SEO Podcast The Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing

Make More Money with Email Marketing: Advanced Strategies and Tools with Jason Wright

• bestseopodcast.com • Episode 632

Share episode

Unlock the secrets of email marketing success with Jason Wright from Internationally Inspirely. Our episode dives into the vital role of email marketing in today's digital landscape, showing how it remains an essential tool for building connections and converting leads. We discuss misconceptions about email's effectiveness, strategies for authentic communication, the importance of deliverability, and tips for choosing the right marketing partners.

• Debunking the myth that email marketing is dead 

• The critical role of email deliverability and DNS records 

• Strategies for nurturing client relationships through email 

• Emphasizing authenticity in email communications 

• Comparing ActiveCampaign and GoHighLevel for email marketing tools 

• The significance of integrating paid ads into the overall strategy 

• Guidelines for evaluating potential email marketing partners 

• Understanding the importance of sequencing in email outreach

—----------

Guest Contact Information: 

—----------

More from EWR and Matt:

Leave a Review if it was content you enjoyed: https://g.page/r/CccGEk37CLosEB0/review

Free SEO Consultation: https://www.ewrdigital.com/discovery-call

One-on-One Consulting: https://www.ewrdigital.com/digital-strategy-consulting/private-consulting-session

—

The Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing podcast is a podcast hosted by Internet marketing expert Matthew Bertram. The show provides insights and advice on digital marketing, SEO, and online business. 

Topics covered include keyword research, content optimization, link building, local SEO, and more. The show also features interviews with industry leaders and experts who share their experiences and tips. 

Additionally, Matt shares his own experiences and strategies, as well as his own successes and failures, to help listeners learn from his experiences and apply the same principles to their businesses. The show is designed to help entrepreneurs and business owners become successful online and get the most out of their digital marketing efforts.

Find more great episodes here: https://www.internetmarketingsecretspodcast.com/  

https://seo-podcast-the-unknown-secrets-of-internet-marketing.buzzsprout.com

Follow us on:
Facebook: @bestseopodcast
Instagram: @thebestseopodcast
Tiktok: @bestseopodcast
LinkedIn: @bestseopodcast

Powered by: ewrdigital.com

Hosts: Matt Bertram 

Disclaimer: For Educational and Entertainment purposes Only.

Support the show

Speaker 1:

Howdy. Welcome back to another fun-filled episode of the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing. For any of you that are watching, I'm at the office. My internet just went down right before this, so I'm a little disheveled, but I have a great podcast guest for you today. Really, one of the things that I've been talking about and we've been working on internally is email marketing and how important newsletters are. And if you think that email's lost its luster, I have news for you. At Brighton, SEO Ma spoke emails still convert the best, and so I thought it'd be great to bring on a guest that specializes in okay, yes, go high levels hot right now, but go high level also active campaign. That's actually what we use internally.

Speaker 1:

Email marketing is not dead and I can tell you let's get into a little bit more in this podcast, Just to let you know. I can tell you, let's get into a little bit more in this podcast. Just to let you know, coaching course is live at MatthewBertramcom. Go, check it out. If you get any value from this podcast, please share, like, follow, whatever. We appreciate the engagement. I am stepping out of the agency as much as I can every month because we have a team that can do it all. So I will be doing more trainings and more content, so hit me up. I want to now introduce Jason Wright. Jason, how are you doing, brother?

Speaker 2:

I'm doing great man. Thanks for having me on the show.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so Jason's with internationallyinspirelycom they do. They focus on automated marketing, they focus on paid ads. You know just really what we were talking about in the kind of pre-interview and we can just pick up our conversation, jason, of like there's a lot of people out there that claim to be internet marketing experts and I can tell you that one of the biggest challenges we deal with when we're interacting with new clients they've been burned by somebody in the past, right, so they have this baggage that they're coming with and they're like, hey, either it didn't work for me or man, like I just can't trust anybody. How do I find the right person to trust? And so you know, I just wanted to kind of start it off there what are your thoughts around kind of like email automation in general? Let's just kind of go there Like has it died? And then we can get into maybe how to select the right vendor and we can maybe talk about some case studies and some of the things that you've seen really leverage email marketing to convert clients and customers.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I appreciate the intro. So when I started my company 10 years ago, people were saying email was dead then. So I think it's an excuse people throw out there so it makes them feel better about not doing anything with it. But it's certainly not dead. It works really well. I've generated millions of dollars online with email marketing so it definitely works.

