Our Best Kept Email Marketing Secret

This is it! Early on we discovered we can’t do this marketing thing alone. It’s TOGETHER that we have Writing Momentum! In this episode of the Writing Momentum podcast, Chris and Gena share their best kept secret when it comes to email marketing…and tell you how you can have it, too.

Here's something fun

Download this FREE PDF poster and hang it on your wall to remind yourself each day: YOU'VE GOT THIS!

Links:

• Liz Wilcox’s Email Marketing Membership: https://writing.fyi/liz
• Mailerlite: https://writing.fyi/mailerlite
• ConvertKit: https://writing.fyi/convertkit
• Get your FREE Move the Needle goal-setting for authors ebook at https://www.writingmomentum.com
• Post to social media FAST with our favorite social media scheduler, SocialBee, and get 20% off for LIFE with coupon code MOMENTUM20 : https://writing.fyi/socialbee
• Write with us! Join Chris, Gena, and Rene each Wednesday at noon Central and let’s get our writing DONE! https://www.writingmoments.com

Episode 60 Transcription:

[00:00:18].170] - Gena
Hi, and welcome to the Writing Momentum podcast. I'm Gena Maselli, and I'm here with my husband, Christopher Maselli. How are you doing?

[00:00:25].440] - Chris
I'm doing well. How are you doing? What's been going on with you? You know what? I'm excited today because we have received an email from someone about this podcast and it always warms my heart when people are excited about it. This is from J. Ryan Fenzel, and he's a fellow author. And he says, Hello, Chris and Gena. I just listened to your podcast, Writing Momentum, and I wanted to tell you, I really like your focus and presentation. You are both engaging, easy to listen to hosts, and a mix of your discussion topics provides a wide variety of episodes. Not many shows range from covering Black Friday deals from writers to tips for social media success to nuts and bolts writing mechanics. Nicely done. Anyway, thought to let you know, I think your podcast is one of the best. Hope you have continued success. J. Ryan Fenzel. And that was so nice of him to say.

[00:01:11].540] - Gena
That was so nice. We don't take it for granted. We know that people are really busy. And so when we get a review of the podcast and someone actually sits down is kind enough to write out what they think of the podcast. We're very thankful. We're very thankful. We don't take that for granted. Thank you, J. Ryan Fenzel, we really appreciate that.

[00:01:32].860] - Chris
And we went to his website and discovered, hey, he's also got a brand new podcast that he's starting with his daughter, Kiera F. Jacobs, who's also a writer. So this is the first father daughter writing podcast podcast that we know of, and it's called The Right Note. And that comes out the first Wednesday, I believe, of every month. And so there should be an episode or two out there. It just started. So just be sure to check that out too. It's called The Right Note. We are definitely going to be looking at it and looking forward to sending a nice note back to them too.

[00:02:01].290] - Gena
And I got to say, doing a podcast like that, being an author and doing a podcast like that with your child, your daughter or son, would be really rewarding because you know that he had a huge influence, I'm sure, on her wanting to become an author. And the fact that she has followed through with that, I'm a mom, you guys know I'm a mom. So that would be amazing. I have said many times, we have three children, and I think we're going to get at least one writer out of the batch.

[00:02:34].520] - Chris
We hope so. We'll see.

[00:02:34].720] - Gena
We might get one. I actually think we have one child who has said, I'll never be a book writer or a novelist, but I don't think that's true. I think that that child is going to be a surprise for herself. So there you go.

[00:02:56].640] - Chris
Speaking of surprises, today we are going to talk about one of our best kept secrets as authors. This is something we've never talked about before on the podcast. I don't think. I don't think so. I'm pretty sure we haven't. We haven't talked about it in our emails or groups and everything like that. And it's our best kept secret when it comes to email marketing. Now, if you've been following us for a while, you know that, first of all, we've been talking about emails all this last month, right? Because we know how important emails are for authors to build that list, to start building relationships with your audience, and to start that interaction, getting to know each other. Because those are the people who've raised their hand and said, Yes, I'm interested in what you're talking about. And yet what we found out is when we tried to start doing that on our own. We just had nothing left in the tank. We could help others build their email list. And we helped a lot of big organizations that had email lists of 100,000 people on it build their email list very successfully. But when it came to building our own, it was tough just because we had nothing left in the tank.

[00:04:03].040] - Gena
Yeah. Sometimes it is so much easier to look at someone else. I've sat down with girlfriends over a cup of tea or a cup of coffee, and we've started talking about strengths. And you know that friend that says, I don't know what I'm good at. If you've got that friend who said, and you're like, What are you talking about? What you're good at? And you can start listing off everything that they're great at. It's that same thing when you're writing for yourself, doing an email for yourself. It's real easy sometimes to write for another person or another organization because we could talk about this and this is the strategy we need to use. And you come up with a whole laundry list of things that you can do. You. But when you're writing for yourself, sometimes it's harder. Sometimes it's just like, I don't know what to talk about. Who's going to care about what I think about this or that? Or what am I going to say about this? Or what strategy do I need to include? And it can feel like you're wandering around blind or in a dark room, unable to see where you're going.

