#131 Email marketing tips for small business. This is hot, hot, hot!

Shayne

Well, email marketing is simply a direct form of marketing so you can think of it as no different to a brochure or a print newsletter or a memo or a fax. It’s just a different channel which is obviously leveraging something that the majority of people have email to communicate directly with your prospects, customers or community.

Tim

I’ll tell you what, whatever it is, it’s an incredibly hot topic, you know, like I posted on Facebook last night, literally, 12 hours ago, saying I’m interviewing an email marketing expert. What are your questions? I’ve got 21 questions sitting there. I’ve got about five sitting on LinkedIn. I haven’t even checked Twitter. So I’m reckoning, within 12 hours, I’ve got 30+ questions just from listeners alone, much less what I’ve got. I’m sure you have a … certainly, let’s cover what I’ve got here because I think we’ll cover a lot of what listeners are asking anyway. Now, given social media and the plethora of email we receive already in our Inbox, we’ve all got Inbox – there must be a word for it – Inbox fear?

Shayne

I call it Inbox fatigue.

Tim

(Laughs) Inbox fatigue. Why is email marketing still a valid form of marketing?

Shayne

Look, I say … and it’s the old ‘Is email dead?’ mantra, and there are kind of two thoughts I look at that. The first is, well, email often gets compared to social media so, you know, you mentioned Twitter, LinkedIn, all those exciting frontiers, and they’re going to be the death knell for email. And, to a degree, I think there’s a bit of an excitement factor about social media that it’s new and interesting and something that us marketers can get a little bit excited about. But when push comes to shove, email and, particularly, my experience, is still from a performance standpoint, miles ahead of social media. It’s just not as exciting, I would say. The second part of that – I’m actually going to ask you a couple of questions to prove that email marketing is still relevant – when was the last time you checked your email, Tim?

Tim

You’re bringing up … I’m going to get emotional. (Laughs) Five minutes ago, you know, like it’s the bane of my life.

Shayne

Exactly. Exactly. And, second to that, what did you check it on?

Tim

My MacBook.

Shayne

Oh, your MacBook. Do you have a –?

Tim

Was that a leading question?

Shayne

That was a leading question. I was hoping it was your phone. So that just shows that email is changing but still very relevant. The next question is how many people do you know that have email but are not on social media?

Tim

Again, leading question. But everyone I know has got email. I just don’t know what their social media activities are but that gap would be closing though.

Shayne

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think even the gap is increasing of people who have social media and not email. But I still think we’ve got a long, long way to before that’s the case. So if you can position yourself in people’s Inboxes, you’re still reaching a very vast and large audience. So that to me suggests that email is a long way from being dead. Same way I still have a telephone, it exists. I don’t use it very often but, you know, it’s still relevant.

Tim

Is there an element of when everyone else is shouting whisper, I mean, could you say that email … my email is no quieter these days than it was five years ago, I must say, but everyone is shouting on social media? Has that provided an opportunity for email marketing?

Shayne

Yeah, and it’s changed, I guess, the approach we take with email, and it’s very much brought a personalization to the forefront. So I’ve got a much more intimate relationship potential with you in the Inbox because it’s typically where you have your longer conversations and they’re not a whole bunch of people shouting and trying to be the centre of attention, I can actually say, “Hey, Tim. We’ve just got this exciting piece of news that because you’ve done X, Y, Z with us before, I thought you’d be really keen to know a bit more about and here it is.” That’s much more intimate and personal than I can ever hope to achieve with something like Twitter or … Facebook, in some ways, you can, but it’s a little bit more difficult.

Tim

It’s interesting. I mean, I get that in a sense. I’ve never thought of email as intimate, although, now that you’ve mentioned it, I could argue for that being the case. But Facebook is pretty … I suppose it is engaging. Twitter is not engaging. Twitter is broadcast. I don’t know. Find me a Twitter expert, will you? But Facebook is engaging. It is conversational. I mean, <inaudible> *0:13:26. So that intimacy of email, tell me more about that.

Shayne

Yes. So you said Facebook is conversational, perfect way to describe that, but is it action orientated? So if I want to have a conversation that results in you doing something, is Facebook the best place for me to do that, particularly if it’s about buying something from me or transacting? Where, email is … I’ve got an ability to shape that into an action. I can give you a whole bunch of contextual information and say, “Hey, would you like to do something?” And I find that email is a little bit more powerful in that than perhaps Facebook. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of Facebook, but I’ll give you a bit of a story. It’s actually quite relevant. It happened about 3:00-3:30 this morning. We launched a new product, a brand-new product, and we had an email base of about 750,000 and we have a social media following across various channels of, I’d say, well over 500,000 sort of pushing those similar three-quarters of a million. And we shared the news of this new product with that audience, and 90+ % of the activity that’s come to that site has been driven from email, not from social media. Yes, so there are real statistics that are still playing out as we speak. I’ve probably still got sales coming in, and I’d say nine out of ten of them are coming by email.

Tim

You’re talking about the ability for email to be more intimate, to be able to share more, that’s like a website. For example, a website is a place where you can put the most amount of information about your business because, by nature, they’re infinite. Yeah?

Shayne

Yup.

Tim

And, likewise, an email is potentially infinite. There’s no limit to the amount of words, pictures, content you can put within an email.

Shayne

Yes, within reason. Email providers will put limits on what people can receive and send. So there is <inaudible> *0:15:26 environment.

Tim

But it doesn’t make it … it doesn’t mean you should, and you still got to get people to open those emails and engage with them and react to them and do what you want to with them. We’ll talk about that. So interesting, interesting discussion. You’re all for … you still believe email is, by far and away, outstrips social media as a small business marketing tool. In fact, you go as far as to say that it’s right up there with, you know, kind of a leading marketing tool that if you get right, a small business can really benefit from.

