483: Email & Text Message Marketing That Results in Sales – 2023 Marketing Mastery #4
Welcome back to my 2023 Marketing Mastery series, it’s day 4 (and if you’ve missed any of the previous 3, they are SO GOOD, so be sure to check them out!) where we are diving straight into email and text message marketing.
I’ve noticed quite often that businesses have incomplete email nurture sequences and/or do not email their list consistently, and this is a HUGE mistake. Email and text messaging are still highly effective methods for nurturing and converting leads, and you could very well be leaving money on the table if you aren’t utilizing them properly.
Tune in to hear more about how to effectively use email and text messages in your marketing, what not to do, and what changes to make to overcome buyer hesitancy and achieve positive results.
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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Emily Hirsh:
Yes, it gets a higher open rate and we’re gonna talk about that. But email is still used daily for most people. And so having really solid email nurture sequences and converting but also nurturing people via email is still highly effective.
You are listening to the Not For Lazy Marketers Podcast, episode number 483.
Hello everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. We are on episode four of our 2023 Marketing Mastery series that I’ve been doing this week. So if you haven’t gone back and tuned in, there are three other episodes. They’re really, really good. They’re like 20 to 25 minutes each. The first one was talking about mistakes that you cannot afford to make this year. The next one is about content, organic content and creating content that will actually convert your audience into buyers. And then yesterday I did a fire episode on actual sales funnel strategies and true Emily style. I got a little ranty during that episode about templates and formulas and creating strategies that way and how that is so bad. So you wanna go listen to that if you haven’t. And then today I’m gonna dive deep into email and text message marketing. So I wanted to do a separate episode about this because I think this is so critical for success and having complete well thought out email nurture sequences.
And so I mentioned it in yesterday’s podcast about how we’re kind of lengthening how long our email nurture sequences are for our clients and for myself and truly creating an experience within an email sequence. And it’s going really, really well. Like with myself, we just launched a new series that is like three weeks long and delivers something free that somebody signs up for while sending them to my paid program. And the open rates are like 40, 50% with like three 4% click rates, which is well above average. So this is working really, really well for myself and clients. And I wanna talk a little bit more about this. So let’s dive in. Okay. First of all with email and text message marketing, I do feel like we go around in these circles sometimes in the digital marketing industry where people will be like, email marketing is dead.
Like it doesn’t work anymore. And here’s the thing, people still check their email. I check my email every day. You probably check your email every day, like people have moved to probably text message and messenger. Yes, it gets a higher open rate and we’re gonna talk about that. But email is still used daily for most people. And so having really solid email nurture sequences and converting but also nurturing people via email is still highly effective. And it’s a way to stay top of mind. And I always tell this to my clients and remind my team this, but it counts. If somebody sees your email in their inbox and doesn’t open it, they’re gonna think of you for a microsecond, they’re gonna see your name, they’re gonna wonder what that email was. The subject line is gonna decide if it was worth it for them to open it or not.
But it still counts as staying top of mind. So I see this all the time that people really don’t have complete email nurture sequences. They send out like maybe 3, 4, 5 emails and then they, it kind of just ends and they don’t email their list consistently. And your email list and your, you know, text message list of contacts is an asset to your business. So leveraging it, you’ve paid likely through time or money or both to get these people on your list. And so leveraging them to the maximum that you can is critical for overall success in your business. So first of all, I wanna note that there’s a huge opportunity that I think a lot of you guys are underutilizing, like I just said, I think a lot of people do not have fully fleshed out email marketing strategies and therefore you’re leaving money on the table.
Like literally, if you do not have a fully fleshed out email marketing or and or text message marketing strategy, you are getting leads likely and leaving money on the table with what you could be doing with those leads because they’re already there. And so if you flesh this out, if you made this more complete, you made this into an experience, you would likely get more of them to take action, more of those leads to build a stronger relationship with you and therefore creating more success in your marketing. And as I said at the beginning, long email nurture sequences that actually bring people on an experience is the direction that we’re going in. And here’s why right now, whatever you think about the economy, we’re in a recession or whatever, but buyer hesitancy is higher. And that’s a fact. And I don’t say that to scare you guys at all because a ton of our clients are absolutely crushing it.
