The Importance of Email Marketing and How to Nurture a List

 

Marco Hernandez [00:00:02] Hey, good morning, everybody. This is Marco from Bullseye Agency.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:00:06] And today we’re gonna be talking about a very interesting topic that a lot of people put on the sidelines. It’s copywriting. And for that, we got Anika Watkins from Moxie Copywriting here with us. Welcome, Anika.

 

Anika Watkins [00:00:18] Hi. I’m excited to be here. And yes, email marketing is so important. And I find it something that a lot of people don’t utilize. They don’t tap into it at all. They spend so much time building a list and then they do nothing with their list. And so I’m really excited to dove in and just talk about, you know, why it’s so important and some practical ways that you can get the most out of your list.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:00:41] Awesome. Awesome. Well, tell us a little bit about your background. Who’s moxie copywriting and where you get started?

 

Anika Watkins [00:00:47] Definitely. So I started Moxie copywriting a couple years ago, but I have owned my own agency for almost 10 years, which is crazy. And I’ve been writing professionally for more than 10 years. And so over the last decade, I’ve been writing copy for everything in the agency world. So Facebook ads, email sequences, landing page copy, pretty much all the copy that’s required to sell your product or service. And as a writer, that’s really my passion. And so I decided to launch a copy rating agency. And so with our agency, we’re able to serve other agencies and write all the copy that they need. And we have a pretty cool model. You can get copy on demand. We’re very affordable. We also have monthly plans.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:01:29] Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, we can we can speak for that. We’ve used Anika in copywriting services. We, for example, in the agency we have we don’t specialize in copy and we’ve understood the power of correctly crafting your words to reach your audiences. So we truly appreciate the work done on that.

 

Anika Watkins [00:01:49] Thank you. Yeah. We love writing for other agencies and we’ve got a team of phenomenal writers who are some of the best direct response and copywriters in the industry. And I think what’s cool about what we do, too, is we’re able to write in so many different niches because our writers have really diverse experience. So, yeah, it’s really fun. It’s never boring. We’re always writing about something new.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:02:09] That’s awesome. So on a personal level, who’s been your inspiration or somebody you look up to in the copywriting field or in the least inspiration, how to write properly?

 

Anika Watkins [00:02:22] There’s so many. I have to say Kevin Rogers was copy chief is amazing. He’s a big leader in the copywriting industry. Dana Derricks has done some incredible stuff in the copywriting space. He’s done a lot with like Russell Brunson and Clickfunnels. Laurie Morgan, there’s so many amazing copywriters out there. And I think one thing that people don’t necessarily understand is there’s a big difference between writing and copywriting. So copywriting is writing for the purpose of selling a product or service and having the knowledge of direct response copywriting, which is very different than writing, you know, blog content or even website content until it’s a really unique skill set to know how to write for different platforms or for Facebook ads, for email sequences. It’s really a craft. And so it’s something I can nerd out on all day long. I do with my team.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:03:17] It’s perfect. We’re we’re here to nerd out. So awesome. No, it’s important you’re clarifying that because we as agencies’ also. We get hit by clients, say, well, I already have content on the site and sometimes they don’t understand that you could have written any information out there. But it’s not sorted or arranged in the right emotional way or maybe in the right structure or grammatical structure to actually deliver properly a message.

 

Anika Watkins [00:03:48] Exactly. Yeah. And it’s the same thing with email marketing as well. You know, I think a lot of businesses think, well, just with weapon email together and blasted out to my list and that’s to be a strategy behind it. You have to know how to nurture your list. What segment you’re gonna be speaking to. What voice to use with your customer. And so I’ll kind of want to walk through some of those specific things with your email list and how to make that work for you.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:04:13] Totally. Go ahead if you want.