Shayne

Absolutely. And it’s about direct impact to the bottom line as well. So social media is great for connecting, engaging, but when you need to pay the bills, that’s where email is still a mile in front in my mind.

Tim

Okay. I want to get to the point, Shayne, where we actually dissect what we need in order to create fantastic email marketing. But I am interested to understand why are so many small businesses getting their email marketing wrong or, at least, not right? Why they’re still so disappointed, disillusioned, disenfranchised from it?

Shayne

I think because a lot of it on the surface looks very hard and feels very hard, and there’s, I guess, a little mountain to climb … I’ll call it a small mountain … but there’s a little work to be done upfront to get –

Tim

A hill.

Shayne

A hill. We’ll call it a molehill … just to get yourself set up properly. And once you do that, then the rest just becomes so much easier. And I think once businesses get over that initial little hill, then the downward side of that just can continue to pay off for a long, long time. I talked to a lot of small business owners and things like trying to use Outlook as your email marketing platform kind of horrifies me.

Tim

Bu-bum!

Shayne

Bu-bum! But I’d say more than you may suspect, they’re still using that because they might have started their email list with, you know, ten, 20, 30 people, and over time, that’s grown into 50 and 100, and they’re comfortable using Outlook as their email platform and haven’t yet made that transition to something that’s actually built for purpose that’s built to be an email marketing platform and then don’t cost the earth either. They’re bought cheap. So that’s really one of the first mistakes I see a lot of small businesses make is trying to use a system that’s not built for purpose. The second kind of part to that is around the strategy. So email, and we’ve spoken about the intimacy before and the relationship that you can build via the Inbox, but what I see a lot of small businesses doing is purely going a take approach to their content plan. I very much, in a relationship standpoint, work on a give-give-take approach. So I’m going to give my readers two things before I ask them to do something. So it might be a giveaway, it might be something interesting or a piece of content before I’ll ask them to buy something.

Tim

So it can be as literal as saying is that three emails?

Shayne

Yes, correct. I mean, there’s a whole bunch of specific stuff. I’m not sure if you wanted to dig down to that but –

Tim

We will. We will. Not just yet.

Shayne

Not just yet. I get a little excited about it.

Tim

Yeah, clearly. I mean, I love a guy who gets excited about email. And say hello to your wife because she clearly likes a guy … come on, Shayne, let it go for a minute, mate.

Shayne

She’s my proof reader. She loves it just as much as me.

Tim

(Laughs) Crazy relationship. Yeah, okay. So they are, they’re getting it wrong. So, the reason … and I’ll say ‘we’ because sometimes I look at my email strategy and go, “Gee, you know, I was hoping for more.” There are tools. There’s the molehill. They’ve got to recognize that there is a molehill and that once they get over that by setting themselves up, like anything, like, you know, I go in and do a podcast, if my microphone is in place, if I’ve got Skype open, if I’ve got Skype call recorder, I’ve got my guest, then it’s literally walk up to the seat, hit record and happy day.

Shayne

How hard did that feel the first time you put a podcast together?

Tim

Unbelievably hard.

Shayne

Exactly. And the same is with your email campaigns.

Tim

Cool. Okay, so we’re going to work on getting over that molehill. Before we do that, let’s just be clear. Is email marketing suited to a particular type of business? You spend a lot of time in an online world. My listeners, a lot of them, are offline. Is it suited to any business?

Shayne

I think it’s suited to every business. I have yet to find one that we couldn’t find some sort of value from running email marketing. And I’ve got to tell you a very quick but very cool story about a butcher. It was a butcher that a friend of mine stumbled across many, many years ago so we’re talking five-plus years ago. And he went to this butcher and bought a particular cut of meat. I can’t remember what it was. And the butcher said, “Would you like to sign up to our email newsletter?” And this guy is a bit of an online marketer as well and that immediately got his attention. I mean, a butcher signing up for an email newsletter. And he said, “Sure.” He just wanted to see what would happen. He didn’t expect much. What actually happened is, by the time he got home, which was about 15 or 20 minutes, he’d receive an email from that butcher with a handful of suggested recipes for the actual cut of meat that he got. And he was like, “Wow! This is brilliant!” Now, that guy has been, off the back of that, is now 100% loyal to that butcher and has been going there for the last five years. So that just shows you how a small butcher can leverage email marketing to great effect.

Tim

Now, that’s a lot of good story. That is a good story. You don’t know that butcher. I would love to dissect that little further. Do you reckon … or do you know the butcher? Have you had contact with him?

Shayne

I haven’t. I just wanted to tell that story.

Tim

Do you reckon that butcher has got ten different sets of copy, depending on whether someone buys the bratwurst, the lamb chop or the porter house?

Shayne

Correct. Yes, yup, yup. Email template ready to go for the different cuts of meat. Now, subsequent after that first initial personalized email, he rolled into the standard newsletter which went to everyone. But just that very first introduction was completely relevant to what had just happened inside the butcher.

Tim

Then I now wonder how did that butcher come across that idea? Has he got it made in marketing? Did he come up with the idea himself? I mean, it’s brilliant. If you had said to me what type of business would you least expect to have nailed email marketing, I’d go, clearly a butcher shop.

Shayne

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s a great example but you can see it’s a very simple but very effective execution from a very brick and mortar business. So that’s why I say with a bit of thought, just about every business can get some value from some sort of email marketing.

Tim

Okay. Love it. All right, mate. The molehill’s in front of us. In fact, I reckon you’ve underestimated it. It’s either a very big molehill or it’s a bit of a run. But let’s get over them because I think that is exciting, and clearly, you’re excited and you got me excited.

