Matt Edmundson:

Welcome to the e-Commerce podcast with

Matt Edmundson:

me, your host, Matt Edmundson.

Matt Edmundson:

The E-Commerce podcast is all about helping you deliver e-commerce wow.

Matt Edmundson:

To your customers and to help us do just that.

Matt Edmundson:

I'm chatting today with Christian Simovic from Honey Badger

Matt Edmundson:

Marketing in the Land Down under.

Matt Edmundson:

Oh yes.

Matt Edmundson:

We're gonna talk about how to create a frothing at the mouth

Matt Edmundson:

email list with plain text emails and if that title doesn't intrigue

Matt Edmundson:

you, I don't know what will.

Matt Edmundson:

But before Christian and I jump into that conversation, let me suggest a few other

Matt Edmundson:

podcasts that I also think you'll enjoy listening to, cuz we have loads of them.

Matt Edmundson:

Now Christian, on the website, we've got a lot.

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, so check out why everything you know about email marketing could be wrong..

Matt Edmundson:

It's one of my favorite titles ever, Uh, with Gabby Rapone.

Matt Edmundson:

She was an absolute legend.

Matt Edmundson:

Love Gabby.

Matt Edmundson:

Check that one out.

Matt Edmundson:

And also check out the five essential emails for successful e-commerce email

Matt Edmundson:

marketing, which is no mean feat.

Matt Edmundson:

I think I did that one actually.

Matt Edmundson:

So check out those episodes.

Matt Edmundson:

You can find these and our entire archive of episodes on our website

Matt Edmundson:

for free at ecommercepodcast.net.

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And whilst you are there on our website, why not sign up for our newsletter

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if you haven't done so already?

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Basically, If you're on our email list, we email out all of the links

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from today's show, the notes, the transcripts, all of the things

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that Christian's gonna talk about.

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It goes straight to your inbox, totally for free, whole thing's

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amazing how it all works.

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And we don't spam it, all that sort of nonsense.

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But we do try and be helpful in what we do.

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Now.

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This episode is brought to you by the e-commerce cohort, which

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helps you deliver e-commerce wow.

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The cohort is underway.

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Yes, it is.

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And if you are involved in e-commerce, it is something I honestly think.

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You should check out, it is a lightweight monthly sprint.

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Basically every week there's something around the topic of e-commerce

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for you to get your teeth into, uh, which will help you grow and

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develop your own e-commerce business.

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Whether you are just starting out or if you're like me, you've been around

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e-commerce for a while, it's just gonna help you focus on all aspects

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of e-commerce in a way I've not seen many things do, if I'm honest with you.

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It prevents you getting siloed, it prevents you getting left behind.

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There's all that CPD and all that sort of stuff going on.

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It's just a beautiful thing and it is a membership, so do check it out.

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Honestly, if you're involved in e-commerce, I can't recommend it

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highly enough, and you can find more information at ecommercecohort.com.

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That's ecommercecohort.com.

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I'm in there doing stuff.

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There's a whole bunch of other people in there doing stuff.

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Come find us, have a conversation, and if you've got any questions

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about cohort, then why not email me directly, matt@ecommercepodcast.net

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with any questions you have because this is an awesome thing.

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Let me tell you.

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So do check it out ecommercecohort.com.

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Now, Christian Simovic is a plain text email marketing specialist.

Matt Edmundson:

I like you I'm intrigued by plain text especially cuz I've not done

Matt Edmundson:

plain text emails for years, right?

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, but Christian is a specialist in this area.

Matt Edmundson:

He prescribes daily emails for his clients.

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, sends out daily email marketing tips himself, via his email.

Matt Edmundson:

I'm gonna give you the link on where to sign up obviously later on.

Matt Edmundson:

His clients have ranged from small organic skincare brands to reality TV stars.

Matt Edmundson:

I think I'm more intrigued about the small skincare brands than the reality

Matt Edmundson:

TV stars, but maybe that's just me.

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, all of that said, uh, Christian, welcome to the show.

Matt Edmundson:

Great to have you bud.

Matt Edmundson:

Thanks for joining us.

Christian Simovic:

Hey Matt.

Christian Simovic:

Uh, pleasure to be a part of the show.

Christian Simovic:

And firstly, I just wanna mention, I thought my title was gonna be pretty

Christian Simovic:

interesting, the frothing at the mouth, but that everything you thought was

Christian Simovic:

wrong about email marketing, that probably takes the cake in titles.

Matt Edmundson:

Yeah, you can use that one going forward.

Christian Simovic:

Uh, so that one yeah.

Christian Simovic:

I'm gonna steal, I'm very sorry, Gabby, but yeah.

Matt Edmundson:

Yeah, I'm sure Gabby won't mind.

Matt Edmundson:

She's lovely actually.

Matt Edmundson:

So, uh, tell me, uh, Christian, uh, about Honey Badger Marketing.

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, what does it do?

Christian Simovic:

Yeah, so I guess the Origin, Do you wanna

Christian Simovic:

go into my Origin story or more?

Matt Edmundson:

Yeah, let's do it.

Matt Edmundson:

Let's go for it.

Matt Edmundson:

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson:

Yeah, why not?

Christian Simovic:

So, um, obviously I do email copywriting as a freelancer slash

Christian Simovic:

agency role, but if anyone, who knows me.

Christian Simovic:

I was into drop shipping I think in around November, December, 2021.

Christian Simovic:

That's when I kind of got in mm-hmm.

Christian Simovic:

and, you know, like, you know, all 22 year old kids, you know,

Christian Simovic:

who think about drop shipping.

Christian Simovic:

Oh, it's just easy money.

Christian Simovic:

It's just, you just set up a website.

Christian Simovic:

You get traffic and you get money, well, that's obviously not how it works.

Christian Simovic:

I learned that the hard way actually.

Christian Simovic:

Not really the hard way.

Christian Simovic:

I didn't really spend any, that's the thing, I didn't spend any money on ad

Christian Simovic:

I was just really, you know, anyways.

Christian Simovic:

You know, so when I was coming up with my products I was like, well I

Christian Simovic:

need to actually like kind of, I need to have, you know, words that sell.

Christian Simovic:

And I kind of stumbled upon copywriting through that.

Christian Simovic:

And I think I was reading the Gary Halbert newsletter and a few others at the time.

Christian Simovic:

And then I kind of pushed aside drop shipping and eCommerce.

Christian Simovic:

Uh, and then I kind of focused into copywriting.

Christian Simovic:

And to this day I still do e-commerce copywriting cause I

Christian Simovic:

do have a passion for e-commerce.

Christian Simovic:

And maybe one day I'll do it, I'm not sure.

Christian Simovic:

But for now I've got my sights here.

Matt Edmundson:

In the email marketing copy.

Matt Edmundson:

So what is it about copy that draws you in?

Matt Edmundson:

What do you find exciting about that?

Christian Simovic:

I think so, like, I'll go more deeper into my, um, Origin story.

Christian Simovic:

So I used to be, I was never a real estate agent, but I've always worked

Christian Simovic:

in the real estate kind of industry and the whole agency commission sales.

Christian Simovic:

I just love being a salesman.

Christian Simovic:

Copywriting is kind, I mean, I know it's a bit of a try, everyone

Christian Simovic:

kind of says that, but it's true.

Christian Simovic:

It's salesmanship in print to an extent.

Christian Simovic:

Mm-hmm..

Christian Simovic:

Um, so you are, you're applying the fundamentals of salesmanship

Christian Simovic:

and understanding the psychology of why we buy and then applying

Christian Simovic:

that to the written word.

Christian Simovic:

Um, and, and that's just a, you know, and it's just a fun thing to do in my opinion.

Matt Edmundson:

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson:

And I think actually, um, Christian if I'm honest with

Matt Edmundson:

you, it's almost like a lost art.

Matt Edmundson:

Because what has, and this is why I'm intrigued for this conversation,

Matt Edmundson:

right, But what I've, what I've noticed over the years, Email marketing has

Matt Edmundson:

become lazier and lazier and lazier.

Matt Edmundson:

And what I mean by that is it's just like, I'm gonna throw some products on a page.

Matt Edmundson:

I'm gonna discount it by 10% and I'm gonna email that out.

Matt Edmundson:

And that's just what I'm gonna do.

Matt Edmundson:

I don't really have to, and I can get plugins now, if I've got a Shopify

Matt Edmundson:

store that will almost do this whole thing automatically, I don't even

Matt Edmundson:

have to figure out the products.

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, I'm just gonna get some bot to crawl my database, figure out what

Matt Edmundson:

you've bought and I'll email that to you and I think you should buy it again.

Matt Edmundson:

Right?

Matt Edmundson:

A lot of automation.

Matt Edmundson:

But no real sort of creativity in the copy.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, certainly in the newsletters, in the offers, maybe I see creativity in the

Matt Edmundson:

segmentation in the, in the sequences, but I don't tend to see it in the

Matt Edmundson:

actual just plain old marketing anymore.

Matt Edmundson:

And I remember the days, and the reason I'm saying this is because before

Matt Edmundson:

this recording, I was actually on your website having a little look at your

Matt Edmundson:

landing page, and I remember the days, um, I wanna call them old school days.

Matt Edmundson:

Maybe it's showing my age a little bit, uh, where long form copy was

Matt Edmundson:

the thing to do and there was a real art to doing long form copy well.

Matt Edmundson:

An art to sort of writing stuff that made me wanna read what you wrote.

Matt Edmundson:

It's more than just like a quick 140 character soundbite,

Matt Edmundson:

Do, you know, what I mean?

Matt Edmundson:

And, and um, and so I'm really intrigued by this, that actually you are into

Matt Edmundson:

email copy and this was sort of an avenue that you chose to sort of express

Matt Edmundson:

your craft or your art kind of thing.

Christian Simovic:

Yeah.

Christian Simovic:

And I like how you kind of just said like, I'm just gonna trip,

Christian Simovic:

rip into shreds about emails.

Christian Simovic:

Um, I do agree with you on that, and I guess it kind of stems from the whole

Christian Simovic:

short form verses long form copy.

Christian Simovic:

Um, I guess I kind of come more from the direct response world of things like the

Christian Simovic:

Ben Settle, Gary Halbert kind of way, and.