Speaker 2:

And I think one of the biggest problems with it is people build up this idea in their head of what it needs to be. And the number one thing that people focus on too much is the design. The design doesn't matter at all. No one's going to remember what it looked like an hour from the time they read it. And the reason why is all of us get inundated with outbound all day, every day and every piece of our life, so they will remember they heard from you. They're not going to remember what pictures or what colors you use. Nobody cares so, and that's not meant to be negative. It's just meant to say hey, stop making up excuses, we're not doing it, just do it. It's not hard, it doesn't require anything crazy. So one thing that has changed with email marketing is dns records used to be the exception. Now it's definitely the rule.

Speaker 2:

So email deliverability has become more challenging, but it's not challenging. Right, there's, there's things you need to do with some of your dns records. All the big providers tell you what to do and if you do that, you'll hit more inboxes, and if you don't, you shouldn't even waste your time trying to email market because you're it's just not going to work out well. But you shouldn't even waste your time trying to email market because it's just not going to work out well. But email marketing is kind of the foundation of what we build our business on. I also really like text marketing, I think text marketing is even more effective.

Speaker 2:

You get higher engagement. Simple, but with all these things, man, you're basically starting new conversations and keeping them going Same thing we do in real life. So that is the simplest way that I can break it down. And really you're emailing for two reasons from a really high level. One you're emailing to get people on a call and I'm just focused on high ticket service businesses, so I think about my own business. But you're working to get people on a call. Then, after the call, if they don't buy the thing that you offered, you're emailing them again to nurture them and keep the conversation going. So if you think about that in your business, you can see, by removing that, you're really missing out on a lot of opportunities, for sure.

Speaker 1:

So I want to circle back to something you said previously that I really want to key in on, sure. So I want to circle back to something you said previously that I really want to key in on. So I was actually on a um Russell Brunson, uh quick funnels conference, right, and uh, they brought on like Napoleon Hill or not not, they didn't bring them on, but they they showed some videos of him talking about it and uh, one of his partners, uh, napoleon Hill's partners made so much money from mindset and he kept saying do it now, do it now. And everybody that worked for him I can forget who it was, but it was like he said a hundred times a day do it now. And he made everybody that worked for him say do it now. And then also there's a book written by uh, I just got back from podfest. Um, uh called start ugly, right, and so you just got to get started, do something, get that initial inertia moving, um, and then you can perfect it. And and even with podcasting, like people fall off before seven podcasts, right, like you just gotta. You gotta start that process and get moving on that.

Speaker 1:

And I think email is so critical. Email is just like an address that someone has like for like mailers that they don't change emails for like eight years typically, and if the deliverability is good and it doesn't go to like spam, you're going to get right in front of that person that they're checking every day. Now text I think you know 99% like open rate on top of it, even if it's spam, like why are you not doing that? And I, I, I was uh in a training years ago and it said what is the relationship you want to have with your customer, right? So is it quarterly, like oh, I know who that person is like.

Speaker 1:

If you send stuff quarterly, you'll probably get put on a spam list more than if you send stuff daily because they don't even know who you are right like. So it's based on that relationship. So, like you know how close do you want to be to them? You know really weekly I think is is really good, monthly is okay you know daily if you're trying to build that, that that really close rapport with them like a best friend or a family member, like you got to think about all that and you got to think about a lot of different things of how maybe let's talk about that how would you set up like a standard campaign for, you know, I don't know e-commerce business and then we'll say, like a service business or something like that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, there's different pieces of it, right. So for e-com, a lot of when people are coming in is to get the 15% off right To hear about the sales or if it's a shopping cart abandonment type thing. But the newsletters I like once a week. If you're emailing me more than once a week I don't want to be your friend, that's too much right. But once a month I'm going to forget about you. So I think the magic is and it depends on your personality. If you're authentically like every day feels good, do it Once a month is not enough. But somewhere between two to four times a month is a good range. And if you can do twice a month is a good range. And if you can do twice a month for six months and step it up, because some people really struggle with that commitment, they make it this really big deal and it's not so.