Shayne

Good, good. (Laughs)

Tim

So I’m guessing there are some must-haves in order to successfully use email marketing as a marketing strategy in your business. What are they?

Shayne

I’m going to start with the platform first. I think I’ve mentioned it before but go and find a good platform that’s built to be an email marketing system. Now, there are a couple of great ones that are free to get started on. So there’s one called Campaign Monitor, which is a good Australian company up in Sydney, and I think it’s up to 2,000 subscribers let you run your programs for free. The other is MailChimp which is very similar to Campaign Monitor. The beautiful thing about both of these two applications is they are so easy to use. You’ll find it might take an hour to get everything set up and ready to go. They’re just absolutely elegant in the way they empower non-technical people to really get up to speed very quickly and, you know, are free to start. There’s a heap more that are cheaper. There’s AWeber which is great if you’re sending lots of emails to lots of people. That’s the one I used last night because the more emails you send, the higher the price could go, and they represent value for money but aren’t as usable.  So I would say really look at the Campaign Monitor or MailChimp as your first port of call. Once you start to get in the tens, twenties, thirties of thousands of subscribers, that’s where you might want to look somewhere else.

Tim

Just for the <inaudible> *0:24:25, Shayne, what does one expect from an email marketing system like a Campaign Monitor or MailChimp?

Shayne

It will house all your email addresses, store all your customer email addresses for you. It will be the place where you will create your campaigns and put your content of the emails you want to send to people. And then they’ll actually take care of the distribution, which is often not thought out … or great value not put on because these email marketing companies are there to make sure that you get caught in the fewest number of spam filters as possible. So they have teams of people who are working with the Gmails, the Hotmails of the world, making sure that emails coming from their clients are still getting through as much as possible.

Tim

Wow! That’s what you’re paying for right there.

Shayne

Exactly. Exactly. And suffice it to say that when you’re getting started, you’re not paying at all. You’re getting it actually for free so that’s fantastic.

Tim

Now, can we take too that within all those systems that you mentioned that you have the ability to do what we call broadcast email, which is, “I want to send an email right now …” type, type, type … send. It goes to your list. You also have the ability to schedule for emails to go out over the course of however long you choose – weeks, days, years.

Shayne

Yes, I could … I mean, getting into more the sophisticated level of email marketing there but you can use what we call –

Tim

I just didn’t want you to get bored, mate. I know how much you love it and I just wanted to sort of take you into the lambo kind of area. I’m going to pull you back quickly though.

Shayne

Oh, damn it. Okay, so there are two advanced techniques. One is action-based response. So if I send you a newsletter about – let’s use the butcher example – about different cuts of meat and I see you click on the roast beef, I can very quickly, a day or two later, send you a special deal on roast beef because I know you like that. The other one is to have an auto-responder sequence. So I might take you on a journey over a half a dozen emails across a three-month period, which might be give-give-take, give-give-take, so it’s using that approach. That is all set and forget. So as soon as you subscribe to that auto-responder, the system will just take care of sending out the things I’ve asked at the intervals I’ve asked them to do. But, again, that’s kind of getting out there at the edge of your email marketing strategy.

Tim

Email wackiness. All right, mate. The molehill is getting a tad smaller. We’ve got the platform. Next?

Shayne

Okay. Then you need to start filling it with email addresses, obviously. So you need to start building a list. The best email marketing plan in the world is going to be useless if you don’t actually have people to send it to. I mean, there are a lot of different techniques about building your subscriber list. Obviously, we want, first and foremost, we want people to know they’re going on the list. I see a lot of people who might email me randomly with a question that I’ll respond to are all of a sudden be part of their email list and that’s a bit of a shock. So I’d say that’s a bit of a no-no. You want to make sure people know that they are subscribing, and you can give them incentives to do so as well. So I’m sure a lot of your listeners have websites. Well, are you offering an incentive for someone to sign up to your newsletter, for example. Give them a reason to. They’re not just going to do it because they feel like it. You actually have to encourage them somehow.

Tim

So this is classic … just so we’re clear here. The email marketing system like your Campaign Monitor is – and this is where I do think it gets technical – and this is where I do think the small business owner kind of melts down and goes, “Well, I see those forms on other people’s websites that ask for my email address and, in exchange, they’re going to give me something.” So give-give-get. Geez, how do I get that form and how do I set all that up?

Shayne

So this is the beautiful side of Campaign Monitor and MailChimp. It’s one sentence basically that you need to put on your website and the rest all just happens magically. So if you can build a Word document or you can do a spreadsheet, you can bug me. I’ll just go <inaudible> *0:29:02 if you can’t set up a form on your website.

Tim

<inaudible> *0:29:04?

Shayne

Yeah. You never heard that one?

Tim

No, I haven’t.

Shayne

The other thing you can do is – and this is an interesting site itself – is a site like Tweaky.com. So you can pay someone on Tweaky $40 and they’ll probably do that all for you.

Tim

What’s Tweaky?

Shayne

It’s a crowd source marketplace to get small changes done to your site. So you might … I just want a subscriber box put here, you pay someone maybe $40 and they’ll get it done for you, which is all managed by the Tweaky guys.

Tim

T-W –

Shayne

E-A-K-Y dot com

Tim

Love it. Love a little website like that. Bravo. So we’ve got the form. There’s a one way of building a list too, by the way. It’s having the form on the website. It’s meeting people in networking functions, getting and receiving a card, saying, “Hey, do you mind if I put you on my list?” All that stuff. It’s that entire address book in our Outlook or our Gmail. Now, what about that? Can we pick that up? I mean, that’s where you start to get a bit messy because you pick that up and drop it into Campaign Monitor, all of a sudden, a whole lot of people are going to get emails that they may have not previously expected those emails, correct?

