Scale Up Strategies: The Business Podcast for Coaches, Consultants, and Speakers
We're your hosts and Business Coaching experts Mary Fain Brandt and Laura Bashore
We’re sharing all our mistakes and insider tips from our 20+ years in business and
how we successfully scaled up our businesses without losing our minds or our husbands.
Sure you can piece it together and try to DIY your way to success
OR
you can listen to us every week and learn the shortcuts because we promise there
are some.
Scale Up Strategies: The Business Podcast for Coaches, Consultants, and Speakers
Email Marketing Decoded: Boost Engagement and Maximize ROI with Special Guest Eddie Garrison
Can email marketing still be your secret weapon for business growth? You bet it can! In this episode, we're thrilled to sit down with Eddie Garrison, an award-winning marketing strategist, to dispel the myth that email marketing is outdated.
Eddie shares eye-opening statistics about the billions of emails circulating daily and how often people check their inboxes, making it clear that email remains a powerful tool for engagement.
We also walk down memory lane with Eddie, recalling our collaborative history and the vibrant, creative atmosphere at Podfest. From funny anecdotes to poignant insights, we underscore how crucial networking and personal connections are for business success.
Get ready to master email marketing ROI like never before! We unpack strategies that will elevate your email game, focusing on the art of crafting compelling calls to action (CTAs) that sell solutions, not just products. We dive into why consistent CTAs are crucial and why click-through rates are more meaningful than open rates.
Looking to manage and grow your email list intelligently? We've got you covered. We discuss the importance of monitoring open rates and purging inactive subscribers to sustain high engagement. We compare several top email service providers, breaking down their features and pricing.
This episode has so many great tips, you'll want to listen twice and implement them immediately!
Connect with Eddie
https://www.linkedin.com/in/eddiegarrison/
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You're listening to Scale Up Strategies, the business growth podcast for coaches, consultants and speakers. We're your hosts and business coach experts Mary Fain Brandt and Laura Bas hore.
Laura Bashore:We're sharing all our insider tips from 20 plus years in business, including how we successfully scaled our businesses without losing our minds or our husbands.
Mary Fain Brandt:Sure, you can piece it together and try to DIY your way to success. Or you can listen to us every week and learn the shortcuts, because we promise they're really awesome.
Laura Bashore:So grab your favorite cup of coffee, tune in and let's start the show. Tune in and let's start the show.
Mary Fain Brandt:Welcome back to Scale Up Strategies, the business growth podcast for coaches, consultants and speakers. I'm Mary Fain Brandt.
Laura Bashore:And I'm Laura Bashore, and today we have a special guest with us, Eddie Garrison, joining us to talk all about email marketing.
Eddie Garrison:Yes, thank you so much, mary, thank you so much, laura, for having me.
Mary Fain Brandt:We're super excited to have you here and, eddie, we just want everyone to know that you're the director of marketing and you're an award winning marketing strategist and coach who helps drive the nation's brands forward. We're so lucky to have you because Laura and I talk a lot about email marketing. Right, I'm going to start this. I'm just going to say everyone, people come to me all the time and they're like, oh, email marketing's dead.
Eddie Garrison:I hear it every day. It's right up there with Facebook is dead. But yes, email marketing is alive and well and, truth be told, right before this, as any pro would do, I was doing a little research on email marketing. Not that I don't know quite a bit about it Let me pat myself on the back there for that one but it said that there is 4.2 billion emails sent every single day. What that is a lot of emails, so if you think email marketing is dead.
Eddie Garrison:Of those 4.2 billion emails, 35% of the people that receive them check their email between three and five times a day. So you know if they're just working Monday through Friday, if they check it three times, they're checking their email 15 times a week. So if you're not in their inbox they don't care and know anything about you.
Mary Fain Brandt:Right, they don't care and know anything about you, right? Well, hey, before we dive into the magic of email, we'd like to tell our guests a little bit, our viewers a little bit about our guests and how you know. We didn't randomly find you on the street or did we ask you. Well, kind of Um. So right before the show, you guys, I was telling Eddie oh, I'm going to share a fun fact, but I'm like I'm not going to share it right now. I wanted to share it live. So, eddie, I was going back through my emails and I did a search right in my email, because I wanted to find that last email and send you the reminder about the show. I found an email between me and you from 2021.
Eddie Garrison:Nice.
Mary Fain Brandt:When we were going to get on a zoom call and talk about our sure microphones yes, about your sure microphone. I I actually don't use your microphones, I'm sorry but you were working somewhere else or I don't know if it was affiliated with ecam or something.
Eddie Garrison:It was funny, I was cracking up you know back then it might have been uh, what was the other one? There's another live stream platform that was no before stream yard before stream yard.
Mary Fain Brandt:Oh oh yeah, so it was one of those platforms and we must have been in a group together and you're like, oh, I'll get on the phone be live, be live that's what it was.
Laura Bashore:I don't even know what he live is.
Eddie Garrison:I've never heard it's just another live streaming platform. That was kind of before stream yard, but yeah it was before the, the real ones came along yes, yeah, but but eddie okay because when?
Mary Fain Brandt:because when I, when we, laura and I, uh saw you and kind of really got to know you at pod fest in january, because it was funny too. You know, we, we have some stories to share but I was like I know, I know you from social media marketing world and I know that I, I I've I was like I know that we've had some conversations. So when I was, you know, searching in my email, I'm like, oh, look at that and I go back to at least 2021, if not before that.
Mary Fain Brandt:Yeah, Probably before probably before social media marketing world. And then we were fortunate to our audience. We were fortunate enough to hang out with Eddie at Podfest and really get to know him and the hub, as he calls it, which I love, a good hub. I didn't know I liked a co-working hub so much, eddie. I really liked the hub at Podfest and if any Podfest listeners are, listening.