Speaker 2:

The service-based business is kind of what I said before right, they could come in through a lead magnet or come in through a program and get some value. But getting them on that newsletter list where they can kind of see what you're doing and I urge this to people all the time and I'm not giving any advice here or anywhere ever that I don't follow myself. It's all based on actual experience and never theory. But be yourself, man. Put your wins and, more importantly, your losses out there, because people don't want to connect with your brand, they want to connect with Matthew, they want to connect with Jason, so put yourself out there. Some of the best open rates you will get on emails or emails like you're not going to believe this massive failure I had. People are sick man. They love that stuff. So why do you think reality TV is so popular? Go ahead.

Speaker 1:

No, I just I totally agree with you. I think that really you got to think about what are you trying to do with email? You're trying to connect with somebody one-to-one.

Speaker 1:

And if you're always putting your best foot forward. It's like you know everybody can look good in an interview. You know what I mean. Like, people want to know the real you. They want that authentic feel. And also, if you're not passionate about something or you're doing something because, oh, I need to do this, because X, y, Z, but it's not inside you, you're not going to keep it up. So, speaking to the once a day, like there's, there's things ritualistically like that, like certain kinds of news that I look at, I could easily turn that into a newsletter and just share what I'm finding with it. Right, like, so it's not.

Speaker 1:

It's not that hard to find something if you're passionate about it, that you have a why to connect with somebody on how to do it. And you know, I think minimum you have to do it once a month. Because if you do, if you don't do it once a month and you just start sending emails later, that whole list is dead, I think, because you're going to get so much spam off it and and you're really looking for engagement, right? So you want to constantly stay in front of them. Even if they don't even read the email, they're still seeing it Like, and I would even say like on LinkedIn. Linkedin's got a lot better and it's a LinkedIn's job to filter out all that spam, because marketers, of course, ruin everything. But I'm going to tell you, even if you sent that spam email in LinkedIn, if those people are locking into LinkedIn and they're posting, they're going to see your name, they're going to see what you do and they're posting, they're going to see your name, they're going to see what you do and they're going to see that headline.

Speaker 1:

And when I, when I do email marketing which was it's like an add on service for for other things that we do Um, I, you know, if I don't, if I don't know what the right thing to do is, I just use the whole alphabet and I test. You know, I'll set it up, or I'll set up, like you know, 26 different titles. You know and and figure out what are people responding to, and then the kind of that's the great magic about internet marketing is you can continue to optimize based upon data. You don't have to just guess, like in branding or traditional marketing. So I think it's super powerful. And the email analytics I mean that, that should that, and SEO. In my opinion, that and SEO are kind of like the core of your business, because people continuously organically find you at all funnels of the channel. And then email should work from not just like cold email, but nurture existing clients, keeping people up to date of what's going on. Like email fits in everywhere, just like SEO does.

Speaker 2:

You said something earlier in the show I wanted to touch on. Like email fits in everywhere, just like SEO does. So you said something earlier in the show I wanted to touch on. So you really were talking about just get started with where you are so a phrase we use in our business and that I live by is good enough to get it out there, right?

Speaker 2:

Just before this podcast, I launched a new Facebook ad. It goes into active campaign and all that exists. There's a notification. There's no email. I'll get to it later today. I didn't have time to finish it, but at least that damn ad is out there and approved and I'll get the rest of it built. I can't tell you the amount of automations where people have hit an email and below it it's blank. And I know I have a three-day wait and I haven't even finished it yet because so many people in business this is all parts of business and in life right, you got me up in this soapbox now, so now you got to hear it.

Speaker 2:

They want to wait till things are perfect. No one cares if it's perfect, and they're not going to know if it's perfect or not, because those are your rules you're assigning to it, not somebody else's. So if it's perfect and on the shelf, it doesn't have any value. It's got to be in the game.

Speaker 1:

So so, to even pile on more right, a social media post on average has a four hour lifespan. Okay and like, even if you start looking at, like all kinds of like really interesting data, people are more concerned If you meet somebody with how they acted in that scenario, there's like 20% memory in anything that you even did. So, unless you did something that hit the um, you know really bad, really good, you blend in the like, you know you just, you just blend into the background. Obscurity is the word I was looking for, but what I can tell you is you want to make sure whatever your message is, boom, you hit that message and then all all that else that matters is just that you're available and you're following up and you're, you're there, but people just, yeah, I think that there's, uh, people freeze and don't execute.