Shayne

Yeah, exactly. So that’s where I say make sure people know that they’re going on there. And you may even want to personally send them an invitation to your newsletter. It’s like, “Hey, I just wanted to let you know I have this newsletter that I’d love you to be a part of. Click this link to either opt in or opt out.” That might be, you know, depending on what approach you wanted to take. So you can take your whole Outlook calendar, shoot them an email and say, “We’re starting this email newsletter” or whatever you’re starting, and then get them to opt in so they actually know. But, absolutely. So we need to probably … it’s worth touching on opt-ins as well so we’ve got some spam rules in Australia that we need to abide by. So there’s informed and explicit, explicit and implicit consent to be able to send people emails. So if you have a direct relationship with someone so they’re your customer, for example, you can email them without them necessarily having to say that they can. But if you’ve got some random lead out in the world somewhere, then you have to ask them well, they have to give you permission to be able to send them email marketing messages. So you just need to make sure that you do have either those two levels of consent which, I mean, there’s plenty of stuff you can read and I can send you maybe for the show notes, Tim, a quick resource for people to wrap their head around that that consent side of things as well.

Tim

Yeah, that will be great. Secondly … well, secondly, thirdly, fourthly, list building, what about the idea of then buying a list? Is it a good idea?

Shayne

I bought a list twice, and it was a complete waste of time. I personally would never do it again. Because I take that intimate approach to my emails, so I’m getting … and we’ll probably talk about stats later but open rates data three or four times industry benchmark is very much because I’m taking priority in people’s Inboxes. So the prospect of going and buying a list, it kind of horrifies me to be honest. And I do see a lot of that in bigger corporates where they’ll share lists and buy lists and borrow lists and, you know, they get open rates that I just get embarrassed by and they wonder why and I go, “Well, because you’re coughing up your own list to other people and like borrowing lists from other people and it’s just, you know, you’re not thinking about the recipients. You’re just thinking about your own campaign.”

Tim

Well, they’re probably measuring it on how many emails they’ve sent as opposed to how many emails got opened.

Shayne

Yeah. I think they’re kind of swept up in their own mediocrity, if I could say that.

Tim

(Laughs) Hello to all you corporate <inaudible> *0:33:13.

Shayne

I come from a corporate background. I’m completely –

Tim

Yeah, me too, me too.

Shayne

But, you know, they compare their own stats and they’re all very bad or horrifying so they kind of think that’s okay, and then I go and share my Campaign Monitor stats with them and they go, “Wow!” Then we start to pull apart why and it’s a little shocking.

Tim

Okay, Shayne, we need to move on from list <inaudible> *0:33:35 … it scares me. This is a full-day interview. One last question, in terms of – the concept you’ve introduced, it’s permission marketing, Seth Gordon’s permission marketing, give to get. What you give – eBook, white paper, a series of videos, audios, whatever it may be – what information, at its most basic, you’ve got to ask for it, “Can I have your email address?” Is there some kind of graph that says the more contact information you ask for, the less people are going to register?

Shayne

There is. I haven’t actually dug into the most recent statistics but for a long, long time that was reviewed ad nauseum. Names sometimes are sacrificed <inaudible> *0:34:16 but I’ve never asked for anything more than email and first name because the greater friction you put into … you’ve got to remember, you’re asking someone to do something so the more fields you have in your subscription box or however you’re doing it, the bigger ask your putting in front of a potential subscriber. So I’ve really just worked from that rule of thumb and it hasn’t kind of let me down, but first name does sometimes help with that intimacy and that personalization. So depending on the project I’m working on may drive that or not.

Tim

Yeah, okay.

Shayne

The market research people tend to argue a lot with me around that. But what I say to that is that I’ll understand what my subscribers are interested in by what they do, not by what they say. So I’m looking at what links they’re clicking on, what particular emails they’re opening to help me understand those customers more than asking them where they’re born and how old they are and whether they like chocolate or not.

Tim

Yeah, okay. I just had a thought. You’re going to help me write an email for when this show goes out.

Shayne

Yes, that’s good. I’d love to.

Tim

Love it.

Shayne

Yes, yes. I can stew on them a little bit though. I’ve been known to refine three or four paragraph emails over a space of a couple of days.

Tim

Oh, I can imagine, mate. It’d be fun to watch you. In fact, if you can set up some kind of time lapse video as well I figure it’d make for some comedic viewing.

Shayne

It probably would.

Tim

Shayne, now … Listeners, I’m talking to Shayne Tilley from Shane Tilley.com and he likes email. Now, we’re on the molehill. We’ve got the platform. We’ve got the list. What else do we need to get over that molehill and get our first email marketing campaign sorted?

Shayne

Okay. So that’s when we’re talking about content. So we need to start thinking about what is it we’re going to send to our subscribers. So there are a couple of important considerations you need to make. The first is probably your subject. Your subject can have a dramatic impact on whether your email gets opened or not. Now, everyone’s going to ask me – and I’m sure this is a question on Facebook – is what subject should I use for my email? And I’m going to say you need to figure that out for yourself but what you need to do is test and review. In Campaign Monitor, for example, you can actually run a real time test. So I can say, “I’ve got my email. Here’s my subject line A, here’s my subject line B.” Send a couple of each and then automatically decide which one is getting opened the most and send the rest to that one.

Tim

Hang on, hang on. Let me understand that. So split test … I’ve got two subject lines. Send each of those lines to what? One person each or however many?

Shayne

However many, because you might only have a list of maybe a thousand.