Christian Simovic:

You know, the emails that I write for my clients, 500 to a thousand words.

Christian Simovic:

And I know a lot of people, a lot of email marketers might think that's ridiculous.

Christian Simovic:

And no imagery, no real graphics or anything, just really just plain text.

Christian Simovic:

And the whole point of that is you can't, like you're kind of mentioning

Christian Simovic:

long form, you know, you can't really be persuasive with short form copy, in

Christian Simovic:

my opinion and in the stats opinion, but as well, just my opinion, um, So,

Christian Simovic:

yeah, long form really is the way to go.

Christian Simovic:

And, and I think a point you kind of meant about like just bringing back copy.

Christian Simovic:

Um, you know, it, it kind of goes back to a lot of people believe in branded copy

Christian Simovic:

and having like really short, not short headlines, but they think that shorter is

Christian Simovic:

better and that's not always necessarily wrong or right, it's, it's just,

Christian Simovic:

it's more of on a case by case basis.

Christian Simovic:

But I'm gonna be biased here and I always think that long form works better.

Christian Simovic:

Mm-hmm.

Christian Simovic:

, you can kind of, you can, you know, we're talking about, you

Christian Simovic:

know, the whole like copywriting framework problem agitates solution.

Christian Simovic:

Well, you can't really do that with a hundred words.

Christian Simovic:

You know, I've seen a lot of PAS or problem agitate solution examples on

Christian Simovic:

HubSpot, for example, and it's just 50 words and it's just boom, boom, boom.

Christian Simovic:

That's, it.

Christian Simovic:

Doesn't really get into the specifics of why I should buy this

Christian Simovic:

product, the problems I'm facing, you know, that kind of stuff.

Christian Simovic:

So I really like that about the whole, and I try and put that into emails.

Matt Edmundson:

Yeah, no, that's pretty, So you are talking about a

Matt Edmundson:

500 to a thousand word email, and one of the things that we've noticed,

Matt Edmundson:

uh, with one of the e-comm companies that I've got is we do like the,

Matt Edmundson:

um, the, the lazy in effect here.

Matt Edmundson:

I really need to be careful.

Matt Edmundson:

They're not, Jen puts a lot of effort to our emails.

Matt Edmundson:

Actually.

Matt Edmundson:

She's not lazy at all.

Matt Edmundson:

I didn't say that.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, no, no, no.

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, I, I definitely know she's not lazy, but we do the sort of

Matt Edmundson:

the offers and the promos and once a quarter I do an update email.

Matt Edmundson:

So it's kind of like an update from Matt, you know, the MD

Matt Edmundson:

of the company sort of thing.

Matt Edmundson:

And they are 500 to 1000 word emails.

Matt Edmundson:

And when I started doing 'em I thought this is a bit nuts really, cuz

Matt Edmundson:

who's gonna read an email this long?

Matt Edmundson:

And you know, to this day they're some of our highest performing emails

Matt Edmundson:

is when I just write an update.

Matt Edmundson:

I don't even try and sell people anything.

Matt Edmundson:

I'm just writing an update about the company, about what's

Matt Edmundson:

going on, and people read those things and they email in and go.

Matt Edmundson:

Thanks for the update, Matt.

Matt Edmundson:

It's awesome, really, and it intrigues me that actually long form content seems

Matt Edmundson:

to outperform uh, even in that context.

Christian Simovic:

Actually, I wanna make a point you just mentioned, you know, when

Christian Simovic:

you do your emails, like from the founder types of emails from Matt addressing the

Christian Simovic:

people, That's kind of, and where people respond, that's really the crux of plain

Christian Simovic:

text emails is that it is a more personal engaging environment because, you know,

Christian Simovic:

a lot of brand center emails, you know, they use the words like, Hey guys, and

Christian Simovic:

then we, and they use a lot of words and not even just words, but like, let's say

Christian Simovic:

from the sender name is like it'n not the founder's name, it's like, you know,

Christian Simovic:

I don't, I'm trying to think of a brand name, let's say from Nike's support team.

Christian Simovic:

It's not really personal.

Christian Simovic:

Like I know this is coming from a marketing team that's not really personal.

Christian Simovic:

Whereas when you Matt, the founder of the company, Matt, send out an email to

Christian Simovic:

everyone, plain text, you know, using the words you and I, speaking to them on

Christian Simovic:

a one-on-one, you know, kind of format.

Christian Simovic:

That's a lot more effective and it really does help to build a loyal

Christian Simovic:

and engaged list in my experience.

Matt Edmundson:

Yeah, no, that's brilliant.

Matt Edmundson:

I'm smiling when you called me Max there, uh, because Sadaf, who you spoke

Matt Edmundson:

to, the show's producer, um, she and I often laugh because a lot of people,

Matt Edmundson:

for whatever reason call me Max.

Matt Edmundson:

I don't know, maybe it's the way I say Matt.

Matt Edmundson:

When people say who are ouy, I say, Matt Edmundson, they go, Oh, Max.

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, and so it comes out a lot.

Matt Edmundson:

And so it's a little internal joke we have here, Sadaf and

Matt Edmundson:

myself about, so she calls me Max.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, and so, uh, I call her Sod off sometimes just

Matt Edmundson:

because, uh, why not, right?

Christian Simovic:

I saw, I just wanna say I saw the, um, when you was

Christian Simovic:

talking about your story, I heard for some reason I instinctively heard Max.

Christian Simovic:

I'm like, I'm gonna say that.

Christian Simovic:

I'm just gonna go for it.

Christian Simovic:

And I realized my mistake.

Christian Simovic:

I'm like, Oh crap.

Matt Edmundson:

No, no, it's totally fine.

Matt Edmundson:

You're, you're definitely not the first person and you won't be the

Matt Edmundson:

last Christian to call me Max.

Matt Edmundson:

That's fine.

Matt Edmundson:

I'm glad.

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, but yes, no, it's fine.

Matt Edmundson:

If you wanna call me Max, I have no issue with that.

Matt Edmundson:

It's a cool name.

Matt Edmundson:

Actually, I quite like Max.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, and.

Matt Edmundson:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Edmundson:

I've got a friend actually not related to anything we're talking about here.

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, I've got a friend who called his son Max after, uh, the movie Gladiator.

Matt Edmundson:

Maximus Decimus Meridius.

Matt Edmundson:

Just so, um, he, he's trained his son in that, that whole speech.

Matt Edmundson:

My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, uh, which I think is hysterical.

Matt Edmundson:

Anyway, so plain text emails, so plain text emails.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, why plain text email?

Matt Edmundson:

What is it about Planet text email, which draws you in versus using the standard,

Matt Edmundson:

um, traditional e-commerce kind of, uh, marketing with images and offers

Matt Edmundson:

and grid layouts and graphics and logos and colors and all that HTML stuff?

Matt Edmundson:

What draws you in about it?

Christian Simovic:

Yeah.

Christian Simovic:

Okay.

Christian Simovic:

So I'll ask you, I'll ask the audience this question as well as you, Matt.

Christian Simovic:

So Matt, do you like salesmen?

Christian Simovic:

Like, do you like when they come onto your door, knock on the door?

Christian Simovic:

Do you like when that happens?

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, yes and no.

Christian Simovic:

Okay.

Christian Simovic:

Well, most people say no, and I, I'll say why.

Christian Simovic:

Most people in the audience will say no, You know, if, for

Christian Simovic:

example, I come up and go, Hi.

Christian Simovic:

Hi Matt.

Christian Simovic:

By the way, my name's Christian.

Christian Simovic:

I live down the street.

Christian Simovic:

I'm selling some water purifiers.

Christian Simovic:

Would you like to buy some?

Christian Simovic:

Most people say no because salesman are annoying for the most part.

Christian Simovic:

And, and, and this kind of stems from advertising.

Christian Simovic:

You know, most people don't like reading advertisements.

Christian Simovic:

They really don't.

Christian Simovic:

They hate being sold on things, but they love buying.

Christian Simovic:

Mm-hmm..

Christian Simovic:

It's kind of a weird psychological thing, but I'll go back to the advertisements

Christian Simovic:

thing and if so, psychologically speaking, we hate advertisements and you know, like

Christian Simovic:

I always do this on my calls with people.

Christian Simovic:

Like I just show 'em the promotions tab in Gmail.

Christian Simovic:

I just show 'em every single, you know, every single ecomm brand is pretty much in

Christian Simovic:

the promotions tab for a lot of reasons.

Christian Simovic:

Mm-hmm.

Christian Simovic:

One of the big reasons they use photos.

Christian Simovic:

You know, I'm, I'll speak more about the psychological stuff.

Christian Simovic:

When you open an email and it just has someone's logo, someone's photo,

Christian Simovic:

10% of banner, you know, that kind of traditional stuff, it's very obvious that

Christian Simovic:

it's an advertisement, or at least I'm about to be pitched to buy something.

Christian Simovic:

So from a psychological point of view, you know, a plain text email is a much

Christian Simovic:

better approach because people, like, obviously people know that it's an email

Christian Simovic:

from a marketing company or from an ecomm brand, you know, from the get go.

Christian Simovic:

I'm not instantly just inundated with pitching number one.

Christian Simovic:

Um, so that's one reason for plain text.

Christian Simovic:

And, and I was kind of mentioning as well that like personal, like.

Christian Simovic:

Personal one on one connection, you know, Would you send an email to your

Christian Simovic:

mom, Your mom, if you're American, um, or your dad, you know, would you send,

Christian Simovic:

would you send like, you know, in, in fire, like fire sale emojis and 20% off

Christian Simovic:

and you know, last Sunday deals like, and you know, like logos and stuff.

Christian Simovic:

No one does that personally.

Christian Simovic:

So why would you send that to your customers?

Christian Simovic:

That's kind of my question.

Christian Simovic:

Another reason for plain text as well is from a deliverability point.

Christian Simovic:

Um, you know, Gmail and Yahoo, they have to scan for images.

Christian Simovic:

Now, I don't know all the technical side of things, I'm not gonna lie, but,

Christian Simovic:

um, you know, from a platform from, you know, if you have images and newsletter

Christian Simovic:

kind of themes, a newsletter themed email, they really do end up in the

Christian Simovic:

promotions tab, or worse the spam tab.