Speaker 1:

Um, now, certainly, you run an ad or something like that and, uh, the link doesn't work, like you want to double check and make sure, uh, but, but some of these platforms will protect you in that. But email marketing, that email, you know, is going to be seen by people for three seconds or seven seconds and then they're probably not going to see it again. And so you know, would you rather create that touch point or not, right Like, and so you got to take massive action to uh change like your trajectory as well as like where you're currently at. Like, and that's what I think a lot of people don't understand is how much action has to be taken to move the needle, because there's so much noise. There's something like I don't even know. I at one point it was like 800 messages a day, but it's gotta be double that or triple that now that we get inundated with it. So how do you cut through the clutter? Well, I think you cut through with consistency. Inundated with it, so how do you cut?

Speaker 2:

through the clutter. Well, I think you cut through with consistency. Yeah, that's the key right there. It's just like the weight room. If you go to the weight room and have the best workout of your life once a month, you're never going to see any change. It's not going to happen Now. If you do a C plus workout five days a week, you're going to see a difference in three months, big time. So it's not my opinion, important than anything. What's?

Speaker 1:

the secret to success.

Speaker 2:

Be consistent with something right. Well, I'm not seeing results. Do it longer or try something different, but nothing good comes overnight. Man, the hardest lesson. I talked to somebody the other day about this hardest lesson I've had to learn as an entrepreneur. I was not a patient person when I started this business 10 years ago, but what I found is the timeline is unknown, right For things to happen click, change, blow up, whatever. I don't know what it's going to be, so you keep going until it happens Like I'm not a I'm going to try this and go back to corporate America kind of guy. I'm not that guy at all. Last year was actually a very, maybe the hardest year I've ever had in business Very hard. My wife at one point was like do you think you need to go get a job? And I said I will never get a job that pays what I make now. That's not an option. Never say that to me again. Get out of my face. We're not doing that Right and I'm wired that way. Most people aren't, but I'm wired that way.

Speaker 1:

But let's find a bad offer. And if you, if you want a 10 to X better return on, like, create a 10 X better offer, right, and I like the consistency of the military just really helps you. Or having that routine, whether it's working out or whatever, getting up to do those things, and you're right. Like you, you work out for forever. You don't know when the muscles are going to start showing up, you don't know when the six pack is going to be there, like you just keep going because you know you're doing the right thing and you're moving in the right direction, and certainly some actions better than no action, because you're definitely going to be moving towards that goal or away from it. Now I want to switch gears.

Speaker 1:

We were talking in the pre-interview about active campaign, go high level. So a lot of people that listen, if they're not in digital marketing, a lot of people that listen are in digital marketing. But there's a lot of kind of people that are taking over their parents' business or they bought in a business or they're trying to digitally transform their company from the traditional way to generate leads. And you got HubSpot advertising really strongly. You got active campaign out there, you got go high levelaign out there. You got GoHighLevel. Gohighlevel seems to be the hot thing out there.

Speaker 1:

I remember when GoHighLevel launched there was no even manual how to use it. There was no customer support. It was really tough, but everybody that knew how to use it was just absolutely raving about it. Now I think we've come a long way since then, but maybe you could kind of set the table as far as, like I mean infusion soft. So on the click funnels conference they were talking about confusion soft that they're just kind of like knocking on it, like so like set the table for like the different um email marketing tools and maybe what, how you view what they might be used best for, because everybody's positioned a little differently.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, great, great question. So go high level. It's everything ClickFunnels wanted to be initially. I'm just a straight shooter, so go high level. The Calendly feature looks exactly like Calendly they ripped it off. The automation builders, like ActiveCampaign, looks a little older but it's more powerful. It's an attempt to be an all-in-one tool. I've never seen an all-in-one tool that I really love for all reasons.

Speaker 1:

But Go High.