People are still buying things. My business is doing really well. Like don’t listen to the the fear mon grain around the recession. There is a ton of opportunity, however, when buyer hesitancy is higher, meaning people think just a little bit more about making buying decisions today because of the state of the economy and because of inflation and because of cost, right? That means you likely have to spend more time nurturing somebody before they become a paying customer. And so maybe in the past you were able to convert somebody in two to four weeks within coming into your sales funnel, but now it might take eight to 12 weeks. And I’m just throwing that out there as an example. I know that it takes six months on average to convert our clients into agency clients. It takes six months. So I know what I do today and the experience I create for the next six months for my clients is so important and it’s also gonna impact me in the future.
So I am a huge fan and this is what we’ve been mapping out for clients recently. I’m a huge fan of long email nurture sequences that actually help people consume what they signed up for and build trust in the process. So here’s an example. If somebody signs up for a a, let’s say three video trainings, this is mine, this is my new funnel, three video trainings on creating an irresistible offer. We have built a three week long email nurture sequence to go with this funnel that actually regurgitates and helps people consume what they signed up for. Cuz here’s the mistake a lot of you make. You assume that because somebody signed up for that checklist or that webinar or that training or whatever that freebie was, that that means they’re gonna consume it and that you just need to send one email with the link to download it and then go straight into sales emails.
Whereas instead, if you build in an experience and you tell stories and you reinforce what you’re teaching inside of that content and you reiterate it and you spoon feed people and you create this experience, not only are you going to build massive trust, but you’re gonna actually get them to consume the thing you need them to consume to be ready to become a buyer. Okay? So I love doing that. And then within it we use what’s called the super signature. I did not invent this like an OG email marketer did. Russell Brunson’s talked about it. A lot of people have. And so in these type of sequences, what it means is at the bottom of every email you put three, you put a link to three things and typically you’re gonna put a link to the thing that they downloaded so that they can find it at the bottom of every single email.
You can also do this with a paid product. You can put their login at the bottom of every email. So what that does is it trains your leads to open your emails so that they know the login or the link to the thing they want is at the bottom of the email. Then the second thing is you put a call to action. So this is probably your offer, it could be your application, it could be your paid product, whatever. And then the third thing is usually an extra piece of content, extra piece of value. So we rotate between podcast episodes of mine a link to my automated webinar training, different things that are relevant to that episode, I mean not to that episode, to that email. And so this is at the bottom of the email below the signature. So after you sign off and it’s just there, it’s not a direct call to action, but it’s there, it’s a reminder.
So every single email that somebody gets in those three weeks, which we send them out daily that equals at the bottom, is a reminder of my call to action of my offer of what they downloaded. And it’s reinforcing it, reinforcing it, reinforcing it. So creating this like two to four week long email sequence creates all of these touchpoints with your brand, nurtures them, indoctrinates them, and eventually converts them. So this is highly custom, like we just built one out for a client for her webinar that is like a 10 day sequence so it can be shorter. And then we have another one that we built up for a client that’s like three weeks long. So it ranges between like 10 days to three weeks. And then I actually, for my v i p day, I built out an email sequence that’s like three months long total once it’s done, we’re working on executing it now, but there’s like multiple phases.
And the final phase is biweekly, twice a week nurture sequence, I mean nurture emails for like two months just to follow up with the leads who didn’t buy. So creating that long email sequence. And, and here’s the thing that you need to do. Look at all the places that a lead could join your email list or in the future if you’re planning for a lead to join your email list and you e-commerce people out there, this means when someone joins your newsletter, you don’t just send them one email and then hope that they buy and they get your regular emails. You create an experience e-commerce, like I have mapped out some epic abandoned cart and customer onboarding email sequences that convert like crazy because everybody gets this wrong. And who actually taught me this was my friend George Bryant who is an incredible email marketer, like one of the best I’ve ever met.
And so we use his methods and we implement them for our clients. And he’s actually gonna be, by the way, teaching you guys teaching all of this in a full day in our three day event in April because I was like, you have to, this is like the most valuable thing cuz it’s changed everything for me when he taught me it. So if you’re interested in coming to the live event that we just announced this week with George Bryant and I, you can just send me a message on Instagram and I’ll shoot you the link. But anyways, back to this E-commerce people get this all wrong. So what they do is when someone buys, they send like, here’s your confirmation, here’s your shipping, right? That’s what 90% of them do. When instead you could create an experience that helps somebody actually consume the product they just bought, have a great experience, potentially leave reviews and maybe order more.