Christian Simovic:

And, you know, a, a big crux of it is email deliverability.

Christian Simovic:

You know, if you're not in the primary inbox, you're not getting

Christian Simovic:

as many eyeballs as humanly possible because you know, no one.

Christian Simovic:

I don't, and know, most people don't, We don't check our promotions tab.

Christian Simovic:

Like that's just that, And I, whilst I'm kind of talking about this, there's a

Christian Simovic:

concept that Gary Halbert had, um, the whole, like, this was more about direct

Christian Simovic:

mail, like actual physical letters.

Christian Simovic:

But, you know, he was sending out letters and there was this whole

Christian Simovic:

concept of the A pileand the B pile.

Christian Simovic:

And the B pile.

Christian Simovic:

Or the A pile.

Christian Simovic:

I don't know exactly which one it was, but one of the piles, I'm gonna

Christian Simovic:

say the A pile was advertisements.

Christian Simovic:

And this was very notorious.

Christian Simovic:

Like you could just tell it's junk mail.

Christian Simovic:

And then there's another pile, which is the B pile, which is like your

Christian Simovic:

personal stuff, personal, you know, from your mom, your brother, or whatever.

Christian Simovic:

Most people chuck out the junk mail, They don't even open it.

Christian Simovic:

And that's kind of the point, you know, if you've got.

Christian Simovic:

An email that just screams advertisement either they're not

Christian Simovic:

gonna open it or they do open it.

Christian Simovic:

It's just not, it's not the same from a psychological perspective.

Christian Simovic:

Sure.

Christian Simovic:

A long winded way of saying that, but yeah.

Matt Edmundson:

No, that's fair comment because I sit here and I'm smiling cuz

Matt Edmundson:

every morning I open up Gmail and I check my emails and I've got the tabs.

Matt Edmundson:

You know, the inbox, the social and the promotions.

Matt Edmundson:

I open up the promotions.

Matt Edmundson:

There's at least a hundred emails, which some have accumulated overnight.

Matt Edmundson:

Now, I appreciate, I'm slightly odd because I get people's emails just

Matt Edmundson:

cause I wanna see what they're doing.

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, there is that sort of learning factor with it, but, Um, I will quite

Matt Edmundson:

happily go through all a hundred emails.

Matt Edmundson:

I'll select all, you know, on the, on the promotions tab, and I'll

Matt Edmundson:

just scan down the list and I'll untick the ones that I wanna keep.

Matt Edmundson:

I'll just delete the rest, right?

Matt Edmundson:

And the whole thing takes like 30 seconds.

Matt Edmundson:

So if I'm not captivated by your subject line, or in fact, I

Matt Edmundson:

rarely look at the subject line.

Matt Edmundson:

It's more who's sending it.

Matt Edmundson:

I'm kind of curious to, I wanna look for different companies,

Matt Edmundson:

just how my brain works.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, there's a strong chance it's getting deleted and not opened, right?

Matt Edmundson:

So I get this whole, You don't want to be in the promotions tab I and

Matt Edmundson:

you want to be in the main tab.

Matt Edmundson:

So does sending plain text emails then mean I'm more likely to get in

Matt Edmundson:

the main sort of email tab on Gmail?

Christian Simovic:

Yeah.

Christian Simovic:

For Gmail and yahoo.

Christian Simovic:

I'm not sure about Yahoo, but, and to be fair, who uses Yahoo, but, um, bit

Christian Simovic:

of a stab at people who use Yahoo.

Christian Simovic:

I apologize.

Christian Simovic:

Um, but grow up.

Christian Simovic:

Um, but Gmail, yeah, Gmail definitely does, They definitely

Christian Simovic:

do penalize, um, for photos.

Christian Simovic:

and newsletter, kind of like the newsletter, graphics, that kind of stuff.

Christian Simovic:

Mm-hmm.

Christian Simovic:

Very good English there.

Christian Simovic:

But yeah, they definitely do penalize and um, I've done my own testing as

Christian Simovic:

well and, you know, moving from my clients doing more the traditional

Christian Simovic:

style across our plane text.

Christian Simovic:

We're hitting the primary not all the time because a lot of the

Christian Simovic:

time, you know, spam filters a hit.

Christian Simovic:

You know, one of my clients, he does, one of my clients, he's more of a, like

Christian Simovic:

a hunting and like a hiking kind of stall with a bit of a pro firearm lean to it.

Christian Simovic:

Mm-hmm.

Christian Simovic:

naturally we do trigger a few spam filters or promotions filters,

Christian Simovic:

whatever you wanna call it.

Christian Simovic:

That's kind of unavoidable there.

Christian Simovic:

I mean, I guess it could take it out, but that kind of spoiled the fun, I guess.

Matt Edmundson:

Defeats the challenge.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, exactly.

Matt Edmundson:

So the, that you're hitting the primary tab more often.

Matt Edmundson:

What software are you using to send plain and text emails.

Matt Edmundson:

Are you just using the same email that, uh, like Kajabi or Active Campaign,

Matt Edmundson:

the same systems that people would use to send their newsletter style emails?

Matt Edmundson:

Or are you using something different?

Christian Simovic:

Yeah.

Christian Simovic:

So for me, pardon me, For me personally, I use, um, AWeber, or AWeber, but

Christian Simovic:

for my clients, they're normally on Klaviyo, so I just stick with Klaviyo.

Christian Simovic:

Um, I, most of my clients, or they're also using the Shopify email as well.

Christian Simovic:

Mm-hmm.

Christian Simovic:

, so most of my clients are on Shopify, so it doesn't really make sense.

Christian Simovic:

You know, they've been using Klaviyo.

Christian Simovic:

It's a pretty effective system.

Christian Simovic:

Very good segmentation.

Christian Simovic:

So I quite like Klaviyo for my clients.

Christian Simovic:

I found deliverability is fine in regards to all of the major, major providers.

Christian Simovic:

You know, MailChimp, um, you know, active campaign.

Christian Simovic:

I'm trying to think of a few others.

Christian Simovic:

Klaviyo, got me on the spot.

Christian Simovic:

You know, those ones, they all, they're all pretty fine.

Christian Simovic:

They're all pretty good for deliverability.

Christian Simovic:

Um, I have no problems with them.

Christian Simovic:

Maybe forget some dodgy ones.

Christian Simovic:

I'm not sure.

Christian Simovic:

I can't vouch for them, but, mm-hmm.

Christian Simovic:

Do your due diligence on them.

Matt Edmundson:

Yeah, I, It's good to know that Klaviyo does that.

Matt Edmundson:

One of the things that I've noticed actually from blogs that I've sort of

Matt Edmundson:

subscribed to is there's been a marked shift from the send the blog post with the

Matt Edmundson:

image header with a nice HTML formatting to actually more and more coming through

Matt Edmundson:

as plain text emails, and I think partly because of what you've talked about,

Matt Edmundson:

cause of deliverability issues right?

Christian Simovic:

Yeah.

Christian Simovic:

Yeah.

Christian Simovic:

And another point as well to mention, cause you're like, I'm not trying to

Christian Simovic:

make fun of customers here, but a lot of them have like a short attention

Christian Simovic:

span or they don't wanna take a certain action where, and people are lazy to an

Christian Simovic:

extent, you know, if you put in a link saying, Hey, check out my blog, you

Christian Simovic:

know, like, you know how some people do a little teaser and then, you know,

Christian Simovic:

click here to read the full story.

Christian Simovic:

A lot of people kind of go, Well, can you just put the whole story in

Christian Simovic:

because I don't wanna click a link.

Christian Simovic:

Which I know that sounds really like petty, but seriously, like I,

Christian Simovic:

I instead just put the whole blog in unless it's, Well, no, even

Christian Simovic:

still, I just put the whole blog in.

Christian Simovic:

It's a, it's a bit better way to do it, in my opinion.

Matt Edmundson:

Yeah, no.

Matt Edmundson:

Interesting, interesting.

Matt Edmundson:

Something else to test.

Matt Edmundson:

So you are using plain text.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, and it's interesting.

Matt Edmundson:

The question is, uh, why would you use it over traditional methods?

Matt Edmundson:

Whereas I would say plain text is actually traditional, uh, because

Matt Edmundson:

that's how when we all started out and that's what we had to do, we didn't

Matt Edmundson:

have such things as HTML newsletters.

Matt Edmundson:

I mean, it rocked everybody's world when we could add an image to an email.

Matt Edmundson:

Geez.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, so we're going back, I think almost to the early days of text

Matt Edmundson:

messaging, the sort of very traditional, Where would you use, um, plain text

Matt Edmundson:

emails in an e-commerce context?

Christian Simovic:

Yeah, so I actually have an e-commerce or hunting client.

Christian Simovic:

They'll, I'll, I'll continue with that story.

Christian Simovic:

So I use purely plain text for him.

Christian Simovic:

I don't have any images unless it makes sense.

Christian Simovic:

So, you know, if you've got like a weight loss company or if you've got any kind of

Christian Simovic:

before and afters, then it does make sense to use the photo there because it actually

Christian Simovic:

is a very, it's a very persuasive image.

Christian Simovic:

Um, you know, but when it, when it comes to, and I would risk a little

Christian Simovic:

bit of deliverability for that, but when it comes to logo, like a logo

Christian Simovic:

or just, you know, a photo of the brand, I would never include that.

Christian Simovic:

Um, because again, so I'll kind of mention as well, you know,

Christian Simovic:

again, people don't resonate with brands as much as people think.

Christian Simovic:

Like, a lot of people think, Oh, it's the font, or it's the color,

Christian Simovic:

or it's, is it Montserrat or Caliber, or whatever, you know.

Christian Simovic:

I don't feel like brands, you know, we don't feel a sense of connection with

Christian Simovic:

brands when that happens, but what we do feel a sense of connection with

Christian Simovic:

is when a brand, for example, Matt, when you're talking about, you know,

Christian Simovic:

having a personal from the founder type email, that's a lot more personal.

Christian Simovic:

Now to get back on your question about when can use it, I personally don't

Christian Simovic:

see a time when it's not applicable.

Christian Simovic:

Like it will always work obviously for some companies.

Christian Simovic:

Like I'll go with weight loss, you know, before and afters.