Speaker 2:

Level gives you a lot of potential functionality. It's very overwhelming for new clients. There's a big learning curve. Active Campaign is a competitor. It is going to be, in my opinion. I still use it for my business, even though we work in both with our clients. Activecampaign is a cleaner interface, smaller learning curve. It's still the king with automation and CRM. It just is. Hubspot's a great one. Hubspot generally gets very expensive, so as people start building-.

Speaker 1:

And they lock you in. They kind of get you in different ways and they lock you in and then you have to do it and I get into people. I was HubSpot certified. I get in and I'm like you're doing an email newsletter once a month and you're paying for craziness, you know, yep.

Speaker 2:

So HubSpot we lose about 10 clients a year to HubSpot and they're generally moving up to, you know, significant revenue and they I almost feel like it's a badge of honor Like people like no, now I can afford this. But so you've got these different tools out there. Active campaign is not going to be the tool you want. Don't forget about MailChimp.

Speaker 1:

Mailchimp is the one you want to start with right? Like I don't, I've never really used Aweber, but MailChimp I think is great and you can actually set up multiple accounts in there and it's a it's an easy to use, fast tool. Like I said, we use ActiveCampaign because I like kind of building out the workflow a little bit and the messaging and the lead scoring. But I mean you can get started with MailChimp in a day.

Speaker 2:

And the key here is use something. Use something. I started with MailChimp years and years ago as well, but use something. Build a list with a purpose, right? Nobody cares about your newsletter. Nobody cares about your white paper or your ebook that somebody on Fiverr made you, that they've made for 50 other clients. Create three videos with two or three minutes of authentic screen. Share value and do something different. Do something your clients actually care about in your own style.

Speaker 2:

There's an idea for a lead magnet. Your lead magnets, or your offer to get a name and email address, should be worth a couple hundred bucks or more in perceived value. Otherwise, nobody cares. But take advantage of email. It's a great way to keep in touch with people, in addition to getting them on your YouTube or your podcast, whatever else you got going on. It doesn't require much effort to be effective. I cannot tell you the amount of people like well, I'll get that done later.

Speaker 2:

Here's the way that I teach funnels right. You've got three pieces of a funnel. The first piece is traffic. You're getting attention online or offline, directing it to a page online. The second piece is the front end. It's the pages online. The last piece is the back end. Everybody wants to do the back end last. It's really dumb. You should do it first. Have a plan. What happens when people get to your list? Then worry about traffic. Then do your front end. You can use Facebook lead ad forms, conditional logic, make them very high intent and push people directly into the back end. You can do it with high level or active campaign. You don't even need a website and you can still get qualified people on your calendar in two or three days from now and people want to argue with me while I'm generating leads for myself and my clients doing that same thing. So it doesn't have to be hard. The hardest part is a conversation you have with yourself about why you can't do it.

Speaker 1:

No for sure. I mean, I can tell you that if you're even skeptical, calendarly, which is kind of the market leader right now for calendars they send you a text message or even email if you verify in to get people to make sure they show up for that appointment. If that is turned off, like, I can see a depreciable amount of people that show up to meetings if they're not reminded about it. So, even if there's an automation, that's that simple to say, hey, you've already agreed to this meeting. Like, please come to it. Like the, the show up rates are so much higher, so email has so many uses and it's like so, so powerful. Like, if you're not doing it right, and if you don't, if you're not generating an email list, that's the one thing that is your asset, right, that that that you have, like, certainly your website. But to, to, to reach out to people, to interact with them, to communicate with them, even. Um, you know, I need to take my own advice for this podcast, cause I have a lot of listeners that I don't know who they are and I need to have a downloadable, and there I'm really kind of shifting from working in the business to uh, kind of uh, doing more of uh, the the of the teaching and stuff like that getting out there on social media. Let's talk about that. So how important like. So, email is like backbone, right, and you got a website and you got to email to get people to that website. It's a high converting website, you know. Okay, it's showing up with SEO in, you know, for the different keywords, so people are organically finding you. So you have a little bit of a funnel going.