Eddie Garrison:Do you know what it is? It's just creativity and energy breeds creativity and energy. So, instead of being stuck in the breakout sessions which I adore don't get me wrong, there's a lot of benefit to being in there. But I find it, when you find other like-minded people at these events in a central hub the Lobby Bar it becomes a little bit more in depth and personal and we can actually work one-on-one or within a group and, like I said, that creative energy just breeds other creative energy.
Laura Bashore:Yeah, well, here we are now right, exactly yeah. So we survived that meeting and now we're back doing an episode together debit card didn't, but that's another story.
Mary Fain Brandt:But we had a lot of fun at podfest I have a lot of people. And laura, how's your knee?
Laura Bashore:my knee is fine and we need to keep this pc, like that could be in a really awkward direction. Yeah, so we could keep the pc.
Eddie Garrison:So, basically, laura tested the theory of gravity while we were talking. Yes, I did.
Mary Fain Brandt:When we were walking to dinner.
Eddie Garrison:Yes.
Laura Bashore:It's all good, what is it? I'm not afraid to fail right and I failed for a quick minute, and that's okay, because I got right back up. We were good.
Eddie Garrison:You did, you did and we continued to dinner.
Mary Fain Brandt:We did. We made it to dinner. It was amazing. A flamenco show.
Eddie Garrison:Which is funny, because that restaurant now is something completely different.
Mary Fain Brandt:Are you kidding? Makes sense with the location.
Eddie Garrison:The churn rate in Orlando and the tourist district is ungodly.
Laura Bashore:Oh wow, I would imagine. So I mean that central location where we were at. It looks like oh yeah, how long have these pieces been here.
Laura Bashore:Yeah, all right. Okay, well, let's then get back onto topic here. So we're brought you on to talk about email marketing and you know I'm not as great at this piece of my business as I would like to be. So I'm really excited to have you here to share some pieces, because it's like when I use it it works, and then I don't use it, and so, yeah, I would assume consistency is a piece of it.
Eddie Garrison:Consistency is the biggest piece of it, and if you think you're emailing your email list too much, you're actually not emailing them not enough. Most of the guys that I look up to in the email marketing world like Chase Diamond is one of them, jeff Felton is another one they're emailing their email list two or three times a day.
Mary Fain Brandt:So they're sending 15 emails a week to their email list. And I have a friend. I don't know if you know Amanda Webb. I get her emails daily and I'm like web. Yes, we know, we're okay.
Eddie Garrison:I get her emails daily and I'm like I don't read them all but she is top of mind.
Mary Fain Brandt:Exactly so, and I'm better at consistency. We're doing like three a week, but obviously now I need to do more, but three a week is consistent.
Eddie Garrison:Yes and especially if the emails are bringing value to the list. If you're just emailing to saying, oh, I email them three times a week, it's kind of pointless if you're not giving them some kind of structure email. You know, and I believe every email needs to follow a certain formula and it doesn't really need and this is more of a sales email formula tactic than it is just an everyday kind of email. But we can get into that a little bit later. Um, but I laid out an eight point kind of ultimate sales email formula that everybody I think should follow and it's just basically like this is number one is start with the problem. Everybody's got a problem. You're trying to sell something. That means that your email readers have that problem. Number two is you want to ramp up that problem, so you want to state it. Then you want to make sure that they know that they have that problem. And then you always want to share a testimonial or a success story, because anybody can sit there on the top of the mountain and say that they're the best and they're number one. But it means more if Laura was a customer testimonial in my email, because I'm always going to say I'm the best right, because I work in marketing, I have to have an ego. But if Laura says I'm the best, they take that more than Eddie saying that Eddie is the best. The next step is going to be number four and that's going to be positioning your offer.
Eddie Garrison:And then, right after that, you want to include a direct call to action, and I actually kind of flip-flop these a little bit when I'm A-B testing. Sometimes, right below the testimonial, I like to put the call to action because it's saying that somebody else believes in me Okay, how do I work with this person? Because it's saying that somebody else believes in me Okay, how do I work with this person? Right? So I like to flip-flop that every once in a while. And then you want to show them what the success actually looks like.
Eddie Garrison:You've already told them they had the problem. You've ramped up the problem. You've shown that somebody else had success. So what does that success look like? And then you want to include another call to action right after that. And then and you, if you want to include a PS section, which I highly recommend, a PS, a PS section can be something like you know, don't miss out on this offer. It's going to be at the end of the month you get 20% off, or however you're going to phrase that. Now, obviously you can kind of fudge that a little bit just to kind of make some false FOMO, uh. But a PS section is always good to kind of sign off and leave them wanting a little bit more.
Mary Fain Brandt:I have some. That was I'm going to go back and listen to this episode. I know I am and like take notes or have. Fathom transcribe it, AI transcribe it. So I have a. I have a couple questions because I've been told different answers. Okay, so when it cause, I believe every email should have a call to action.
Laura Bashore:Absolutely Okay.
Mary Fain Brandt:So I and I had a business coach and she said you only get one call to action and then I see other people they have. Here's how you can work with me and we'll have three call to actions. So I like does it matter, Should you only have one? So I do LinkedIn, optimization and AI. There's two things I do. I have AI emails that only talk about AI and the problems and the solutions.
Mary Fain Brandt:I have LinkedIn emails, but I'd really like to get your insights, Eddie, on how many call to actions can you have? Do you say listen to our podcast, grab a consultation call, grab my AI special?
Eddie Garrison:So there is a lot of schools of thought on this. I don't think one is enough because, especially, it depends on the length of your email. You know, because most people are looking at their emails on their phones. So I mean if you put a call to action, like, say, in the upper third of your email, but it's got four more thirds by the time they're done to your email, they don't have another call to action, they're not going to scroll back up.
