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Episode 178: How to Create Effective Email Sequences (w/ Abbi Perets)
1.7k Plays2 years ago
Today’s guest is copywriter Abbi Perets of Successful Freelance Mom and we’re chatting about how to create effective email sequences. I was recently introduced to Abbi through a connection on LinkedIn who was raving about her content—and as I chatted with Abbi, I could see why. She was a lot of fun to chat with, I appreciated the practical tips she shared, and I also appreciated her love for different marketing tools.
She actually shares a bit about how she sends dynamic content to email subscribers using liquid coding based on a survey she has people complete. Since she showed me this, I’ve implemented it in one of our email sequences. My plan is to record a video demonstrating how to do this and drop it in the show notes.
Abbi shares a bit of her story with us, and there’s a lot we can learn from it. Especially if you’re just starting out, you won’t want to skip the beginning of the episode. Then we dive into email marketing and email sequences.
As always, be sure to check out the show notes at daveyandkrista.com for the resources we mention during the episode and specific timestamps if you’re looking to jump around the episode. We link to a bunch of helpful email resources that Abbi has put together.
And can I ask a favor? If you enjoy the Brands that Book podcast and find this episode helpful, would you mind heading over to Apple Podcasts and leaving us a review? Reviews are helpful for so many reasons, but most importantly they let us know that we’re producing the kind of content you want to hear.
Now onto the episode…
Recommended
Transcript
Success Through Freelancing Advice
00:00:05
Speaker
So I started very informally just kind of sharing some information with these women, like, okay, well, have you thought about freelancing? Well, what does that even mean? And I would tell them, like, go do this, go do this, go do this. And they'd come back to me and they'd be like, I did what you said and I just made 400 bucks and I can buy groceries.
Podcast Introduction: Brands That Book Show
00:00:25
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands That Book Show, where we help creative service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
Guest Introduction: Abby Peretz & Email Sequences
00:00:35
Speaker
Today's guest is copywriter Abby Peretz of Successful Freelance Mom, and we're chatting about how to create effective email sequences. I was recently introduced to Abby through a connection on LinkedIn who was raving about her content. And as I chatted with Abby, I could totally see why. She was a lot of fun to chat with, I appreciated the practical tips that she shared around email marketing, and I also appreciated her love for different marketing tools.
Personalizing Emails with Liquid Coding
00:00:59
Speaker
She actually shared a bit about how she sends dynamic content to email subscribers using liquid coding based on a survey that she has people complete. And this might sound complicated, but once you do it once, it's actually pretty straightforward. I'm really grateful that Abby shared this tip with me and I've since implemented it in one of our email sequences. So my plan is to record a quick video demonstrating how I did this and drop it in the show notes. So if this is something that interests you, you should check it out.
00:01:28
Speaker
because it really is a cool way to engage your email subscribers on more of a personal basis. Abby shares a bit of her story with us and there's a lot that we can learn
Exploring Email Marketing Strategies
00:01:38
Speaker
from it. So especially if you're just starting out, you won't want to skip the beginning of the episode. Then we dive into email marketing and email sequences.
00:01:46
Speaker
As always, be sure to check out the show notes at davianchrista.com for the resources that we mentioned and also specific timestamps if you are looking to jump around the episode. We link to a bunch of helpful resources that Abby has put together. And before we move on, can I ask you a favor? If you enjoy listening to the podcast and you find this episode helpful, would you mind heading over to Apple Podcasts and leaving us a review?
00:02:09
Speaker
Reviews are helpful for so many reasons. You probably know that, so I won't go into all of them. But most importantly, they let us know that you're enjoying the content that we're producing and that we're on the right track. So thank you and enough of me. Let's move on to the episode.
00:02:33
Speaker
I want to start, we're going to jump into all sorts of stuff, email sequences, which is a huge, really popular topic typically on the podcast. And for good reason, excited to dive into that. But before, maybe you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your backstory.
Abby's Freelance Journey: From Motherhood to Writing
00:02:49
Speaker
Like how did you get a successful freelance mom off the ground? And you know, what does it do?
00:02:54
Speaker
This is like literally my favorite thing to talk about. So we've blocked off four hours for this, right? Fantastic. Okay. So way, way, way back in 1999, I had my first baby.
00:03:10
Speaker
And she is now 23 years old. And after I had that baby, I was like, I am not working in an office again. So at the time I had had an office job in Tel Aviv in a small boutique marketing agency where my primary skills were I spoke English fluently.
00:03:26
Speaker
And I knew how to use a computer. So it wasn't like I had any kind of special training. I am a college dropout. I have no degree. And they would hand me things and say, please write about this. And I would ask super insightful questions like, what would you like me to say? And they would tell me, and then I would write about it. So truly, no experience. So then I had this baby, and I was like, yeah, I'm not doing that anymore. So I decided and announced, I am a freelance writer. And my husband was like, super cool. What are we doing for money?
00:03:56
Speaker
And I was like, why you got to be like that? And so I declared myself an expert in all things pregnancy and parenting because I had been pregnant one entire time and I had given birth to one complete human. So I knew all the things that there were to know. And I began pitching.
00:04:15
Speaker
these websites that talked about pregnancy and parenting. And this was back in the day when people were still excited to get email. You'd be like, oh, I got a new email. Let's open it and see who it's from. So people would reply.
00:04:28
Speaker
What a world. People would reply to me when I would pitch and they'd be like, yeah, okay. So I sold my first article for 25 entire dollars. And I was super excited. I was like, I am a freelance writer. And my husband was like, yeah, listen, I don't want to rain on your parade or anything, but we actually have genuine household expenses and $25 is really not going to cut it. So could we work on this a little bit?
00:04:52
Speaker
So, I did. Over the years, I worked on it a little bit. My husband and I moved from Israel to California with our baby. I was pregnant with our second, and I picked up the yellow pages. Now, some of your younger listeners may not be familiar with this tool.
