Inside Email Marketing w/ Kelly Forst from Aweber

Kelly Forst 0:00
A lot of people can feel like they’re writing to the stadium full of, you know, nameless faces. And how are you? How are you going to write an email that resonates with that many people. If you just sit down and you draft an email to a friend or your family member and just focus on writing to one person, it’s going to resonate. It’s such a great way to approach email copywriting because it automatically comes across more personable and authentic.

Mike Beatty 0:32
Hey guys, it’s Mike from Make Time Online and today we are joined by Kelly forced from AWeber.

So Kelly works for a big autoresponder company called AWeber. If you’ve never heard of them before, they basically can be a great way for small budget. says bloggers, online entrepreneurs to collect email subscribers and send them either automated

Unknown Speaker 1:06
emails or broadcasts to your email list.

Unknown Speaker 1:10
And she is joined joining the podcast today,

Mike Beatty 1:13
just to kind of chat about a recent study that AWeber have done with it, which has loads of useful key facts and findings that they’ve taken from thousands of different small business owners

Unknown Speaker 1:28
about things like

Mike Beatty 1:29
that, how often you should send emails, the design, the writing, copy, split testing, what actually effectiveness really means and what people are trying to get from sending the emails out. And she kind of is going to go through those things. And also, there’s just so many little useful tips in here about best practices for sending out email. So if you have any interest of email marketing and building an email list, this is a great chat to listen to. If you want to just get the key takeaways that I took from the podcast, you can jump to the last few minutes as always, and I’ll summarise if not enjoy this one guys.

So Kelly, can you explain a little bit more about this study that AWeber carried out recently?

Kelly Forst 2:21
Yeah, definitely. So, earlier this year, we conducted a study with over 1000 small business owners to use email marketing for their to promote their business. And as part of that study, we also interviewed 10 of the top email marketing experts in the world to share their insight and guidance about our finding. And we conducted this study, primarily to get insight on how small businesses are conducting their email marketing strategies. We’ve been in the email game for more than 20 years and we’ve seen how impactful email marketing Can can be firsthand. But one thing that’s constant is change. And email is constantly changing. That means that you know what is effective is changing and those who are using email marketing need to adapt to grow and innovate with those changes. So we did this really to get some insight on how small businesses are conducting their strategies, what they consider to be effective, how, what kind of copy they’re using, what kind of design they’re using, whether they find those things to be effective, whether you know how they’re impacting open rate and click through rate. There’s so much value in this study. And we really wanted to set some baselines to give small businesses those insights so that they can compare and adjust their strategies as needed.

Mike Beatty 3:53
Perfect, Jeff, what can you give like some examples of some of the small businesses that were in the sun in the study was it kind of like more physical or whether some sort of like online blog, the blog is kind of in the study as well.

Kelly Forst 4:08
So it was really all over the place. I don’t have those numbers in front of me. But we, it really was, you know, online businesses, retailers in a tonne of different industries and from all over the world. Yeah, that’s amazing.

Unknown Speaker 4:24
I’ve

Mike Beatty 4:24
sort of really looked through this study. And I just think it is, is incredible. So one of our findings as well. One of the things that I just kind of wanted to dig into first, before we go any further is, you talk a lot about effectiveness and things like that in the study. I just wanted to like define what that actually means in purpose of like, What does effectiveness mean in this study?

Kelly Forst 4:47
Yeah, in this study, we really wanted to get it. You know, how business owners felt about their strategy. So it really doesn’t mean anything beyond how they felt about it. The tactics that they’re using for email marketing. So for instance, we asked them you know, how effective is your email marketing strategy? And 60% said, their email marketing strategy is effective or very effective. And then we use that to basically compare you know, of those people who said that they had effective strategies, what did they say their open rates were their click through rates were, were those metrics, basically determinant of whether or not someone felt they had an effective strategy.

Mike Beatty 5:37
Right. Okay. So it was kind of more just their own, like how effective they perceived it. That’s kind of more what it was.