Eddie Garrison:So, there should be at least two. There should be one right below your success story or your customer testimonial, and then there should be one at the very bottom, and if it's a longer email, there should be three. There should be one at the very, very bottom, right before your foot or where all your social links are. I think there should be one there. And when you're looking at call to action buttons, this is just sociology and psychology 101 right here. So you don't want to make the buttons square, you want to make them with rounded corners or like an elongated, what they would call a pill. So because when people look at a square button, they look like they're confined into that and it looks like you're talking at them instead of offering something. So if you use a button with rounded edges or that pill button, you're actually going to see your CTA increase.
Eddie Garrison:Now, it may not be much, but a little bit more click-through rate is always good. Now, I don't like the stuff that just says work with me or schedule a call. I like the stuff that just says work with me or schedule a call. I like the ones that give them like an adjective, like in an explanation, like a schedule call now, work with me today, you know, lead them onto a path that says, oh my God, this deal is so good that I have to click this button, because they're saying, now and today, it's just so, it's just psychology, that's golden.
Mary Fain Brandt:That that I like that Cause we do need to get into the psychology of selling in our emails. Yes the email isn't just to write and, like you said, just Send an email. To send an email. That's like when I talk about content on linkedin, I'm like don't post, just to post, right, and and a lot of other things that you can look at on your cta button is Don't sell the product, sell the solution with your cta.
Eddie Garrison:So it lets just say that you're selling a weight loss project. Don't say get weight loss project now Say, lose 15 pounds in a week. That's a better CTA than buy my weight loss product.
Laura Bashore:Well, and then I sorry, go ahead, eddie.
Eddie Garrison:No, I was just going to say try to sell the outcome, try to sell the solution, not the actual product. And I know that's hard for a lot of people to get their head wrapped around. But once you start to see it more and use it more, you'll actually see the best performing emails and even the best performing ads on television. They're selling the solution, not the product.
Laura Bashore:Yeah, absolutely, because you're showing them how they can get their instant gratification, which is the transformation.
Mary Fain Brandt:So I'm like are you ready to go from boring?
Eddie Garrison:to badass I'm not like.
Mary Fain Brandt:Are you ready to have your profile optimized?
Eddie Garrison:Right, Exactly, Because those are just idiotic marketing. You know keywords and nomenclature that everybody's used since the beginning of time.
Laura Bashore:But then I have a question too on the call to action. So we're saying we're going to put in multiple calls to action I think, at least in my opinion. So I'm glad we have you on here to give me the right answer about it, which is maybe also it's that your call to action should be the same call to action but phrased a little differently, instead of like here's, three different things. Like keep it simple.
Eddie Garrison:If they're continuing to read, they want the same thing, right? I am a huge proponent in that, because I look at an email almost as I look at a landing page or a website. So all your calls to action on my website are the exact same thing. They're like work with me today, work with me today, work with me today, whatever it's going to be, whatever your CTA is going to be, that needs to be all over your website. It needs to be the same in an email. And I say that.
Eddie Garrison:And the reason that I say that is because when you're dealing with multiple CTAs in email two or three I've actually worked with clients that the third call to action button and I have them set up that way so I can see where the click-through rates are coming from the second and the third call to action buttons are the ones that are driving the click-through rate higher than the very first one.
Eddie Garrison:So I would equate that to if there was only one and they kind of glance over it, they may not click through it and that's just going to bring your, your click-through rates down. And I really don't give a damn about open rates, because the way that Google and Yahoo and everything work. If somebody has their out of office on when it. When you get that out of office reply, it counts that as an open. So that's not really telling me. Yes, that's not really telling me anything. I want click through rates because that's where I'm pushing them to and that's where you're going to look for the sale or get the call booked or whatever your call to action is.
Mary Fain Brandt:So click through rates over open rates, right? So just to clarify for our listeners when we're talking about the call to action, the button, you're saying to have one clear call to action but have it in the email multiple times. So what I was saying was some people have multiple call to actions, like at the bottom here are ways you can work with me book a one-on-one, join my course, listen to my podcast. So you're saying don't have multiple call to actions. That are different things.
Eddie Garrison:When it comes to like an actual button CTA, yes, I don't like having multiple ones, but you can utilize the PS section at the bottom to say this is how I can help you and it could just be like a quick three-point bullet list and all those can have URL links and that's fine and that's really a call to action as well. But it's more of a passive call to action, not what we would consider like a regular call to action.
Laura Bashore:Okay, right. Because, again street all together. Like that is confusing to your mind. Like now, you were all in and going for it and then all of a sudden you're like Whoa, now I have three options and I have to stop and think, and that's what it confuses them from clicking Correct and when I started.
Mary Fain Brandt:I want people to have options. I'm your options, girl. Like I don't want to box you in, like here's an option to work with me here and I like to give people choices. So I'm like no, I want to list all the different ways, but my business coach was like no, mary, you can't do that because you confuse people and then they choose nothing.
Laura Bashore:That's right, and I was like yeah exactly.
Eddie Garrison:Just get them to your website, and then that's where the options come into play.
Mary Fain Brandt:Gotcha yeah. So I have a stat I want to share and get your input on it. So, according to HubSpot, email marketing generates $42 for every dollar spent, which is a 4,200% ROI. That is a huge ROI, would you say that that's about accurate Eddie.
Eddie Garrison:You know, I see that stat all the time and I'm wondering where do they get this from?
Mary Fain Brandt:I've heard this stat in the past, but I do believe that the money that you spend on email marketing, the ROI, is very high. Oh yeah, without a doubt, without a doubt.
Eddie Garrison:I mean, if you look at just globally, in most niches or industries or however you want to, you know nomenclature that, especially if we look in the digital media world and the social media world, the average reach and engagement rate on, say, something like Facebook, is very low, right, the average engagement rate is like under 2%, where the average open rate and the average click-through rate is going to be north of 10%. You know, I mean some people like I have clients that we have over a 70% open rate and a 50% click-through rate is going to be north of 10%. I have clients that we have over a 70% open rate and a 50% click-through rate.