Or same thing for abandoned cart. What typically people do is they send like one email that’s like, Hey, you forgot to buy. And then that’s it. When you could create an experience that actually provides other value. So I just did this, I plan this out for a c client who sells hammock stands, like high end hammock stands for campers. And so we planned out an email sequence that tied in content that that person would enjoy, like other things to pack on your campaign trip, things to take into consideration when looking for a hammock like other valuable content that wasn’t, hey, you forgot to buy, but what do you think every email is doing? It’s reminding them of the purchase that they abandoned and they didn’t buy through valuable content. And so people get this so, so wrong and e-commerce, you guys have tons of opportunity here, but thinking about any place that a new lead is coming into your email list or taking an action, buying a product, signing up for a digital product, signing up for a service, that is all an opportunity for a journey that you can create through email marketing.
Okay? So think of your email sequences as a journey and an experience in your emails and that is absolutely how we write them these days in our, in our company. And we create this long experience. Everybody doesn’t have to open every email, but we’re providing tons of value while also more importantly staying top of mind. So an action that you can do from this is look at all the opportunities that you have a journey and then ask yourself like what is that journey of of reinforcing content or providing value that I could create? And so that could be new lead to a PDF download, it could be registration to a free challenge to a webinar to a workshop. It could be abandoned purchase, abandoned cart, customer onboarding for all products, digital, physical and service. Everywhere there’s an action people successfully take, there’s a journey that can be created to follow it via email.
And there’s a specific formula we follow to do this that I’m not gonna get into on here, but this is George’s formula and we now implement it for all of our clients and it is like, it converts like so crazy. So here’s a couple other things with text messages. How do those play a part in email marketing? And I think people overcomplicate text messages. So here’s the thing with anything in marketing, you have to think about the experience. And so when somebody gets a text message, it’s a different experience when they get an email. So your text messages have to be less frequent than email can be. You can send a daily email, you cannot send a daily text message. You likely would make some people annoyed. Your text messages have to be shorter for obvious reasons. When you look at a text message on your phone and it’s like this super long paragraph text message, you’re likely gonna ignore it or skim it and they, they have to be punchy to the point and valuable.
But really it’s almost like it’s like an announcement or just like a quick tip. So what I typically do when we plan text messages is first we plan out the email sequence and we plan that entire journey out. Then we sprinkle in text messages throughout there at a less frequent pace and usually it’s about a third of the volume. So if I’m sending out 10 emails, then I’m sending out about three text messages within that same timeframe. And the information is almost the same. It’s just shortened more brief straight to the point. And the other like minor thing is do not put ugly links and text messages. If you’re gonna send someone a link, make it look nice, do not have like 16 numbers attached to that link. Okay? Cuz those little things make a difference. So text messages, text messages can be used very strategically.
I’m a big fan of them. If you guys are on my list, you know, we send text messages and they do have a higher open rate. I get people to tell me that all the time. I don’t open your emails as much, but I see your text messages every time you send them. So when you strategically they can be really successful. Okay, the next thing I wanna talk about is regular nurture emails to your list. So I’ve talked about having a journey attached to any action that people take when they download something for free, when they abandon something, when they buy something, right? That’s all journeys. Then you’ve got your regular email nurturing. I think the sweet spot of sending out regular like nurture value emails to your list. So that excludes like sales call to action emails is about two a week. If you’re doing none right now, then just start at one.
And it’s really important that you stay consistent with that. Do not be that person that grows your email list. They go through four emails and then they don’t hear from you again for months. Because what happens is people be like, they forget, they forget what they even signed up for, they become disengaged. And then all that work you did to actually get those emails and those leads really gets wasted because so many of them become disengaged or they don’t open your emails or they don’t build that relationship with you. So I like having our clients have two nurture emails a week, one to two. And these are pure value. So these are excluded from any sales or call to action specific emails that you’re gonna do related to whatever’s happening in your business. And when you do this, you earn the right to sell.