Christian Simovic:

They're very, it's pretty crucial to have a photo there because that is a

Christian Simovic:

lot of the persuasion is through that.

Christian Simovic:

Um, but even still, you know, for most brands, a lot of brands might think like,

Christian Simovic:

Oh, well I need photos to convince people.

Christian Simovic:

I've never had that.

Christian Simovic:

The case, you know, a lot of the times they'll read my copy, they'll click

Christian Simovic:

the link and then they'll, they'll see an image anyways on the landing page.

Christian Simovic:

Um, you know, people don't buy based on images.

Christian Simovic:

People buy based on emotion, and that's for the whole point of long form copy.

Christian Simovic:

It's to build and kind of get people not crying, but emotional to an extent about

Matt Edmundson:

Yeah, no, you want 'em to feel something.

Matt Edmundson:

Right.

Matt Edmundson:

And you can, And words are a beautiful, I mean, this has been

Matt Edmundson:

around for thousands of years.

Matt Edmundson:

We use words, you know, to, poetry is made of words.

Matt Edmundson:

Shakespeare is made of words.

Matt Edmundson:

And so, you know, words work, don't they?

Matt Edmundson:

I'm intrigued because, um, I was smiling when you were talking about the logo.

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, I have this thing, whenever I do coaching with clients and I come

Matt Edmundson:

across their website, the first thing I do is minimize their logo.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, and I follow it up with a statement.

Matt Edmundson:

No one cares about your logo other than you, right?

Matt Edmundson:

They just don't.

Matt Edmundson:

And if you look on Amazon, and if you look on Apple, you look on Nike, look at how

Matt Edmundson:

small their logos are on their websites.

Matt Edmundson:

It's unbelievable.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, now you could say, Well, they've got massive brand recognition.

Matt Edmundson:

If you're a small brand, don't go for brand recognition

Matt Edmundson:

because it's just not worth it.

Matt Edmundson:

Right.

Matt Edmundson:

Just go for being memorable.

Matt Edmundson:

Go for, Just so I get what you're saying about logos and that makes me smile.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, and they don't buy cause of the pretty colors, et cetera, et cetera.

Matt Edmundson:

So have, is there a case then I guess for, um, I have an eCommerce store, right?

Matt Edmundson:

I sell stuff online.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, if I want to get started, but I'm slightly nervous.

Matt Edmundson:

Can I split test?

Matt Edmundson:

Should I send, um, you know, part of this audience, my traditional

Matt Edmundson:

newsletter and part of them a bit more of a long form content email and just

Matt Edmundson:

see what kind of results they get.

Christian Simovic:

Yeah, absolutely.

Christian Simovic:

Testing is great.

Christian Simovic:

I think testing to an extent, you know, a lot of people, if you're, if

Christian Simovic:

you've got a very small sample size, like 50 or a hundred people, then it

Christian Simovic:

probably isn't the greatest sample size, like for testing purposes.

Christian Simovic:

But absolutely, a lot of my clients go, I don't, I don't believe what you're saying.

Christian Simovic:

I'm like, Okay, well we'll do a test and see what happens.

Christian Simovic:

So a hundred percent, that's more than, more than, um, I think you should test

Christian Simovic:

anyway, so yeah, no problem with that.

Matt Edmundson:

Okay, so let me run through some quick fire questions for

Matt Edmundson:

you before we get into uh, actually how to write a plain text, email, you know,

Matt Edmundson:

and some of the methodology you you use.

Matt Edmundson:

Cause I'm curious to see how your brain works Christian, if I'm honest with you.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, But before we, before we get down there, what are some of the

Matt Edmundson:

common misconceptions or hangups people have about email marketing?

Matt Edmundson:

Like you mentioned in, um, or we mentioned in the bio, your proponent of emailing

Matt Edmundson:

every day and instantly, if I'm honest with you, there's a little, there's

Matt Edmundson:

a little voice inside my head going, Alert, alert, Do you know what I mean?

Matt Edmundson:

Dive, dive.

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, don't go there.

Matt Edmundson:

So, um, should you email every day?

Christian Simovic:

Yeah.

Christian Simovic:

Can I, I'll answer the first question cause you, you kind of alluded to it,

Christian Simovic:

like, how do you write emails, I guess?

Christian Simovic:

No, it's not a good way.

Christian Simovic:

I'll, I'll talk about daily email.

Christian Simovic:

So daily emails basically the thing is if you're sending, again,

Christian Simovic:

20% off hard pitches every single day, I a hundred percent agree.

Christian Simovic:

Daily emails are not, Really, they're not ideal at all.

Christian Simovic:

In fact, you probably get a lot of unsubscribes.

Christian Simovic:

Mm-hmm.

Christian Simovic:

, Um, and unsubscribes aren't necessarily bad.

Christian Simovic:

I'll kind of mention that in the future.

Christian Simovic:

But, um, in terms of daily emails, why they're effective and why they're good.

Christian Simovic:

And I'll try and, it's kind of hard.

Christian Simovic:

Do you mind if I just say, how do I write an email, just like

Christian Simovic:

my kind of way about it, just so I can provide a bit of context?

Matt Edmundson:

No, let's do it.

Matt Edmundson:

I mean, let's go there.

Matt Edmundson:

We can always come back to these questions and I can grill

Matt Edmundson:

you about this for an hour.

Matt Edmundson:

So have at it.

Christian Simovic:

Yeah, yeah, sure.

Christian Simovic:

So in terms of making a memorable brand and writing emails a

Christian Simovic:

lot, a lot of the thing is, you know, writing a long form email.

Christian Simovic:

I like to talk about people's pains or people's, the market's problems.

Christian Simovic:

Mm-hmm, for an example, I'll use one of my clients, again, I'll use this hunting plan

Christian Simovic:

cause it's the easiest one I can think of.

Christian Simovic:

I wrote his emails yesterday.

Christian Simovic:

Um, and, and there's an issue of.

Christian Simovic:

Um, waiting times in New South Wales in terms of the firearms

Christian Simovic:

registry and applying for licenses and that kind of stuff.

Christian Simovic:

There's a long waiting time and there's a lot of pent up angst and, and frustration

Christian Simovic:

and not rage, but like a lot of, a lot of an annoyance with, with the bureaucracy.

Christian Simovic:

And I kind of.

Christian Simovic:

I, I like to take sides in email marketing in sort of saying like, Hey, I'm a brand.

Christian Simovic:

I'm for this kind of person.

Christian Simovic:

If you're not for that kind of person, then you probably

Christian Simovic:

shouldn't be on our list.

Christian Simovic:

Mm-hmm.

Christian Simovic:

And in for that, for, you know, our list, you know, they are angry at

Christian Simovic:

the firearms registry for whatever reason, and I go into forums, I go

Christian Simovic:

Reddit, and I just read their opinions and then I write an email about it.

Christian Simovic:

Pretty much agreeing with them, just kind of ranting and raving about the problem.

Christian Simovic:

And so I, I kind of set up the whole thing with, you know,

Christian Simovic:

here's little story about this.

Christian Simovic:

This guy took him three months to get his firearms license and

Christian Simovic:

then here the comments, people kinda getting angry with it.

Christian Simovic:

I kind of agreed with him and then I said, Look, you know, we're selling

Christian Simovic:

a slingshot, which it is legal in, in, in New South Wales and you

Christian Simovic:

know, you don't need a license.

Christian Simovic:

I was saying, you know, having a firearm is great and all, but you

Christian Simovic:

know, an even better way, you know, to get something right now, you can

Christian Simovic:

still kind of scratch that itch of, of shooting tin cans or whatever it is.

Christian Simovic:

You can buy our Sling shot.

Christian Simovic:

You can kind of see the way I've framed it there.

Christian Simovic:

When you write like that, a lot of people respond back to our emails saying like,

Christian Simovic:

Yeah, I really agree with your take, man.

Christian Simovic:

I really like it.

Christian Simovic:

You know, I kind of, you know, I can't agree enough with it.

Christian Simovic:

So like, in terms of writing daily emails, you know, if you're writing,

Christian Simovic:

again, if you're just writing, not writing for the sake of writing, but if

Christian Simovic:

you're just writing just hardcore sales pitches, they do get very tiring quickly.

Christian Simovic:

But if you're writing fun, informational, and entertaining, more

Christian Simovic:

importantly, entertaining content.

Christian Simovic:

Entertaining content could be anything.

Christian Simovic:

But if you're writing entertaining emails that segue into a product.

Christian Simovic:

You really can't go wrong daily emailing, in my opinion.

Matt Edmundson:

And so the emails you send out daily, whether it's for the

Matt Edmundson:

hunting company or, or whatever it is, they're all 500 to 1000 words long, or

Matt Edmundson:

there's some shorter, some longer ones.

Matt Edmundson:

How do you do that?

Christian Simovic:

Yeah, yeah.

Christian Simovic:

So generally speaking, I do the short, So generally the thousand word ones

Christian Simovic:

are more for setting up a big problem.

Christian Simovic:

And I'll kind of mention that in a little bit.

Christian Simovic:

But like, so these kinds of the normal, the daily correspondence,

Christian Simovic:

about 300 to 500 words give or take.

Christian Simovic:

Um, it can vary.

Christian Simovic:

Some of them a hundred, some can even be 10 words.

Christian Simovic:

Honestly.

Christian Simovic:

We, we did one.

Christian Simovic:

This was a cool, like, little trick you guys can use, or a little hack, I guess.

Christian Simovic:

Uh, it's called like a deliverability booster email.

Christian Simovic:

Um, basically you don't actually pitch anything in your product, you

Christian Simovic:

just ask them a simple question.

Christian Simovic:

So for this market, you know, we're based in New South Wales and the National Rugby

Christian Simovic:

League, the grand finals on two weeks ago.

Christian Simovic:

Okay?

Christian Simovic:

So I simply asked, Hey, who do you think's gonna win Paramount versus Penworth?

Christian Simovic:

That was the two teams playing.

Christian Simovic:

Um, I didn't, there was no call to action, Nothing.

Christian Simovic:

It was literally just a plain text email from the guy.

Christian Simovic:

10 words and the amount of responses we got is ridiculous.

Christian Simovic:

And it just, and the reason why we want responses, because firstly, they responded

Christian Simovic:

because they think it's like I'm writing to them personally, which I'm not.