00:05:10
Speaker
It is fairly old school. It was a giant book of phone numbers. I went through the Yellow Pages and I called every single marketing agency and graphic design firm that I could find listed in Los Angeles, figuring that those people have clients and might be looking to connect with writers. I had a phenomenal pitch.
00:05:33
Speaker
You ready? I'm gonna share it with you. It goes like this. Hi, do you ever outsource any of your writing to freelancers? That was it. That was my entire pitch. And I was super tech savvy. So I also took that pitch and emailed it to, I basically, I went to the fortune website, you know, fortune 500. And I found, and this was again, we're talking 99, 2000.
00:06:02
Speaker
Websites were not slick and savvy things. They were extremely basic. So when I say I found the Fortune 500 list online, they literally had a list of the companies as text. They were not linked to these companies' websites. We did not have Google. We had Alta Vista. So that was our search engine of choice back in the day. And I would just go and find these websites if they existed because not every single Fortune 500 company at the time had a website.
00:06:32
Speaker
I would scour that site looking for the email address of somebody who had a title like marketing manager communications director whatever and then i would email them my very same pitch do you ever outsource any of your writing to freelancers so.
00:06:47
Speaker
From doing that, and I made a, I think the technical term is a crap ton of phone calls and emails over the course of like a month or two, literally a thousand pitches inside of a month. And so from that, I got a lot of people who ignored me. I got a lot of people who were like, no, I'm totally not interested in this. And I got about three people who were like, yeah, sure.
00:07:09
Speaker
And so then I had three clients, three, let's call them corporate clients. And those people paid me. They didn't pay me giant sums of money. One guy paid me 600 bucks to write a little brochure. One paid me a couple hundred dollars to write a press release. But that was my real breaking into this world. And I began doing this freelance writing thing and bringing in
00:07:33
Speaker
some actual income that could help support our growing family. And I continued to do that over the next many years. I had five children along the way, and my third has some significant special needs. He's intellectually disabled. And so freelancing gave me the flexibility to even when I was sitting in waiting rooms of like
00:07:55
Speaker
physical therapy, speech therapy, OT, all of that stuff. I could continue working. I could work around the schedule that I had built with my kids and continue to bring in income while also parenting. Fast forward some years. This is the really long answer to your question, by the way.
00:08:16
Speaker
Awesome. So fast forward some years. My husband was like, let's move back to Israel. And I was like, don't really want to. And my problem is and has always been that I am madly in love with this man and I just follow him all over the world wherever we go. So we did. We moved back to Israel and my kids were starting to be in full day programs. They were getting a little bit bigger.
00:08:36
Speaker
When i was thinking cool i can take on like larger clients and do more advanced writing projects and then and this is the really sad part of the story my third son. Got cancer and that was horrible and it sucked and it was terrible and i stopped working completely like we found out on a friday and by monday i had reached out to all of my clients and i was like i'm out i'll transfer.
00:08:58
Speaker
you know, materials to whoever you need. I'll talk to whoever you need. I'll refund money. No problem. But I can't serve you. Like, I can't. And so for three years, I did not work. Now we get to 2016. My kid is better. And they're like, okay, Abby, like you guys are dismissed from the Oncology Award, go be normal
Supporting Moms Through Freelance Opportunities
00:09:16
Speaker
again. And I was like, are you out of your mind? It's like, I don't know how to be normal anymore.
00:09:22
Speaker
And I knew that I did not have the patience for dealing with freelance writing clients right then. Like I was in such a terrible headspace. It was so dark and I just was so angry and still carrying all this fear and trauma. And I was in a Facebook group for moms of kids with cancer because there really is a Facebook group for everything. And a lot of these women, so I don't know if you've heard this, but apparently healthcare in the United States is not like
00:09:50
Speaker
what you'd expect from a first world country so again i was living in israel we have socialized health care here so all of my son's treatment. Did not cost me a penny and i'm in this facebook group with these moms were like i'm literally in danger of losing my house i can no longer work in normal nine to five.
00:10:07
Speaker
my kid needs me and the bills keep coming and the hospital bills keep coming on top of all of it. So I started very informally just kind of sharing some information with these women like, okay, well, have you thought about freelancing? Well, what does that even mean? And I would tell them like, go do this, go do this, go do this. And they'd come back to me and they'd be like, I did what you said and I just made 400 bucks and I can buy groceries.
00:10:29
Speaker
And this advice is given a lot to people who are depressed, like when you are depressed and when you are stuck in your own darkness to get outside of yourself and to do things that help other people. I can't tell you if that advice works all the time for everyone who's in depression, right? But for me, it was incredibly helpful to get outside of myself and to focus on helping other people.
00:10:50
Speaker
This was the thing that literally got me up off the floor of my kitchen. I would get my family organized and out the door in the morning, and then I would sit on the floor of my kitchen and sob. When I was helping these women and getting these replies back from them, I was like, oh, this is a reason to keep on living. It was incredibly powerful and exciting for me. From that,
00:11:12
Speaker
all of that leading up to the birth of successful freelance mom. I was like, I want to do this. This is a big part of why I was put on this planet. I'm going to help women. And there we go. Yeah. Well, I mean, so glad to hear that your son is okay and he doesn't continue to be cancer free. Thank you. He's incredibly healthy now. Like you would look at him now and you'd be like, wait, that kid had cancer? Seriously? Like he's 19. He's big. He's bulky. He's amazing.
00:11:47
Speaker
I mean, there's a few things that stick out. One, I just, I mean, I always appreciate, I don't know how many episodes I've done 150 plus now at this point. And so I've interviewed a lot of people and, you know, so many people who started their businesses by basically doing that hustle in the beginning where, you know, for you, it's the yellow pages for people, it's cold emails, or, you know, whatever, or just putting it out there to family and friends, but actually putting it out there, you know, that goes a long way, you know, because it gets you a little bit of experience. And that's all you need to turn that little bit of experience and do a little bit more experience. Definitely.