When you give and you give and you give through nurturing and content, when you go to sell and do a promo and you wanna send like seven emails in a week for it, you might annoy a few people, but you’ve also earned the right to do that because you’ve given a lot more to them, right? And, and you’ve balanced that scale. So you’re giving more than your selling. These email nurtures emails can be very unique to your business if you have a regular piece of content like a podcast or a video, that helps a lot with what these should be. A lot, a lot of people, and I do actually think this is coming back, are creating newsletters again. I know a couple of really successful business owners that are friends of mine who have weekly newsletters with tens of thousands of people assigned up to just get literally those newsletters every week.
So that used to be a strategy like seven, 10 years ago, everybody had a weekly newsletter and then it became, oh, like that was boring and people didn’t have it anymore. But I love the concept of a weekly newsletter and, and making what goes into it very specific to your brand. Like what does your audience wanna hear from you? Is it the answer to a question? Is it product recommendations? Is it specific features that week? Is it you sharing something personal? Is it a story like the it you can be creative here with how you wanna show up every week for your audience, but the key is consistency. Just like I said in the content episode, the regular nurturing of your email list, the key is consistency. Okay, I have two more points that I wanna make here. One big one is when you go to write emails, nurture sequences, sales sequences, whatever, make sure that they don’t become too templated or robotic.
Like make sure that as you send out emails, like if they’re your regular emails that you’re sending to your list, I see this happen a lot. People send out a weekly email and they all start to sound the same and they don’t freshen things up, they don’t test new things, they’re not really tracking their opening click rates and trying things. We try things all the time with my podcast emails because we’re trying to see what gets the most impact. And we also don’t want things to become so like I guess what’s the word? Just, just like predictable that you guys are like, oh, it’s the same email every week, the same template, no value in it. And then you start to ignore it because people do ignore predictability, right? When things become so templated and robotic feeling, people start to feel like it’s not real.
So just keep that in mind when you go to write emails. Like if you’re writing a really long sequence, if you start to feel like you’re saying the same thing over and over again in your emails, come up with some different stories, some different angles, some different emotions that you can create from this and to make it fresh and then also do that for your regular email nurturing, just so it doesn’t become templated, it doesn’t become super robotic and people really are receptive to it. Speaking of that, if we’re talking about the actual successful emails and the content in them, storytelling and emotions, hands down, always win. So when we plan out these email sequences for clients, we are being so crazy intentional that you wouldn’t even know it when you go through the sequence. But what we’re doing is we’re purposely putting in stories that are meant to help people overcome objections that we already determined.
So this is something that I do to help with all sequences is we have an overall intention of what the email sequence should do. And that intention should be to take someone on a specific experience that helps them overcome an objection or believe something or take action on something. And likely it’s related to taking your offer. So for example, I’ll tell you guys mine behind the scenes, and if you go through the sequence, you may or may not even realize it. So we have a very long sequence attached to our marketing playbook. And the number one objection that I want people to get over during that, like I think it’s like four week long sequence, is understanding that they need to invest in their marketing and they need to have a set aside monthly marketing budget. Why? Because one, that’s how you create success. And I know that because people who don’t invest in their marketing and their growth don’t grow.
But two, that’s how you work with us. You have a marketing budget, you decide what your marketing budget is, and then you are qualified to work with us. And so within the sequence, we’ve intentionally pulled out stories of myself, of clients, of past students from our past program that showcase that they invested in their marketing and they chose a specific marketing budget and what that did for their growth and that they realized they weren’t investing enough and that was slowing it down because the intention of my overall email sequence was for them to o overcome that objection. So anytime you write a sequence, having a clear intention, and then we also do that for each individual email. So each email we write has an intention, has a goal within, we want this email to make someone feel this way, to understand this, to get clear on this.
And then that drives the copy. And so having that set out and laid out first, then you can go ask yourself, what stories do I have that help reinforce this? Because we all know humans respond the best to stories. If you just straight out tell somebody something or you tell them through a story every single time, almost every time, they’re gonna retain it through a story better, right? So pre-planning out what stories that you can tell and you can bring into your emails is going to help you overall write them and bringing out that emotion because people wanna feel something. I look at emails when my team sends them for me to approve or our creatively looks at them to approve for clients. Every single one we ask ourselves like, do I feel something when I read this email, what am I feeling? What am I experiencing?