 

Anika Watkins [00:04:17] Yeah. So I think, you know, let’s just quickly touch on a few things that make email marketing so important. I think the first thing is that it’s really cost effective. So you’re not spending thousands and thousands of dollars on Facebook ads or a billboard or any other form of advertising. You own your list, you know. So Facebook could crash tomorrow. There could be new platforms. And so when you have a list that’s yours to keep and to nurture. And the great thing is you can send out an email blast essentially for free. I mean, obviously, you’ll have to pay for your platform or your CRM. So like active campaign or Globule or email champ, which I don’t recommend. It’s just a little dated, but it’s very cost effective. So actually, if you’re a copy. Writer, you can write your own copy and put together an e-mail sequence and send that out to your clients and automate it. Or you can hire a copywriter if that’s not your strength. And then have that sequence run out and automate for you. So it’s very cost effective. It keeps you top of mind as your customer. So I think a lot of times, like I said, people will put so much emphasis on building a list. They’ll do Elite Magnet and they collect all these e-mails and they just kind of collect dust in their CRM. And so you really have to nurture emails, because if you don’t, let’s say you had a lead magnet from like six months ago, but you never actually followed up with them after you delivered the lead magnet. Chances are they’re probably not going to like your email six months from now because they’ve already lost interest. They don’t know who you are. It’s so easy to get lost in the shuffle. So having a nurture sequence is so important. And it can be set up in an evergreen format where somebody ops in you can make it last pretty long. You could even spread it out over two to six months. You’re just staying top of mind with them. So that’s a really nice thing about email marketing. You can automate it. Like I said, so with platforms like Active Campaign or Klaviyo, I love these things because it’s so awesome. So for our business, when we have a new customer, they get segmented to a certain list and then they get dropped into a flow where I know they’re gonna get 70 emails over a certain amount of time. And that’s a very easy way to just stay present with your customers and add value. Do you use a lot of e-mail marketing with your own business?

 

Marco Hernandez [00:06:37]  Guilty of everything that you’re actually describing. I’ve been very get on board, but unfortunately I do while you’re speaking. It’s actually something that I’ve considered myself like as an agency and as an e-commerce firm in both aspects, probably over the last year and a half from an agency standpoint, collecting maybe 200 emails.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:06:58] And I haven’t seen every single email. Sometimes I feel like I’ve sent emails to those leads on a very manual way. And the response is good. Sometimes they reply back. Sometimes they end up signing up a client that never nurtured that. And I think that’s been a big flaw in my business and it is something that I need to correct. So it makes sense what you’re saying.

 

Anika Watkins [00:07:21] Yeah, definitely. And I think with nurture sequences, the biggest thing is add value first. So in every single email when somebody opts into your list, you always want to add value. So I am not a believer or fan of just hard hitting sales emails. I mean, yes, when it’s like Black Friday or something like that, those your sales emails. But you know, typically with any brand, whether it’s e-commerce or B2B or your service-based business or agency, if you lead with value first and consistently, you just build so much trust with your audience and they’re so thankful that you’re just sharing all of this great information that they can genuinely implement. So that’s a really good way to look at your email sequence. Add value first and then you can kind of drop in your product or your service as a p._s. That’s a really good way to get people, you know, suddenly interested in what you’re doing and kind of a non-threatening way. But you can also make it really interactive. So at the end of almost all of our sequences, we just simply say, you know, have a question or a struggling reply to this e-mail. We love to help. And some of them will even say, we love responding to emails. So please hit us back if you have any questions about copywriting. And it’s amazing to me how many responses we got because just that friendly personal line at the end, people are like, wow. Actually, I do have a question about X, Y, Z.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:08:43] It’s actually a very good tip or something in line so that maybe you’ve seen this or experiment with this. It’s actually assigning a persona to that email where you really say, hey, my name is Jenny from customer service and here’s my contact information, whether it’s actually true or not.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:09:00] You put some physical personal will respond to that email greeting that avatar word doesn’t make it like a personal email, but something somebody’s writing crafting that. Yeah. By rock etc responds.