Christian Simovic:

I'm sending to 5,000 odd people.

Christian Simovic:

But, you know, another reason why we want responses is because we

Christian Simovic:

can be put in that primary inbox.

Christian Simovic:

Um, so that, that was that.

Christian Simovic:

To go back to daily emails, I'm trying to just not lose my train of thought.

Christian Simovic:

Daily emails.

Christian Simovic:

The whole point of it is that, you know, on any list you've got the hyper buyers

Christian Simovic:

and then you've got, you know, the people who are a little bit skeptical.

Christian Simovic:

Um, and you know, you can send emails to the hyper buyers and they'll

Christian Simovic:

buy pretty much straight away.

Christian Simovic:

It, it really doesn't matter what you send, they just want the product.

Christian Simovic:

But the hyper, the non-hyper buyers, the kind of the skeptics,

Christian Simovic:

they need a lot more convincing.

Christian Simovic:

They need a lot more time before they buy.

Christian Simovic:

And I know I've seen on some people's lists, you know, it might take 110.

Christian Simovic:

120 days before someone actually, like, that's the average it takes for someone to

Christian Simovic:

buy on, on some one of my friends' lists.

Christian Simovic:

Oh, wow.

Christian Simovic:

Um, so that's kind of the whole point of daily emails.

Christian Simovic:

It's kind of like a rock, you know how like a water cut through rock?

Christian Simovic:

It's not just one go, it's, it's just gradually over time.

Christian Simovic:

Um, and so that's the whole point of daily emails.

Matt Edmundson:

So you, you're sending out these daily emails.

Matt Edmundson:

They're plain text emails, they're various lengths.

Matt Edmundson:

Short question.

Matt Edmundson:

Some sort of three to 500, some 500 to a thousand depending on the kind of content

Matt Edmundson:

you're sending out, what's gonna work, what's gonna resonate with your audience.

Matt Edmundson:

It's gotta be information or educational type stuff.

Matt Edmundson:

It's gotta engage.

Matt Edmundson:

You can't just be pure sales because no one cares.

Matt Edmundson:

Right.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, so you are sending out these daily emails.

Matt Edmundson:

One of the things that you said, which I thought was interesting that I wanted

Matt Edmundson:

to circle back to is you take sides.

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, in the emails, um, and I was talking to, uh, Adam, who

Matt Edmundson:

was, until recently actually.

Matt Edmundson:

He's moved on to bigger and better things.

Matt Edmundson:

Bless him.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, the marketing director of one of the companies I'm involved with, and

Matt Edmundson:

he was talking about how as a brand we need to become much more polarizing.

Matt Edmundson:

We need to sort of take sides, take a stand on something.

Matt Edmundson:

And so the fact that you've mentioned this intrigues me.

Matt Edmundson:

Is this something that actually, um, as brands we should do is sort

Matt Edmundson:

of almost take sides in things and sort of become a little bit more

Matt Edmundson:

polarizing rather than beige and trying to be all things to all men.

Christian Simovic:

Yeah, so that's, This kind of brings up a point.

Christian Simovic:

I always see a lot of, you know, when you, whenever you go to some,

Christian Simovic:

an e-commerce store and they'll say, you know, 10% often join the tribe.

Christian Simovic:

And you know, I love this idea of a tribe, but the reality is, you know, like.

Christian Simovic:

In order to become a part of a tribe, you need to feel like there's

Christian Simovic:

a group of people that you are in.

Christian Simovic:

And if you are appealing to everyone, then you can't, There's simply, you

Christian Simovic:

just can't have a tribe for everyone.

Christian Simovic:

Mm-hmm.

Christian Simovic:

, you have to pick a side.

Christian Simovic:

And an example of this, you don't have to be really controversial.

Christian Simovic:

I mean, an obvious example is Alex Jones.

Christian Simovic:

He's probably too far, but like, maybe let's talk about golf.

Christian Simovic:

You know, and, and so, you know, in the golfing niche there's,

Christian Simovic:

there's like, there's lots, lots of different buyers, but let's just

Christian Simovic:

say you've got the golfing purists.

Christian Simovic:

You know, the guys who don't like laser range finders, they don't.

Christian Simovic:

Fancy gizmos or do dads, they just like the purest sport of golf.

Christian Simovic:

Mm-hmm.

Christian Simovic:

And then you've got the other guys who are golf like technicians and they love

Christian Simovic:

every little trick and hack and any kind of thing to one up and get better.

Christian Simovic:

And you know, if you're a golfing e-commerce store, you could say,

Christian Simovic:

You know what, I'm gonna pick the purest side and then I'm gonna

Christian Simovic:

write purely for the purest.

Christian Simovic:

And I'm gonna start, I'm not saying to rag on the the technical side all the time,

Christian Simovic:

but you don't even have to rag on them.

Christian Simovic:

You know, if you don't want kind of controversy.

Christian Simovic:

But you can always just say, Look, we're for the pure side, we're

Christian Simovic:

gonna stock purest stuff only.

Christian Simovic:

And the whole reason why we do this to be polarizing is because, you

Christian Simovic:

know, building a loyal and engaged list, there's this kind of factor.

Christian Simovic:

It's called like the know, like and trust factor or klt factor.

Christian Simovic:

A lot of brands have know and trust, but they don't have like, you know,

Christian Simovic:

do you like, I'll give you an example.

Christian Simovic:

Like I don't really like Coke, the brand like Coca-Cola.

Christian Simovic:

There's nothing to like.

Christian Simovic:

Now when we talk about Elon Musk, very polarizing figure.

Christian Simovic:

I personally.

Christian Simovic:

I don't like him or hate him.

Christian Simovic:

I don't, I'm pretty indifferent to him.

Christian Simovic:

But you know, a lot of people don't like Tesla because it's the brand.

Christian Simovic:

Tesla.

Christian Simovic:

They like Tesla because it's Elon Musk, you know?

Christian Simovic:

Yeah.

Christian Simovic:

It's this polarizing dude, just says what he wants.

Christian Simovic:

Same thing with Donald Trump.

Christian Simovic:

Same thing with any kind of really out there politician.

Christian Simovic:

Really.

Christian Simovic:

Um, so building a, like a loyal and, Okay, so the whole point of why you should be

Christian Simovic:

polarizing because when you build like an in group, like a people, that's for me,

Christian Simovic:

like, let's talk about the golf purists.

Christian Simovic:

All of a sudden the golf purists on your list, they start to like you more.

Christian Simovic:

And when they like you more, they'll, they will buy more.

Christian Simovic:

They will have either, either more increased average order volumes

Christian Simovic:

potentially, but more importantly, when they like someone and they, they

Christian Simovic:

like to buy from them more often.

Christian Simovic:

You know, as a golf purist, I'd rather buy from the guy who talks the stuff that

Christian Simovic:

I agree with and I actually like than the guy who's just schilling me stuff

Christian Simovic:

or, or you know, just a corporate brand.

Matt Edmundson:

It's interesting, isn't it?

Matt Edmundson:

This whole polarization thing and taking sides.

Matt Edmundson:

And actually one of the things that I came across recently was, um, something

Matt Edmundson:

called the trust report from Edelman.

Matt Edmundson:

And it was a really interesting survey.

Matt Edmundson:

38,000 people, something like, I mean, a lot of people around the,

Matt Edmundson:

around the world, uh, Australia, the uk, New Zealand, um, Thailand,

Matt Edmundson:

I mean all kinds of places, right?

Matt Edmundson:

So, they did this survey, uh, and they were, they were asking people about trust.

Matt Edmundson:

Who do you trust?

Matt Edmundson:

Right?

Matt Edmundson:

And obviously, as you would've predicted, given the times which

Matt Edmundson:

we're living in, our trust of politicians is falling at a rapid pace.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, what's interesting is when they start talking about trust of companies,

Matt Edmundson:

Um, like, do you trust companies and the big companies are losing

Matt Edmundson:

trust in the eyes of the consumer?

Matt Edmundson:

What is gaining trust are the smaller brands who stand up and not only try and

Matt Edmundson:

sell you something but have a cause, have a just cause which they're involved with.

Matt Edmundson:

Right?

Matt Edmundson:

This comes down to the polarization.

Matt Edmundson:

So taking a stance on certain things.

Matt Edmundson:

So, um, a lot of consumers now think companies should take a stance on, uh, say

Matt Edmundson:

salaries and the environment's a popular one, like, you know, um, whether or not

Matt Edmundson:

it's sustainable and so on and so forth.

Matt Edmundson:

And you can either be pro sustainability or you could give a

Matt Edmundson:

fly and flip, but it in effect creates a tribe, like you say, of people.

Matt Edmundson:

And actually it starts to build trust.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, and it's something that I think the stat was something like 60 odd

Matt Edmundson:

percent, 70% of consumers think companies should be doing this more now.

Matt Edmundson:

I mean, it's a lot of consumers that.

Matt Edmundson:

That, think that, right?

Matt Edmundson:

So, um, I'm intrigued by this whole person, uh, this whole

Matt Edmundson:

polarization thing, you know?

Matt Edmundson:

And, and, um, and how, so how did you, how else have you seen that work?

Matt Edmundson:

You talked about it with the hunting thing.

Matt Edmundson:

Where else have you seen that work?

Christian Simovic:

Yeah, and I, I actually wanted to mention as well,

Christian Simovic:

just cause I kind of thought of that idea, talking about the corporate world.

Christian Simovic:

Um, and a lot of trust is kind of falling in the bigger brands.

Christian Simovic:

Probably a good example would be like greenwashing for example.

Christian Simovic:

Like a lot of the brands, the larger brands like to talk about where an

Christian Simovic:

environmentally friendly, sustainable.

Christian Simovic:

In reality, their practices are pretty, pretty negative.

Christian Simovic:

Um, so that's kind of a mention.

Christian Simovic:

I want to talk about that.

Christian Simovic:

Um, well, a good example, this is actually kind of one of my, my mentors,

Christian Simovic:

I guess I'll talk about Ben Settle.

Christian Simovic:

Um, a lot of his, his kind of email newsletters, very polarized in the

Christian Simovic:

sense that he doesn't really cater towards, like beginners and newbies.