Kelly Forst 5:46
Yes, exactly.

Mike Beatty 5:48
Yeah. Nice. Yeah. No, it kind of makes total sense. But it was so many like really interesting findings and I definitely want to get into some of those. One of them that kind of came up was there talking about the frequency. And this is something I’ve heard people ask and things before. And I think there’s so many people out there that feel like they don’t do email marketing very well. And I put my hand up here, I’m definitely one of them. And so was there like a ideal amount, like an ideal frequency of how many times people send an email for them to find them more effective.

Kelly Forst 6:28
Most people said that they send emails at least once per week, but less than daily. So 54% of small businesses send emails at least once per week and 86% of small businesses send emails at least once per month. But what I think is, is more important than how often you send emails is that you’re sending emails, that at the frequency that you promised subscribers, whether it’s on your signup form or on your landing page, Or in that first welcome email that you sent your subscribers, you’re always wanting to set expectations with them upfront, tell them what they can expect. If you promised that you were going to send emails at least once a week, send emails at least once a week. If you start sending more than that, or less than that, then you’re not staying true to what you promised them and they’re more likely to mark you as spam. If all of a sudden they’re getting multiple emails per day that they they were like, I didn’t sign up for this. It’s much better rather than focusing on frequency, focus on what you promised, focus on what the value is that you’re providing to them. If your emails are informative, educational, you can send as many emails as you want, essentially, but make sure that you’re sticking to what you promised them.

Mike Beatty 7:51
Yeah, that makes total sense, actually. I mean, I’ve, I’ve know sometimes just from personal experience, like when you sign up for something, and then you just get You know, three emails in that same day, like, unsubscribe, because you just think, yeah, is this what it’s gonna be like all the time. But yeah, just I think if you can do that as well, like you say, if you can, before they even opt in, if you can be like, we will send you one email a week or one email a month, or, you know, make it really specific what it will be, or at least one email every two weeks or something like that, then at least that gives you It gives them something to expect, and they know what they’re getting into up from.

Kelly Forst 8:32
Yeah, and that goes from more than just frequency to it goes through what kind of content you’re going to send them. If you can set all of those expectations up front and an opt in form or on your landing page. They’re much more likely to engage with you in the inbox, which is really good for you. Because the more someone opens your emails and engages with your emails, the less likely your emails are to go to spam. That’s a totally different conference. Around email deliverability and making sure that your emails are delivered to the inbox. But sticking to your promises is one way to make sure that your emails are going to the inbox.

Mike Beatty 9:13
That’s really interesting. Actually, I’ve kind of have noticed that before. I didn’t know Is that a real thing then? So will it be your email provider? If you don’t keep opening people’s emails, they’ll just automatically move them to spam or something all that junk?

Kelly Forst 9:30
Yeah, a lack of engagement over time can indicate to these internet service providers like Yahoo, Gmail, or outlook, that your audience isn’t interested in your content. And while you might have their permission to email them, if they haven’t opened an email from you in a while, it’s more likely to have an impact on whether that Internet Service Provider delivers your message to the spam folder, which is why Yeah, and that’s why running a reengagement campaign. With those unengaged subscribers can let you know who’s really interested in keeping in touch and who’s not. So it’s really important to look at your stats and clear your list if they’re not active subscribers, and that’s something that I think a lot of people have trouble with is, you know, cleaning your list and taking those people who, who have not engaged with you in six months or a year or whatever you determine is right for your audience. taking those people off your list because a smaller engaged list is ultimately more beneficial than enlarge a larger unengaged list. Oh, yeah,

Mike Beatty 10:38
totally. Actually, I’ve recently just been doing this myself over the last couple of months. I’m at that stage where we’re about to get bumped up to the next pricing so I just almost weekly at the minute I’m clearing cold subscribers going through like checking individual people be like, are they interested? Is there any way to to actually do that effectively. I’m sure I’m not doing it very well. But is there a way to, like you said run a reengagement campaign? Is there a? I don’t know, is it like, does AWeber have a way of doing that within it?

Kelly Forst 11:14
Yeah, the way that if you’re an AWeber user, and you can basically create a segment of subscribers who haven’t either opened an email from you, in six months or nine months or 12 months, whatever you determine, you want to use as your baseline time period, create a segment of those unengaged subscribers who haven’t opened an email from you in that period of time. And then you can basically use that segment and remove that from remove them from your list. So you’re not sending to that segment of subscribers anymore. And but I also recommend you send a reengagement campaign first. So send an email to that segment of subscribers and say, Hey, I haven’t noticed I noticed you haven’t opened an email for me. I would love to hear if my emails are still valuable to you what you’d like to hear from me, and those who take the time to either click a link and to provide feedback or they just still haven’t opened that email. You can remove those people from your list.

Mike Beatty 12:18
Nice. Yeah, that’s a really good idea. Yeah, I definitely need to do that. Because I’ve just, I’ve been pretty brutal reserved has been like, delete. But probably, it probably makes a lot more sense because there might be some people.

Kelly Forst 12:32
It gives them a second chance.

Mike Beatty 12:33
Yeah, no, definitely. So another thing I noticed from the study as well is that design was one of the key fight like one of the key questions and things that people have talked about, you know, what if you just have like plain text emails, or I guess if you use images or gifts, or you know, like, what was there something that people found was best too. to actually do because I’ve heard mixed things about his swatches really don’t know what the answer is here.

Kelly Forst 13:05
Yeah, so just to touch on brand design for, it’s really important to have brand consistency across your emails and your website and whatever you’re using, and makes it really easy for your readers to recognise and trust you first and foremost. And it can have an impact on whether or not your subscribers take action, and convert. So when we asked people in the study, whether they send HTML emails or plain text, the majority did send HTML emails. And I think there’s a misconception out there about what an HTML email really is. Like I said that

Unknown Speaker 13:47
a lot I was about to say I have no idea what that means.

Kelly Forst 13:51
essentially means if you’re including any HTML elements like that includes bolded text italic, underline a hyperlink. Then it’s an CML email, a plain text email is essentially, you know, what you and I would send back and forth to each other. It’s just text. It’s not including any bold or hyperlinks or images or anything like that. So I think that’s something that there’s a big misconception out there. What exactly is an HTML email? Think people generally think that super highly designed emails will. That’ll essentially just one big image, our HTML emails, and that’s not the case at all. If you’re bowling if you’re hyperlinking, that HTML did not know that. Yeah,

Mike Beatty 14:35
that’s, yeah, that’s good to know. I guess. So. Yeah. I guess, probably most people do send HTML down there, because most people at least have a link or something in there.

Kelly Forst 14:46
Yeah, for the most part, um, and it’s interesting, too. If you’re including an image in an email, you know, that’s HTML and 86% of small businesses that we ask them to survey said that they use images in their emails, sometimes they’re always. So it’s interesting that those, I think there’s that shows right there. And that’s that misconceptions. And if you’re including images in your emails, but you’re not sending HTML emails, you know, there’s a disconnect there and what you’re doing and there’s a time and a place to send both HTML and plain text. If you really want your email to come across in this personal way, you really want it to just be like a one on one conversation. plain text can be effective. But I think HTML really helps when you’re sending those designed emails. If you really want to drive someone to take one action. Include a button in there with a CTA.

They definitely both have their time in place.

Mike Beatty 15:51
Yeah, that makes total sense. So brand consistency is probably like the key though, isn’t it? No matter what type of email you send Guess does that mean that you have to include like a logo or an image? Could it just be? Maybe the style? Does that count as brand consistency, you know, like just how you send written texts and things like that?

Kelly Forst 16:14
Absolutely.

It really it depends on your brand. So if if you’re into that carries through to your brand voice too. So if you’re writing emails, and the same brand voice, that you’re writing social posts, or you know any other type of marketing material, your website that’s absolutely effective and effective copy strategy. You want to write in a consistent brand voice that resonates with your subscribers so that they recognise you and all of a sudden you’re not going from a casual voice on social media to a super button that you know, professional voice on on email. They want that consistency. And that’s how you earn your subscribers trust.

Mike Beatty 17:06
Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. And then there was obviously the bit, which is probably like the main bit, which I’d love to dig into a bit more is about like writing copy. And I think there were what was there anything that the study kind of found about some of the best practices and some of like interesting tactics that people could maybe use?

Kelly Forst 17:30
Yeah, so I think one of the most interesting things that the study uncovered, we asked whether effective email copy copy increases open and click through rates. And what we found was that about two thirds of the small businesses in the study with effective or very cost effective email copy, have click through rates of 6% or higher. And about half of small businesses with effective copy open rates of 26% or higher. So it’s interesting. Those who felt like they had effective email copy also had higher click through rates and open rates. But email copy is something that I highly recommend people test and play around with. It’s one of the it is what will get people to open your email. If you can write an effective subject line, the only two things that will get people to open your email are whether they find your subject line interesting and engaging. And they want to know what’s inside that email and the brand affinity they have for you. So basically, your sender name and your subject line are what will get people to open. As for best practices, a couple things came out of it. We interviewed a couple of email marketing experts who shared their thoughts and I think these These points are just so important. And Hanley, who is the Chief Content Officer of marketing Prop, and an AWeber customer too, she sends a bi weekly email every Sunday or every other Sunday rather. It’s just jam packed with awesome content about copywriting marketing. I could go on and on her emails were awesome. But her she recommended that marketers write to one person at a time, not a segment, one person at a time. And that’s really a mindset thing. And when you’re sitting down to write emails with when you’re just getting started with email marketing can feel really overwhelming if you’re not sure where exactly to start or what your brand voice is. I think the important thing is that you just start and you’ll find that brand voice over time. But a lot of people can feel like they’re writing to the stadium full of you know nameless faces How are you? How are you going to write an email that resonates with that many people, if you just sit down and you draft an email to a friend or your family member and just focus on writing to one person, it’s going to resonate. It’s such a great way to approach email copywriting because it automatically comes across more personable and authentic than if you were to suddenly try to write to 1000 people at one time.

Mike Beatty 20:33
Yeah, no, I think, um, I guess the more people that you’re trying to write to as well, they’re gonna have maybe slightly different wants or needs. And it’s just way easier if you’re just writing into one person because you know, exactly kind of what they’re expecting, or what they’d like to hear and what they actually are what they want from you. So, if you just have that one person in mind, I guess that just makes total sense.

Kelly Forst 20:59
Definitely, and I mean, Just remember your subscribers are people first. You know you want to, you want to bring them value and make your emails worth their time. So it’s just, it’s just that little mindset shift that can help you get started when you’re writing content.

Unknown Speaker 21:17
Yes, that’s a really, really good tip.

Mike Beatty 21:20
Is there anything? Was there anything to do with like headlines subjects and subjects for the headlines and things like that? Was there anything? I don’t know? You know, like in blog headlines, there’s so much research on like, numbers and lists and how tos and things like that. Was there anything like that that kind of stood out or even I’ve even heard people get into nitty gritty like, whether you should capitalise each first letter of each word and things like that or use emojis. I’ve heard all of these kind of things being thrown out. I just didn’t know whether that’s something that maybe the study looked into or or you just know anyway

Kelly Forst 21:59
yeah. Something that this study looked into, but it was something that we looked into last year. And so I can definitely speak on how to write effective subject lines and what to look at there. And I love talking about this kind of stuff because subject lines are so important. Like I said earlier, it’s one of two things that are going to make someone open your email, because it’s your chance to make an impression on your audience with every email that you send. So when we when we looked into subject lines last year, what we found was, on average, they have 44 characters. And when it comes to subject line length and character count, I did a lot of people look for that, you know, baseline average, how long should my subject lines be? But what works for one audience does not necessarily work for another. My best advice would be to test test, test and find out what works For your unique audience, that goes for testing subject line link emojis, using numbers like five tip for XYZ, or connecting it with a seasonal holiday or something and just see seeing what works. But one thing to keep in mind when it comes to subject lines is mobile tend to cut off the subject line around 50 or 60 characters. So if you really want to make a quick change to how you’re writing subject lines, it might be worth testing really short subject lines, and seeing if they make an impact on your open rates. Because if you’re writing really short subject lines, you know that they’re not getting cut off on mobile. It’s outside of the average. And that’s one way to stand out in the inbox. But yeah, some ways to write really effective subject lines. Make sure you’re always focusing on the benefit to your work. why they should care. Don’t try to make them guess what you’re sending be really clear, don’t try to be click Beatty, because that’ll just, you know, annoy your subscribers if what you send in your subject line isn’t ultimately reflective of what’s within the email itself. Keep it active, use punchy, active, actionable verbs that incite your readers to take action like words like get, learn, watch, join, save are all really good things to use in the subject line because it drives the reader to take action and connect it with the pre header. That’s one area that I think is so overlooked. The pre header is that area of text that appears right after the subject line depending on what Internet Service Provider you’re using. It’s either right next to the subject line or right below the subject line. And that’s another opportunity to give the reader more context for what they can expect them I think a lot of people would just copy the subject line text to using the preheader. And that’s a missed opportunity to provide a bit more context on what they can expect when they open your email.

Unknown Speaker 25:09
Oh, nice. Yeah.

Mike Beatty 25:11
Yeah, I do notice that Stephen just like on on mobile, you can usually see like, a line and a half of what is actually in the email. And that can that often is the deciding factor for me whether I’m actually gonna open it or not. I know for like, when you’re writing a blog, a blog post, you can actually put like the meta description, and you can choose where it gets cut off. And

Unknown Speaker 25:36
you know, you put three dots at

Mike Beatty 25:37
the end, score a fancy word for what it is, but you can quite often do that and choose exactly what that is going to be. Is that possible with email? Or do you just kind of have to test out a few times and see what actually gets cut off from your emails?

Kelly Forst 25:52
You have to test it out. I think every internet service provider will cut it off at a different point. So I would just recommend testing and just seeing what because everyone audience is going to be different too. There might be an audience that likes longer subject lines, and another audience that likes shorter subject lines. So that’s really my my best piece of advice for for anything email marketing is just to test it out and see what works for you.

Mike Beatty 26:18
Yeah, no, I think that’s so, so valid. And I guess that kind of leads on to the next thing that the study kind of got looked into a little bit, which was split testing. Was there is that only in the headlines subjects headlines that they were split testing, or is that is there something more that I’m missing all together with email marketing that you could you could also do,

Kelly Forst 26:40
you can split test anything within your email. So you can test copy elements like subjects minds, headline, the body copy within the email itself, and call to action like you’re driving people to a button or something like that while you’re hyperlinking You can split test design elements like colours, fonts, images, what templates you’re using, and even as something as small as like spacing between paragraphs. And even other things like what day of the week you’re sending, what time of day you’re sending, what holidays you’re sending for, it really goes on, you can split test anything, at least within AWeber. But some variables will give you more insight into your subscribers minds than others. And I think one of those is subject lines.

Mike Beatty 27:37
Yeah, yeah, I’ve never even thought of loads of those things. So it’s kind of obvious. Now you say it, but I’ve never even thought to do it. So in AWeber, you can actually have to, you know, use basically the exact same email, but then you think, Oh, I’m gonna test out line spacing in this one. And you could have exactly the same subject headline in both exactly same words, but in more You could have, you know, short, smaller spaces and the other one, you could have like a big a big space, send that out and see which one performs better.

Kelly Forst 28:09
Exactly. And in theory, you could do that. And, you know, conducting a split test is really simple. Like you said, you just create two or three identical versions of the same email. What’s really important, though, is that you’re only changing one variable at a time. So you’re not going to want to change paragraph spacing, and whether or not you’re using an image in the email, because then you won’t know which factor is impacting the results. And then make sure that when you do conduct a split test, you’re only changing one variable at a time, but you can get really creative with it and test a lot of things. And I think it’s really fun to kind of see how certain things perform relative to others. Yeah, I’m a massive geek with that sort of stuff.

Mike Beatty 28:55
The percentages and things like that, so that for me, that’s my fault. Hold on, like, Can I see? Can I kind of make it a little bit better and things like that? I know we’ve talked a lot about like the features already throughout this chat. But can you go into a little bit more detail about like the pricing and like the cutoff, you know, the different levels and things like that where it kind of changes?

Kelly Forst 29:17
Yeah, definitely. So what’s really exciting about this is we just released a free product. So up, if you have a list of up to 500 subscribers, you can use AWeber for free. And you get a tonne of really awesome features with the free product that you wouldn’t get elsewhere. But really tools that allow you to get started building your list, you know, create and send emails, newsletters, you get Automation features, you get access to our landing page builder. So if you use AWeber, you can also build beautiful landing pages that drive signups to your list and that are automatically integrated with each other. You can send to basic segments and, and there’s just so much that you can do with it. And ultimately, if you get to that point where you find that you need things like split testing or behavioural automation, you can upgrade to AWeber Pro. And that will give you all the features that you need in order to take your email marketing to the next level. Amazing. Yeah, I mean, that’s so

Mike Beatty 30:26
rare with so many like autoresponders out there. And so the big differences between like the free and the Pro is obviously you’re limited to 500 subscribers you say in the free divers Yes. Amazing to get started though. I mean, that’s, that takes forever. And then you said also like things like split testing and automation. That’s with the Pro is it. So

Kelly Forst 30:52
now behaviour automation is with the pro version, you can still send automated emails. You can They’ll set up campaigns that trigger on, you know, when someone signs up for your list with the free version. But what you really want to get this is a more advanced feature, which is why we’re offering it to pro users. If you want to get really creative with sending emails based on behaviour, like page, click automation and stuff like that. That’s when AWeber pro can really help elevate your email marketing game. And yes, split testing is one of those things that’s in cluded in pro as well.

Mike Beatty 31:33
Crazy. Yeah, that sounds that sounds really cool, because that is not that is not that common still. So I think that’s definitely gonna make a weaver stand out in the next few years.

Kelly Forst 31:45
Yeah, it’s a really exciting thing to be involved in, especially right now with, you know, the impact that the current climate has had on small business owners. It’s exciting to be able to know that we can help Connect with their audience drive deeper connections.

Mike Beatty 32:06
Yeah, no, definitely hundred percent. So if someone is listening to this, and they just kind of want to get in contact, or they’re interested in maybe learning a bit more about the study or something like that, or just getting started with AWeber, what’s the best way for them to do it?

Kelly Forst 32:21
Definitely, I’d recommend going to AWeber calm. And at that page, you’ll find all the features and learn about what we offer. And I would also recommend if you’re interested in diving into any more of the topics that we talked about here, go on to blog aweber.com, we have a tonne of awesome resources. And we get into really awesome conversations on all of these topics and really deeply. So I recommend checking out our blog and going to aweber.com to learn more.

Mike Beatty 32:54
Thanks, I’ll put all that in the show notes as well, but it’s been an absolute pleasure, Kelly, and I really appreciate it

Kelly Forst 33:01
Thank you so much. It’s It’s awesome.

Mike Beatty 33:07
So there you have it so much value in one quick chat with Kelly. And if you do want to check out the website or the the actual report itself that we talked about throughout here, you can check that our aweber.com forward slash 2020 dash report. And also all of these things will be in the show notes where you can find them as normal. And this is going to be make time online comm forward slash 70. So that’s seven zero. So these are just the key takeaways that I took from this chat. Number One was that Kelly said it doesn’t really matter what your sending frequency is. It doesn’t need to be once per week or once per month or once per day. It doesn’t really matter as long as you are you do what you promised that you are going to do. So if you have an email opt in form that says we will send you an email once a week, make sure you do that it’s more important to just deliver or if it says we’re going to deliver emails at least twice a month or something like that, then at least people know what they’re going to expect and live up to that expectation. Basically, number two, is all about the spoke tonnes about deliverability to different email. Email is PS, use confusing words. And they’re basically like Gmail and Hotmail, things like that. And you kind of spoke about how if people do not check the emails, if they do not click on your emails, those providers can actually just end up putting your emails in spam or junk. So what we can do as bloggers, online entrepreneurs, people that have the email list, is to actually run a reengagement list rather than doing what I’ve just been doing recently, which is just calling people that I think are cold emails. waivers, you could actually set up segments within your autoresponder which basically means that you can then send them another email and just say, hey, I’ve noticed Gemini received this email for a while, please click this link, if you would like to receive them again, something along those lines, and then at least it gives them another chance. Number three is brand consistency. All of the design things that that again, Kenny said, it doesn’t really matter. There’s not one size fits all for this. It’s just being consistent with your voice with your brand across your blogs, other social media platforms and your email marketing campaigns. If you are, you know, your blog is all about dog training tips and then you start talking about how to care for your baby when they’re six weeks old. Obviously, that’s going to be a complete disconnect for people. So as long as you’re being consistent, have the similar sort of colours and themes and text and style of writing, then that’s going to really help for people to be engaged. This this kind of links on to number four, which is, there’s really only two things that ever make people want to click your emails. Number one is the subject line is interesting. And number two is the brand affinity. So if people trust you, they trust your brand, they’re more likely to click on an email, just think about yourself, you probably have people that you receive emails from, that you always read every single time they send you an email, there’s probably other people where you’re like, I can’t even remember who this person is. And that is brand affinity, people learning to trust you and trust your brand. So the way that you can really improve brand affinity kind of that is a whole other ballgame and something that needs time and relationship building and things like that and your copyrighted everything comes into it. But the subjects headline is something that you can control and you can test and you can do split tests.

Some something that Kelly talks about quite a lot though was that the average Email such as headline that goes out is 44 characters. So if you try that for a while maybe that will work really well for your audience but maybe your the people you’re speaking to, would prefer a longer headline, maybe a really short like two three words headlines may get the most clicks. And this is something I’ve been trying recently myself. And I’ve actually found that the short headline because she says, you know, on mobile, they can get cut off. Short headlines do seem to be doing quite well for me recently because I guess it also they’re typically more intriguing but test this out yourself as well. Things like make sure you actually provide what the benefits are going to be to that person. If you can imply that in the headline. They’re more likely to get clicks. Don’t make it click Beatty and annoying and spammy and put this this open this email to win $1 million and then say jokes. That’s not really that’s just the clickbait people will get turned off from that. get really annoyed by it. And also use active words, those punchy words, so get once watch, save, I wrote a few down, I think I missed some other things that she said, those kind of punchy words are effective as well. And then the final one, probably the biggest one that I took from this is a really good tip to improve your copywriting and your actual emails themselves. Just imagine one specific person, maybe it’s a friend, maybe it is, you know, actually think of a real person that you know, and then write the email to them. You know, if you are a mommy blogger, think of a friend who is a mom, that would really appreciate an email. It might even be you that would really appreciate the email. But just think of writing email to one person and only send it to them to only write the email for them, not anyone else. And that’s actually going to end up connecting with people better. Apparently, I’m going to try out and let you know how it goes. Anyway, I hope that was useful guys. And I’m gonna stop rambling. Thanks for listening in to this episode of Make time online. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast so you don’t miss any future episodes. And please take a moment to write a review for a podcast in the App

Unknown Speaker 39:19
Store. keep

Mike Beatty 39:20
changing for the better guys. Take care

So there you have it so much value in one quick chat with Kelly. And if you do want to check out the website or the actual report itself that we do talked about throughout here, you can check that our aweber.com forward slash 2020 dash report. And also all of these things will be in the show notes where you can find them as normal. And this is going to be make time online comm forward slash 70. So that seven zero. So these are just the key takeaways that I took from this chat. Number One was that Kelly said it doesn’t really matter what your sending frequency is, it doesn’t need to be once per week or once per month or once per day. It doesn’t really matter as long as you are you do what you promised that you are going to do. So if you have an email opt in form that says we also didn’t send you an email once a week, make sure you do that. It’s more important to just deliver or if it says we’re going to deliver emails at least twice a month or something like that, then at least people know what they’re going to expect and live up to that expectation basically. Number two is all about the She spoke tonnes about deliverability to different FEMA, email ISP. Use confusing words. And they’re basically like Gmail and hotmail and things like that. And you kind of spoke about how if people do not check the emails, if they do not click on your emails, those providers can actually just end up putting your emails in spam or junk. So what we can do as bloggers, online entrepreneurs, people that have the email list, is to actually run a reengagement list rather than doing what I’ve just been doing recently, which is just calling people that I think are cold emails, subscribers, you can actually set up segments within your autoresponder which basically means that you can then send them another email and just say, hey, I’ve noticed Gemini received this email for a while. Please click this link if you would like to receive them again, something along those lines and then at least it gives them another chance. Number three is Brian consistency, all of the design and things like that, again, Kenny said, it doesn’t really matter. There’s not one size fits all for this. It’s just being consistent with your voice with your brand across your blogs, other social media platforms and your email marketing campaigns. If you are, you know, your blog is all about dog training tips, and then you start talking about how to care for your baby when they’re six weeks old. Obviously, that’s going to be a complete disconnect for people. So as long as you’re being consistent, have the similar sort of colours and themes and text and style of writing, then that’s going to really help for people to be engaged. And this this kind of links onto number four, which is, there’s really only two things that ever make people want to click your emails. Number one is the subject line is interesting. And number two is the brand affinity. So if people trust you, they trust your brand. They’re more likely to click on an email, just think about yourself. You probably have people You receive emails from that you always read every single time I send you an email, there’s probably other people where you’re like, I can’t even remember who this person is. And that is brand affinity, people learning to trust you and trust your brand. So the way that you can really improve brand affinity kind of that is a whole other ballgame and something that needs time and relationship building and things like that and your copyrighted everything comes into it. But the subjects headline is something that you can control and you can test and you can do split test. Something that Kelly talks about quite a lot though, was that the average email subject headline that goes out is 44 characters. So if you try that for a while, maybe that will work really well for your audience, but maybe your the people you’re speaking to would prefer a longer headline, maybe a really short like two three words headlines may get the most clicks, and this is something I’ve been trying Recently myself, and I’ve actually found that the short headline because she says, you know, on mobile, they can get cut off. Short headlines do seem to be doing quite well for me recently because I guess it also they’re typically more intriguing but test this out yourself as well. Things like

make sure you actually provide what the benefits are going to be to that person. If you can imply that in the headline, they’re more likely to get clicks. Don’t make it click Beatty and annoying and spammy and put this this open this email to win $1 million and then say jokes. That’s not really that’s just the clickbait people will get turned off from that and get really annoyed by it. And also use active words, those punchy words so get once watch, save. I wrote a few down I think I missed some other things that she said. Those kind of punchy words are effective as well. And then the final one, probably the biggest one that I took from the This is a really good tip to improve your copywriting and your actual emails themselves. Just imagine one specific person, maybe it’s a friend, maybe it is, you know, actually think of a real person that you know, and then write the email to them. You know, if you are a mommy blogger, think of a friend who is a mom that would really appreciate that email. It might even be you that would really appreciate the email. But just think of writing an email to one person and only send it to them to only write the email for them, not anyone else. And that’s actually going to end up connecting with people better. Apparently, I’m going to try out and let you know how it goes. Anyway, I hope that was useful guys. And I’m gonna stop rambling.