 

Anika Watkins [00:09:12] Yeah, definitely. And then before we dive into like actually how to nurture your list. The last thing I’ll say if you’re not super familiar with email, I know Marco, you know this, but you can track everything. So with e-commerce you can track purchases. So how many people click through and actually buy your product? So for a band and cart sequences for example, that is money left on the table if you’re not using that because I see the back end of many Shopify stories for our customers and we set up their emails and sometimes it blows my mind. I’ve seen abandoned part rates as high as 30 percent. And so if you think about those numbers, if you’re selling thousands of dollars each week with your Shopify store, you’re getting a lot of those sales directly from your emails, which cost you nothing. You set up your emails. They automate their your customer to come back and. Yes. And so you can track purchases, open rates, bounce rates, click, click through rates. So it’s a really easy way to see what your customers are responding to. Which I really love about e-mail.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:10:12] Awesome. Before diving into the next topic. Yeah. Just to touch base on something. So for the last 10 years, I’ve probably heard about this number. And in my mind, it still stays. They talk about the importance of growing the list because if you’re nurturing properly, consistently e-mailing them, you will see an average return of one dollar per month person subscriber and your list.

 

Anika Watkins [00:10:37] Oh, that’s interesting. I’ve heard that stat before.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:10:38] OK. Yeah. It’s been around for about 10 years. That number, it’s state even even though people say, you know, it’s gonna be dead and there’s still a lot of money being made. So somebody has about a million subscribers in their e-mail list. Average is about a million dollars in sales. It doesn’t mean that everybody’s purchasing. But statistically speaking, some people will come in and buy your thousand dollar product. I believe that. And people who have about a thousand users or a thousand people in their list. They tend to average about a thousand dollars. So that’s why we need, at least from the analytic standpoint, we think grow your list as fast, because that’s going to help you even out that revenue through time.

 

Anika Watkins [00:11:21] Yeah. And I’ll say, too, I can’t tell you how many times I opt in on a Web site. It says, subscriber, download this free thing. And then I get nothing. And it’s actually really annoying. So I’m like, well, I was expecting something and I gave you my email and the lead magnet doesn’t come or join their newsletter. And then there is no newsletter or no content. And when people give you their email today, especially, that’s a big things. People get so spammed or so bombarded with content. So I think as the business owner, you have to think, OK, somebody trusted me with their email address. What am I going to give to them? So I feel like it’s kind of our responsibility when somebody gives us our email to give them value in our story.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:12:01] And maybe later, can you elaborate on the opposite where there’s over saturation of emails, you often in daily they’re hammering you until you buy like who can you later a work work the call about that?

 

Anika Watkins [00:12:13] Definitely. OK. Absolutely. I think that’s a really important thing to mention. OK. So I kind of wanted to just quickly look at some different nurture options for both income and then agency or service based businesses. So for e-com, one thing we offer our clients is like an ultimate income sequence, which is three abandoned card e-mails, five opt in email. So after somebody ops and on your Web site, your Web site or pop up and then for new customer e-mails and those are essentially the basic mandatory emails I think every single income store needs to have in place because it’s such an easy way to win sales and to build trust and to actually get people to come back and become repeat customers. So abandon card. Hopefully everybody knows what that is if you’re listening to this. But when you buy a product, when you’re looking at a product and you leave the cart for whatever reason, maybe you got distracted or is in your credit card, you want to trigger these emails to bring that person back to that product. And these these email services like Clavier, an active campaign, we’ll do it in a dynamic way. So it’ll show the customer the exact product they were looking at, which is really cool. So if you’ve ever gotten an email like that, it’s like, oh, yeah, those are those shoes I wanted. And I ran out of time and now I have my card. I’m going to go ahead and buy that. So have at least three of those in place. Usually one will go out a couple of hours after abandoned cars. You don’t want to be too fast. And then, you know, twelve to twenty four hours later, could be the second one. And then 48 to 70 hours later for the third and final. And there are different ways you can do that. The first one can just be straightforward. You left something in your cart. Come back and get it. The second one could be here’s a coupon to give them a little nudge to finish the purchase. Or maybe free shipping. And then the third one could be, we can’t hold your card any longer. Your coupon is going to expire. Come back and complete the purchase. So that’s very straightforward. And one hundred percent automated. So once you set this up, it’s just going to constantly send those emails out to your customers every time they abandoned card. It’s like, why would you not do that? It’s just money on the table. And Marco, you have an e-commerce store, so you know, it matters.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:14:22] Totally. Oh, really? And I’ll also see how it’s when it’s not implemented properly in a work. And you’re gonna be able to incentivize them like you say. Sometimes they get distracted, sometimes clicking through.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:14:36] And they lost that checkout process because it maybe sometimes silly things happen that they’re browsing an ad on Instagram, browse or not even on their safari on Instagram browser. A call comes through and when they hang up the call, the session of that browser disappears. So they can’t even fulfill it physically.