Christian Simovic:

He kind of, he doesn't really make fun of people, but he

Christian Simovic:

does, I guess, troll people.

Christian Simovic:

If someone, you know, has a, a silly question, he's not afraid

Christian Simovic:

to roast them in the comments.

Christian Simovic:

I'll give you an example from my other client.

Christian Simovic:

Um, I'm not gonna say his name, but he has like a, like a Psilocybe.

Christian Simovic:

He doesn't like the term, but magic mushrooms essentially.

Christian Simovic:

Mm-hmm.

Christian Simovic:

, Um, it does sound a little bit derogatory, so I get that.

Christian Simovic:

But yeah.

Christian Simovic:

So basically magic mushroom company, and we kind of in our emails like the

Christian Simovic:

villain, so this is a good way as well to kind of build a tribe, is to have

Christian Simovic:

a villain and in, in our case, for the, you know, for magical mushrooms

Christian Simovic:

and the, and the alternative health fare, Big pharma is a perfect villain.

Christian Simovic:

You know, that is the ultimate villain.

Christian Simovic:

And I wanna go back to the firearms one, the villain in my

Christian Simovic:

case was the firearms registry.

Christian Simovic:

And in, let's say in the case, , let's say in the case of like an e-commerce

Christian Simovic:

company, just a generic one.

Christian Simovic:

You know, the villain could be drop shippers, you know, in the hunting company

Christian Simovic:

one, I, I did an email kind of just saying that drop shippers, um, the whole

Christian Simovic:

process of what drop shipping is and, and how it kind not riling up the customers,

Christian Simovic:

but getting them to understand what, you know, what drop shipping is and why

Christian Simovic:

it's ineffective compared to e-commerce and just showing them the negatives

Christian Simovic:

and kind of painting the drop ship is as a bit of a villain in this case.

Christian Simovic:

But yeah, the, the magic mushroom one, that was an awesome villain.

Christian Simovic:

Big pharma was a great villain.

Christian Simovic:

And I don't always like talking about pains because, you know, you

Christian Simovic:

don't wanna always be depressing.

Christian Simovic:

You know, we live in a very, very like, fractured society

Christian Simovic:

nowadays, especially after Covid.

Christian Simovic:

You know, a lot of people still are kind of depressed and very isolated.

Christian Simovic:

So I like to provide uplifting stories.

Christian Simovic:

And one of the stories for this, Psilocybin Magic mushroom company

Christian Simovic:

was we, we did a story with this woman named Janet Li Chang.

Christian Simovic:

She was someone online and this was kind of her effect.

Christian Simovic:

She, she basically told the great benefits she got from.

Christian Simovic:

She, she received from, um, it's called Microdosing or Magic.

Christian Simovic:

That's what the whole, the whole thing is microdosing.

Christian Simovic:

And it was kind of just an uplifting story of how she went from, you know, depressed,

Christian Simovic:

nearly suicidal to, you know, just feeling alive with energy, talking to people.

Christian Simovic:

She even spoke to, apparently she spoke to a barista at an airport

Christian Simovic:

for like four hours straight.

Christian Simovic:

She was just that full of energy.

Christian Simovic:

So I like telling those stories as well.

Christian Simovic:

And it does hit a problem the market is facing as well at the same.

Matt Edmundson:

So, um, I mean, magic mushrooms aside, uh, having a villain

Matt Edmundson:

I think is quite an interesting idea.

Matt Edmundson:

Who, who's the villain in the story?

Matt Edmundson:

And I think about every well written story.

Matt Edmundson:

There's always a villain, right?

Matt Edmundson:

There's always the arch nemesis.

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, and so, um, when you are writing these stories of heroism, um, have you

Matt Edmundson:

come across a guy called Don Miller?

Matt Edmundson:

Don Miller's a really interesting guy.

Matt Edmundson:

Story brand.

Matt Edmundson:

Yeah, absolutely.

Matt Edmundson:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Edmundson:

And his whole theory isn't it, is.

Matt Edmundson:

That, um, when you write, you write as though the customer

Matt Edmundson:

is the hero, not the brand.

Matt Edmundson:

You're not trying to make the brand be the hero.

Matt Edmundson:

He likens it to Luke Skywalker.

Matt Edmundson:

He's, he's like, the brand is Obi Wan Kenobi, the customer is Luke Skywalker.

Matt Edmundson:

Right?

Matt Edmundson:

So you are writing them into your story as the hero.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, but he always talks about the villain.

Matt Edmundson:

Who's the villain in the story, Who's the Darth Vader, right?

Matt Edmundson:

Who we got to overcome.

Matt Edmundson:

And that can be people, that can be other companies, that can be a particular

Matt Edmundson:

problem, it can be a limiting belief.

Matt Edmundson:

There's all kinds of things that that villain can be, and that's

Matt Edmundson:

part of the story of being the hero, which I think is quite interesting.

Matt Edmundson:

So you send out daily emails, which I'm really intrigued by actually.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, do you get many unsubscribes?

Christian Simovic:

Yes, we do.

Christian Simovic:

And I'll be very blunt.

Christian Simovic:

So a lot of people go, you know, unsubscribe, wouldn't

Christian Simovic:

you get a lot of unsubscribes?

Christian Simovic:

That is very true.

Christian Simovic:

Um, but, you know, checking the Klaviyo, the software, what we noticed, um, when we

Christian Simovic:

were first doing this, cause I was worried the first time I ever did this, I'm like,

Christian Simovic:

Oh crap, we're getting like 1% unsubscribe rate, which sounds really high, but the

Christian Simovic:

reality was we checked out all the buyers.

Christian Simovic:

Or the buyers.

Christian Simovic:

I'm doing air quotes, if anyone can't read that , every single person who unsubscribe

Christian Simovic:

had never even bought a product.

Christian Simovic:

Or if they had, they hadn't bought since 2018 and they bought

Christian Simovic:

a $30 item five four years ago.

Christian Simovic:

Um, you know, this whole concept of, you know, like, Oh, we don't wanna offend, you

Christian Simovic:

know, like, we don't wanna unsubscribe.

Christian Simovic:

As I understand where that's coming from, but it's not really coming.

Christian Simovic:

It's coming from a bit of like a, like you're playing to lose, not

Christian Simovic:

playing to win kind of mindset.

Christian Simovic:

Mm-hmm.

Christian Simovic:

Like, instead of what, what I personally think and what I've done

Christian Simovic:

with a few of my clients is that, you know, Get those people off the list.

Christian Simovic:

Cause they'll never gonna buy anyways.

Christian Simovic:

That's the best sign that they're never gonna buy.

Christian Simovic:

Unsubscribe straightaway and then fill, fill up their place with people who are

Christian Simovic:

going to buy, whether that's through paid advertising, SEO, or whatever.

Christian Simovic:

Just constantly build the list, constantly build a list of buyers,

Christian Simovic:

which is even more important.

Christian Simovic:

You know, a lot of people like to think like, Oh, I've got a 10,000 or 20,000,

Christian Simovic:

I had one client shed an 80,000 person list, and that sounds really impressive.

Christian Simovic:

But none of them were buyers.

Christian Simovic:

They were all just a mishmosh of random people.

Christian Simovic:

You know, when we're emailing, the results weren't great

Christian Simovic:

because they just weren't buyers.

Christian Simovic:

Um, I'd much rather have a highly responsive list of 3000 or 4,000

Christian Simovic:

people than 10,000 people who were just kind of there for the

Christian Simovic:

ride and not really responding or not buying or anything like that.

Matt Edmundson:

That's really interesting.

Matt Edmundson:

I like your theory on unsubscribes.

Matt Edmundson:

And do you, do you then segment, do you send the same email to everybody

Matt Edmundson:

on the list or do you go, cuz like with Klaviyo you mentioned, or

Matt Edmundson:

Klaviyo, however you pronounce it.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, you mentioned that you, you know, it's got good segmentation,

Matt Edmundson:

which it has, we use that ourselves.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, do you send the same email to your best customers that you do for

Matt Edmundson:

those that haven't bought from you since 2018 and bought ones for $30?

Christian Simovic:

Yeah, so how I segment is, so I've, I'm, I said

Christian Simovic:

Klaviyo's got great segmentation.

Christian Simovic:

I don't really take full advantage of it, and that's something

Christian Simovic:

I should be trying to do.

Christian Simovic:

But I normally have a buyer's list, a non-buyer's list, and then

Christian Simovic:

like a hyper buyers list, which is that kind of that VIP buyers.

Christian Simovic:

Maybe they've bought three or four times more.

Christian Simovic:

Um, generally speaking, everyone gets the same list and I say everyone gets the

Christian Simovic:

same email and I'm trying to experiment a bit in actually kind of writing a second

Christian Simovic:

email, like two emails in a day for that hyper buyer's list or potentially.

Christian Simovic:

Let's say, So it kind of depends on what you're selling for e-commerce.

Christian Simovic:

Like let's say there's like the flagship product, which is, let's

Christian Simovic:

say a slingshot, you know, and you get everyone on your list, everyone.

Christian Simovic:

So once they buy that slingshot, then they get moved onto a new product.

Christian Simovic:

Maybe like some kind of an upsell, I'm trying to think like slingshot

Christian Simovic:

coaching or slingshot, whatever.

Christian Simovic:

But like, I'm trying to think of another way.

Christian Simovic:

So maybe the buyers or the buyers in this case, and then the non-buyers

Christian Simovic:

would get just the normal standard daily email, whereas the hyper

Christian Simovic:

buyers might get a more expensive up, like, what's the word, high ticket

Christian Simovic:

product or maybe even a second email.

Christian Simovic:

That's something I haven't really toyed, I'm kind of thinking

Christian Simovic:

around as well on the go.

Christian Simovic:

But to answer your question, I send, right now, I just send the same email

Christian Simovic:

to everyone, so an email to everybody.

Christian Simovic:

Okay.

Christian Simovic:

So probably not that segmented, but still.

Christian Simovic:

Okay.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, I've got here a little note saying, Ask

Matt Edmundson:

why, Uh, Sadaf put this in.

Matt Edmundson:

Why using spell check can make your emails less profitable.

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, I am super intrigued by this cuz I spell check everything

Matt Edmundson:

like, cuz my spelling is awful.

