Elevating Your Email Game: Insider Tactics for Advanced Entrepreneurs

Jennie Wright [00:00:00]:
Hey there. Welcome back to another episode of The Acquire Podcast, where we dive deep into the world of list building and online events. And it’s designed to empower entrepreneurs and marketers just like you with the knowledge and strategies to master what I feel are essential business grow tactics. And I’m your host, Jenny Wright. I’m a list building lead generation specialist and fractional CMO. And we’re gonna get real about something that I know that you are very passionate about, which is elevating your email marketing game. And I know that this is not your first rodeo when it comes to email marketing. And I know that you know that an email list is more than just a collection of names.

Jennie Wright [00:00:38]:
It’s actually people who represent people who Wiehler been following you for a while, potential clients, past clients, and so on. It is the heart of your business and your digital marketing strategy. It is going to be there always. And it’s something that you need to really, obviously elevate. And it’s your core connection with your customers, with your leads, with your past customers, and so on. So my question is, how do you take this vital tool and really make it work for you in an advanced way? And how do you ensure that every name on your list isn’t just a number or somebody who may have purchased something from you at some point in the past, But that it’s a key part of your business growth and your success. I mean, if you want intro level email marketing, I know you can Google that. I also talk about it in different ways.

Jennie Wright [00:01:29]:
And on, you know, previous podcast episodes, I really want to get into the advanced sort of tactics here. And that’s what I really want to focus on. So let’s get into this. And and that’s what I wanna unpack with you. We’re gonna go beyond the basics. We’re gonna dive into some advanced strategies that will transform your email list into a powerhouse of engagement and conversation as well as conversion. We’re gonna talk about deep dives into audience segmentation, but not just any segmentation. And I really want to explore AI driven insights and predictive analytics, so that we can kind of foresee what our subscribers needs are before they actually even think that they need them.

Jennie Wright [00:02:12]:
And then I wanna shake up your world a little bit with some lead magnet strategies that are seriously next level. Forget the standard ebooks and webinars. We’re gonna get innovative and collaborative. And of course, we’re gonna talk about email list without discussing the art of conversion, those landing pages and personalized emails that really make a difference. And I’ve got some tried and true and tested tactics to share. And believe me, they’re absolutely game changers. So last but not least, we’re also gonna get into behavior triggered email sequences and advanced list maintenance. And it’s all about sending the right message at the right time and keeping your list as tidy as you possibly can.

Jennie Wright [00:02:55]:
So whether this is starting your day off or you’re winding down, get ready to take some notes. This episode is going to equip you with the tools and the strategies you need to turn your email list into your business’s superpower. So let’s do it. I’m excited to talk more deeply about things like segmentation, and let’s kinda dive into a little bit more than that. So you probably already know that basic segmentation is all about basic demographic information, you know, somebody who registered off a form of your website or who set up a sales call with you or who registered for a webinar and so on and so forth. Those are basic demographics. Let’s get into more next level graph, like demographics. Let’s talk about more segmentation.

Jennie Wright [00:03:42]:
Let’s take a look at how you can more deeply segment. So if you don’t have an abandoned cart sequence, why not? If you don’t have all the different possible sequences that you could create for the different things that people do within your email list. A lot of people actually don’t do this. And one of my clients that I’m a fractional CMO for, they use HubSpot. And what we have is we have the ability and you can do this in a lot of your email marketing providers, but we have the ability to deeply segment. So red email, didn’t click on links. Those people are gonna get different segmentation emails from me. Didn’t open email, that’s a different email sequence.

Jennie Wright [00:04:25]:
Read email or opened email, clicked on link, but did not book a call. I can definitely do a new sequence for that. Like, hey. I saw that maybe you were looking to book a call or you click the link, but you didn’t book a call. Maybe there wasn’t time on our calendar that suited your schedule. How can we fix that? Send me a quick email too or call The, and let’s set up a time to talk. Like, I would definitely look at deeper segmentation so that you can get people and keep them within your sphere of influence. The thing that people don’t realize is that when they don’t do this deeper segmentation, you’re leaking people out.

Jennie Wright [00:05:02]:
And we want to stop all of the leaks. We wanna plug all the holes in the boat. And by doing deeper segmentation with your email marketing, you’re going to keep people more finely attuned and in your sphere of influence, and I love this. And one of the things and one of the tools that I love to use is AI. I have adopted the AI stuff. A lot of people have, which is great. It is not a buzzword anymore. It’s actually a big game changer on understanding your audience.