00:12:07
Speaker
Good, good. Yeah, I mean, you know, we could stop the episode here, I think.
00:12:16
Speaker
Yeah. So when you started successful freelance moms, it was post your son getting out of the hospital.
Building a Business with Copywriting Courses
00:12:22
Speaker
How did that start? Was it basically like, so you, you noticed that you were helping some people with the strategies that you were given them. And then you started a Facebook group, right? And that Facebook group still exists.
00:12:31
Speaker
that Facebook group still exists. Actually, I didn't start that right away. What I did first was I took a course on how to do this whole online course thing because I didn't know anything about it. I had no clue what I was doing. I figured I'm a reasonably intelligent person. At this point, we had Google. That was a cool thing. There was this whole course on how to do this. I took the course. I followed the steps.
00:12:53
Speaker
I had a friend who had a very popular and extremely niche blog and I asked her, her blog was on budgeting, but it's called kosher on a budget. So like very targeted market of the kosher consumer who's looking to save money, right? And hugely popular within that niche. So I said to her,
00:13:12
Speaker
can I do a guest post on your blog on how to create more margin in your budget through freelance writing? And she was like, sure, when would you like to do this? And I was like, so I have it ready. You can post it anytime. She was like, oh, so like, you know, next week I'm like, or now, now is good too. And she was like, sure. Okay, crazy lady. But she's a good friend. And so she did that for me. And so I like very quickly, you know, in two hours,
00:13:36
Speaker
managed to get 80 people on my email list. And I was like, I'm good. I'm going to have a webinar now. And everybody around me was like, maybe wait a little. I'm like, no, I'm good. I'm good. I'm just going to do the webinar. So I hosted a webinar. And I talked about freelance writing and the strategies that I was using at the time. And I announced at the end of this 30-minute thing, OK, I'm opening enrollment in my new program, Writing for Money. This is what it's going to contain. This is what it's going to cost. I had nothing.
00:14:05
Speaker
Written yet. I just had all this knowledge in my brain from having done this for over 15 years at the time and I managed to get 13 women to sign up for this program and version one of this course Was so funny like it was $97 it was PDFs and I was just you know a week ahead of them in creating the content right so I was just writing out everything that I knew and putting it together for them and then after
00:14:34
Speaker
the first week of content was released, they had some questions. And I thought an easier way to answer these questions would be in video. So I created a small private Facebook group just for those like 13 students and recorded some videos and dropped them into the, I guess I did them live into the group. Cause I guess you couldn't at that time, like upload. I don't know. I don't remember exactly the tech, the high, whatever tech that I was doing, but I put these videos in this group, answered their questions in the Facebook group.
00:15:02
Speaker
went through the whole course, loved it, launched it again at a slightly higher price point. And then I started finding out about other tech tools like Teachable for hosting courses and things like that and started getting a little bit more like, you know, I had ConvertKit for my email list, but I started like really digging in on what was
00:15:20
Speaker
possible. And right then is when I stumbled into some cool stuff, which is, you know, I'm in this course learning how to build a course. I'm working with all these other people. I see that I really love the part about writing sales pages and email sequences for my course because like I'm just having fun. I'm literally just communicating with people. I'm sharing my heart. I'm having a great time.
00:15:42
Speaker
And everyone else in this course on building courses is like, oh my God, I can't write a sales page. Oh my God, I hate writing these emails. And I was like, oh, hi, you wanna pay me money to do that? And in the beginning, it wasn't even pay me money. It was like, I needed all this tech help. I was like, I don't know how to make a website. Like, I don't wanna learn how to make a website.
00:16:01
Speaker
not at all interesting to me. And so I would trade with people like, you set up this and I'll write your sales page. Because writing sales pages for me was something that was so super easy and fun. And so I traded a bunch of services. And then I did begin doing this for money. And it felt so good to me because I was like, now I'm not just teaching the theory of freelance writing. I mean, granted, I had 15 years
00:16:23
Speaker
of prior experience. But now I'm actually back in there doing it and going out and getting clients so I can really talk to my students very authentically and in integrity and feeling really aligned with what I'm doing. And it grew from there. And here we are. It's 2022. I have this business that started as an idea in my brain. And it blows me away on a daily basis because we've put literally hundreds of women through multiple programs at this point.
00:16:52
Speaker
I've had the opportunity to change lives. I get emails from women who are like, because I have these skills now, I could leave an abusive marriage, or I could leave a toxic job, or I know that my kids are never going to be hungry again. We've paid off our credit card debt. That's mind-blowing to me and so exciting that I get to do...
00:17:16
Speaker
People pay me to do this. This is wild. It's like everything I dreamed about when I was a kid and I didn't even know to dream about all of this when I was a kid.
00:17:24
Speaker
Yeah, and that's how we were introduced, right? Yeah. So one of your students actually posted about you on LinkedIn. Which is so wild. I've been hanging out more on LinkedIn lately. And you just had all these great things to say about you and your program. And so I was like, I got to check this out. Because as I told you, I just think it's such a good fit for this podcast. And I know that to be true now, because I think one of the things that we talk about often is just
00:17:46
Speaker
just starting and being scrappy in the beginning. First of all, just selling those 13 seats to those 80 people, that's a great conversion rate. It really is on the grand scheme of webinars. I'm sure you know this at this point, but it really is. I appreciate that you just jumped in and did it because you're going to learn so much from that first launch. I think a lot of people will go in and say,
00:18:06
Speaker
you know, I'm going to sell all 80 seats or I'm going to have hundreds of people sign up the first time around. And oftentimes that doesn't happen, but it's those small incremental things. So what does that Facebook group look like now? There are 5,500 women in this group. That's like insane to me. I look at it every so often and I'm like, whoa. And like last night I put out an email about we're running a small group coaching program, just kind of something that one of my team members and I feel was really needed.