And is that what we want them to feel? Or do we need to, you know, dig deeper? Okay, the final kind of strategy that I wanna share and this is another George Bryant strategy, which he told me he didn’t come up with this. I guess someone, some OG did <laugh>, I can’t remember the email marketer that did, but he’s like, before Russell Brenson time and Russell learned a lot from him, which is the concept of open loops. So they do this a lot in movies and in entertainment where they will open a loop, meaning they’ll say something like, you know, oh, so-and-so you know, did this. And then you’re like, wait, what? And, and then it makes you pay attention. You can do this in marketing too, where you say, oh, I’m gonna tell you about that time that we 10 x that person, you know, XYZs return on investment later, but for now let’s talk about this.
And what that does is, is it subconsciously gets the consumer, the reader or the listener or however they’re consuming the content to go, oh, I need to listen out for that. Like, I need to hear the answer to that. And it keeps them intrigued. And so if you can do this in your email sequence itself, you’re just gonna increase your engagement way more. And so what we do is we plan out, okay, in email number two, we’re gonna open a loop and then we’re gonna close it in email four. And then in email three gonna open a loop and close it in email five. So once we have the whole sequence planned out, and this is getting a little advanced, so if you’re like, what the heck, then just hire us. Just kidding. But really if you’re not and you’re tracking with me here, this is so valuable what I’m telling you because this is how people get people to stay engaged and people do this in podcast, I do this in my podcast, I do this in my webinar.
It’s something that you don’t realize is happening, but now that you hear it, you’re gonna see it. And yet you do stay engaged cuz you’re like, I wanna hear that thing. So once we plan out the whole sequence, the number of emails, the intentions of the emails, then we just mark where we’re gonna open the loops. And you actually don’t even have to know what loop you’re gonna open cuz it probably will come to you when you’re writing the content and you know, you just have to open a loop and just basically say this really intriguing thing, I’m gonna tell you about it soon, but for now we’re gonna focus on this. And then it just sparks that it, it sparks that kind of intrigue and then you close it later on in the email sequence. So planning these out, it’s highly advanced, but it increases your stats so much.
And we do this all the time now in our sequences and in my sequences and like I said, the numbers speak for themselves. I’ve compared sequences not doing this to ones doing this, and the open rates and click rates are almost double like literally that is insane. And it’s because of the engagement and the experience and the overall feeling that you’re giving people as they go through the email signals, they want more. And don’t you want people to want more of your emails? Like that is such a great thing to have for your brand that people feel like your emails are valuable and nurturing and they want to open them and they want to read them and they maybe don’t get to every single one. And that’s okay. But they want that and that’s the really important piece. All right you guys, that was a lot, that was a lot of value, that was a lot of tactics.
So as usual, when you listen to my podcast, I want you to have one big takeaway. One big takeaway from this episode that you’re gonna go take into your business. Likely you listen to this and you’re like, oh, I have a lot of opportunity for planning out email sequences in my business. And truly you guys, like we have taken our email sequences that we plan out for clients to the next level. So if you want this done for your business, you can go to help my strategy.com. And I did reveal the event with George Bryant in this episode two, I don’t normally do multiple calls to action, but it just naturally came up. So George and I are doing a live event called Marketing Mastery Live, and we are two incredible marketers and when you put us together, we’re like magic. And we are talking about everything related to your marketing, your strategy, your email marketing, your content, your messaging, like super deep.
We’re only letting 30 people come to the event. It’s in Austin, Texas from April 14 to 16. And so if you want details on that, just send me a message on Instagram. We announced it yesterday, we already have some spots filled, like it’s gonna go really fast, it’s going to be amazing, very intimate. And so if like even this email sequence interests you, we’re gonna actually be planning out people’s email sequences live in the event. It’s a get stuff done event, not just an information event. And it’s gonna be absolutely incredible. So if you want those details, feel free to send me a message on Instagram and I’ll just shoot you the link. You can DM me at Emily Hirsch. All right, you guys. So this episode is number four and to wrap up our whole series, I’ll be back here tomorrow with my paid ad predictions and strategies that you can leverage right now in your business. And I hope to see some of you guys back here. Remember, if you are loving this series at all, I’d love for you to share it on social media and tag me at Emily Hirsch too, so I can thank you for sharing it and I will talk to you guys tomorrow.
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