[00:05:03].240] - Gena
And so that is where our best kept secret came from.

[00:05:06].580] - Chris
Yeah, because we learned really over the past few years how important accountability was. Working with others and this one, we were trying to lose weight. We've taken some pictures, taken a bunch of family pictures, and we got it back and I'm like, Oh, my goodness, I had gained so much weight and yet I knew I needed to lose it. But I was like, okay, I don't know how to do this on my own because I started many weight loss programs and never had lost any. I ended up joining a program where you were accountable to one another and where you had meetings once a week online. And that accountability helped me lose 40 pounds in four months. It's crazy. Okay, did really well. Helped me change my complete diet. And it's because I had the accountability. That's the reason we started Writing Moments, which you can find out about writingmoments.com. That's where we get together with other writers every Wednesday and we just write together. It's like what I would say, the co working together. And it's really been successful, and we've had some big successes come out of that group. The same thing is true for email marketing.

[00:06:05].680] - Chris
We found it so hard to get those emails written, to get our email strategy done, and we realized, you know what? We've said it before. It's together that we have writing momentum, so we need to get together with someone who can help us get these things done. And that became our best kept secret.

[00:06:25].140] - Gena
Our best kept secret. Drum roll, what is our best kept secret?

[00:06:30].150] - Chris
Our best kept secret is actually a person. Her name is Liz Wilcox, and Liz is email guru. She lives this stuff. She loves it and lives it. She's studying and learning about what the latest trends are in email marketing, how email marketing works, what's the open rates and the click rates, all those things you have to know. She does all of that, which is great because to me, that's a lot of the heavy lifting. And we've been able to count on her to learn those things for us and then just teach us what we need to know. And she has a great way of breaking it down for other people. But more than that, she also helps individuals create their email marketing strategy and create then a weekly template like an outline of here, this is the strategy we're going to focus on. Here's a basic outline you can use to write your email this week. Now, fill it in for your audience, write to them personally the way you would, and then look for that interaction coming back. And I know you're probably thinking, Wow, this must be expensive. You must have hired this.

[00:07:36].880] - Chris
Because she's really into email. She's like a consultant. She's someone who just helps us get these things done. And she was able to look at the way we're doing things and give us real insights. And so, yeah, you'd think it'd be really expensive, but actually it's not. But before we get into all of that, what things would you say that we learned from Liz over this past couple of years?

[00:07:57].900] - Gena
One, I think Liz has really even though, as we've said, and it's a little embarrassing to me to admit that when it came to writing email for ourselves, that we were at such a loss because we have written for large international organization. Large international. Chris said 100,000. We're not talking 100,000. We're actually talking like half a million on their list thing. So we have written for these really large organizations and helped them come up with strategies. That were successful and they worked. But turning them on ourselves and going, Okay, what are we going to talk about to our small group? What are we going to say? And that's where I think talking to Liz, I think Liz does a few things. One, she's so much fun. She's so down to Earth. I have sat in trainings before with marketing email gurus, and it was stiff, and it was like, you could have been sitting in a boardroom at a Fortune 500 company, Oh, dear Lord, don't make a move thing. Liz is not like that. Liz is really down to Earth, and she loves it. She loves email marketing. I think that's the thing that Liz has done for us is she is very accessible and she has made email marketing accessible.

[00:09:21].160] - Gena
And she has taught us and really reminded us of the power of email marketing for the entrepreneur, for the solo entrepreneur. That's what Chris and I have said many times as writers, that's what we are a business as writers, as much as we are authors and we're wordsmiths and we're craftsman words and all of this. Yes, we're all of this. There's definitely artistry in it. We don't take anything away from that. But as independent authors and as traditionally published authors, there is something to be said in developing the business side of things. And so that's where sometimes I think as authors, we need help. And hearing from Liz really has helped us in that.

[00:10:05].830] - Chris
Yeah. Our email list has gone from. So this is real proof here. We used to have email opens when we'd send our emails, maybe 13 % to 16 %. If that's where yours are, we're right there with you. We understand where you're at. Now, there have been times we've had emails of up to a 66 % open rate. I don't think we've even hardly been below 50 % since we've started working with Liz, using her strategies and her templates. She has once a month, she'll meet with a group of anyone who wants to be a part of it where you can ask her any questions you want. I usually like to go to those because I'm always hearing really interesting things. It's always interesting to hear what others are going through. There's quite a few authors that are part of that program, and so she's able to cater things to us as authors real well. Plus she has all kinds of programs that she'll put out on a regular basis, saying, Just talk to this person, and we're going to show you how to do a welcome email series, or I'm going to talk to this person, we'll show you how to create landing pages.

