh, I wonder who no Haku is, I wonder, you know, what can I say to her to help her understand that I'm invested in email for her? Right? And so I'm not thinking, Oh, my gosh, I gotta send 100 People an email, how can I get at least 60 of them to open? I'm thinking about one person at a time. How can I connect with Nahoko? who just joined the email list? What does she need to hear? Because chances are everybody else newsy are the same thing, right? And you can say those things over and over, because, you know, we pick it up when we're ready, not when you know, somebody else wants to preach to us. So I love email for that reason, and I really truly love connecting with my subscribers, if you could see me, usually, this is the part where I pull up a slide and I have like, 10 pictures of me with subscribers. And they're all customers too. Because I believe customers actually create community. Yeah. Wouldn't you agree?

Val  19:38  
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Oh, yeah. So everybody, if you've been on my list, you already know that I just I've like been all in on emails this year. Like all in. You also know that I've been online for decades. And the hearing the message when it's the right time to hear a message is so all important. Even if you've been told it a million times, you know, you might be here right now. And all of a sudden, it's like, clicking. And you're like, oh, okay, this feels right, this feels like the time to do it, you know, don't even analyze it. Just go. Just go with it. Start connecting in your emails, start asking questions. Yeah, like what says, definitely be looking at it, and who can I connect on my list, you know, even pulling them up. That was one of the beautiful things that happened when I just went through my list is backwards of what I would tell any one of my clients because I spent hours going through my list, however, it was a mindset shift. Because I feel like I just connected with all 1800 people that I did keep on my list. It was not about those people that didn't open. All the sudden, they just went away, I went holy crap. There are 1800 people that are at one some time opening my email list. And I do feel like I need to talk to them.

Liz  21:01  
I love that that excites me. So

Val  21:04  
because turning on

Liz  21:06  
emails, yeah. Well, I mean, it is an individual connection. And what I love about email versus other kinds of marketing is its consent based, so we can get excited about those 1800 people said, Yes, Val blew my mind, you know, yeah, let's hang out, right? That's a lot and email works so well, why I can spout these, you know, one to 14. Thing is because it's consent based. I said, Yes. Now, I want to hear more about this. Right. I think what Matt was talking about is, you know, we're moving people that aren't opening from your email list. Those people have just simply removed consent. They remember we talked about that vision, you know, they got on the bus, and now it's like, oh, wait, actually, I wasn't ready to go to email. talentless, I need to get off this bus. Right. And sometimes they do it manually themselves. They unsubscribe others. I mean, how many unread emails? Do you have? Others, we just keep deleting, or we just ignore them. Somebody sent me a video today, and I noticed they had 121,000 unread emails. And that's all I can do. Luckily, the video was only like 45 seconds. Well,

Val  22:18  
yeah, because I don't know what you even said. Because I'm like, holy moly.

Liz  22:23  
Right, right. Oh my gosh, Austin Powers. Anyway, so if those 121,000 If those people were being responsible business owners like now, they would have removed Mike years ago, apparently, right? So it's really important to do those cold scrubs. And to also see unsubscribes as someone who's just, you know, they got on the bus, and they change their mind. And that is okay. It's not personal. It's maybe it was bad timing. You know, you just got lost in the shuffle of their other 120,000. And in that case, they will re subscribe. Yeah, that's what I'm noticing now that my email list is about three and a half years old. I'm noticing a lot of resubscribed, which is awesome, because it's like, Oh, they got on the bus. They got off. They said, Oh, snap. Let me catch you back. That's actually is the bus I need? Yeah. So don't take unsubscribes personally, and definitely, you know, if you want to learn more about cold scrubbing, just DM me later, because it really is awesome. And again, it goes to that consent based marketing. And that's what makes email so awesome. And how you can make those real connections with the people that really want to be there.

Val  23:37  
Yeah, yeah. And now it's got me looking at it. A nerdy looking at it going, Oh, okay, well, this is so and so. And I've never had a conversation with them. Like, that's beautiful. They're opening all of this stuff, but I've never had a conversation. What can I talk about to get them to reply?