Speaker 1:

Okay, where do you see paid ads fitting in? Because I think paid ads I started in paid ads. I think paid ads is fantastic, like I think it adds, it's a compounding kind of effect and so kind of, okay, a lot of people are running advertising Almost anybody I talked to they're running a bunch of advertisers 're spending way too much money, I think, on one channel advertising, and I'm like, spread this thing around. Let's, like you know, let's hit some multiple channels here. Um, is is typically what I advise. I mean, how, how do you see that? Like, when someone comes to you, what are the issues that they're dealing with? And then, like, what are you recommending to them? And then how do you um combine uh paid ads to to the mix? I just kind of hear your thoughts on that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean it depends what niche they're in. I mean we work with a lot of capital raisers for real estate, but high ticket service providers are really our broader niche. Typically, when people are looking for more leads, they're just relying on referrals. You know they don't have a whole lot going on. They might be doing some organic posting to LinkedInin, but nothing's really happened from it. So if they have a budget, facebook facebook ads is a supplement to our. What they're already doing is generally why go first? It's the quickest way to start showing them some, some life, some blood in their business. Then, obviously, getting that nurture set up. What happens after the call is super important as well, because not everybody's gonna invest or buy on the first call. Most won't unless you have some really high pressure sales tactics, which we don't. So that's really important Doing something.

Speaker 2:

I think guesting on podcasts for me has always been more valuable than hosting my own show. Your show is really successful. You've been doing it a long time. You probably have a different experience, but I love getting on as a guest. I've been on I don't know 110, 115 podcasts now and it's great getting in front of new audiences. It's fun, it's a good use of your time.

Speaker 2:

I like YouTube. I like getting in front of the camera and the mic, getting on stage. So YouTube's a platform that I like to create and totally unplug. So I think getting yourself on video is huge and a lot of people don't like it. But face-to-face is best, but it's not scalable. Right, it's not scalable, it's expensive, it's inconvenient. But getting on video is huge because people can figure out very quickly, within a few seconds of watching you speak is this person full of shit or do they seem like they're kind of authentic, they figure out and they make a lot of decisions quickly. So it really can shorten that no like and trust thing. So doing stuff with videos Great, I really like it.

Speaker 1:

Well, so to speak, out to videos. I mean, this is, I think, a golden error for for videos, since, like all the live days, like when, everything was going live was like awesome.

Speaker 1:

And then now, now, if you're, you know, if you're a business like, you're not going to get any visibility unless you pay to play, which I understand that, and I think that there's value in kind of giving the search engines or the different social media platforms a little bit of money to kind of warm up to you, and it makes a lot of sense to do that. But I can tell you right now, posting on TikTok, if it stays around like it's back and forth, I don't know, youtube Shorts and Instagram is where it's at to get organic reach, you can set up like a mini chat where you have like a downloadable text me this send you that Now you've got the email address right, offer organic traffic right and you've given them some value. And then you can continue that conversation because a lot of people are like well, I don't have the right lead magnet. Continue that conversation because a lot of people are like well, I don't have the right lead magnet. To your point, if you get the right video of just you answering a problem of like hey, here are the three things that I do. That do whatever and you can speak to it in your authority on it. You put that together with the call to action. You can put that on your website. It will convert. You can put that on a newsletter. You can put that on social media. You can turn that into a paid ad. So, like, everybody has access. Now that Zoom is a thing since COVID, right, or whatever.

Speaker 1:

Whatever you're using Google Meets, whatever it is, you know Microsoft, I'm sorry, so there's a lot of problems, but and my mom worked there so I can say that but I would tell you that you can get on video and you can record video. There's no excuse to be able to do it. Like you said, you're just in your own way. Figure it out. What you have value in You're. You know, know, like and trust. They pick up so much from you by what you say, right, there's so many on, you know, on things that are not in the words, right, so there's things that are not in the words, especially text, right, things that are not in the words, right, so there's things that are not in the words, especially text, right, you get text confusion all the time of what's going on. But if you're an authority, you're an expert, right, and you're trustworthy. That's all you need to communicate in.

Speaker 1:

Whatever it is that you're offering, put that out there and put a couple of videos. The algorithm is going to tell you if it's good or not, and then you can pick that up and turn that into an ad. But, like, you could do this all in a day and you could start generating a list. But I think that, even going back to the beginning, do it now. Do it now like to the beginning of it. You just gotta. You gotta take action and, and I think, um, one of the things that I would love for you to speak on and we were talking about this in the pre-interview is how do you figure out who to trust, right, because everybody and their dog can hang a shingle out and say you know, I actually wrote so this book.