Mary Fain Brandt:These are big numbers that are generating millions of dollars, right? So what would you say for the average business owner, the small business owner? Like, an average open rate is 10%. Like, if you're hitting 10%, you're doing something, right?
Eddie Garrison:No, you're doing something wrong.
Mary Fain Brandt:What should it be at?
Eddie Garrison:Your open rate needs to be closer to somewhere between average between 25 and 30. And your click-through rate needs to be somewhere around three to five.
Mary Fain Brandt:Okay. That's kind of Good numbers. That's a benchmark, yeah, yeah, okay, good to know I've got work to do, but it's okay.
Eddie Garrison:Here's another thing that people don't think about and it actually it's twofold. You always need to look at your open rate and you need to go back and look and see who isn't opening your emails and say, go back over the last two months of your emails and if you see somebody that's only opened one or none, get them off your list. Because one thing, you're paying extra for that big list if you use MailChimp or Beehive, so once you get to a certain you're paying for the size of your list. So I don't care if you have a 50,000 person email list, that doesn't impress me. If you have a 50% open rate, that impresses the hell out of me. So you know, go through and look at your list. If they're not opening it in the past two months, get them off your list, because then you'll actually see your stats come up. And yes, it's not always about the numbers, but if you're paying more for people that aren't getting your emails, why are you paying that money when they're not seeing it?
Mary Fain Brandt:We do a purge of my email list twice a year. We send out an email like hey, you haven't. You know that like a series of three. Hey, you haven't you know that like a series of three. So we purge twice a year my email list because I was getting it was super high, because I was on like a summit and there were, like I think I got like 1500 people signed up just to get my freebie.
Eddie Garrison:Oh yeah, I love doing that.
Mary Fain Brandt:Yeah, but then it's like that's all they want, Like maybe a couple of them stay, but it's just like so. I learned to purge my list and I do it just twice a year, and that's enough for a business my size that's and I'm in cartra. So because I've used, you know and I know we're going to get to tools. But since you kind of brought it up, there are so many different email providers. I started with constant contact right I moved to active campaign.
Mary Fain Brandt:I tried MailChimp. I couldn't. Back then I tried MailChimp for about a month and I just it didn't work for me. And then I went to Kartra because I was going to do courses, right, so I could do everything. So what are and I don't want to box you into one, but what that's hard, right depending on the because mary likes options.
Laura Bashore:You have options.
Mary Fain Brandt:Right, I gotta have an option yes, I'm options girl, so, um, what are two to three email providers that you've worked with that you are feel are good for the small business owner?
Eddie Garrison:not your fortune 500 in order mailchimp beehive and constant contact MailChimp.
Mary Fain Brandt:Beehive and Constant Contact. Beehive, now Beehive's newer, isn't it Newer?
Eddie Garrison:Yes, yes, fairly new, yeah, I would say, at least they're. I think they're only about two years old.
Mary Fain Brandt:Yeah.
Laura Bashore:Okay.
Mary Fain Brandt:Okay.
Laura Bashore:But, they are. What are they doing?
Eddie Garrison:It's. You know what? It's. Not that they're doing anything different per se, because it's just like social media management and scheduling tools. They all pretty much do the exact same thing. It's just layout and integrations that you can use into other platforms and what works best for your situation and your company. I use Agora Pulse, I used to use Hootsuite. There's Loomly, there's Schedule, there's Socialio. I mean they all do the same thing. It's just pricing. You know how many you can do for this amount, what you can do here. Is there a listing? What's the reporting? There's not one that I can say. That is the absolute best, even though I use Agorapulse. Thank you very much, but like.
Eddie Garrison:I use MailChimp. That's what I use because I've been using it for like 10 years, so I'm just very comfortable in that environment.
Mary Fain Brandt:Right and MailChimp is affordable.
Eddie Garrison:And it is affordable. Yeah, I mean. Well, them and Beehive both have a free version that I think you can have almost 2,000 contacts before they'll even charge you anything. Now I will say this on those tools If you use their free ones, you can't actually schedule in advance.
Eddie Garrison:So, we're all about automation, automation. So if you're going to use any of these tools to be automated, you're going to have to pay for it. But I mean, they're like 20 bucks a month and if you can't afford 20 bucks a month, you probably not should be in business.
Mary Fain Brandt:So I agree. Yeah, and that's true you know you have to figure out where to put it.
Eddie Garrison:$ like $2,400 a year. What is it? 20 times 240.
Mary Fain Brandt:It is super expensive and I think I'm going to be leaving it. But that's a big project because it's so expensive. But, I have my landing pages in there.
Eddie Garrison:I just build my own landing pages on Squarespace.
Mary Fain Brandt:Well, I'm on Squarespace.
Eddie Garrison:I love Squarespace.
Mary Fain Brandt:I do too. I see I love Squarespace too. Okay, so Beehive and MailChimp are two really great email platforms for you to use, but do pay for them so you can do the automation, because, you know, laura and I are certified AI strategists If you're not automating your business, then you shouldn't be in business.
Mary Fain Brandt:At this In 2024, you should be automating as much and using AI, but that's a whole different conversation. So, you know, should we talk about and I don't do a great job at this and I want to this year targeting and creating the different lists. So can you talk to our listeners about building those targeted and engaged email lists?
Eddie Garrison:Yes. So what Mary is going to be referring to here is what's called email list segmentation. So you're going to have in your email marketing whichever platform that you use MailChimp, whatever it's going to be you're going to have your email list and that's going to be everybody that signs up for all your freemiums, all of your courses, wherever you're collecting their data, they're all going to be on that list. Now, when people are going there and you're going to see people that purchase things from you, you're going to be able to segment them out, and then you need to have another series of emails that walks them through up sales. That needs to walk them through. Have you gotten through this workbook yet?