 

Anika Watkins [00:14:54] Right. I think that happened before. And so when you have that abandoned cart sequence you’re making. Much easier for that interesting customer who is already warm to come back and complete the purchase.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:15:04] Yes, sometimes we forget that you were doing that action. So it’s it’s a great reminder. Hey. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Anika Watkins [00:15:11] Yeah. ECom Mandatory. You have to have that and then website. Pop it like pop up. So most eCom sites have some sort of pop up or it’s like 50 percent off and you subscribe for updates or maybe have like a subscribe button at the bottom of your site. Those people get neglected so much. Usually they’ll just send one code, you know, after that initial pop up and then nothing else. Or if they subscribe on the bottom of the site, they never get emails. It’s just the store collecting email addresses. And so that’s a really easy way to win back customers. You know, you can offer a discount code again and tell them your story in a fun and engaging way, not just here’s how we started. Blank, blank, blank. You know, email copywriting should be very conversational. It should be very personal. And that’s why you really need a copywriter who understands that to craft those before you connect with us on social media is another great email customer testimonials. So just rave reviews about your product or services blog post just adding value, finding creative way to add value when somebody opt in to your list is really important.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:16:15] How do you find no responses with attached videos on them like personalized video when after they submit a purchase that the CEO of a company might record a video and say, Hey, thank you for purchasing your product. How do you find engaging with the audiences?

 

Anika Watkins [00:16:29] I haven’t even seen anything like that. Honestly, with the video embedded, but I think that’s a really cool idea. I think the more personal you can make your emails, the better. So if you can record a video and say hey means so much to me that you purchase their product, we put our heart and soul into this and we can’t wait to share this with you. I think that’s amazing. And it’d be really cool to split test and see, you know, in Klaviyo or active campaign how the video did against the one without the video, right? Yeah, I think that’s an awesome idea. And the new customer emails. So people who purchase your product, obviously you want to send them a nice email thanking them for the purchase and then send a series of value emails after that. That’s what I like to do with eCom story. So thank you for the purchase. Here’s some more value we want to send your way. So just super helpful tips, hacks or blog content, how to use the product, how to maximize the products. There’s so many ways you can get creative with that. Let’s say it was a scarf you purchased online. So your value email could be like how to style your scarf. You know, for fall or best accessories to mix and match. You can do so many things, but it’s just about adding more value. And then you could also do something like. Have you tried our other product or service because you bought this? We think you might also really like this product. And here’s what our customers have to say. And then as a thank you. Several emails later. Give them another code to say thank you. And it’s just for customers. So we appreciate your business. When you come back, you use this code. We’ll give you discount for being a loyal customer. So those are just like basic three sequences. Every eCom store should have in place to nurture.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:18:07] Great. Brilliant. Brilliant.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:18:09] I think you’re talking some very important aspects that we really overlook and don’t give the importance to me to our stores.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:18:19] We take them for granted. All Shopify has already some sequence built in. I’ll take them. But hey, if everybody is doing exactly the same. Guess what? There’s no value proposition behind why you’re better than any other brand, though.