Tim

Yeah, right. So send it to any each and then once there’s a winner, send the balance of the emails with the winning subject line.

Shayne

<inaudible> *0:37:31.

Tim

Oh, there it is. That’s exciting.

Shayne

Yeah. So, yeah, it’s been around for some time. And I’ve used that manually for ten years because I know that you can have differences of a hundred percent. They can be that significant in terms of whether they get opened or not. The second part to the content is actually thinking about the words you’re putting in there. Now –

Tim

Hang on, hang on. You’re not leaving subject line that easily. I’m looking at the Facebook questions and I’ve just gone straight there and there’s one from Darryl … subject line tips that help increase open rates. So you’ve got to give us three that are like … I’m guessing should it be personal, should it be curious, should it be short, should it avoid the word ‘free?’ Come on, give us something.

Shayne

All right. So it should be relatively short. Sometimes you’ve got to break your own rules but keep it short as possible. I like to actually keep it very factual as well so don’t describe the subject as something the email is not because that has different implications. The other thing is to make it enticing so use words like – there’s going to be some clichés in here but, you know, ‘the secrets to’ or ‘master’ or ‘conqueror’ or that sort of stuff. They’re very much in your content-led email so just a short description that’s just powerful as you can make it. Think of yourself like you’re a newspaper subeditor thinking of the headline for the front page of your newspaper for that morning. What’s going to be the cry that’s going to get people to buy my newspaper, in this context, read your emails? So –

Tim

Now, that’s really good advice and one thing I say to my clients is if you are struggling for a headline like that for your email or for anything, for blog posts, go into the news agent, have a look at Men’s Health or Cleo and look at those little headlines on the front cover because they aren’t there by accident.

Shayne

Exactly. Exactly. And there are people whose job title it is to make those up. That’s their job. That’s what they do. Nothing more, that’s it. So, yeah, the same rules apply with email. But it’s a tough one for me to answer because it is very situational so like the subject I would use for a butcher is very different from something I would use, say, for the podcast announcement, for example.

Tim

Yeah, gotcha. Right. Content? Body copy, I suppose.

Shayne

All right. So make it readable. Now, that’s a sweeping statement but you want to realize that the majority of people reading your email are going to skim read it. They’re going to read the headline, they’re going to read the bullet points and then they’re going to make a decision whether they’re interested or not. So don’t put huge chunks of text in your email unless you know this is going to an audience that are book nerds and like to read, for example. So keep it as short as you possibly can and to communicate what it is you need to. And you might have just to call to action is to read more on the site. That might be simply, “Yeah, we’ve just released this great white paper on how to record great audio for your next podcast with some mind-blowing factoids that you probably haven’t realized were possible. If you’d like to learn more, click here.” So that shifts them to your website to get them through. So, yeah, keep it very short and to the point. The other thing I want to talk about in content is HTML versus text.

Tim

Oh, yeah. Well, let’s just explain that just in case. That’s good talk. It’s all good talk but HTML, pretty pictures, links, flexible type format text is exactly that – flat, static text.

Shayne

So I like to think brochure versus letter. HTML is brochure, letter is text. Now, it’s relatively common practice for retailers to do a nice glossy kind of brochures as their monthly newsletters, which I think is fine.

Tim

Really?

Shayne

I do, with the exception that I never use them for specific sales emails or where I’m trying to go that personal approach. So I use the example as when was the last time you sent an HTML email – I don’t know if you’re married, Tim, but I’m going to say your wife. When was the last time you sent a glossy, fancy HTML email to your wife? Have you ever?

Tim

She’d just think I was weirder than I am.

Shayne

Exactly. So you’ve got a very personal connection with your wife, I hope. So you send her plain text. You send her letters. So if I’m a business trying to replicate even a fraction of what you have with your wife, sending you this glossy, shiny magazine billboard-y thing is not going to get that connection. So if I send you a personal letter and go, “Hey, Tim. I’m super excited about this email marketing stuff. You got to get on board. It’s like fantastic, you know. Check it out here.” That’s going to get much more cut-through than me doing a nice box shot of something and it’s … yeah, so I’m the guy that always challenges the necessity for HTML email and, that being proven right more times than wrong when I’ve challenged people and say, “Do an HTML version and see what that does for your conversion rate?” And it always wins.

Tim

I can’t help but think … and I haven’t got any stats to back it up except my own personal consumer hat on experience and I can’t help but think that these fancy e-newsletter type, brochure type emails we get are driven by the fact that the email program from the company that has sent me that email allows them to create these bright shiny objects that the guy in the marketing department can go to his boss and go, “Have a look at this beautiful email newsletter I’ve just created. Doesn’t that look like a magazine?”

Shayne

I could not agree with you any more, Tim. That’s pretty much spot on.

Tim

Shayne, this is an email loving. I didn’t expect it because I’m not the kind of rational marketing guy like you. You might have changed me.

Shayne

That’s because you can, not because you should.

Tim

Correct. Exactly. So, now, HTML still can look like a letter. The emails that I’ve seen from Small Business Big Marketing headquarters are HTML but they’re just text with links.

Shayne

And that’s a fine compromise. It’s called rich text is the nerdy word for it but I think that, yeah, that’s kind of the happy medium and where I sit maybe on, let’s say, 50% of the emails that I’ve sent. The rest will be plain text only with no styling whatsoever.

Tim

So the point of being able to say it, Shayne, is that any small business owner that’s listening that is doing email marketing, that’s thinking of doing email marketing, they’re going to go and sit and send an email after this episode, hopefully, and if it’s a newsletter with updates from the business or if it’s them selling a particular program or product or service, then they really should just sit there, <inaudible> *0:44:53 over a really clever bit of letter writing and do it that way. Don’t worry about pretty pictures. Don’t worry about design layout. Don’t worry about logo. Just write.