00:18:33
Speaker
We opened 10 spots in this program, and I had put out an email about it. And literally within moments, I get a reply back from someone. Remember, this is a person who signed up to my email list, and her reply to this email is, haha, scammer. And I was like, whatever, dude. So being the petty, not mature person that I am, I, of course, screenshot, block out identifying details, and post it in my Facebook group. I'm like, always fun to announce a program and get called a scammer.
00:19:00
Speaker
And then we're like immediately, like within moments, like a dozen of the women who have been through my programs who were like, uh, yeah, you're not a scammer. Like, and it was so, I mean, it helps because as much as I make fun of this stuff and I'm like, oh, I'm, you know, I'm going to screenshot it whenever it's still, it hurts.
00:19:17
Speaker
Scammers a heavy word, dude. When I hear that, it hurts. When I see that there are people who jump in immediately and say, no, that's not who you are, it's a good thing. It's a really powerful thing. I've built a community that really knows me and who I am. For example, I'm Jewish. I live in Israel. My family is observant. I'm not online on Shabbat.
00:19:43
Speaker
Friday night sundown to Saturday night sundown in Israel, I'm offline. And it's at the point where if somebody asks a question in my Facebook group during that time, someone else will chime in, have these offline for Shabbat right now. She'll answer you later. It's so cool. Like it's mind blowing to me and I love it so much.
00:20:00
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, I want to jump into talking a little bit more about email. I mean, I know maybe that's not a great transition from this email. I got this nasty reply. So nasty replies aside. All right. Can you tell us a little bit about why email marketing is important? I mean, how much of an impact does it has in your own business?
Why Email Marketing is Vital for Sales?
00:20:20
Speaker
You know, basically, I guess briefly maybe make a case for email marketing real quick.
00:20:23
Speaker
Yeah, email is the best. My primary method of sales is email marketing. And by primary, I pretty much mean only. You have a Facebook group of 5,500 people, which is certainly, and you've already spoke to the value of having a group like that. Yeah. I'd say even people who have really big Instagram followings but have no email list, right? It's always one of those things where it's like, that's great. And I'm sure some people will buy from you just
00:20:53
Speaker
And also, you don't own your Instagram account or your Facebook group.
00:20:59
Speaker
Mark's a great guy in all, I'm sure, but he could make changes tomorrow that would have profound effects for you. You don't know what your account's going to get deleted or blocked or Facebook jailed for. You have no control over that. And that, to me, is incredibly dangerous. So my email list is something that I own, and I can contact those people, and it's mine forever. Email, I also think of as something incredibly intimate. And I say that because think about the way
00:21:29
Speaker
We read email. We read email mostly on our phones and we check it everywhere we go. So you walk around during the day. Your phone is with you. Your phone is with you in the bathroom. Your phone is with you in bed. You are checking it. And as much as we tell ourselves, I'm
00:21:44
Speaker
We're not going to check email first thing in the morning. We do. It's always there. On my phone, I also have things like pictures of my beautiful children and texts from my husband and messages from close friends. When you're on my phone in my email, you're sharing space with the people and the things that mean the most to me. That's a really intimate relationship and it's something that we have to respect.
00:22:06
Speaker
From a practical and ROI standpoint, I want to say the latest numbers are something like every dollar you put into email marketing returns something like 36 or 38. It might even be $42. It's an insane ROI. Absolutely mind blowing and just so incredibly valuable. I have a
00:22:26
Speaker
training that I do on email marketing. And one of the questions is, okay, if I tell you that for every dollar you put in, you will get 36 or 42 or whatever it is back. How many dollars should you put into email marketing? And people will be like, 100? I'm like, no, no, no. All the dollars that you have, you should put them in. As much as you put in, you're going to get so much more back.
00:22:50
Speaker
You can be so real. You can be so present. And it's fun. Make it fun. I don't believe in... Okay, I'm an extremely lazy person by nature. I don't like to work hard and I like things to be fun. So I've built a business around doing things that I enjoy and that are fun. And to me, email is just so much fun. And what email platform do you use? What email platform do you typically recommend that people get started with?
00:23:15
Speaker
Right, so I use ConvertKit. I looked at ActiveCampaign for a bit and I had an account with them for about six months. And for me, I like to be in it in my email marketing. So I want to be able to set things up myself. And ActiveCampaign was too complex and too like overkill for me. ConvertKit allows me to do what I want to do. I love
00:23:40
Speaker
and am slightly obsessed with liquid coating. And I'll talk a little bit more about what that means later on. But the power that I have at my fingertips with ConvertKit is wild. Is it perfect? No. Is there a perfect platform? Absolutely not. And we make decisions about what are the compromises that I can best live with in my business. And so for me, it's ConvertKit. I definitely recommend it. It's sequencing capabilities. It's automation capabilities.
00:24:07
Speaker
and the power of liquid coating phenomenal stuff. Yeah. Okay. Awesome. And we use ConvertKit ourselves and talked a lot about it on the podcast and the blog. So people should be relatively familiar with that. So one of the things that we're talking about today are email sequences.
Understanding Email Sequences vs. Broadcasts
00:24:22
Speaker
And I think people might not know exactly what email sequence is or maybe how it's different from a broadcast. Can you go through the differences real quick?
00:24:28
Speaker
So broadcast emails are one-off emails. Those are the emails that you send out to say things like, hey, we're going to have a coaching call on Tuesday at 4 p.m., right? So this coming Tuesday, November 1st, right? Like we're going to have a coaching call at 4 p.m. and that you send out one time.
00:24:44
Speaker
Sequences are automated emails that are designed to be like evergreen so whenever somebody enrolls and opt in or a free challenge or a paid program you wanna have a series of emails that are gonna go out at set times based on actions taken by the user so.
00:25:03
Speaker
If somebody enrolls in my signature program, they immediately get an email that says, welcome to Writing for Money. Here's what's going to happen. And then every following, like seven days later and then 14 days later and 21 days later, they're getting emails about the next module that's unlocking for them in the content.