 

Anika Watkins [00:18:34] Yeah, exactly. And Shopify and a lot of these other platforms, they do have some of those just automated templated emails. But what customers will remember is the personalization. So even if it’s emojis and your subject line of the email or saying the customer’s first name, I always recommend that that makes it way more personal. But just modifying any template that you have so that it really sounds like your brand’s voice and that it’s connecting with the reader on a personal level that makes such a huge difference. And I think that those emails convert much higher than just a generic copy and paste it for somebody starting that Houssam More does not have a sequence in place.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:19:16] What works better? They just pulled a gun and say, Hey, Annica helped me build this email list. Or do you find it better to say, hey, okay, I’m gonna sit down, write 5 e-mails. That’s how I understand it should be written. And then Longo’s to you and you guys come in and tweak them and craft them better. What works best?

 

Anika Watkins [00:19:34] So typically when we work with people, they will have an email list. Almost everybody who orders e-mails from us has some sort of existing list and they don’t know how to utilize it. And so what they’ll do with us is say, hey, OK. So I’d really like like a strong nurture sequence after somebody buys our product, but I don’t even know what to say. And so our team can say, OK, let’s walk you through that. So email one, let’s do X, Y, Z, email. 2 and we’ll work with them to figure out how can we add value, what makes sense for your products, because a lot of business owners don’t even know how that translates into emails. We’ll help them figure that out. And then once we know those details are like the bones of the structure, we’ll write it for them. And so then they have these really nice, completely customized emails that match their brand’s voice, that match their avatars voice. And so that’s typically the most effective way to do it. Fantastic. Yeah. And then. So if you’re an agency or if you have a service based business, you might feel like, how do I implement emails for me? I don’t have a band in part. I don’t have purchases on my Web site. What can I even do with my list? So for an agency, for example, you still have customers, but you need to be adding them to your list. However, it is an active campaign. Or Flavio, I guess not hobbyists. That’s more Shopify, but active campaign. So whenever you have a new customer, let’s say you sign up a new client, put them in a sequence. So say welcome to the agency. We’re so excited to work with you. Maybe tell them how to get the most out of it. How do engages you guys? Kind of like an onboarding email that be a great email number one, then email number two could be something value based, you know, share recent client wins. So you want to set up like a nice nurturing sequence when you onboarding any new client as an agency. I think that is super essential and most agencies don’t do that. So that’s a good one. Having a nice new customer sequence in place. You could even share blog content or videos like this. Like anything that your customer is going to find value from. And here’s what I have found. The more value I deliver to my customers, the more they want to work with me. They sign up and they pay for something. And then I just continue to send them more and more and more and more value and more value. They’re like, wow, I feel like I got so much for my money and I just keep giving to the client. They really feel like they get a lot out of it. And then also you could do some sort of like reactivation sequence. So whether you’re an agency or B2B or B2C, so that’s your list of clients that you haven’t heard from, that you haven’t worked with and say like 180 days. So you could send out a nice sequence to them saying, hey, we haven’t heard from you in a long time, here’s a discount code or we’ve got these services. We’d love to bring you back in or offer something for free. So you could say we’re doing complimentary calls. We’d love to just take a look at Web site, no sales pitch. So there’s some clever ways you can reactivate your dormant list. And then also, obviously, like a subscription, you should have a subscription button on your website somewhere or a pop up. And then again, offer value and then slowly picture services. So the thing I hate most about pop ups and subscription lists is let’s say I opted into your website marcoh for your agency. And the first e-mail I get is like, thanks for opting in for the best agency to work with. Schedule your call with me. Let’s get you signed up. That is such a turnoff for most e-mail subscribers. So again, you have to switch on that value mindset first. So how can I add value probably four to six e-mails in which may sound like a lot. And you can do a P.S. that says, you know, schedule a complimentary call, but you should never lead your sales pitch because you haven’t built that trust. They’re a new person. And again, I swear by this. The more value you add, the more people respond to you and like to work with you. So you can do a soft sell in your emails in the format of the p._s. That’s the easiest way to get people to connect with you for.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:23:46] For agencies who want to grow their email list, you suggest going down route of case studies and leave magnets rather than just. Just don’t leave it open.