Jennie Wright [00:05:34]:
I’ve been experimenting with creating my own ChatGPTs to analyze the data coming in from my email marketing and help me more deeply segment. So I’ve created a chat GPT. I’ve told the chat JPT to analyze my data more deeply, come up with solutions or ideas for deeper segmentation. Jason How can I connect with these people more deeply? How can I connect with them on different levels? What do they need? And coming up with ideas that I can then write content for. And again, I write my own content, and I do not use AI generated. I write my own content for my emails so that I can get this in front of my ideal client over and over and over again. So that is a lot like segmenting is big. And then the other way that I segment is by getting people to take action or self select.

Jennie Wright [00:06:26]:
I call it self selection. And so this is basically up like, upping your lead magnet game and providing different lead magnets at different stages. So your top of funnel, your tofu, I’m gonna use a couple sort of words that I use in my CMO stuff. So top of funnel, middle of funnel, and bottom of funnel. So tofu, mofu, and bofu. I know it sounds hilarious. But in the tofu stage of your of your business, this is people who are just coming into your business, who’ve never seen you before. What does that top of funnel look like? Where are you sending that traffic? Some people just send it generally to a link, like, to their website, or their landing page or even a blog.

Jennie Wright [00:07:06]:
That’s really, really basic. And although very, very useful, it’s not going to create enough self selection. So although I am I’m totally for having ads or even organic traffic to this top of funnel, I like to AB test it with a little bit more advanced techniques, such as instead of, you know, having that top of funnel top of funnel being your, like, main website, having it go to a very specific lead magnet that solves a very specific problem and have people self select. And I will have more than one lead magnet that I might be testing at any given time that helps people additionally self select. And when I say self select, I mean, they are basically saying, I have this problem, and I need a solution. And my problems are not or the lead magnets that I create, I should say, are not general. They’re incredibly Jennie and super specific. So it’s not like a, how to a, b, c, 123, you know, guide.

Jennie Wright [00:08:04]:
It’s how to achieve x, like, one specific thing with The technique. And that self selection tells me that person has that problem. And they want that solution. It’s not basic email marketing, it’s subject lines. And that’s the depth that I kind of wanna get you to go into. Because it’s actually gonna help people or help you actually identify where people are in their, journey, where they are with any issues that they’re having, and what solutions The actually need. So that’s really upping that lead magnet game, which I love. And then as part of additional segmentation, I really want you to look at the power of collaboration.

Jennie Wright [00:08:45]:
So in going for a, like, a higher level segmentation, your ideal client is on other people’s lists. We know this. You can get incredibly dialed in and niched in on where your ideal client is. Whose list is it on? Whose audience are they list like, who are they listening to? Who is your audience listening to? And you can actually look at where those people are, create opportunities or even content that closely, mimics the problems or the issues that those people are having and have them, see you as the potential solution. And you can do that not through and I hate competition. I believe in collaboration. So I’m not suggesting that you go and poach. I’m suggesting that you work collaboratively.

Jennie Wright [00:09:31]:
So there’s a ton of people who do email marketing. There’s a ton of people who do what I do even, but nobody does it exactly like The, and nobody does it exactly like you. So you have your own way of doing things, your own solution to things. And so even though there’s somebody in your field that you could connect with, the solution that they have for their people is different from your solution. Therefore, you could collaborate, and you could provide one thing to that person’s email list that has something that they need that the other person doesn’t offer. You can figure that out and then offer it. So for example, if you’re gonna collaborate with somebody that has, you know, that talks about sales. And they talk about sales through sales calls, and you talk about sales through automation and website stuff, like website forms and so on and so forth or a book a call funnel, then you could collaborate with that person and offer trainings back and forth, to your list, to their list, and you could create some self selection there on what problems that people have because not everybody wants to do organic sales calls.

Jennie Wright [00:10:37]:
Some people wanna do automated things or automated form fills. So you could create collaboration, and I love that. And then also with these advanced email marketing techniques, I want you to look at mastering conversion. And landing pages are the real MVPs here, they are absolutely 1000% The things that are gonna make the difference in your conversions. And what I do, my advanced technique here is AB testing. And I will always, always, always create an AB test of my landing pages to optimize them. And the rule of thumb with this is don’t change like, if you if you have an opt in page that you really wanna improve the optimization for The or the conversion rate for, don’t change everything all at once. Don’t change your headline and everything on the page and add pictures and do all this kind of stuff.

Jennie Wright [00:11:27]:
You do it slowly. And I know it’s aggravating. But if you change everything and something like your your opt in rate or your conversion rate suddenly changes, you’re not gonna know exactly what worked. So AB testing is essential. I will usually do The short form page, The longer form page, and see how they hit. How do they land with people? What is the traffic doing when they get on these pages? It’s better if you can even see heat maps on these pages. I love technology that shows me all that kind of stuff. So see if you can do that for yourself.

Jennie Wright [00:11:58]:
And look at what people are looking at. Look how long they’re landing on the page for before they either leave the page or convert on the page. If it’s on the page and they’re gone in 3 seconds, you have a high bounce rate. If they’re on the page and they’re sticking around for 39 seconds or 40 seconds, they’re reading the material or watching the video or whatever’s on that page. And that’s really important data, And I love that. So really get into the nitty gritty of AB testing to really improve how your email marketing is affecting people. What are they watching? Where are they landing on? How are they interacting with your landing pages? And then optimize so that when you do some of those email marketing messages out, you send those emails out, people are gonna get the best potential offer in front of them, whatever it is, lead magnet sales page, and make those conversions happen. And then also personalization.

Jennie Wright [00:12:51]:
I cannot believe how many people do not personalize their emails, like, let’s talk about advanced personalization techniques and emails. It’s more than just adding that first name. So how I do it is I will insert that person’s name deeper in the email as well. And usually in the form of a question, like, what do you think first name? Or is that how you do it? Or, you know, just asking questions in an email. I like doing that. And then also in terms of personalization, I’ve gone so far as to actually for the people who open some of my sales emails and will interact, I have a, sales video email that I send out. And it’s actually quite personalized, because it I mean, it looks very personalized. And I also make sure that the Jason, like, hey.

Jennie Wright [00:13:44]:
I saw that you opened The, you know, the email or you interacted with this email. I wanna make sure that you got all the information you need and so on. And so I actually create these videos, and I have in the The, and it depends on how much you wanna do this. But I have in the past actually created The off videos, for people who’ve actually had sales calls with me. And I send them that email like, hey, Josephine. It was so amazing to talk to you today. I’m super excited about your trip to blah blah blah. But before you go, I wanted to make sure I got this in front of you so that we can ensure you have the right plan in place for your, you know, marketing, blah, blah, blah.

Jennie Wright [00:14:23]:
So that’s something that I think people need to look at is adding more personalization. And because, gosh, we’ve really removed a lot of personalization with AI. And we’re going the wrong way, in my opinion. And I really wanna bring and swing people back to having more personalization in their email marketing. And just generally in their marketing, like, just generally in their marketing. And, I mean, Google is throttling AI generated content. And if you don’t already know that, I’m sure you do. But if you didn’t already know that you Wright, you need to get into your blogs, and anywhere that you’re putting AI content, and you really need to switch that up because The are throttling that stuff.

Jennie Wright [00:15:05]:
AI generated emails. I mean, there are ways to know this now, if it’s, you know, if it’s AI generated, there’s websites that you can actually copy paste content in, and the website will tell you whether or not it’s AI generated. And it’ll tell you to what percentage. It’ll even highlight the text in your copy that is AI Jennie. So they know. And there’s just no way of getting around it. We need to add more personalization. We need to get away from generic, and we need to get really, really specific.

Jennie Wright [00:15:33]:
And then I really wanna make sure that we have, email campaigns that actually get opened. And what I was talking about before was along the lines of behavior triggered emails. They’re kinda magical. They’re really fun. And, you know, if you if you haven’t already got those set up, they’re not hard. Definitely wanna recommend that you do. If you’re using an email marketing provider that doesn’t allow you to create those behavior triggered emails, like, if opened, send The. If did on did not open, follow-up.

Jennie Wright [00:16:04]:
If booked call but did not show, send, you know, email if, if you have the ability to send text messages before sales calls, love doing that. You know, the day before, you know, or somebody who clicked on your booking link but did not book the call, that could mean that The, again, that they did not find a time in your in your calendar that stuff does. And some of my automations are huge. And they’ve grown over the years. They didn’t start off that way, but they have grown over the years to include all these different behavior trigger triggered emails that make a difference. And it keeps people, like I said before, in that sort of sphere of influence that you’re creating. So that is I mean, that is a high level advanced technique, but super, super good. And then one of the other things I really work on, and I do this with my clients is keeping your email list lean and clean.

Jennie Wright [00:17:05]:
So list maintenance is important. You know, I remember back when we actually paid for unsubscribes, and The was really painful. Now we don’t pay for people who’ve unsubscribed as you know, anymore. But a lot of people have switched to, email marketing providers that give you an amount of emails that you can send per month. So you can send a 100,000 emails per month or whatever that is. Like, you can buy that kind of stuff with within your email marketing provider. Now I I use active campaign. I don’t have that problem.

Jennie Wright [00:17:36]:
But one of my clients uses Brevo, and Brevo is like, when you send, you know, when you send an email, you have this allotment of emails that you can send. So if you send 2 emails a week, and you have, you know, 5,000 people on your email list, that means you’re sending 10,000 emails. And so if you’re doing that, you know, 4 weeks out of the month, that’s 40,000 email addresses that you’re sending it to. Now, if you have email addresses that are not active, that’s gonna that’s gonna be a bummer. So how do you either mark those people as inactive, get them off your list, or stop paying for them? So I look at it as an engagement campaign. Some people are really, really, I don’t know, I’d call it like hard line on this, where if you haven’t interacted with an email of theirs for, like, 3 months, we’ll kick you off their list. I’ve had clients like that. But I believe, and I’ve seen this in practice, that you shouldn’t do that.

Jennie Wright [00:18:35]:
Well, I just don’t think you should do it because I’ve had people stay on my email list for 6 months, 9 months, and then all of a sudden become a client. So they’re watching and they’re listening. They’re just not ready. So I recommend engagement sequences. So there’s an automation setup in my in my, active campaign. And when somebody goes quiet and stops opening emails, it puts them into an automation that just says, hey. Just wanna make sure you’re getting the content that you want to get out of this. So and it has, like, 2 questions.

Jennie Wright [00:19:05]:
Do you wanna receive emails about this? Do you wanna receive emails about that? And if you don’t, go ahead and unsubscribe. So I’m trying to get people to, again, self select and create more behavior triggered email magic. So that is a really great way to make sure that your list is lean and clean. And always making sure that the people that you’re sending it to are engaged, you really want those open Wright, and those click through rates to be high. And your open rate is one thing that is definitely affected by having people on your email list that just don’t want to be there, or bounced emails. So creating that self selection, I think is super important. I love doing that. So look at creating additional automations that create that behavior triggered magic that we were talking about.

Jennie Wright [00:19:48]:
And that will help keep your list lean and clean as well. And you decide, 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, 2 years, how long before you kick people off your list? Or, I mean, not at all. And so when we’re looking at creating these, advanced email marketing techniques, these are just a couple things that I employ right away when I start working with somebody, but I’ve also I also use them myself to help make sure that people stay within my sphere of influence, opening my emails, clicking through my emails, or responding to my emails, responding to my clients’ emails, and just really taking our email marketing to a new level. So again, let’s just kind of wrap up on what we covered. I think there’s some real gold in here. You know, we talked about behavior triggered email magic and and lean and clean lists. We talked about landing pages. We talked about personalization, collaboration, our lead magnets, getting those really, really good, AB testing, segmentation, which I think we’ve talked about like the whole time.

Jennie Wright [00:20:48]:
And just really making sure that people go deeper with your email marketing. It’s super, super important. And I’m really, really glad that you’re here. I hope that you can take some of these techniques and put them into play. I’m pretty sure this is gonna have some sort of effect on your email marketing. And let me know how that went. Let me know what you think, and and definitely reach out and let me know if you have any questions. And I just wanna say thank you so much for listening to The Acquire podcast.

Jennie Wright [00:21:14]:
As always, it is produced and edited by Jason Wheeler. And if you found today’s episode to be valuable, please don’t forget to hit subscribe, rate and leave me a review. I’d love to know what you think. And again, thanks so much for being part of my community. And if you haven’t already, consider following me on Instagram or anywhere on social media, all the links are in the show notes. And as always, the Acquire Podcast is brought to you by the Audphonic Podcast Network. Thanks so much for listening.