Matt Edmundson:

Awful.

Matt Edmundson:

So I use it all the time.

Christian Simovic:

So it comes from two things.

Christian Simovic:

So number one, You know, it kind of goes down to the brand and the

Christian Simovic:

corporate, kind of the corporate look.

Christian Simovic:

You know, a lot of people, whenever you see a corporate brand speaking,

Christian Simovic:

it's very perfect, crisp, no slang, no jargon, and it's very

Christian Simovic:

corporate and that's totally fine.

Christian Simovic:

But you know, I'm gonna liken them to Dua Lipa or Brad Pitt or you know,

Christian Simovic:

Chris Pratt or any of these guys.

Christian Simovic:

Any of these like famous actors.

Christian Simovic:

Can you personally relate to them?

Christian Simovic:

Like they've got a six pack, they've got perfect teeth, you

Christian Simovic:

know, chiselled jaw, all this stuff, You know, they look perfect.

Christian Simovic:

I can't, I personally can't relate to them, but you know who I can relate to.

Christian Simovic:

I can relate to the guy, you know, waking up at 3:00 AM he's a little

Christian Simovic:

bit overweight, he's eating ice cream.

Christian Simovic:

Probably shouldn't.

Christian Simovic:

So his wife's gonna try not catch him outta bed.

Christian Simovic:

You know, like I, his wife's like, Where are you?

Christian Simovic:

Like he's just getting ice cream.

Christian Simovic:

Like that kind of guy is a lot more relatable.

Christian Simovic:

And when you use spell, when you use typos, when you use slang, when.

Christian Simovic:

No jargon, just slang and typos and, and purposely, I don't purposely

Christian Simovic:

misspell, but sometimes I'll misspell and I won't fix it up.

Christian Simovic:

You're making mistakes in a sense that, Have you ever watched,

Christian Simovic:

you know, Colombo, that TV show?

Christian Simovic:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Christian Simovic:

Like the, Yeah.

Christian Simovic:

You know, the detective, he kind of comes and he looks like a bit

Christian Simovic:

of a bumbling fool here and there.

Christian Simovic:

That's on purpose because he's kind of telling everyone that, Hey, I'm not okay.

Christian Simovic:

You like in the interrogation, the interview, you are

Christian Simovic:

better than me in a sense.

Christian Simovic:

Like you are more okay than me and people feel more comfortable with that.

Christian Simovic:

You know, people, I know this is kind of a weird thing, but when you're in

Christian Simovic:

a social environment, when you see someone who's really like in high

Christian Simovic:

school, like let's say the really cool guy, I'm not comfortable with that guy.

Christian Simovic:

I don't want to say a joke.

Christian Simovic:

I don't wanna like say anything that could get me in trouble.

Christian Simovic:

You know?

Christian Simovic:

That's just psychologically speaking.

Christian Simovic:

But when I'm with someone who I don't perceive as.

Christian Simovic:

As, as okay.

Christian Simovic:

You know, then it's, I feel a lot more relaxed and comfortable.

Christian Simovic:

And then I guess that sounds kind of bad cycle, you know, from like, it doesn't

Christian Simovic:

really sound nice, but that's just the way humans are and that's the whole point of

Christian Simovic:

spelling, uh, spelling mistakes and typos.

Matt Edmundson:

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson:

It's disarming, isn't it?

Matt Edmundson:

I mean, Colombo was disarming, that's probably the word you

Matt Edmundson:

would, that you would use.

Matt Edmundson:

So I think that's fascinating.

Matt Edmundson:

So can you run us through, uh, Christian, your process for writing an

Matt Edmundson:

email then that, you know, customers are gonna want to, gonna want to read

Matt Edmundson:

that they're gonna enjoy reading.

Matt Edmundson:

What's the sort of, If I'm sat there at my computer, um, I'm staring at it.

Matt Edmundson:

Writer's block blank screen, you know, where, where do, What are

Matt Edmundson:

some of the things that I can do?

Matt Edmundson:

What do you do?

Christian Simovic:

Yeah.

Christian Simovic:

Okay.

Christian Simovic:

So the answer to all your questions are in the market.

Christian Simovic:

And I know that sounds really simple, but it's true.

Christian Simovic:

If you spend all of your time knowing everything about your market, the

Christian Simovic:

problems, their pains, what they want, all that kind of stuff, their

Christian Simovic:

little slang, their little jokes.

Christian Simovic:

It writing daily emails or just writing emails in general is

Christian Simovic:

very easy because you understand.

Christian Simovic:

You understand what they wanna talk about.

Christian Simovic:

And this whole writer's block notion, I had that.

Christian Simovic:

The real, the reality is, you know, when you do a lot of research and

Christian Simovic:

understanding exactly what their problems are, it becomes a lot easier.

Christian Simovic:

So let's talk about, I'll do like a sample right in front of all of you, . Um,

Christian Simovic:

let's talk about magic mushrooms, cause that's what we're talking about before.

Christian Simovic:

And let's talk about the pain of, So the real problem is depression and anxiety.

Christian Simovic:

Uh, a lot of people who microdose, they do it because they're depressed,

Christian Simovic:

they're anxious, maybe they have ptsd.

Christian Simovic:

So the problem might be, I might, I might go on Reddit or Quora or a YouTube comment

Christian Simovic:

and I might say a really popular trending.

Christian Simovic:

Like question, Let's say the question is, I don't know.

Christian Simovic:

Let's talk about like, you know, like, I've tried antidepressants

Christian Simovic:

before and I don't feel any better.

Christian Simovic:

I'm gonna try microdosing.

Christian Simovic:

Like, so that could be the whole point of the email.

Christian Simovic:

So the email could be basically saying like, you know, Maybe you've

Christian Simovic:

tried, like they're called SSRIs or antidepressants, you know, you've

Christian Simovic:

tried antidepressants before.

Christian Simovic:

Here are some of the negatives of antidepressants, and just kind of get

Christian Simovic:

into their head and get into their world about the problems they face.

Christian Simovic:

You know, again, if they've got any talking points, if they've said any

Christian Simovic:

opinions I'd, I wouldn't copy and paste it, but I'd kind of rewrite what they've

Christian Simovic:

said just to understand exactly what you know, to just to show that I'm on their

Christian Simovic:

level, like I'm getting in their head.

Christian Simovic:

I understand what's going on through them.

Christian Simovic:

Um, and then from there, like I can't explain it off the top of my

Christian Simovic:

head cause I'm really bad at that.

Christian Simovic:

But I kind of just go from there.

Christian Simovic:

I'll come up with a topic from the market.

Christian Simovic:

I'll talk about their problem.

Christian Simovic:

Maybe I might even insert a story about a problem.

Christian Simovic:

You know, someone on antidepressants, here's this shocking story.

Christian Simovic:

You know, they gained weight, they can't fall, sleep, whatever.

Christian Simovic:

Maybe there's a funny kind of story.

Christian Simovic:

Maybe there's, trying to think of something else.

Christian Simovic:

That's what I can think of.

Christian Simovic:

Let's go with funny story and then I'll kind of just segue that into

Christian Simovic:

my product, which is microdosing.

Christian Simovic:

And then I go like, Look, if you've, if you're, if you're sick and tired of these

Christian Simovic:

symptoms, you should try microdosing.

Christian Simovic:

And that's a really crap, you know, kind of, um, like a synopsis of what I do.

Christian Simovic:

But that's just the general framework at this point.

Christian Simovic:

I kind of just go into autopilot and just write 'em up, I guess.

Matt Edmundson:

So when you write and you know, you talked about your

Matt Edmundson:

mentors that you've looked at, is there a framework, uh, earlier on you

Matt Edmundson:

mentioned about PAS, The, what was it?

Matt Edmundson:

The problem, agitate, solution.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, is there a framework like that, that you are thinking of

Matt Edmundson:

when you write the email so you've got some kind of structure to it?

Matt Edmundson:

Like a beginning, a middle, and an end?

Christian Simovic:

I guess like now that I look back, I probably do.

Christian Simovic:

I just don't, I don't consciously think about it, I, now that I'm, now that I'm

Christian Simovic:

kind of the way you said it, I probably definitely to follow just a very, very,

Christian Simovic:

like a PAS problem, agitate, solution.

Christian Simovic:

Um, you know, there's another thing.

Christian Simovic:

You know, this comes from like the legendary, like negotiator.

Christian Simovic:

He actually, his name was Jim Camp, um, one of the world's most feared

Christian Simovic:

negotiators, and he had this whole concept of building a vision,

Christian Simovic:

which is essentially just PAS.

Christian Simovic:

You know, instead of pitching the benefit straight away of my product,

Christian Simovic:

you know, he would, he'd talk about, you know, just provide a, and he

Christian Simovic:

did obviously in selling, but he'd provide a vision of the problem.

Christian Simovic:

Um, and that's kind of the whole point in the emails.

Christian Simovic:

Like, I always try to make, make sure the reader knows that, hey,

Christian Simovic:

there is a problem, or agitate their problem and then provide the solution.

Christian Simovic:

Um, but in terms of frameworks, I, I don't have any off the top of my head.

Christian Simovic:

I know a lot of copywriters out there like, Like the 18 step framework, you

Christian Simovic:

know, if X, Y, you know, like if then Z and I, that's just too complicated and

Christian Simovic:

convoluted even for me and especially for, you know, e-commerce business owners.

Christian Simovic:

Like you guys have a lot on your plate and there's no point, you know,

Christian Simovic:

worrying so much about copywriting books.

Christian Simovic:

I think the best thing is just to start, just start writing and

Christian Simovic:

understanding your market and, mm-hmm . Yeah, that's probably the best way.

Matt Edmundson:

Yeah, I've like, I mean, going back to the founder email,

Matt Edmundson:

which I, uh, well, the, uh, the, the MD email, I'm not the founder.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, but going back to that email that I write, I don't have a framework.

Matt Edmundson:

I'm just trying to be authentic.

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, and I think people respond to that.

Matt Edmundson:

And for me, that includes telling a lot of stories, um, because I think stories work.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, but I, I'm in, I'm curious about the PAS thing.

Matt Edmundson:

I've, I've seen that a few times, actually, I can't

Matt Edmundson:

say as I've ever used it.