Speaker 1:

I'm meeting with a client like after this, but I wrote this book a couple years ago when I kept seeing like 15-year-old Instagram, uh, saying they're going to help me grow my business, and I was just like, um, and for anybody that listens, it's called um how to transform yourself into an authoritative brand and attract your uh ideal customers, build your brand mania. So that's, that's a book I wrote about five years ago, but I literally wrote this book explaining my journey and like how to do it. Um, so I say I like, just like you, I drank my own kool-aid. But like you're kids, I like how can you prove to me that you do it if you're 15? Like, how are you a a business consultant? Like it's just good and like it was just it was, it was too much and so that that that kind of perpetuates is okay.

Speaker 1:

How do you do email marketing right? It's not like accounting. You know what I mean. Like it's kind of a little bit of an art and there's so many people out there that say they do it and look, I call it kissing frogs. Honestly is, I've been doing this long enough. I have so many different people. I've used agencies, consultants, people that I've known, hired, done partnerships with, like I kind of have a sense of like who to use or where to go, but for somebody that's starting out, it's like I'm running this business and I need somebody to email marketing.

Speaker 1:

Like I can go 50,000 places and get a hundred thousand names of people that do this. I mean I can tell you there's like I don't know how many. I think there's like 1800 something agencies in Houston Like okay, how do I know which ones are good? Like I don't know any of these people, right? So, like, when you're looking at email marketing, maybe what are some questions you can ask them or what are some things you can look for? Maybe, like I know, the badges and the certifications are super helpful as a starting point. But, like, how would you evaluate an email marketing person if? If you were trying to hire somebody today?

Speaker 2:

That's a great question. I mean, like you said, unfortunately age has a piece to it. You know, if you're living at home, I don't really want to hear your life lessons because you've never got out of the world on your own. So, finding somebody that's been doing it for a little while, but getting them on a video call, get them on a Zoom call, have a conversation If they oversell themselves with, the results are probably full of shit. Honestly, we've worked with close to 700 people in active campaign in the last 10 years.

Speaker 1:

I jump on a call with people.

Speaker 2:

It's a lot. It's a lot. I jump on a call with people, I figure out what they're doing, what they're trying to do, and if it's not a good fit, I want to say, hey, you know, e-com's not really our focus. There's other people that focus on that. It's not really us. But let me give you a couple of pointers to leave you better than I found you.

Speaker 2:

While we're on here Off, you go Jumping on a Zoom call with them, asking questions, seeing what they are. When people want me to guarantee stuff, can you guarantee? Search it in me. Have a good day. I don't want anything to do with this scenario because we're just starting and this is coming off crazy. You're going to be a nightmare six months down the road. I'm going to hate my life because of you. So I'm going to set you free and send you on your way. Brother, I have no problem telling people that I might have one of those conversations today to be honest with you, so we'll see how it goes. I'm a nice guy, but I'm not scared to tell you exactly what I think.

Speaker 1:

And especially if it's answering a question. If you have a question, I'm going to give you an answer. So well, I think you know, see again, consulting and giving people advice on on what to do and how to stay out of the ditch. You know, I, I'm happy to provide that, that direction, and and I have lots of years of experience and lots of campaigns to be able to say, hey, this is what I'm seeing going on and this is what I really think you should do, um and and and so. But I can tell you that the um, the guarantee business, is a different model, Like like, okay, well, give me, give me a piece of the revenue, right, like, like what we got to get more involved, but like out of the gate, like I want we need to step into this thing, right, and so there, there's a lot of those kinds of things that I think that people if I'm speaking to the agency owners out there now and the freelancers don't pick up the wrong client because, look, I'm always going. I want to hit this out of the park. I want to get a good review out of this. I want this client to be my client long-term, I want to get referrals out of this. So I know what my ideal client is and if it's not, I try to tell them that and I try to dissuade them to say, hey, this ain't going to work. Or if it's going to work, we need to make sure that we build, because a lot of people know what they want but they don't have the budget to do it Right.

Speaker 1:

Worst thing you can do, even if it's not a bad client, is take on a client that you know that, that, that, that you're, you're, whatever you're doing, they don't have enough horsepower or fire power to deliver that Right. Like. So, if you're brand new product and you're doing cold email marketing or whatever, um, like you got to have enough accounts going, you got to have enough emails. Like, and it's a numbers game to to to a certain degree, but like if you're trying to rank for a very difficult keyword and you have big competitors, hey, like you're not going to get there on like a shoe string budget.

Speaker 1:

So it's really about um evaluating, I think, for um, all the freelancers and agencies out there, the the the right client, because that client's going to cost you a ton of money, and that's how my agency has been able to scale is making sure we're picking the right clients and also that goes back all the way back to email marketing is making sure the hook. The hook is right, because you're going to, you're going to see in the leads what the bait is you're putting out like from a fishing analogy, and if you tweak that, you can get exactly what you're looking for in the right messaging solving the right problem and hitting the right people Right. I think that it's. You know what? Is it the right target at the right time with the right message, or something like that? Like really is. I mean, tell me a little bit about like sequencing and then we'll start to kind of wrap up here, getting close to time.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So I mean I always tell people it's like any new relationship in life You're going to talk more, more often when you first meet somebody. And as time goes by it's not necessary. Like if my mom, after me being alive for 43 years now, she wants to talk every day, I'm going to be like mom about once a week Every day, 43 years now. If she wants to talk every day, I'm going to be like mom about once a week every day is kind of a lot. I don't have much to say. I work at home, it's not that much going on. But if a new neighbor moves in next door at first we're going to talk often to get to know each other.

Speaker 2:

So it's kind of the same way with your sequencing you don't want to be overwhelming, like if I get on your list and you making those touch points. Uh, something I was going to say just with, like email structure, what I use. I love playing to curiosity. It's one of my favorite things to do with subject lines and even the beginning of emails. But, um, curiosity to get it open, a little hook at the beginning, little storytelling about our real pain or our real success or whatever, one actionable question or thing and then some kind of a call to action. I pretty much do that in every newsletter and it's very conversational. If you read my emails they would say, man, it sounds exactly like Jason. It's because it is right. I say I speak exactly how I write and vice versa. And it works well because it's easy for me to create, it's easy to consume and it's different than everybody else. So I hope there's value there.

Speaker 1:

No, I think that that's great. I I think that many times I've talked to people or message people and then I've spoken to them or met them in person, right and, and they're different, right and, and that's so wild, and and you would think, you would think that across all mediums you want to be the same person and be and communicate that same way. I've started to do a lot of emails where I'm just talking, right, so I'm not typing anymore, I'm just talking, and then I'll grammar check it or whatever ever and just very conversational. You know, there's, there's a formula 7-11-4 that was put out by a zero modem, a true study by Google that said seven hours of content. They got to consume seven hours, whether it's talking to you live or checking out your stuff or whatever reading your emails. And you know they see your message 11 times and they need to see it on four different channels.

Speaker 1:

And if you follow that formula, you're going to, you're going to and you're targeting the right people. Good things are going to happen. Like I don't think there's any any other way, way around it. But, man, if they just know who you are over over that quote, unquote, seven hours, they're going to know, I can trust you and they're going to decide whether to do this with you. Like you're, you're like a straight up, like you know, no, no, like right, get right to the point. Kind of a no nonsense kind of guy. People are going to listen to this and go man, that's what I want. That's what I want to work with, right Um.

Speaker 2:

I describe my style as unapologetically authentic.

Speaker 1:

I like it. I like it. Well, hey, we're I. I want to make sure people know how to get in touch with you. Where are you hanging out? What are you doing? I know you got an email newsletter. People have inscribed true, kind of tell, tell, tell everybody your info.

Speaker 2:

Yep, so company is intentionally inspirationalcom. So that is also the website you can go to If you really want to see Jason unplugged. More of this, but even a bit more hardcore. Our YouTube channel. We have a playlist called Smoke, flow and Grow and it's turned into me reviewing a lot of cigars and hanging out by my pool and talking a little bit about business, but it's a great place to get more of a feel for me, unplugged and, yeah, intentionallyinspirationalcom.

Speaker 1:

Love it, jason. Thank you so much for coming on. No-transcript. So that was. That was pretty cool and until the next time, guys. Bye-bye for now.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Matt Bertram

Host