[00:11:04].840] - Chris
She's got other things like that going on. But to me, the real meat and potatoes of everything she does is this email template club that she has. She helps you create your strategy. And then she gives you the templates, which are like a kickstart to when you're writing each week. And what do you think that she charges for this? Is this too expensive for anyone in our audience to afford, do you think?

[00:11:27].440] - Gena
No, this is very affordable.

[00:11:29].010] - Chris
Yeah, believe it or not, all she charges for this is nine dollars a month, which blew me away. She charges nine dollars a month. That's two dollars and 25 cents roughly per week in order to get your email strategy and email template. And this is a proven strategy, good, strong template. She gives a few different versions because we all have different audiences. And so she'll write one version that's more towards a services audience, one that's more towards products, that thing. She'll give you some different ideas that you can run with. But when you have that thing to kickstart off with, man, it just gets you excited and gets you going. So she calls it her email marketing membership. And we thought, we got to share this. We're talking about email marketing. We have got to share about Liz Wilcox's email marketing membership because it's made such a difference for us. So if you want to find out more about that, just go to writing.fyi/liz, or you can look in the show notes and you'll be able to get into this program. It's only nine dollars a month. There's no commitment. You can go ahead and cancel anytime you want.

[00:12:33].370] - Chris
But we have found once we joined, we're like, I don't think we'll ever cancel this thing because it has helped us so much.

[00:12:38].250] - Gena
And one thing that she also does is with each week's template that she releases, she also produces a short video to explain. She explains the video, she explains the strategy behind it. And then she'll even do things like say, okay, look, we're doing this in here because we want to get this result, but realize that you might get several unsubscribed for this, which I've really appreciated because if you've ever sent out emails regularly, you'll get to one that all of a sudden you get a higher than normal unsubcribed. And so that can be a really... It can be a little shocking. What in the world is going on? What did I do wrong? And Liz has also, the other thing that I've really learned from her is that unsubscribeds are okay. Unsubscribeds are not that you've done anything wrong. It's that the person who is unsubscribed is not connecting with your message. They're not your target market, which is really good. So for us as authors, if we're promoting our books and we get somebody who unsubscribes, that's okay. That person might not be our reader, and that's okay because the higher... And go back and listen to an earlier podcast.

[00:13:56].640] - Gena
A couple of podcasts ago, Chris and I talked about this. But when it talks about unsubscribed or you're talking about open rates, you want open rates to be high so that the email services understand that your email is not spam and it will make sure that it gets into people's inbox. So that's where that comes from. But when you're looking at numbers and you want your numbers to grow and all of a sudden you hit an email that has some unsubscribed, it might throw you a little bit. But Liz will walk you through that and let you know that's an okay thing, which I think has been really nice for us. And it's nice to know that when I put an email out there, we put one out there. If it is going to get some unsubscribed, it's nice to be warned about that a little bit beforehand to go, Okay, that's what this one does.

[00:14:46].980] - Chris
And that's okay. But the reason you might still want to go ahead and do those, even though they might have unsubscribed, is because it also endears the people who are subscribed and who don't want to subscribe to you. So it's worth doing to having that counterbalance.

[00:14:59].700] - Gena
And I also want to point out that I think anybody listening to this might say, Oh, my gosh, why would I want a template so that when my email goes out, it sounds like everybody else's email that you start thinking, Well, they're going to all sound cookie cutter. And it doesn't because you are unique. So your voice is unique. What you're going to say, Liz guides you down the road. But how you go and the car you drive, that's completely different. So your email is going to be really different from other people, from another author's email even.

[00:15:32].750] - Chris
It's truly different. In fact, what it is, we use the word template, but it really feels more like it's a guided outline. Okay, here's the direction I want to go as far as strategy goes. And here's the points I want to hit, but it's still going to be completely unique to who you are as an author and for you and your audience. So that's all we wanted to share this week was about our best kept email marketing secret, which is a person and is because we can't do it alone. And that is Liz Wilcox. So find out about her email marketing membership at writing.fyilLiz, the link is in your show notes. And we just really think it's something that will bless you, too. It certainly helped us.

[00:16:14].920] - Gena
Yeah, it definitely has because we no longer go through those dry moments where we think, okay, what are we going to put in the email this week? Or what are we going to do this week? She really has helped even that out and has kept us moving and helped us to be more consistent. And so we hope that it is as much of an encouragement and a tool for you as it has been for us.

[00:16:37].100] - Chris
Absolutely. We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Writing Momentum podcast. If you did enjoy, please rate, review, subscribe, and share. If you do want to go ahead and leave a review like they did at the beginning of this podcast, we'd love to hear it because that always encourages us and we'll leave and give you a shout out too. Until next time, this is Chris and Gena reminding you that together.

[00:16:57].800] - Gena
We have Writing Momentum.

[00:16:59].720] - Chris
Bye bye.