Matt Edmundson:

I've come across a few of them, like, you know, Ada, you know, the, uh, attention,

Matt Edmundson:

interest, desire, action or whatever.

Matt Edmundson:

There's a few, isn't there?

Matt Edmundson:

There's a few different frameworks out there that you can look at, but I think

Matt Edmundson:

the bottom line is, um, my, my sort of takeaway, I think from the conversation,

Matt Edmundson:

Christian, is email marketing.

Matt Edmundson:

I sort of got into a bit of a rut, and one of the things that you

Matt Edmundson:

can do to try and do something different is the plain text emails.

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, and just try and be a little bit different in how you write them.

Matt Edmundson:

Try and be a little bit more creative and try them and see what the responses are.

Matt Edmundson:

And you can do that probably with your existing email provider, like, um,

Matt Edmundson:

Klaviyo, um, or you know, Aweber or a few of the others that you mentioned.

Matt Edmundson:

So I'm intrigued by it.

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, and I'm intrigued by, um, how we can use this now as an e-commerce brand and

Matt Edmundson:

how we, we might sort of try and mix this up and change things around a little bit.

Matt Edmundson:

So thank you for that.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, I'm kind of curious, I ask this question, uh, to all my

Matt Edmundson:

guests at the moment, Christian, cause I'm really curious to the

Matt Edmundson:

answer, uh, as I'm aware of time.

Matt Edmundson:

You're standing before a live audience, right?

Matt Edmundson:

You've just delivered your best keynote speech ever.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, the crowd's going wild.

Matt Edmundson:

You know, we're sponsored by the e-commerce cohort.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, these guys are sat there in front of you, you know, all the members

Matt Edmundson:

are sat there in front of you.

Matt Edmundson:

You've just delivered your keynote.

Matt Edmundson:

And so you take a sort of a little bow and you go, Listen, this is fantastic.

Matt Edmundson:

I would just like to thank dot, dot, dot.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, yes, because without them I wouldn't be here.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, whether that's a book, a podcast, a mentor, family member

Matt Edmundson:

who is on your list, I'm curious.

Christian Simovic:

Yeah, I have to say it's probably my copy chief at the moment.

Christian Simovic:

Um, his name's John Brandt.

Christian Simovic:

He's very slept on.

Christian Simovic:

He's a very good writer.

Christian Simovic:

He doesn't promote himself enough.

Christian Simovic:

Um, um, his name is just John Brandt.

Christian Simovic:

Copy.

Christian Simovic:

Uh, he's, he's an exceptional copywriter.

Christian Simovic:

He really, I work for one of, like, as a client, one of my clients is the podcast

Christian Simovic:

factory and there's a group of writers and he's the copy chief and he really has

Christian Simovic:

just transformed the way I look at copy and more importantly, business, honestly.

Christian Simovic:

Um, you know, a lot of people like to spend money on coaches and masterminds,

Christian Simovic:

and there's nothing wrong with that, but I, I don't think you, you can't

Christian Simovic:

beat like one-on-one mentorship.

Christian Simovic:

That's why it's so hard to find though.

Christian Simovic:

But if you can, you know, having a mentor really is game changing

Christian Simovic:

for any kind of business really.

Matt Edmundson:

So, John is your, John Brandt is your mentor then, Um, I'm

Matt Edmundson:

curious, what does that relationship look?

Matt Edmundson:

Oh, unofficial.

Matt Edmundson:

But what does that relationship look like?

Christian Simovic:

Yeah, so for the most part, you.

Christian Simovic:

It's, it's not, We kind of met in a weird circumstances, like

Christian Simovic:

it wasn't like I was signing up for a mentor program or anything.

Christian Simovic:

It was more or less I was working for this client.

Christian Simovic:

We have a group of writers and then at the time, he stepped up to be the

Christian Simovic:

editor, I guess, of all of our writing.

Christian Simovic:

Um, He edits the writing and then, you know, he also does similar to

Christian Simovic:

me email, freelance copywriting.

Christian Simovic:

Um, I kind of just asked him a few questions and he's very receptive

Christian Simovic:

to my ideas and asking questions, and he's always, always free to

Christian Simovic:

jump on a call or, you know, provide a bit of advice in, in the dm.

Christian Simovic:

So yeah, it's, um, I, I never like, to be honest, I never would've

Christian Simovic:

thought that this would've happened.

Christian Simovic:

You know, it's not like, it's not like I kind of, you know, press X to get mentor.

Christian Simovic:

It is just kind of, it just naturally occurred and yeah, I'm forever grateful.

Matt Edmundson:

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson:

That's really interesting.

Matt Edmundson:

So, John, thank you.

Matt Edmundson:

If you're listening to the show, um, I, I'm always intrigued by

Matt Edmundson:

the response people have, uh, when I ask em this question.

Matt Edmundson:

So, um, Christian, listen, uh, how do people reach you?

Matt Edmundson:

How do they connect with, if they want to do so?

Matt Edmundson:

. Christian Simovic: Yeah.

Matt Edmundson:

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson:

So I have my, um, my email list.

Matt Edmundson:

It should have been in the show notes somewhere.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, sign up to my email list.

Matt Edmundson:

I provide daily.

Matt Edmundson:

That's daily Email tips.

Matt Edmundson:

Email tips and tricks.

Matt Edmundson:

And you have to, right after, just after this conversation,

Matt Edmundson:

you've gotta provide a daily email.

Christian Simovic:

Yeah, yeah.

Christian Simovic:

Holding me to account now.

Christian Simovic:

Um, but yeah, it's, it's daily email tips, but more importantly, more

Christian Simovic:

marketing tips more than anything.

Christian Simovic:

Email and just general marketing tips.

Christian Simovic:

Um, because marketing really is, the fundamental.

Christian Simovic:

Email is just a tool to get you there, but you know, the fundamentals is marketing.

Matt Edmundson:

That's great.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, how long does it take you to write those emails?

Christian Simovic:

So it depends.

Christian Simovic:

At the start it took me about an hour or two.

Christian Simovic:

There was a lot of second guessing.

Christian Simovic:

Um, but when you don't spell check, maybe 30 minutes or so.

Christian Simovic:

No, I like my 30 minutes to 40 minutes, depending if it's research top, like

Christian Simovic:

research late and then probably longer.

Christian Simovic:

But if it's more of just a rant style email, probably 30 minutes.

Matt Edmundson:

Fantastic.

Matt Edmundson:

Well, we, uh, will of course link to Christian's, uh, links in the show notes,

Matt Edmundson:

which you can get for free, along with a transcript at ecommercepodcast.net.

Matt Edmundson:

Or if you're signed up to our email newsletter, we don't

Matt Edmundson:

email you every day maybe yet.

Matt Edmundson:

Maybe, uh, need to rethink this.

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, but if you wanna sign up to our email newsletter, you can get

Matt Edmundson:

all of this direct to your inbox automagically as it comes out.

Matt Edmundson:

So, yeah.

Matt Edmundson:

Christian, thank you, uh, so much for joining us on the podcast.

Matt Edmundson:

It's been great.

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, and I think really challenging because what you've done here irrespective of

Matt Edmundson:

whether people agree with you or not.

Matt Edmundson:

Um, you've challenged the norm, you've challenged the default, and you've said

Matt Edmundson:

people think about this a little bit.

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, and I've got a lot of respect for that.

Matt Edmundson:

So well done, and thank you for coming onto the show and sharing your thoughts.

Christian Simovic:

Appreciate it, Matt.

Christian Simovic:

It was really Max Matt.

Christian Simovic:

Good fun.

Christian Simovic:

It was good fun.

Christian Simovic:

And I think I gotta check out, um, Gabby's podcast to see if I

Christian Simovic:

can be more polarizing next time.

Christian Simovic:

Cause I gotta be the most, I gotta be, I dunno who.

Christian Simovic:

The Alex Jones of email writing.

Christian Simovic:

That's what I wanna be.

Christian Simovic:

Yeah.

Christian Simovic:

In fact.

Matt Edmundson:

Well, it's good to have a goal, right?

Matt Edmundson:

It's good to have a goal.

Matt Edmundson:

So there you go.

Matt Edmundson:

So there you have it.

Matt Edmundson:

What's a fantastic conversation.

Matt Edmundson:

Again, huge thanks to Christian for joining me.

Matt Edmundson:

Also, a big shout out to today's show sponsor, the e-commerce cohort.

Matt Edmundson:

Do head over to ecommercecohort.com.

Matt Edmundson:

That's all one word, dot com, ecommercecohort.com for more information

Matt Edmundson:

about this new type of community that you can and probably should join

Matt Edmundson:

if you are involved in e-commerce.

Matt Edmundson:

Be sure to follow the e-commerce podcast wherever you get your podcast from because

Matt Edmundson:

we have yet more great conversations lined up, uh, like today's one with Christian,

Matt Edmundson:

and I don't want you to miss any of them.

Matt Edmundson:

And in case no one has told you yet today, dear listener.

Matt Edmundson:

You are awesome.

Matt Edmundson:

Yes you are.

Matt Edmundson:

It's just a burden you have to bear.

Matt Edmundson:

I have to bear, Christian has to bear it.

Matt Edmundson:

We're just awesome.

Matt Edmundson:

It's just the way it is.

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, and so, uh, you can take that with you throughout the rest of the day.

Matt Edmundson:

The E-Commerce podcast is produced by Aurion Media.

Matt Edmundson:

You can find our entire archive of episodes, uh, on

Matt Edmundson:

your favorite podcast app.

Matt Edmundson:

The team that makes this show possible is Sadaf Beynon, Josh Catchpole,

Matt Edmundson:

Estella Robin and Tim Johnson.

Matt Edmundson:

Our theme song is written by Josh Edmundson and my good self.

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, and as I mentioned, if you would like to read the transcript or show notes, head

Matt Edmundson:

over to the website ecommercepodcast.net.

Matt Edmundson:

And also, if you haven't signed up for our weekly newsletter, maybe

Matt Edmundson:

changing it to daily, hashtag the same.

Matt Edmundson:

Uh, that's it from me.

Matt Edmundson:

That's it from Christian.

Matt Edmundson:

Thank you so much for joining us.

Matt Edmundson:

Have a fantastic week, uh, wherever you are, and I will see you next time.