Eddie Garrison:So all of these individual lists are going to be what's called segmentation list, and that could be somebody that has purchased something from you. That could be somebody that didn't purchase something from you. You actually saw them put something in their cart or clicked on add to cart or buy now, but they didn't go through that entire process. They're then going to go into another segmented list to go, hey, you did you forget about me? And link them back to their shopping cart. Or hey, we noticed that you put this in your cart but you didn't buy. Did you know we also offer this, this, this? Or you can say, hey, was it a price thing? Tell you what. If you order within the next 24 hours, we'll give you 15% off.
Eddie Garrison:So these are just going to be segmentations of lists, which are very important because the more segmented that you get your list down to, you're going to actually see that's where you're going to earn the bulk of your money with email marketing is these lower, not lower level lists, but tighter lists. So let's say that you have an email list of 10,000 people and you have segmented lists that go like 5,000, 2,000, 1,000, all the way down to a hundred. I would almost bet you dinner in Orlando that that a hundred person segmented email list is going to be driving more revenue than the 10,000 that you have on your big list. That impresses people. It's a big number.
Laura Bashore:Yeah, right.
Eddie Garrison:That makes sense.
Laura Bashore:I mean, like I said, I'm not great with email marketing, but I'm really good in using the strategies that you're talking about through my LinkedIn and my LinkedIn contacts. So now you're helping me make more sense of this, where I'm like oh, this now makes sense to me because I'm always thinking about well, what's my ROI? Like what? And even more so, what can I control? Like I need to see how these results are happening and see where. I can get more bang for less, so this is great.
Laura Bashore:This is very helpful for me and showing me why I need to do this.
Eddie Garrison:And another reason that I love email marketing so much is it comes, in the fashion of analytics and data, to where social media. Don't get me wrong, everybody loves social media. I love social media. That's where we make all of our money Well, not all of our money but that's where we tell everybody what we're doing and how we're doing it. But email marketing data and the analytics that are produced by that are. So to the second, and so, too, it just tells you exactly what everybody is doing.
Eddie Garrison:It'll say that Laura opened my email at 9. 17 and 30 seconds on monday morning. She clicked on this button, you know. Two minutes later she went to this website. She came back to my email at one o'clock, so I can actually see the natural progression of her day and that's going to give me more intel to when I need to be sending her different types of emails. So if I see that, you know you open my email at 9 30 and you clicked on this and you went to this website and I can see that direct path, and then you came back to my email at 1 to click on that button again. Then I can segment it down to you go. Okay, she's very interested in this product or service. Now she needs to be in this email chain that says this is what we do, this is how we do it, this is who likes it. Here's how to buy it. So the data and insights that you get from email marketing are invaluable to your business.
Mary Fain Brandt:I love it. Data data, data.
Eddie Garrison:It's all about the data.
Mary Fain Brandt:So I want to ask another question. So this is really valuable information. I hope everyone is taking notes or going to listen to this episode. A few times we talked about the platforms, we talked about the platforms, we talked about open rates, talked about segmenting all important stuff. So let's talk about, eddie, how you grow your email list.
Eddie Garrison:I know how I grow mine.
Mary Fain Brandt:Right Speaking, like literally speaking, is how I grow my email list. But, what are some of your go-to how to grow? Is it lead magnets, signup forms, social media.
Eddie Garrison:Tell us a little bit about your strategies for that. I love lead generations Anything that you can give away for free. People love free stuff and I'm a firm believer. There is only two ways to sell in the entire world. There are only two ways to sell, and that is to give away the product and sell the implementation, or sell the product and give the implementation away. So I look at it like that's what lead gen is is you're giving your insides away for free to lead them down a path to buy the product that you're talking about. And people love checklists, people love workbooks, people love hack lists Anything that says okay, I work with a lot of hospitality brands, so I will have a.
Eddie Garrison:These are the 15 things your hotel needs to do on social media, and it's just a two-page thing that probably gets me 10 to 20 emails a day Wow and you need to be just pushing it and pushing it and pushing it on social media.
Eddie Garrison:You need to run Facebook ads on it Now.
Eddie Garrison:You don't have to put a whole bunch of money behind it. I'm a firm believer in Dennis Yu's system, especially when you're testing lead generation and it's the dollar a day strategy, and basically what you want to do is create three different Facebook ads. One of them is going to be be this is my own twist to this. One of them is gonna be a still image, one of them is gonna be a carousel post and one of them is going to Be a 20 second video. You run all of those with your lead with the URL leading back to your landing page for them to download your lead gen, and you Run them for a dollar a day for seven days. At the end of seven days, you see which one produced the best results and then you put the other bit of your ad budget behind that for another 30 days and you will begin to see leads just roll in, emails just roll in because of that strategy. And these do not need to be 50 page eBooks. They don't need to be that Checklist.
Mary Fain Brandt:I like a good checklist.
Eddie Garrison:Yeah, two to five pages of a PDF, and please don't make them in word, make them in Google slides or in PowerPoint, so it fills up the whole damn page. Please just make it look.
Mary Fain Brandt:Who uses word?
Eddie Garrison:Well, I don't, I'm just, I'm just using, I'm throwing that out there, I use Canva to create my PDF.
Mary Fain Brandt:Yeah, and that's fine. I I use Canva to create my PDFs.
Eddie Garrison:Yeah, and that's fine. I just come from the graphic design world, so I always say that I Canva, so I can yes because you need more control than what's there. I do.
Laura Bashore:I just used beautiful AI this morning because I realized I had to put something together and I wasn't ready, and since I know how to prompt oh, my goodness, good enough for what I need it for.
Eddie Garrison:I'll be using it in the next hour and I was this. Share with your friends with this link, and then you can actually start to see if they're referring you to their friends and make it almost like a contest, make it a goal-oriented thing for them. If you refer 10 friends, I'm going to give you 10% off this product. Now you have somebody out there building your email list for free.
Mary Fain Brandt:Right, I love it. I love that strategy. So let's talk about some best practices, ensuring that we're in compliance GDPR spam regulations, Because I know that's a concern for everyone. Am I ending up in your spam folder? So, is that too many GIFs or videos? What are some basic things that'll be like oh, we're going to put you in spam.
Eddie Garrison:It has a lot to do with the size of the email, the load time of the email, how many videos that you put in there, how many GIFs. All this animation really bogs down the internet and it bogs down email servers. They don't like that. One good thing about using products like Beehive, MailChimp, ActiveCampaign is it will tell you if it's going to get hit by this stuff. So I highly recommend using products like that because it's going to keep you out of trouble and you don't want to get in trouble no, no trouble, we don't want trouble um, and make your unsubscribe easy to do.
Eddie Garrison:Don't go to a web page. And why are you unsubscribing? Don't do that because people are going to get pissed off. I get, wait, I get pissed off.
Mary Fain Brandt:When I can't finally unsubscribe, I am currently going through an everyday unsubscribing to like three things a day. But why, eddie, does it take me five times, like it takes forever to get off a list, and some people don't have an unsubscribe button and I just want to, and that's actually against that.
Eddie Garrison:That's actually against the email quote, unquote law. You have to have an unsubscribe button on there. You have to have an opt out on there.
Mary Fain Brandt:Oh yeah, it just drives me batty. And don't add anybody to your email list without their permission.
Eddie Garrison:Exactly Just because you know them, even if you meet them in a networking event, they give you their card. Add me to your list.
Laura Bashore:Is that not the most annoying thing? It's right next to people just handing you like items you know, but all of a sudden I'm like oh yeah, I remember running into that person. Now I'm on their email list, Cool.
Mary Fain Brandt:I'm on some real estate, like I meet a lot of realtors and I'm like I I'm not. I have my own realtor. I'll connect with you on LinkedIn, but don't add me to your real estate list.
Eddie Garrison:I don't know how I got added to one.
Mary Fain Brandt:These people, these women, are relentless at emailing me about wanting me to be a brand ambassador for their woman's lingerie line.
Eddie Garrison:I am not a woman. I get bombarded and I unsubscribe once a week and wouldn't you know it, on Tuesday afternoon I get another damn email from them.
Mary Fain Brandt:Oh my God, that's hilarious, and I've blocked.
Eddie Garrison:I don't know how many times I've blocked their email addresses and I don't know how many email addresses they have, but this has been going on for, I'd say, a solid two years.
Laura Bashore:What oh?
Mary Fain Brandt:my God. Well maybe you should just take them up on it and get a whole bunch of lingerie.
Eddie Garrison:I might. That'll be my freebies at Podfest next year.
Mary Fain Brandt:Oh great, I'll take Aqua, I'll take a turquoise one. So let's talk about some of the emails that every business owner should be sending.
Eddie Garrison:Yes, let's do it.
Mary Fain Brandt:I've got things in my head like the promotional email, the welcome email. So tell us. I mean, I know what I do, but I'd love to hear from you what I should be doing.
Eddie Garrison:I've got kind of just an easy breakdown for things that I do. So number one is always an immediate welcome email, anybody that signs up. It should just be instant. It shouldn't wait 24 hours. It should be right when they hit subscribe or whatever. You're going to do it right. The next email that you need to send is introduce your brand, tell them who you are. Yeah, they may know who you are, but they may not know that you've worked with insert company A here or worked with this ambassador of this brand here. So the first two is obviously an immediate welcome email and the next one is going to be introducing your brand.
Eddie Garrison:Right after those, you want to send a product or a service showcase, right? Just kind of think that this is like your online catalog, like this is what we do. This is how it's going to help you when we go back to that here's the problem Revamp the problem. It's going to be kind of like a sales email at that point. And then on the fourth one or maybe even on your fifth one, depending on how you are in your segmentation list is you want to provide an exclusive offer or a discount, and this doesn't have to be something oh, 50% off. It doesn't have to be that way. It can actually be a perceived discount. So after you do your product or service showcase, when you send them that exclusive offer or discount, say, this is usually $2,000, but now we're running it for 97. Now it doesn't mean that you're actually selling it for 2,000, but give them that perceived discount.
Eddie Garrison:And a lot of people think this is a little shady, but it really isn't. I mean, when you go into a place and it's like when you go to buy a car, it was like, oh, did you know? It's $29,995?. But if you come in on Sunday, sunday, sunday, it's going to be 25,000. That's all they're doing. They're putting a perceived value on it and they're actually still getting the sale price that they want. So it isn't bait and switch, it's not shady business tactics, it's just true life. And then you want to mix in educational content as well, because nobody just wants to be bombarded with buy from me, work with me, buy from me, work with me.
Eddie Garrison:That's the quickest way for somebody to click unsubscribe. So make sure that you're mixing in some educational content. And then you always want to send an email that's actually going to encourage them to do social media engagement on your behalf. So if they were to download your PDF checklist on AI, prompt structure or whatever you're giving them, make sure to say hey, we know that you downloaded this and obviously this is paraphrasing. We know you downloaded this. Tell us what you think. If you enjoyed it, make sure to tag us on social media with this specific hashtag, this specific you know. You can even give them the text to copy and paste.
Eddie Garrison:I've seen that work a million times because it gets the exact message out there that you want to get out there. And then another one is gather feedback. Ask them for their opinion. What did you think of this? How do you think it's going to help your business? How do you think it's going to help you generate whatever? If it's more sales, if it's more leads on their behalf, just straight up, ask them for feedback.
Eddie Garrison:And then you always want to set expectation for future emails, so you want to clearly communicate what type of content they're going to be seeing from you, since they gave you that very beloved email and first and last name and phone number and birth date and blood type and sex and all that good stuff. But no, but you always want to set the expectation for future emails. And in all of this, the more that you can personalize the emails, the better it's going to be perceived. They know they're signing up for an email list. They know that everybody on that list is getting the same one. But if it says, hey, mary, how are you doing today? It's better than hey, guys, what's up?
Mary Fain Brandt:Then now you're just talking to a thousand people.
Eddie Garrison:If you read it and they go and it says hey Mary, good morning, wow, they're talking directly to me. So the more that you can personalize it, the better. And I mean, don't just personalize it in the subject or in the in the copy of the email, do it in the in the subject line of the email, because you can just if you use stuff like beehive and MailChimp and active campaign and constant contact, you can use merge codes and they're just going to automatically pull the data from the list and it's going to put it in there for you. So it's not like you have to go in there and type 10,000 people's names. It's going to do it automatically for you. But even do it in the copy, would this help your business more, Laura? Not just will this help your business more. Question mark, personalize it there as well. So the more that you can personalize it, the more it's going to come off as genuine and that you're talking to them and not the masses.
Mary Fain Brandt:Wow, right, I'm doing a lot of that, but not all of it, so I have some work to do this next month. Thank you, um, eddie, I will have you on speed dial on my phone, just kidding, not kidding I might be flying to Orlando. Are you coming out to Phoenix or San Diego? We'll just have a session.
Eddie Garrison:Well, yeah, whenever. I mean, I used to live in Phoenix.
Mary Fain Brandt:Did you?
Eddie Garrison:I did yeah.
Mary Fain Brandt:I'm in, I'm in sun city. If you know anything about Phoenix, you know I do. I lived.
Eddie Garrison:I was only there for about four months. I was playing hockey there for a team and I lived on, or at almost the very end of old Indian school road.
Mary Fain Brandt:So oh, indian school road goes forever it does but you are. There are a few streets, like bell road goes from the west side to the east side. I was like, wait, it's kind of like Balboa Avenue in San Diego or Claremont that just keeps going.
Eddie Garrison:I just want to hit on this one more thing Make sure that when you are creating your emails and you're looking at the preview, look at every preview. Don't just look at the desktop, look at the tablet, look at the mobile devices, because something that looks great on your screen when you look at it on a mobile phone, it could be cutting something off. They could scroll down and it could actually look offensive to some people. I hate to say it like that, but if you have a certain button or a certain H1 in there and it looks really, really good on your screen because you're working on a 60-inch monitor, but if somebody's looking at it on a phone and it cuts certain words off, it could be offensive to somebody, or you could piss somebody off and they could screenshot it and then it's out in the world forever. So make sure that you're doing your emails and looking at every preview possible to make sure that everything looks and functions correctly. Please test your URLs. Make sure they're not broken, make sure they're going to the right places.
Mary Fain Brandt:Yes, Otherwise yeah. Then you have to send out that email. Oops, we have a broken link. I just got one of those this week and I was like well, I wasn't reading that anyway, I have seen that before and I've seen that work.
Eddie Garrison:People try to work it in the opposite way. The link actually worked and they're just trying to and to me that's shady because I'm like wait a second. They've used this before. So I went back and found that email and went to the original and that email work or that link work just fine, oh my gosh, wow, this is so amazing, so helpful.
Mary Fain Brandt:I mean I know that you are the email strategist to have on the show. You bring so much value you really do and we had so much value you really do and we had so much fun hanging out with you and podfest that's fun, I love definitely. We're definitely going to need to have a reunion, so yes, well, are you guys coming?
Eddie Garrison:are you coming in january?
Mary Fain Brandt:uh, we, I hadn't planned on it yet, but is there a hub? Is there a hub meeting?
Eddie Garrison:yes, there's a better hub at this hotel.
Laura Bashore:Yeah, I heard, I saw that they're all excited about being at this different hotel and I looked at it I was like well, that is better you know what's funny?
Eddie Garrison:You can't see it from here, but if I walked outside of my condo I can see that hotel from my balconies.
Mary Fain Brandt:Oh my gosh, so you'll just be crossing over we will have to make our travel plans to be in podfest. But, seriously, if you get to san diego or phoenix, or you need a reason to escape.
Eddie Garrison:Uh, let us know and I was just in vegas at nab last month, so oh yeah, I know, you know I missed you by a day, eddie I know I saw that I'm gonna get this ticket.
Laura Bashore:And then I was like, oh my gosh, we're leaving that very same day.
Eddie Garrison:And my husband was like, oh, I don't know I'm like fine, whatever and believe me, believe me, a week in Vegas is way more than anybody should be there.
Mary Fain Brandt:So no, a week like a whole week.
Eddie Garrison:I was there seven nights, yeah.
Mary Fain Brandt:How many hub meetings did you have?
Eddie Garrison:That was like two or three at night, it was just the whole thing is the hub right Like that the whole thing.
Eddie Garrison:Is the hub right? It is. That was my 34th time going to Las Vegas, yeah, and the career that I had before this I was the director of marketing for a SaaS company and I wasn't married, I didn't have any kids or anything, so I was the one that they sent everywhere and I was usually typically on the road 225 to 230 days a year and I was in Vegas at least three times a year and, you know, for 10 years and it was just it got to be too much. And it's not just the party and everything, because when I was younger, yeah, I did that, but now going out there, if you're not a big gambler or just a huge partier, there's really nothing to do there.
Eddie Garrison:Yeah, the only benefit is everything is open 24 hours. So if, like me, coming from the East coast, I'd wake up at four o'clock in the morning, I'm like, oh my God, it's like seven. No, it's not, it's still four. And I'm like, well, I can't go to sleep now, so I would just go downstairs and eat.
Mary Fain Brandt:You go downstairs eat put some money in the slots right there I talk about game. I'm like, Ooh, I'm taking a hundred bucks for the weekend, for the weekend.
Eddie Garrison:Like literally.
Mary Fain Brandt:I am not a gambler.
Eddie Garrison:And Vegas, vegas. May. I live really really close to Disney, and Vegas makes Disney seem cheap, so right Well yeah, yeah, definitely.
Mary Fain Brandt:Well, this has been so informational and I know that I took away so many golden nuggets from this and now I think I'm just gonna scrap my email, like I think I'm gonna move, and maybe the beehive or MailChimp I like it is on my list and now that you've talked more about it and I have Squarespace we'll create, we'll just copy all the landing pages there and I think I'm really gonna go back and listen to this episode and really implement a smart email strategy moving forward. So thank you for your time, eddie.
Laura Bashore:Thank you for having me on.
Mary Fain Brandt:Oh, of course. Now, before we go, if you're okay, we play a game. We have some questions to ask you at the end. So are you ready for the four questions that we ask every guest?
Eddie Garrison:I am yes.
Mary Fain Brandt:Question number one what was the last risk you took as a business owner.
Eddie Garrison:It's funny enough because I may be going backwards at this point, but I went all in on myself. I had a very, very high paying corporate job and I did not like it anymore. So I legit just straight up, quit, moved to a different city and started my own company. So that was a very, very big risk on my part.
Mary Fain Brandt:That is a big risk. Yeah, okay, yeah, it is. What is a quote that you live by in your business?
Eddie Garrison:It's never wrong to do the right thing.
Mary Fain Brandt:Aw, that's a good one, I like that, Especially in marketing.
Laura Bashore:that's a good way to try to just keep yourself on the right path. I like that, Especially in marketing. That's a good way to try to just keep yourself on the right path.
Eddie Garrison:I like that a lot. We get billed as snake oil salesmen and everything like this. And I just really don't want to be known as that.
Mary Fain Brandt:My ethics teacher in college said it's never wrong to do the right thing when nobody's watching.
Eddie Garrison:That's correct.
Mary Fain Brandt:Yeah, it's more important to do it when no one's watching. Yes, um question number three what is the number one social platform you use for your business?
Eddie Garrison:linkedin actually is it. It is what from from a business side it is, but the platform on the that I'm on the most is which is kind of X or whatever they're calling it this week.
Laura Bashore:Yeah, I don't know.
Eddie Garrison:Yeah, but I get more leads. I get more business on LinkedIn than any other platform. Facebook is a very close second runner, but LinkedIn is number one.
Mary Fain Brandt:I just want to state for everyone to hear Eddie Garrison said LinkedIn is the platform he gets the most business on, and if you need help with LinkedIn, you've got two LinkedIn coaches strategists right here. Just a shameless plug there.
Eddie Garrison:It's your you have to. It's your show the reason that I like LinkedIn. And I didn't used to like LinkedIn at all. I didn't until I niched, until I niched down in my marketing agency to the hospitality world. You can. You can make LinkedIn all about one thing and it's just all I do is interact with hospitality people in there. So that's what they know me as, that's what they know my business as. So that's why it quickly became my number one Over the past year. It's only been about the past year that it's been number one, okay.
Mary Fain Brandt:All I need to hear is that it's your favorite platform and it's where you get the most business from.
Eddie Garrison:Again, shameless joke and remember to Zell me that money because I said that.
Mary Fain Brandt:Yeah, I'll send it over to you.
Laura Bashore:Only if we work for LinkedIn, then maybe what is the key to your success?
Mary Fain Brandt:That's a hard one for me.
Eddie Garrison:The key to my success is resilience. Of my success is resilience, especially going at it on your own, even though I've had employees in the past and I only have one now, but I mean I've had as many as 12. And in the marketing world, especially in the digital media era and that social media era, a lot of brands that you're going to work with, your attrition rate is going to be atrocious. The longest client that I've ever had was eight years, but my churn is about three, maybe four, and a lot of times these are big clients. I mean, I was working with an international franchise that was based out of Canada and they had 33 locations across the United States and Canada and we were managing all of their social media platforms and all of them had four, so it was four times 33 that we were doing.
Eddie Garrison:So I hired six people and I was invoicing them $37,000 a month, right, so this is a lot of money. You know we're talking close to half a million dollars a year and it was good. And then I had another franchise that came on with another quarter of a million dollars a year. So we're making, I'm making all this money, I've got all these employees, and two years ago. As I'm standing on the stage at Podfest, I get two emails within an hour and a half of each other and both of them left on that same day. So I lost over $400,000 of recurring revenue in one day, and that is enough to not kick you when you're down. That's beat you up, put you under the ground, dig you back up and kick your ass again. So you have to be very, very resilient when it comes to your business and being successful. You can't let it get down. You can't get too high on your own success and you also can't kick yourself in the ass enough to get up when you actually get beat down.
Mary Fain Brandt:Wow, that that's a story. I didn't know that. Yeah, you definitely have to be resilient. Thank you for sharing that. Yes, of course, but listen like literally. Email marketing is not dead. It's very important, but it's important to be consistent and to have a strategy segment your list and be consistent and give it all away. I love that you said that, because I'm a proponent for giving away what to do and then you sell the implementation, because that's what I do too.
Mary Fain Brandt:So I just want to encourage all of our listeners to really listen again and take some notes, take three, three golden nuggets and share with us what strategies you're implementing. Please connect with Eddie on LinkedIn. In our show notes we will have all of his links so you can connect with him on your preferred platform. But I'm just going to say LinkedIn and our next episode is going to be fail first and fail hard an open conversation about business failures and why they are important. And, Eddie, like literally, you didn't know that that was our next episode.
Laura Bashore:I didn't. It's a great segue. We appreciate it.
Eddie Garrison:Both in the business. That's what we call a segue, or seg for short. So that was a good segue there.
Mary Fain Brandt:That was great.
Laura Bashore:All right. So remember to subscribe, rate and review our podcast, and here's to good coffee, great conversations and even greater success. So ciao Cheers.
Mary Fain Brandt:Thank you, you're proud of me. If you enjoyed the podcast, show us some love. Please rate, review and subscribe to our podcast, and if you have any feedback, go ahead and share that with us too, because we want to hear from you. Until then, stay focused, stay motivated and stay caffeinated.