Shayne

So I would say everyone who’s giving this a go, just imagine you’re writing a letter to Tim. He’s the only person that’s going to receive that letter and you are writing an email to him. Write it in your own email system before you bring it into something like Campaign Monitor if you want, but just pretend and imagine that you’re writing to Tim.

Tim

When you say Tim, you don’t literally mean me, but you mean – I always say to people write your marketing as if you’re writing to your, I call them, your best mate, your ideal customer.

Shayne

Exactly. Exactly. So you’re just writing for one person and then you can bring it into your broadcast system.

Tim

Now, with the content, am I right in saying that you want that email opened and then you want people to click on a link in that email and get them off to your website as soon as humanly possible?

Shayne

Yeah, in most cases, in 95% of cases, yeah. I might be building – and this is more in the complex form – I might be building you up for something so I just might be sending you tidbits to kind of get you excited. I’m not ready to ask you to do anything yet. I just want you on board so when I do ask you, it’s kind of a no-brainer. That’s more kind of that auto-responder, that elongated kind of salesman or process. But for the most part, starting out is just either get them on the site to give them more value or get them on the site to get them to do something for you.

Tim

Okay, so if it is an email newsletter format that people are sending, the email should really say, “Hey, guys, here’s what’s happening in the business that’s of benefit to you,” and lists the three or four or five topics that you’re going to cover in that newsletter, “Click here to read all about it.” And head off to a page, one page on your website where you cove all those topics.

Shayne

Exactly. Yup. That’s what I would do. So you touched on something that I’ll just grab of benefit to your reader. So you’ve got to remember that you’re giving value to your reader so make sure it is stuff that’s of benefit to them. I don’t think they want to care about how excited you are about the shiny, new purple reception desk you’ve got. Well, some people would but “here’s a great new addition to our product that we thought you might be keen to understand a little more about.” So it’s a benefit and value to your reader, not yourself.

Tim

Yeah. Good point. That shiny purple reception desk … Oh, gee. It’s a distraction. Now, okay, so we’ve got them to the website. Now, the other thing I dropped previously was that notion of a number of topics within the email. Would it be fair to say that you’re better off sticking to one message per email?

Shayne

Yes. Particularly in sales email, it’s going to focus on just one product. If it’s to buy something, it’s like buy this one thingy. I’m not going to confuse you with a million different things. What I’ll use multi-topic emails for, though, is to understand what you’re interested in. So, say, I’m selling TVs. Before I ask you to buy a TV, I’m going to send you some content which all about Jamango flat screen TVs or it is might be TV screens for my car. There’ll be a bunch of different topics. I will then go, “Tim, what did you click?” Okay, you clicked the more information about TVs in your car. So I know that’s what you’re interested in. So a week later, I’m going to send you a special deal on a particular new model TV for your car. So I’m actually using those group posts to understand a little bit more about what you’re interested in. And then when I ask you to buy something, I’m asking you to buy one thing, not one of 20. Yes, that’s the approach I’d take with that.

Tim

Shayne, what about in terms of body copy or content, video or audio with the email?

Shayne

I have actually never sent video or audio in an email. Whether that’s right or wrong, I can’t answer because I’ve never sent one so I can’t give you the comparable statistics. I’ve sent links to videos. I’ve sent kind of tricky emails where I’ve got just a picture of what looks like a YouTube video with the play button but you click on that and it actually takes you to the site. But that’s as far as I’ve got. I worry about being that pain in the ass that’s stopping all my other emails coming through because it’s bloody 20 MB large. I always worry about being that guy and so <inaudible> *0:49:44 is you valuing my email, I don’t want to put that at risk so I’ve always just been a little hesitant about that rich media inclusion directly in that email.

Tim

How many links in the copy?

Shayne

I’d say make sure – if you’re asking someone to do something, make sure it’s at the top, middle and bottom.

Tim

Top, middle and bottom.

Shayne

The one that gets missed –

Tim

The same link, they’re linking off to the same place but three times.

Shayne

Yes, yes. So say I’m selling you this TV, I’d say great deal on this TV. Here’s the one factor that’s 20% off. Grab it here. And then I might give you a bit more of the text specs of the TV and then I’ll have a grab it here. And then right at the bottom I’ll have a final one as well. The one at the top is the one that I think gets missed but the one at the top is the one that most often gets clicked when you put it there because most people skim read and go, “Oh, wow, 20% off this TV that I’ve wanted for my car for ages. I’m done. I’m out of here.  Don’t waste my time.”

Tim

Yeah, yeah. It’s the anchor text in those links are what’s important, I’m guessing. Should it be different each time?

Shayne

Yeah, I tend to slice it up so it doesn’t look like I’m sticking those links in just because I should. I try to weave them into, you know, to snap up a copy, click here, and down at the bottom, you know, don’t forget the special offer runs out in two days. Click here to secure yours or something like that. So I’ll get creative with that just to look consistent.

Tim

Do you love a good P.S., Shayne?

Shayne

I love a good P.S.

Tim

Do you? Why?

Shayne

I actually fought P.S.’s for about three years <inaudible> *0:51:29. And then I got challenged. I said, “All right. We’ll do your way and we’ll do my way with the P.S., and the P.S. won. So I love the P.S.

Tim

Wow. How’s the P.S. best used?

Shayne

It is either for a final point of note so it might be that little kicker. So if you’ve got a money-back guarantee or if you’ve got a time limited promotion, you just might make that … it’s like that final remark. And everyone, for some reason – and I’m no psychologist – it’s like orange buttons gravitate to the P.S., and I’m not sure why but for probably nine of the ten emails I send, nine of them will have a P.S. I haven’t stepped into the whole P.P.S. and P.P.P.S. yet but P.S. is definitely something you can just leverage for that final word.

Tim

I often confuse … is it P.S.S. or P.P.S. or … I just leave it at the one so I don’t even have to worry about that.

Shayne

Just one more thing!

Tim

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s exactly right. Tell me, what about layout? If we are talking a letter layout, I often see emails come through where people are doing returns halfway along the line. They come in narrow columns versus running the width of the space. Is there any magic there?

Shayne

Yes, there is but it’s kind of changing to be honest, and this is with the bloody mobile phones being – otherwise, now, you’ve really got to be cautious about not only how it’s read on a computer but also on a mobile phone these days. So we used to hard carriage returns at 130 characters, I think it is, just to make sure that it looks nice in your Windows Outlook that has the split windows. So you’ve got all your folders on the left hand side and then all your email content on the right hand side. It used to be done for that but I guess now with emails, it’s all kind of up in the air. So I tend to limit those hard carriage returns or when you hit enter to break a line before you get to the end as much as possible because it kind of looks kooky on mobile phones. The same with … and if you do want to do the HTML emails as well is if you’ve got that big wide banner, which I think used to be 760 pixels wide which is quite wide, if you are still using that and you’re opening that email on a mobile phone, the text is so tiny because it’s trying to fit that header image in that as well so you’re forcing people to zoom in.

Tim

Oh, is that why it happens? That drives me nuts.

Shayne

Yeah, it drives me nuts. So there are some good templates that the good providers have that are now what they’re calling mobile-friendly which avoids that tiny text in those fancy emails.

Tim

So let me understand that. I got one yesterday and I just could not read it no matter how much I pinched and squeezed and whatever the opposite of pinching is. It’s when the content of the email has got a banner in it, like a signature panel or whatever it may be, that is forcing the width of the screen way beyond the aspect of the phone screen.

Shayne

Correct, yes. Because it’s an image so it’s going this is a picture of something so I want to get, by default, the whole picture in my screen which makes the rest of it really tiny.

Tim

Love it. Got that one. Now, okay, we got to keep moving. Have we covered content?

Shayne

(Laughs) As much as we can.

Tim

Oh, goodness. Email marketing so easy.

Shayne

So the other thing I will touch on content is to test as well just as you do your subject lines, you can test your content as well. Don’t take my word for it with HTML versus plain text. Run a test yourself. Do an email to your thousand subscribers – 500 HTML, 500 plain text, and see which one works.

Tim

Shayne, we’re taking your word for it, mate. Sorry. So, got it. Shayne Tilley.com if you want to complain, listeners. Now, the molehill is melting. We’ve got platform, we’ve got list, we’ve covered content, anything else that makes up that molehill?

Shayne

Well, we’ve got the testing which I’ve kind of harped on all the way through it. The other thing you need to think about is how many and when so when are you sending your emails and how often. Just to simplify things for you –

Tim

Yeah, go on.

Shayne

So, again, when we talk about what day and what time of the day, and this is very dependent to your audience. So if you’re SMB working mostly with businesses, then during business hours is likely to be a better time … business hours, Monday to Friday, is likely to be a better time. But if you’re selling lifestyle products, maybe clothes or different sorts of services to a general consumer, then sending it out of work hours might be a better time. Now, I tend to fixate on the specific hour so I know –

Tim

Of course, you would.

Shayne

(Laughs) If I’ve got a product that there’s a high density of moms, for example, I won’t send it between school pick-up hours. So I won’t send it between sort of 3:00 to 6:00. I might introduce that at 7:00 pm or sort of 11:00 am when the kids are at school. So you really got to think about who are my readers and when is the best time and day of the week to be sending them the email.

Tim

Now, that’s based on the assumption that you’re sending an email and hoping they are going to read it immediately. But email stacks up. So what’s the problem with sending an email anytime, knowing that it’s going to sit in the Inbox until they next log in?

Shayne

So I’m trying to time it when they’re most likely to have just logged in because I want to be at the top of the pile. If I’m at the bottom of the pile, then I’m likely to get deleted fairly quickly. But I’m the first one when you’ve got all this energy to check your Inbox, that’s where I want to be so that’s where timing is important to not be the guy stuck in the middle or at the bottom of a pile of emails that have built up over the last five-six hours.

Tim

So B2B, during business hours, Monday to Friday. B2C, out of hours but –

 

Shayne

Not necessarily. You need to play round B2C. B2C is a little more unique to the product and you play with different times. You figure it out over time.

Tim

I also challenge that too because I’ve just found the idea of timing emails is just like, wow, it’s fraught with danger and it’s such a general thing. I mean, not everyone is the same. But everyone is checking their email so often these days, you know, in and out of hours. Does it really matter?

Shayne

If I’m asking you to buy something or do something, then it does matter because I need you to be in a position to buy something. If I’m sending you my, “Hey, this cool new widget is awesome and it’s 50% off. Go and get it now,” some people are very comfortable buying things through their mobile phones. You probably are. But a lot of people still aren’t so they’re going to want to receive that email when they’re sitting down in front of their computer. They can go and do that then and there. So, again, I’m happy to accept any challenge on that because what I say to everyone is you need to experiment with different times and find what works for you. But I do know that there are nuances and they can have an impact to your overall result.

Tim

Yeah, okay. All right. How often? People say how often should you send out a podcast episode? My answer to that is, well, set an expectation with your audience and meet it. That’s how often. So if you’re going to do a podcast episode a month, let people know it’s going to come out a month. For me, mine comes out every Tuesday, and there’s an expectation. So is there really a number that you can put to it, a frequency?

Shayne

Yes, with the right expectations, how often … you’ve just answered that question beautifully with one caveat is don’t leave your gaps too wide. So a month is probably the longest I would like to go without just touching base with your customers because they’ll forget and they’ll get distracted. So if you’re emailing once every three months, I’d be pretty sure that a lot of them that email that comes once every three months is kind of out of the blue and they go, “Who the hell is this company and when did I sign up to their newsletter?” So if you’re going at least once a month, once a month you’re reminding them, if they’re not even reading them, that you’re around and here you are. So don’t leave the gaps too wide or people will consider you to be a spammer.

Tim

Yeah, that’s fair enough.

Shayne

Yeah. But like I’ve got sites that I email people every day. I’ve got sites that I email once a week, twice a week. So there’s no hard and fast rule but, as you said perfectly, as long as you set the expectations up.

Tim

No need to go into the detail on the site that has a daily email but how do you … that’s a lot. That’s a lot. What’s the question there? The question is how do you avoid unsubscription?

Shayne

Well, that’s actually a daily deal site for photographers that people signing up for it, and the expectations are right so that’s why that’s fine. Yeah, so that’s probably the only one that I do daily. There are some great examples I was even hearing on the radio about programs that run daily so you might sign up for a daily tip on how to be better with your time management. And each day, you get an email which is purely just a little tip for you to read and go try this technique. I guarantee you at the end of that, let’s say, it’s a three-week program, you’re going to get an email that says how about you buy this product?

Tim

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Shayne

That’s an example of when a daily email might work in a different context as well.

Tim

All about expectations. Shayne, where are we at, mate? Are we over the molehill?

Shayne

We are over the molehill. I’ve hopefully kind of opened your eyes and you fired off your first campaign and you’re kind of thinking through it. The best thing then is to really be out and digging and understand what’s happening so you can readjust and just redefine your strategy to find what’s perfect for you.

Tim

Yeah, that’s good. I mean, I feel as though there’s some breakthrough there. There are some real, little nuggets, little marketing gems that all of us can take to either launch into an email marketing strategy or improve the one we’ve got because I bet all of us are thinking, “God, there’s room for improvement,” and there are some gems there.

Shayne

Can I leave my P.S.? I’ve got a P.S.

Tim

<inaudible> *1:02:04. What have you got?

Shayne

P.S. Probably the most important thing when you’re thinking about your own email marketing is to think at a reader level, not at a campaign level. What I find is people come up with these great campaigns and they just forget that there are real readers and subscribers underneath that you need to be thinking of. So if you’re thinking at a reader level, not a campaign level, then your email campaign is going to be much better for it.

Tim

Let me understand the difference between thinking at a reader level. Is that like thinking of your best mate and writing them a letter –

Shayne

Yes.

Tim

– versus what’s the thinking look like at campaign level?

Shayne

Well, it’s just the deal, the offer, more if the deal goes well, we’ll give them another deal when we just sort of inundate them and burn them out. And it’s more worrisome in larger companies that have different marketing campaigns that are all trying to talk to the same person. So, you know, they’re thinking of their own campaign level, not the same reader has received four emails this week from different divisions of your organization.

Tim

Do you think there’s value in appointing a copywriter to your virtual marketing team to write these emails?

Shayne

(Laughs) All the copywriters I work for over the years are going to probably slap me on the face when I say this, but I got a bit of advice from a smart guy a long time ago, saying write your email, send it to a copywriter and then change all the changes they made back to your original one and send it out.

Tim

(Laughs) Hello to all you copywriters.

Shayne

Yeah, so I’ve worked, in a good sense, with a lot of copywriters. I do find you’re the best person to write your own email.

Tim

Oh, thank you. Oh, you mean generally. (Laughs)

Shayne

Generally. I tend to leverage copywriters just to help me massage it but I don’t get them to write it from scratch. So I use more editors than copywriters I would say.

Tim

Okay. Editor. Where do you find an editor?

Shayne

I just go to my contact list and … look, you’ll find a handful of people that you connect really well with in an editor sense so I think you can’t just go to Elance and find the first one that comes across your radar. You’ve actually got to find someone who you can connect with who can understand what it is you’re trying to say in your gibberish that you put together and then kind of re-communicate that still in your own voice. So it can take time to find an editor that you really can work with in a long term sense. So experiment with a few different ones using Elance and other sort of recruitment areas but, once you find someone who you can connect with well, then kind of continue to use them.

Tim

Now, Shayne, mate, you’ve shared some gold. Firstly, thank you.

Shayne

No worries.

Tim

I just think if you can find a little bit more passion around email, you know, it would come through clearer in the next interview you do. (Laughs)

Shayne

<inaudible> *1:05:03.

Tim

Now, what we haven’t done – and I’m just looking guiltily at 19 questions on the show’s Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter. But, that said, now is not the time to go through and tick off the ones we have answered but I do feel as though we have answered quite a lot of them.  What I’m going to do is talk to you off air and then I’m going to insert some static, a static sound effect, and after that, I’m going to then explain to the listeners exactly how they’re going to get access to those questions that they’ve asked. And, in fact, I’ve got a couple of other ideas because I don’t think the email marketing discussion has finished with you, and you’d be welcome back into the Small Business Big Marketing headquarters to pursue it if you’ve got the time and you can find the passion, mate.

Shayne

Sounds like fun. You don’t have to work too hard to get me to rant about email.

Tim

I love it. Shayne Tilley from Shayne Tilley.com, thanks for being on the show, mate. I really appreciate it.

Shayne

Thanks, Tim.