Liz  23:54  
Yeah. Do you guys want to know something really silly that I do sometimes. So of course, you know, when people enter their email, they're supposed to enter their name, too. But not everybody does. Right. And so something that I do you know, when you personalize your email, I've never talked about this on a podcast. Something that I do so you know, you say, Hey, first name. And then hey, you know, friend, like it will replace like, first name with friend or whatever, you can actually customize that to say whatever the heck you want. And me everyone, I don't do this every single time. But you know, when I'm in an especially like, goofy mood or something, I'll say, you know, hey, person who should hit reply and tell me their first name. How you doing? And I'm telling you at least one or two people every single time. Oh my gosh, that was hilarious. You know, my name is Liz. I can't believe you know, that's so funny. How did you know and, you know, we're off to the races. So that's a great way to Val's point of like, how do I get this person to interact? I hope I've never had a conversation with them. So great. Well way to start, especially with those people that don't have their name in the field, right? Because if you can get their name in that field, and you can start sending those personalized emails, they're going to engage more. Yeah, yeah, even

Val  25:13  
even I know how marketing goes, I know that they didn't type my name in there. However, there will still be times and especially with somebody, I do know that all of a sudden, I read an email, my name is in there, and I get this little you know, that connection, that little instant connection. She talked to me, you know, absolute,

Liz  25:33  
and I only, it is silly. And there are some I've seen a lot of or not a lot, but I've seen email marketers, and especially a lot of copywriters. And this is where I'm gonna get burned on the stage one day, they'll say, don't say, you know, hey, Val, hatless, hey, Roberto, don't do that, like just get into the email. But for me, and what I teach is, you know, the following a friend, if I was writing vow, I would say, hey, Val, can I talk to you real quick? Like, I would, I would have that small talk to have that greeting? I mean, unless it was somebody like my sister who I'm just like, you know, take a look at this. Right? I'm always saying, you know, dropping in real quick bow. Hey, Val, that's what I would do to an actual person I know. And so it's more emphasis for me on the email than the marketing like, marketing. And you're an excellent storyteller, a copywriter? Sure, you would drop that name, and you would just get into, you know, let me tell you about the time. I don't know, I was thinking I stepped in dog poop, right, you know, like, like, you know, those all those copywritten they're excellent storytellers. And I'm not. I'm not like talking smack. But you know, those emails, you open it, and like, I could feel the squish in my shoe. And, you know, but they don't say their name, you know, cuts off that, hey, because it interrupts the story. But for me, I teach a much different way of, you know, quote, unquote copywriting in your email where it is, like you're talking to someone you know, and you just happen to, you know, sprinkle in those sales when

Val  27:10  
appropriate, which was right back to putting your personality in there. Right. Yeah.

Liz  27:14  
If you if you pour personality in there, you know, it also goes to, you know, showing I'm investing I'm relatable. being relatable is really easy. Oh, my fridge broke. Anyway, I'm writing an email, because that's what I do on Tuesdays, that is so relatable and you didn't tell a story. But suddenly, I know, your fridge broke. And I, which is relatable. And I know, you're emailing me, which shows that you're invested in me. Without all the storytelling,

Val  27:41  
right? Yes, yes. Oh, my gosh. All right. We should probably wrap this up. Something we could talk about for so long. Yeah. Well, I

Liz  27:52  
could talk about this forever. And I do and I do.

Val  27:58  
Don't have genius in, obviously, right there. So as we're wrapping this up, is there anything one last thing that you want to leave the listeners with?

Liz  28:09  
Yeah. So buckle up, I know, you're probably driving, doing the dishes, something like that. Turn it up. This is what I want you to hear. When it comes to email marketing. You know, seriously, when it comes to just life in general, I always ask myself two questions. And this helps guide me. Number one, what would this look like if it was easy? And chances are, you know, the answer is you might be like, Oh, well, I would hire someone, but you might not have the money. So I always have a backup question. And number two is, what would this look like if it was fun? And between those two answers, you can usually come up with a solution or a next step action item. That doesn't feel like pulling your teeth. I know email feels like this not you're never going to untangle there's segments tagging, funnels ESPs, you know, all these things that seem really, really daunting. But if you just ask yourself, what would this look like if it was easy? Or what would this look like it was fun. I promise that knots going to start to untangle for you.

Val  29:11  
And then you can be nerds like us. Because you'll all of a sudden be all in and you'll be talking to everybody about this topic as well. And you'll be like who am I? One? Join the dark side. It's fun over here. Awesome. Oh my gosh, thank you so much for being here, Liz and sharing all of your tidbits that everybody's gonna be writing them down everyone, we're gonna have all of the information in the show notes and especially how to join her membership, because it's wonderful, absolutely wonderful. And you're gonna love it and I know you just connected with Liz so you're going to want to go grab her information and get on her list and follow her. So all of that's going to be in there. But thanks so much, Liz for being here today.

Liz  29:57  
Yeah, thank you so much. I'm so Though excited to see what everybody does with email, and if you want to get started you can just go directly to Liz wilcox.com Hit the hot pink button in the right hand corner. You can't miss it. I'm gonna give you an entire welcome sequence already written for you three newsletter samples and 52 subject lines all for free. Loose wilcox.com hot pink, but you can't miss it.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai