Unknown 0:25

Hey, it's Rob and Kennedy.

Unknown 0:27

I know today on the Email Marketing Show we're talking about sending New Year's emails that won't bore your clients and subscribers to death.

Unknown 0:36

Now, if you get to the end of this episode, and you think that sounds good, but my business is different, how does this apply to me and what I'm doing? I totally get it. That's why we've created a free Facebook community. It's called the Email Marketing Show community. And it's full of 1000s of business owners just like you and us all sitting chatting about that email marketing every single day. I think that's it. They might be standard. I don't know. They might be Dunson, who knows, but it's a really fun place to hang out and talk about this stuff and ask questions about what you hear in these episodes and email marketing in general. So all you have to do is go over to Facebook and search for that email marketing show community request to join totally free and you can sit stand or dance your way and

Unknown 1:08

yes, it's true. It's true. I thought I thought about the dancing idea that I've got like this vision of people around the world isn't the show dancing the way in anyway. He can only remember up to three directions at a time. It's commonly referred to as Robert double. And

Unknown 1:20

he likes a thick base on his cheesecake. It's like a logical Margarita Kennedy. The bass no trouble.

Unknown 1:31

No trouble just me and Meghan Trainor and Meghan Trainor if you haven't

Unknown 1:34

checked you out with a bit of pop culture looked it up? I think obviously, you know, I'm quite new to the well the cheesecake to it like it I think thick base less cheese good. Now you got your biscuits

Unknown 2:02

one of the things that always came about dealing with negative research psychology was how many bits of information can you remember? And they wanted to prove or disprove MSK prove the fact that on average human beings can and the way they expressed it was really, really so like typically psychologist which was people can remember. So the number of people can remember is seven plus or minus three right? Some thing

Unknown 2:30

100 plus or minus a couple 100 Anything at all. I think we should do I mean Okay, yeah, for some reason if I asked somebody for directions and I'm like, well, it was the the church or whatever. Because I was asked the judge, they'd be they wouldn't. Mind that says down there. That's one turn right and two, second left three at that point. I have to stop and go thank you very much. I'll get that far and ask somebody

Unknown 2:52

else. Oh, you're saying with all kinds of instructions because some people call you know every instructions are at where the directions for this situations. Can you remember it? Was it you put in a bit of furniture together from IKEA?

Unknown 3:07

Yeah, I don't read the instructions. Right?

Unknown 3:10

That tells you that tells me everything you knew about that bit of furniture stand behind it.

Unknown 3:14

So that's gone wrong. And then I go back and try and work my way back. Home I've skipped half the instructions so it's hard to even work your way back and this is dead unprofessional or when you just chat you're using the mic right microphone because you sound a bit weird.

Unknown 3:25

I don't think I am so I can't switch. So I think we have far too much fun. Unknown 0:21

now going to use my actual professional microphone to say hello every week on this show. We show you how to make more sales and earn more money from your email subscribers. We talk about email marketing strategies, psychology tactics and share what's working right now to make more sales online making you the email marketing hero of your business with a brand new episode every email marketing Wednesday. Make sure you hit subscribe on your podcast player.

Unknown 0:47

That sounds but I thought an AI had snuck in and replace Kennedy because it just didn't sound like it normally does. But you fixed it with the right microphone.

Unknown 0:54

Thank you. This is a really good time.

Unknown 0:58

Every time that you play that angelic choir sound, I keep thinking Well Could that be could it be somebody's picked up a plate that's too hot

Unknown 1:06

I think it's a song that moves you open the fridge. Oh, in the night in the middle of night. Yes knocked out for a sneaky isn't the fridge but yeah, sneaky piece of what was that ham call which was the shape of a face of a bear bear the bear. A little sneaky slice of billy bear ham and Philadelphia cheese. You've opened the fridge and it goes like it was those those divots okay. Anyway, make sure you subscribe your podcast player otherwise obviously you'll miss an episode of this and you wouldn't want that at all for all this content you've been getting. We've had nothing in microphones we've had chats about billy bear. We

Unknown 1:42

are about six minutes into this podcast and it's taking us 50 minutes

Unknown 1:47

oh my god. Look at that time anyway, we're talking about New Year's emails, obviously, a happy new year and all of that stuff still. And so let's let's kind of crack on with a little bit of chatter that the first thing I think that we were talking about is somebody asks us, you know, what do you do after you've taken you know, 12 people back after the break of Christmas and the festive season in the holidays, and you get back into the New Year's emails. And Rob You were pretty hot on the tail. Good. Well, what was this word you use that b word break.

Unknown 2:11

A break is a thing your subscribers can choose to take if they want to, but we carry on in other words, like if your subscribers are reading your emails, you know in the first of December and the second of December on the 10th of December and the 15th of December, and then at some point between then and the holidays, they sort of wind down and they stop opening their emails, which I think is less and less of a thing by the way, especially if you're dealing with or particularly on probably only if you're dealing with particularly either b2c or what we think of as BT a little businesses, you know, tiny little businesses like ours. Those people I check my emails I check my emails on Christmas Day. I do out of interest you check your emails on Christmas Day on your phone. Yeah, yeah, of course. I mean, like and if I saw something, I want it, I would still buy it.

Unknown 2:44

I'm looking to see if I've had it. I've had an email from Santa.

Unknown 2:48

I don't think we're out of the I don't think we're unusual that we check our emails on Christmas Day, or New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. Like I'm stuck with my phone up until you know, hooked up until in through the start of the new year and I'm still every now and then just get it out because we're all addicted and we mostly get my phone out of a little Jack the old emails is one of the few apps I opened that one Instagram that's really it. So I think some subscribers will probably and fewer than you think will go right after that. Then I'm going to take a break I'm gonna wind down I'm not going to check my emails between now and the New Year. seems unlikely but some will do it. So we the way we say it is even if they choose to take a break we are going to carry on regardless right? We

Unknown 3:22

are the ones who do take a break if you're doing more like business to Corporation, they will have those out of office replies on Yeah. When I go on holiday, like when we take a break and we go so when I'm when we travel apple and out of office on saying I'll be back on the you know whatever date but I'm still checking emails every day. Well

Unknown 3:43

that's a remove the pressure for you to have to type a long winded reply with your thumbs from a sun lounger. Right? So rather than saying I'm not reading your emails, I don't care anymore by so

Unknown 3:52

exactly exactly but it also gives us a bit of slippage like if I if I know there's like a detailed response need to I need to contact the team and needs you know something needs to happen I'm like I'm not dealing with that. So in that auto reply it says hey, set your contact this person but also if the if another week goes by you haven't heard back from me it might have just got buried my time off emails so make sure you do circle back with me because that's definitely a possibility. So yeah, basically, we don't take a break, we carry on. And there's two reasons for that. One is there's a bunch of people who are going through automations, right, so maybe joining your email list or going into an automation. We're not going to pause all the automations that's a headache. It's a lot of work that you just don't need to do after it's because of those automations were able to make sales every Christmas Day we're making sales every New Year's Day when making sales like it's always happening even on Rob's birthday, my birthday, whenever we're making sales, we will be making those automations and secondly, because our thing is we're gonna email you every day. You know, if you're if your frequency is every Tuesday and New Year's Day falls on a Tuesday sometime and guess what you gonna do on that Tuesday? You gotta send an email. That's what you that's what you do. It makes me think years ago I saw one of those funny viral photographs. And it was a shop and the shop sign in the window said open 365 days a year close to Christmas Day, New Year's Day and Easter. And basically you don't want your emails to be that right so again, if you email email every day so what are we most every day it's not every day asterisk and then small Asterix at the bottom except Christmas day because I know you'll be busy and we'll be busy season messaging like it goes back there coffees mescaline, just like I saw somebody post on Instagram yesterday saying hey, we will host this event every second Tuesday and I'm like dude, I'm never know what the hell that is. Tuesday is every second Tuesday handle that they're almost the opposite of every second today is not every for me. Like I'm quite pedantic but essentially it's every Tuesday. Oh is it every second Tuesday of every other month for me? Okay.

Unknown 5:26

I think for us the way that we see it is those Remember, our emails are not just a sales tool. There are there are a way that we turn up in somebody's inbox we show up in our lives and we build deep relationships with people who want to hear from us and those who don't unsubscribe or disengage and then we get rid of them. Okay. And so what that means is that through because we're building human to human connections, if you'd like between us and the person reading the email, that means that we want to use those emails over the course of Christmas and New Year to be able to turn up and say, you know, and to say happy holidays to say happy new year to talk about the challenges that that brings. Oh, isn't it tough when you're trying to run a business at the same time as having a having a family needing your attention every three seconds? Isn't it totally like

Unknown 5:59

you're saying you're the fitness nice and then you feel we often use it like hey, it's really tough to stay healthy at this time of year because there's cake and chocolate and all these others Right? Like I think people often think like oh, this whole thing had to apply to me. It's super simple. Like if you help people to look good like if you're like a fashion consultant for people how people dress, you know, like a wardrobe consultant kind of person and again, keeping you know, knowing what clothes to keep and what clothes to throw out when you get new clothes over the holiday season or if you help people with decluttering we know that that time of year you know how what you do applies over this this sort of season.

Unknown 6:31

So basically you can use this time of year as another thing to like push people towards reflecting on what it is that you do and help them through the new struggles that this time you are brings at the same time in the same way that when Valentine's Day comes around, there's going to be a different set of struggles that people are going to face a different set of things that people are going to face regardless of what market you're in. So there's always something at different times that you are that people need to reflect on. New Year's is one of those things, whether it's the emails just before New Year's or the emails you've just sent just after New Year's, whatever it is. There's always stuff for people to reflect on coming up to the new year people are excited and ready for it's just after the new year. People often feel deflated because they get back to it and go oh, but it all looks the same as it did before I left for Christmas. And I had this pretty picture of it all in my head over Christmas that it was going to be easier when I got back and now I'm here and it's not like so there's different sets of challenges and that people need the knowledge of inspiration to help them through it right. I

Unknown 7:17

think the other thing is that they go oh, well, you know, everyone else is talking about New Year's resolutions. And we all know the sticker on New Year's resolution like any habit is very low. I think that's a great new year's resolutions probably lower than anything else is because the reason for starting the new habit is so manufactured not based on anyone's personal motivation, personal need, but it's based on the fact that this is the time of year when you're supposed to, you know pull up your socks and get your act together with that thing. You've been putting off your house, the cat tidying the garage, you know, whatever it's going to be. So I think that's one reason that people fall down. I think one of the things to do is to maybe speak to that as well and use it one of the thing that's really nice to do is take take something that's already happening. So this in this case, New Year and what you can be talking about this month is stuff that links something is already happening the New Year to something you want to have happen right that's that's a really it's basically an anchor that's already pre existing anchor right so if you could have any holiday even if it's a holiday have not heard on it or use a New Year's the example right and give you some specific examples of things that you can get into with the new year thing in a second but with any holiday, you can look up those you know, those holidays every day is a different holiday, a different celebration, different special day of the year, every flippin day from cheese toastie Day to you know hop on one leg day, you know, there's all of these ridiculous days. And if you could anchor into one of those, and it's even better if it's a one that everybody's already aware of it and other people say well, I don't think we should I think we should not I think we should not do that. I think you have a new year because everybody else is doing the thing with New Year and and you know and sometimes I like to save everybody else's Zach and I like to go What's the opposite so rather than going here's how to how to here's a great new year's resolution it could be how to actually completely screw up your New Year's resolution before that before the first week is out. Like if it has like an unusual angle to it. You can play opposites definitely good but I think there's a place for actually riding the wave that already exists. So look at like last year right like Black Friday, you wouldn't say, Well, I'm not going to a Black Friday off because everybody else is doing one. That's crazy. You're basically saying I'm going to walk down a huge street with people who've got their wallets open and money hanging out hanging out of the wallet saying, I really want to buy your thing and you're going no, no, because everybody else has taken the money. That's pointless. So we want to get that balance right? But let's get into some specific stuff that you could do over the rest of this month, basically over the rest of this month, every January. What kinds of things could we be doing? And one of my favourite things that we like to do is to take a typical sort of behind the scenes. We like doing that, don't we? Yeah,

Unknown 9:48

I think people are always really interested to sort of have that sort of voyeuristic peek into what's going on. So you can kind of share a sneak peek of what's coming up over the next year. And that allows you to do a couple of things. First of all, you can kind of pre frame people for what to expect and get them excited and tease them a little bit about some of the cool stuff that's gonna be happening like new stuff, you might be launching things that are coming soon. We wouldn't push that too far down the line. I would talk about stuff that's coming relatively soon because that excitement soon dwindles. But also you can you can use this as a really good opportunity to reset the the parameters and the beliefs and the expectations around your relationship with that person. So for example, one of the things that we talked about in our getting to know sequence when somebody first joins our list is we very quickly set the scene for the fact that this person is going to hear from us every day. They can hang out in our Facebook group, they can hear that they listen to this podcast, they can join our main programme. We talked about that stuff in our against new sequence. And when this new thing comes around, there's two things to remember. You can use this time to sort of reset the fact that this is going to continue on even though it hasn't paused some people will have taken a little pause and reading your emails like I said, but even though you haven't paused sending it you can reset the parameters and the expectations of what is to come and what are you working on and what's what does the New Year mean to you as a business and therefore what does that what does that mean to them as a result of that? What's the benefit of that in their life? So that's the first thing. The second thing to realise is I remember listening to somebody talking about being a radio presenter, and they said that one of the bad things that radio presenters do is you know, I'm you know, Bob Smith, the radio presenter, and Sally Jones is coming after me and after my show was finished at 12pm I get to 1158 and I go well that's it for me Bob Smith. Now I'm gonna close and log off here and then Sally is gonna be here in a minute with the best of the 90s. Have a great day, whatever you're doing, here's Jim with a winner. And so he says the worst thing you can do because the minute you create a divide between the end of your show and the start of the next year, like people immediately have permission to switch off. So you want to make sure that you don't suddenly give people permission to switch off from your emails because you've entered this new phase. It doesn't need to seem quite seamless, but you can still use this to this time to sort of set people up for for what to expect and what's a common again, it is a good opportunity to rebuild those relationships with people remind them I'm here every day with a little tip or you know, whatever your frequency is, with something that's going to help move you forward so that by the end of this year, you've made the significant progress in your business in your in your fitness in your fashion in your whatever that you're trying to achieve. Yeah,

and I'd like to have them behind the scenes in terms of like what we've got planned as well like, Hey, by the way, here's what we've got coming up this year, we're looking forward to we're gonna be speaking at this event or we've got this new programme launching or we've got this new service happening or we've got three new programmes to be launching this year. If you don't know what they are yet, you can say hey, we'll have three different programmes launching this year. So excited about that. We'll be like people aren't going oh, cool is gonna be like an exciting new year. It's a good opportunity to let your audience know that you're not blase. You're not You're not just resting on your laurels. You're not just chilling out, pumping out the same thing over and over again, what is the new innovative stuff? But even if you don't know what it is, if you know there's gonna be some, tell them some specifics. Don't be like oh, by the way, as lots of new developments happening, like I see on Instagram all the time. Lots of exciting projects today. I'm like, I got zero excitement or value or emotional anything from that post nothing. You know, you said, you know, send an email saying, hey, well, I'm working on some exciting and you go, right, whereas if it's like, Hey, I've got a big excited announced announcement tomorrow. That's going to show you even if I say nothing more, and we have other announcements tomorrow, that's cool, because that's soon and that's what makes it exciting. how close it is and exciting, but the soonest the soonest the soonest. So I think it's really important to be specific as you can if you know, like, Hey, I'm gonna be launching three different programmes with you this year. That's great. Some some specificity around three and how are the time the years have you might have done 12 It doesn't matter if you know you already planned to do three tell people that all three, you can always over deliver. And heck, if you say three, you only end up launching one. That's okay too, because what you're telling people is the plan for the year. Right? Hey, so a great year. This year I plan on launching three different unique programmes. I'm going to help you with something to help you with this year. If you only can get more specific, hey, we're relaunching this year look excited because we're relaunching our email engine accelerate. I'm gonna run it three times this year. We're also going to be doing this other family speaking at that event. It's going to be a great people go wow, that this person is emailing me. It's reenergized. They're reconnecting. And they're really putting effort into their communication what it is they're doing their business that offers they're very present. They're not just like you're not rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat boring cuz we've all seen and observed businesses who are like that. You can do goals. You can talk about stuff that's happened over the past few days. And you might you might already be doing that in your emails, but if something fun happened over the festive season, where because obviously when the festive season always brings out bonkers stories because families get together. People get more intense when they're out and about doing shopping in the shops and stuff like that. There's usually a few good opportunities doesn't crack and stories, definitely share those things. And because that really humanises you right so you don't want to be sharing those things. The thing is, if you are talking to cholewa advice, which is to not stop over the holiday season, then the chances are you will probably share those things in real time. So don't hold them off to be like, I can't tell her story till January because Roman can become an email on the internet. That's not true. Like you're probably gonna be sending email to send those emails as when they happen like, Oh, I've never guess what happened this morning when I opened my present. It was uh, you know, whatever the story is. So keeping it kind of real time people love hearing that real time experience of you. It's another really good reason to be sending at least three emails every single week. So people follow you on this real time journey. We read our emails, Robert like, Rob is off on a cruise ship. That's cool or Kennedy's just got back from Orlando that's cool can it's gonna be in Orlando that's gonna be there with you doesn't always have to be retrospective. So when Rob sends an email from a cruise ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean on his way the flippin Bahamas, that tells a lot of stuff even if the story is innocuous as as often our stories are. And similarly, if I've not left the house all day, and I'm telling them that's the story, because people like to visit in real time. So definitely don't hold off your fun, interesting novel stories until the new year. Tell them in real time as much as you possibly can. So people are basically running in parallel with you. They're going through the holiday season at the same time your goods on the new season, and they see that likeness with you. That's what you really want to go for when we're running in parallel. There's

also a really big opportunity to do two things and that is to look forward and to look backwards and share stuff with your with your audience and help them with it. So for example, you can share the changes and predictions about your industry or your niche that you can foresee for the coming year. Talk about how that's going to affect them what they should do, but you also get the opportunity to reflect on the previous year and how that relates to your customers and stuff in the lessons I learned and things that you can do and that kind of thing. We tend not to back reference email specifically like you know, three weeks ago I sent you an email about because a somebody might have forgotten me they might have read the email see they might want to subscribe yesterday and therefore couldn't possibly have seen it and you don't want to feel make them feel like an outsider. But you can talk about the last year in general, the stuff that's gone on the things that have changed the stuff that's happened. And I think whenever you look at if you watch the trends on sort of YouTube video, YouTube channels and on podcasts, there's often a lot of episodes that come out around, you know, five big lessons I learned about x in 2020, whatever the year was, again, likewise, you know, three predictions for next year. And this sort of date based content works really, really well on those social video channels and podcasts. And the same thing applies when you're sending emails, you know, so again, you want it to feel timely and very present. And so one of the big opportunities is to again to look forward to talk about what's coming as well as to look back and to talk about what's been as long as both of those things are then linked to how that helps the person.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. So lots of different ideas for you there to use in your sort of New Year emails. And I think a big thing for me is to remember that before the New Year, so in that December period, a lot of us experienced that the people who have opted out the people who have said you want it is I'm at the point now, and I think it happens like mid November honestly, when people start saying, You know what, I'm gonna pick up that interest. I'm going to pick that activity or I'm going to solve that problem in the new year and kicking it to the new year. So your New Year's emails could be Look, you've been thinking about all last year. Do you want to get to this time next year and still not have it? So let's get this done while you've got the vibe of the new year. Let's get this done. Now let's not kick it down the line. And also, you could do those sort of shorter emails which are like, Hey, we've been thinking about doing this. You've been thinking about fixing your x y Zed. Thing. You'd be talking about getting a swimming pool installed. Is this something you want to sort of start getting booked in for the summer getting booked in now so it's ready for this summer? Like it's it's short emails, those reignition emails have like that sort of hint either directly or indirectly, like now's the time now is the new year. Let's follow up. It's a great time to do all of your follow up. Look at the people who've been engaging back last year in November, December mango cool. Let's contact the people and go hey, you know this is going to be your year. Shall we get this going? I think that would be doing I think I should I think you should definitely be taking a look. So

there's a bunch of stuff to take away from this and that is that just because there's a particular time of year it doesn't mean your email should shift particularly but it does mean there's some opportunities that you can leverage not just at this time of year but at all times of year you know when we're talking about Valentine's Day Easter Black Friday stuff, you know, leaning into trends rather than running away from them, but then also doing things in a slightly different way as well. And you know, I realised we will often wake up and go off to ascend today. What are the emails I'm supposed to send today? That's why we put together our programmes to help people get to a point where they never wake up look at their email marketing platform. Like we want you to always wake up know exactly who to say what to send, who to send it to why you should send it and why it works. Without really questioning it just sort of know you've kind of become fluent in this stuff. So if you want to jump on board with all of this and make sure that your email marketing this year, makes the dramatic changes that you wanted to make last year, but fellow fellow off, then we'd suggest you go and check out our programme over at email hero blueprint.com It's brand new, we're super excited about it. This is really the first place we're hugely talking about it. We're gonna give you all the tools and all the resources you need. In order to really start making email marketing work for you just head to email hero blueprint.com

Awesome. And now it's time for this week's subject line of the week subject line of the week. Rob, what do you got for us?

So this one is the eyes emoji, and it's the words watching you in brackets watching me now is that an Abba lyric or is that? What's the Americans something you owe me? No, no, no, it's nothing like that. Then it's got the main idea

for me it has that same sort of hobby I think catchy solos are cracking souls have you know you know if you were like, in the dating niche you could have spice up your wife.

Yeah, when the cookery nice spice nation suppose that you know your strife

like making trifles it can be spice up your drive No, no right

so yeah, that's roughly where I came from. But it was about it was about watching you watching me

nine of the week subject line on the floor. Anyway, thanks for listening to this week's episode of the show. Hopefully you've enjoyed it and got some ideas of what you could be doing this month with email marketing, and every every new year coming forward. Of course, make sure to subscribe button on the podcast player. We do this every single week and we'd love you to listen in so make sure to subscribe that make sure the episode automatically downloads to your device. If you haven't already hit go that your podcast player and leave us a review on that player that would really help us to share this information and help more people who really want so thank you so much. We'll see you all next week.