 

Anika Watkins [00:23:57] You have to grow the list. Yes. So I think that case studies that can work. Lead magnets are great. If you can offer offer like templates or your Facebook agency, like our top five Facebook app packs for high converting ads or something, that really it should feel like it’s almost too painful for you to give away because you’re sort of giving away the secret sauce, but not really. Those are the type of lead magnets that do best. That information that, you know, is such a valuable golden nugget and you’re willing to give it away for free. But I still think that’s one of the best ways to build an email list is through a lead magnet to have a really solid lead magnet or a free training. So you could do a free training where they opt in. You take them to a landing page for a video and you give them like a jam packed hour long pitch free training on whatever it is you’re best at. And those two are the things that I see work best for generating leads.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:25:01] You actually you guys do the lead magnets, don’t you? Right.

 

Anika Watkins [00:25:05] Yeah. What we do. What what type of lead magazine can you offer to the marketplace? You’ve seen work. Great.

 

Anika Watkins [00:25:11] Yeah. So I mean, the lead magnets that we write are, you know, typically for an agency it’ll be like their top ten tips for improving your Facebook ads or we’ve written so many different lead magnets. We’ve done them for doctors, for medical practices. But essentially, it’s just an e-book with, you know, five to ten super valuable, implementable things that people can read and go out and do. So I’m not a believer of like fluff lead magnets where you just read it and you don’t actually gain anything from it because we’re busy. We want to have content that we can actually go out and do something with. So anything like that, it doesn’t have to be super complicated. But as a business owner, there’s got to be five to 10 ideas floating around in your head where you’re like, oh, yeah, I could I could give that information to my customer and they would see tremendous value in that. And then just turn it into an e-book for them to download.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:26:05] Okay, fantastic. Do you have anything else on the on your list?

 

Anika Watkins [00:26:11] Let me see it. I mean, the only other thing I was gonna say is, you know, don’t forget about one off campaign. So anytime you’ve got news that your client or your list would be interested in like a new service that your clients might need a new website, even if you have a new Web site, your clients who like you want to know these things. So don’t be afraid to sign off one one off campaigns as well. In addition to your automations, you know, new products. If you’ve had a big success with the client, those do really well. So if you’re in the coaching industry specifically and you’re continuing to get amazing wins for your students or your clients and you’re trying to convert that email list by sharing those amazing wins, by email, those convert really, really well. And one of our clients has a high ticket coaching program and we write all of their emails for them. And by far, that’s one of the highest converting emails. Side of everything we write is re sharing huge wins that they’re getting for their their students and then doing a soft patch at the bottom saying, you know, this could be you. You’re just a click away reply to this email to book your strategy call.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:27:21] Great. Yeah. Well, I think we’ve gotten a lot of content & good goodies here.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:27:27] Okay. The audience will well grab a couple of these ideas and if they have any questions, how can they reach out to you? What?

 

Anika Watkins [00:27:35] Yeah, definitely. You can go to our Web site, which is moxiecopywriting.com. So that’s M O,XI E and then there’s a contact button on there and you can just get in touch with us that way. But I will personally respond to any email on the website.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:27:49] Fantastic. You can opt into her list.

 

Anika Watkins [00:27:51] You can opt in to my list and get my emails.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:27:55] That’s great. Yeah. Guys, we’ll put a link below the video so that you can have any Atika’s contact information or you agency cheat.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:28:04] And hopefully whatever she can offer to you is your business as a professional services or eCom store. You will find that answer with no marketing.

 

Anika Watkins [00:28:15] So yeah. Moral of the story. Do something that your list. Don’t let it sit there and collect us.

 

Marco Hernandez [00:28:20] Exactly. And that speaks for me too. We need to get working on that out here. So. All right. Thank you all. You see in the next video series bye.