00:25:20
Speaker
And at set times, they're getting specific emails that say, hey, go do this thing, take this action. And you can set sequences up in your business that are brilliant and that engage your users on a consistent basis without you having to physically sit at your computer 900 hours a day and send the email.
00:25:39
Speaker
Yeah. And would you say that's kind of the main benefit of writing email sequences is basically like the evergreen nature of it is that it just kind of runs on automation in the background and you don't have to worry about it most of the time. It's the automation is a major point. I also think that a big piece that people don't tap into enough
00:25:57
Speaker
is the amount of personalization that you can control within sequences. And again, that taps into the liquid coding piece that I was talking about. So should we dig in on that? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so there's something in email marketing that a lot of people don't pay attention to, and that's called segmenting. So that's when you know a little bit more about your subscribers, you can create incredibly customized content that feels highly personalized without creating a lot of extra work on your end.
00:26:25
Speaker
Again, as I mentioned, I am an inherently lazy person. I don't like to work hard. So I'm very happy to sit down and do the work once and let it pay for itself and like work for me very hard over a long period of time. So as an example, I have a $19 membership, right? So $19 a month. And there are over 250 women in this membership at this time. So one very brave and wonderful man.
00:26:52
Speaker
and in this membership for freelance writers. And it's $19 a month. So I don't want to be spending a lot of time creating custom content. And at the same time, I want to provide a very custom and high touch feel for the members. So how do we do these two things? When people join this membership, they get a link to a quiz.
00:27:14
Speaker
So short quiz, multiple choice questions where they're just clicking buttons to give answers. Now, tech stack wise, the quiz is hosted through a piece of software called ConvertBox, which is different to ConvertKit. At the moment, it's a one-time fee. So I would definitely, if you're interested at all in this, take advantage of it. What's awesome is that they integrate with each other, so ConvertBox and ConvertKit. And for every answer that somebody clicks in that quiz, it sends a custom feel back to ConvertKit.
00:27:43
Speaker
So, we ask them how much experience do you have in freelance writing? How much time do you have to work on your business? Do you have clients right now? Are you pitching right now? How are you getting clients right now? So, we've given them all these options that they can talk about. We ask questions about their mindset and their habits and the biggest struggle in their freelance writing business. And then all of that information, they get right as soon as they submit that quiz, they get an email that says, okay, great.
00:28:08
Speaker
Based on what you told us, you're just getting started in freelance writing. Here's your beginner writer's workout, and here are some trainings that we think are going to be most useful for you as a beginner. Also, you said that the biggest challenge you have right now in your business is not knowing where to get started. Here's where we recommend you start.
00:28:24
Speaker
And again, that content is completely customized based on the answers they give. So on the flip side, if I have somebody who comes into the membership and tells us I'm experienced, I have eight hours a day to work on my business, my mindset's in a really good place, my biggest problem right now is I don't know how to scale my business. So great. So I'm going to give them custom content based on those answers. It creates this incredible high touch feeling like, wow, they really know me.
00:28:50
Speaker
And it took the work one time for me to do, and it's just going to keep working for a long time going forward. And I can use all of that information in other emails as well. So let's say I put together, for example, this coaching program that I'm running now, that's not for newbies. It's not going to be useful to you if you're a brand new just getting started. This is for somebody who's already a little bit established. So I can go and I can target exactly those people.
00:29:18
Speaker
On an ongoing basis in email, I can say, because I've collected this information and I've put it into custom fields, I can use liquid coding inside of ConvertKit to say, as a mom of toddlers, you should blah, blah, blah. As a mom of teens, you should blah, blah, blah. It makes people be like, how does she know? They've told us this information. I'm not that good.
Using ConvertBox for Personalized Quizzes
00:29:40
Speaker
But you know like they've told us this information we can use it we can use it to give them really customized and targeted advice and trainings and offers. That overall makes them have a much better user experience and makes my business much more successful so yeah i'm i'm a little obsessed i know i'm sorry.
00:29:59
Speaker
Yeah, that amazing convert box is a great tool. Yeah. We've talked about that a lot as well. I'll make sure I post a link to that convert box. I think it's owned by Thrivecart now or the same company that owns Thrivecart. Phenomenal tools. Yeah, which is always really nice to limit subscriptions, right? Indeed. That's incredible though how you use that. I've never used it that way before and so taking notes on doing something like that. Oh, for sure. I'll show you some screen share stuff afterwards.
00:30:26
Speaker
Yeah, that'd be awesome. So as far as setting up this custom fields, it's one of those things that I think probably sounds relatively complicated to people. It's not. Yeah. I mean, ballpark, if you wanted to set up an integration like this, how long do you think it would take somebody to do? I mean, not counting the email writing, of course. Right. I mean, literally setting it up, it's like a four second thing. You literally just decide what is the field name going to be and what are the values that I'm going to allow people to put in here and that's it. It's really simple and straightforward.
00:30:56
Speaker
Again, I am not, I married a software developer. I am not a tech person at all. And if I can figure this stuff out, I mean, first of all, ConvertBox, Thrivecart, they've got great videos in place for how to do these things.
00:31:11
Speaker
They have excellent support teams. So whenever I've had a question, I do go in and I ask. I'm telling you, like active campaign was beyond me. I could not figure that software out. And this was stuff that I can and did do on my own. I think in your business, it's good to be able to get your hands dirty in the beginning and set things up so that you know what capabilities are there and what's possible. And then as you grow your business, sure, it makes a lot of sense to have somebody specific on your team handle that stuff.
00:31:39
Speaker
I do think though that like getting your hands dirty is a lot of fun in the beginning and just powerful for letting you know what kinds of things you can do in your own business. And this is really not a difficult thing because I don't do difficult things.
00:31:51
Speaker
Yeah, and you know, we had a similar experience with EntrePort, you know, and it went right back to, you know, probably for a lot of the same reasons that you'd like an active campaign. So jumping maybe a little bit deeper into email sequences. I think I know my tendency, I see all the different options that you have with something like ConvertKit. I mean, there is so much different automation and personalization.
00:32:14
Speaker
And then I want to do everything, you know, and I want to create like one variation for absolutely everyone out there. And so I just end up making things too complicated, right? Especially get started. So I guess what tips do you have for people to get started with email sequences in a straightforward way?
Creating Effective Email Sequences
00:32:30
Speaker
Yeah. And I think you make an excellent point. It's so tempting. Like you start thinking about this stuff and your mind goes off in a million different directions and you're like, this would be so cool. I want to do this. I think that's awesome. I think capture those notes for yourself. I'm a person who lives by Apple notes and I have at any given time, you know, over 500 notes and easily searchable, right? So like, as long as you give yourself some context, you can go back and find that stuff later when you need it. So write down the ideas that you have.
00:32:59
Speaker
and set aside time in your business to like if you call it a CEO day or whatever to think about what you do want to implement later on. But in the beginning when you're sitting down to build out a sequence, start with a single sequence. Start with a single sequence that will walk people through
00:33:15
Speaker
like one thing, right? So for me, I love, I think one of the first sequences that every business needs to have is an automated welcome sequence that builds up the know, like, and trust factor, right? So by really deriving intimacy with your subscribers and having a very clear goal for that sequence. So
00:33:37
Speaker
That initial sequence might be if you want people to join your Facebook group, to follow you on Instagram, to book a call with you, or to enroll in a small low ticket offer, right? You have going into that sequence knowing the person took this specific action and is now getting this sequence, and here's where I want them to end up five or seven days from now.
00:33:58
Speaker
So knowing those two things when you get started, critical. Now, what are the steps that take them from here to there? So when you look at your own email, if you open your phone and you look at your email right now, very quickly, you scan people's names and your email helpfully bolds the person's name for you and not the subject line. So people go on and on about subject lines and it's not that they don't matter at all, but they're less important than the person's name.
00:34:24
Speaker
You want to be a person whose name is recognized so that when your subscribers see your name in their inbox, they're like, I absolutely want to open this email. I know I want to read this. So that's who you want to be. So how do you become that person? You become that person by being genuine, by not overwhelming people. I've seen initial emails from people in sequences that are like, okay, now go do these 73 things and report back to me.
00:34:49
Speaker
I don't want to do 73 things. I don't want to do seven things, and I don't want to do three things. I want to do one thing, maybe. And it has to be easy and fun and deliver me a win. So if you want to take people on a journey over several days, break it down into really tiny steps. And even when you think the step is tiny, break it down some more and explain to them how to accomplish that step.
00:35:12
Speaker
Remember that you're operating under the curse of knowledge. The stuff that's really easy for you to do is not easy for other people to do. They're here and learning from you for a reason. So they don't know all the stuff that you know. So when I say, oh, liquid coating, you might be like,
00:35:29
Speaker
What is she even talking about? Don't make step one, go set up the liquid coding for your sequence. Step one might be get a ConvertKit account. Here's exactly how to do that. We can take people on that journey by breaking things down into really, really small steps.
00:35:49
Speaker
making them feel like they've accomplished something like if you've given me seventy three steps to follow when i get your next email like i'm not even open that that's like i already feel bad about myself delete unsubscribe block mark as spam like these are the actions that i'm gonna take because it makes me feel bad about myself.
00:36:06
Speaker
Whereas if you've given me a win that I can be like, oh, I did that yesterday and it was so cool and like awesome, you know, and now I'm interested in opening your email because I'm feeling good about myself. I'm getting my endorphin hit and I want to keep that feeling going. So you create that good cycle by giving people quick wins, by being relatable, by understanding how much else out there you're competing with. So when you're making an email sequence,
00:36:35
Speaker
you'd mentioned like maybe five to seven days later. How many for that welcome sequence in particular in previous episodes we've called indoctrination sequence as well so people following along. How many emails do you typically include in a sequence like that?
00:36:49
Speaker
Yeah. So when you're just getting to know somebody, you want to be hitting their box on a daily basis because there's a lot of information coming at us and we don't want to let people forget who we are, right? So we want to make that impression. So I do think that a welcome sequence can be about five to seven emails coming at you one each day over five to seven days. And it really depends on, there's not like a, like this is the ideal length for a welcome sequence. It's
00:37:14
Speaker
how long does it need to be to get the person from point A to point B? You don't want a welcome sequence that doesn't really have a point that's just like, Hey, I want to talk to you about me and how awesome I am and how like my awesomeness has evolved over the last 15 because that's like super boring for everybody else. Your readers care much more about themselves than they care about you. So you always want to be approaching email from the standpoint of the person reading it.
00:37:38
Speaker
and making it really as much as possible about them. And getting them to point B takes five days, takes seven days, it might even take longer than that and that's okay. As long as there's a purpose to each email and you're not just sending email to say, like make a check mark, like send email to my people, like I'm engaging, having a purpose. So, I mean, five to seven is a good rule of thumb and it's not gonna be perfect for everybody. You might be able to accomplish what you need to in four emails and it might take you nine.
00:38:06
Speaker
Yeah, and I think it's a lot of pushback that we get. It's like, oh, that feels like so much. People don't want to hear from me that much. And that's the thing. I don't think it's that much. And then two, I think people are most excited when they first sign up. That's really the time. If you're going to send five emails in a row, that's the time to do it. I had something humbling happen to me a few weeks ago now, I guess. Somebody filled out the contact page over, I think it was for the ad agency, and they scheduled a call with me. So this is a sales call. They scheduled it.
00:38:35
Speaker
I mean, two days later, the call happens and they're like, hey, who is this again? Wait, where are you from? And I'm like, you scheduled the call with me. And I mean, it just goes to show you that people have so much going on. And if you're not showing up right away, you know, it's like,
00:38:51
Speaker
I mean, look, I recently, again, with this, this little coaching program, right? I reached out to somebody who I specifically thought like she is perfect for this, this, I kind of created this with her in mind and I messaged her and she didn't reply, which is weird for her because she's somebody who's very engaged in my content and very active and whatever. And then she had a few days later commented on a post in Facebook. So when I replied, I was like, also,
00:39:18
Speaker
you are ignoring my message." And she was like, what? I'm going to check right now. So then she messages me back. She's like, first of all, I miss this message. No clue how. Second of all, I haven't even heard about this coaching program. Give me all the details. And I'm like, really? Because I've been talking about this fairly incessantly inside of the communities that you are in. So again, we think that we are very, very important. And we are not so important to other people.
00:39:44
Speaker
Other people care very much about themselves. So we're all busy. I've got five kids. I've got a husband. I've got a lot of Netflix that will not watch itself. There's a lot of stuff competing for people's attention. And your readers, your list members are the same way. There's a lot competing for their attention. And if you're not being present and showing up, they are not going to make time for you.
00:40:10
Speaker
They're not saying to themselves, wow, I didn't get an email today from Abby. What should I do? How can I make this happen? Like nobody's sitting around doing that. I also think that with a welcome sequence, you want to set expectations clearly at the outset. So if it is a nine day sequence or a four day sequence or a 72 day sequence, tell people like,
00:40:28
Speaker
Every morning for the next seven days, you're going to see me in your inbox. This is what's going to happen. And here's where we're going to be seven days from now. Like here's the transformation that's going to take place. Don't panic about it now. I'm going to walk you through it step by step. And setting those expectations lets people know to look for you.
Ensuring Authenticity and Engagement in Emails
00:40:46
Speaker
So what other tips do you have, best practices for email sequences, especially when it comes to things like engagement and conversion? Yeah, so one, be super, super genuine and write, I know people say this all the time, write like you talk. The way I master this is like talk out loud, record yourself. If you need to, what I do personally is I walk around my house talking to myself, my kids are like,
00:41:11
Speaker
weird. I don't care because it's really good for me and my writing and how I function, right? And I say things like, like, like, and dude and whatever. So those come out in my emails as well. I don't feel like, Oh, I must be professional. And you know, I cannot say dumb things. Like I say dumb things all the time. Also, as a professional writer, I communicate
00:41:32
Speaker
extensively with gifts and emojis and so like I'm not afraid to do those things in email because it does help people relate better to me I share personal things people connect with people so I am not by any means like
00:41:51
Speaker
perfect and professional and polished all the time. I am sitting here wearing a t-shirt from Target. I am sweating like crazy because I don't put the air conditioning on when I'm running calls because it's so loud. And you know, this is how I show up. It doesn't bother me. I haven't put on makeup. I'm 46. I haven't put on makeup in like, I don't know, 20 years, right? Like I'm not going to get all dolled up to show up because that's not who I am as a person.
00:42:19
Speaker
So that comes through in my email too. My emails have typos in them. My social media posts do as well. And my father, bless him, emails me about every single one of them. Nobody else cares. And so letting go of that stuff. I was speaking to somebody recently who said,
00:42:35
Speaker
I speak english as a second language so i'm really thinking that i should probably hire an editor or proofreader to go over my emails and i said to her you absolutely should not because then people will have this really jarring discrepancy between the writing you put out and like when you're on facebook live lean into it and say to people like.
00:42:53
Speaker
I think this is the right expression in English. This is what I'm going for. Lean into it. Let people see who you are. People relate so much more to that. Anytime I write an email talking about a mistake that I've made or a way that I screwed up or something dumb that I did, that's when people are like, thank God, because I thought it was only me.
00:43:18
Speaker
And a major thing about engagement, and this is huge, if you ever put in your email to your list, hit reply and tell me one, two, three, do not have some sort of random auto responder on your email that says, thank you for your email. You are so important to us. And we will reply to you in seven business days.
00:43:37
Speaker
Make time. Figure out a system. And when you have a small list, you're in such an enviable position. You are in the position where you can personally reply to people who write into you and do that. And if you have to use tools and technology to help you with that, I use a text expander tool. And again, as a super cheap person, I use not like the official
00:43:57
Speaker
text expander that has like a monthly subscription fee. I use a little app called AText that's sold by like a guy in a room. It costs like $4.99. There's no tech support whatsoever. But a text expander tool, you know, I type in when somebody writes into me like, oh, I want to get started in freelance writing, but time is a really big issue for me.
00:44:14
Speaker
Let me tell you how many people have written in to me to say exactly that. So I have a little shortcut that I type on my computer. I type the word time with an extra T at the beginning. And my computer spits out this whole response about how to be effective with your time. And here are some things. And I can go in and make a few small tweaks to that in under 30 seconds. And the person is getting a useful and relevant reply from me. And it's not taking seven hours on my end.
00:44:41
Speaker
But reply, like if your email subscribers are hitting reply and talking to you, that is gold right there. Engage with them. I also have been known to, again, as a professional writer, sometimes I find writing extremely difficult and it's much easier to just record a video to somebody. So I'll just make a loom video and send that, which blows people away. They're like, you made me a video? This is amazing. And that's engagement. And if you build a list,
00:45:08
Speaker
where you have engaged subscribers, it's OK if you're not making sales right away. The sales will come. Engagement is always the first metric that you want to be tracking. People need time to make decisions. They're going to buy on their timeline, not on yours. Yes, there are things you can do to speed that timeline up. And in the beginning, engagement is your focus. If people are opening your emails, responding to your emails, clicking links in your emails, these are excellent signs that you are going to have a wildly successful business in the long run.
00:45:38
Speaker
Yeah, so I hate autoresponders. Right? Just in general, but I just don't get it. You know, I feel like when I get an autoresponder and it's like, you know,
00:45:48
Speaker
five paragraphs long. I get it. You're busy. Everybody's busy. So controversial opinion, I know. But really appreciate that take just in general because one, I think it's really good for deliverability. I mean, if you want to keep ending people's inbox, I mean, I know we talk about how email doesn't have an algorithm, but it does kind of, right? Yeah, it does. People end up in spam or whatnot.
00:46:10
Speaker
One way you can prevent that in the future is, you know, reply to people and start those conversations. Email service providers, you know, track that kind of stuff. And in general, I think that anytime somebody sends you an email, it's good to respond. You know, it's just... It's polite. Like, come on.
00:46:27
Speaker
And I feel like everybody says like, oh, it's like always join my community. It sounds like something really personal. So anybody who emails us, we respond to. We might not be able to give them the exact answer that they were looking for, but we typically can at least point them in the right direction. So I really appreciate that advice. Loom's also a great tool as well. Yes, obsessed. We use it all the time in our business.
00:46:50
Speaker
I think that's what I need a list from you. It's just all the different tools that you use. Great tools in your business. Oh my goodness. I love tech stack talk.
00:47:01
Speaker
And I'm really into basic and easy. Like I said, I live and die by Apple Notes, right? Apple Notes, Google Calendar, people overlook these things. They are so critical. For me, Apple Notes is much more effective than Trello. I use Trello when I have things that team members need to also have visibility into. But when I'm managing myself, all Apple Notes all the time, baby.
00:47:21
Speaker
Yeah. So anything else that we should talk about when it comes to email sequences? I know there's so much more that we could talk about.
Building Trust in Email Marketing
00:47:28
Speaker
And I think anybody who's interested in learning more, I definitely want to connect them with you. So I want to get that information here in a second. And people know they can go to the show notes for that kind of thing. But is there anything else email sequence wise that you're like, oh, we really got to at least mention this? Yeah, I would say in general for email, never ever send an email that you wouldn't want to receive.
00:47:49
Speaker
Never. Also, I would say a corollary to that is never send an email that you would be embarrassed to tell your parents that you sent. And I'm not saying, I don't want people to misunderstand. I'm not saying that you can't. If you are a sex therapist and that's what you're going to talk about in your emails, I have no issue with that whatsoever. What I'm saying is if you don't want people to think of you as a scammy, sleazy internet marketer, do not be a scammy, sleazy internet marketer.
00:48:16
Speaker
Don't lie to people, right? Trust is such a big thing. Integrity matters. It takes so long to build up a trusted relationship with people and you can lose it in seconds if you're not careful. So if you lie and you say things like, this sale is only good for 12 hours and that's the price that your thing is all the time, people are not dumb. They will recognize that and they will not believe you.
00:48:42
Speaker
Like if you lie in general, people are not stupid and they will figure it out and they won't trust you. And when they don't trust you, they won't spend money with you. And they're certainly not going to tell other people to spend money with you. And the opposite winds up happening. Like they'll tell people, I don't trust that guy. There's something about him that's off, you know? And that matters. So focus, truly focus on creating and crafting email that makes your reader the center, the hero of the story, the center of attention.
00:49:11
Speaker
never send an email that you would be unhappy to receive in your inbox and that goes for everything like even little things like so for example if somebody has a failed payment in one of my programs our first like automated email response to that isn't like where's your payment it's is everything okay
00:49:28
Speaker
We noticed this payment didn't go through. Is everything okay? Is there something we should know about? Because we genuinely care about these people and we want to know, is there a reason? Often, it's something silly like, oh, the card expired or my card got stolen and I had to change it and I forgot to update it. Totally normal, these things happen. By approaching it as, is everything okay rather than where's my money? It shows that I care about them and they're much more likely to remain in the program and to make the payments.
00:49:56
Speaker
So never send an email that you wouldn't want to receive. Yeah, I love that advice. And I agree that it really does. You know, I love the Lumineers, one of my favorite songs. It's a long road to wisdom. You know, so I appreciate that. So one of the things that I am going to start working on is that convert box quiz. I think that sounds awesome. So I hope listeners are walking away with something like
Resources for Freelance Success
00:50:19
Speaker
that. And there's just so much to walk away with. For people who want to follow along,
00:50:23
Speaker
and learn more about you and Successful Freelance Mom and all the different programs that you offer, where can they go to do that? Yeah, so if you visit SuccessfulFreelanceMom.com, I'm pretty findable. I'm on Instagram as at abbyparrots. And I will say specifically on email marketing, I have a little bundle that I put together. It's SuccessfulFreelanceMom.com slash EE for everything email. Got a bundle on there that's got some good stuff in it. And a lot of that stuff's gonna be getting updated in the very, very near future where our plan is for
00:50:53
Speaker
some January releases of new updates to those materials. And I'm crazy about email. Also, I'm exceptionally findable because I'm like the only Abbey parrots on the internet. So if you Google me, you can find me and I answer my own email in an almost timely fashion.
00:51:09
Speaker
And the slash EE is that no hyphens in between. No hyphens, just slash EE. And as far as all those links go, people can go to the show notes and I'll make sure that I link to all of those things as well. As far as programs go, what programs are open right now?
00:51:25
Speaker
Yeah, so writing for money is my signature program and that is an evergreen program. So it is on a rolling basis. If you come to my website, you can watch the free training on that and you can find out about it and you can enroll in that program. I have my membership, which is SFM Society in that we generally open on a quarterly basis. Although there is a backdoor entrance by getting on the wait list, you will have like a one day offer to kind of join us.
00:51:53
Speaker
without the fanfare of a launch kind of thing. And again, that's the beauty of automated sequences. You can build stuff like that in, it takes 10 minutes, one time, and you can then make sales on this ongoing basis. And the everything email bundle is there's like no timers or anything on it. It's just like, it's not like a thing that I massively promote on my website, but it's there and you can find your way into it. That's what we have.
00:52:16
Speaker
Well, I really appreciate your time. Thanks so much. And I feel like there's so much more that we could talk about. So maybe we'll have to have another discussion at some point. I would love that. Maybe we'll just focus on our different marketing stacks. Love it. Love it. Absolutely. Thanks for tuning into the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to DaveyandChrista.com.
00:52:52
Speaker
you