336: Effective Use of an Email List
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Summary:
Once you have contact information from your lead magnet, what do you do with it? Use email to have a conversation with your customers. Email is a great marketing tool, but it can help your business in other ways, too. More than just a marketing ploy, email is a great way to build trust with your clients. We break down what kind of content to include, how to shape an email marketing campaign, and how often to use your list.
Main topics:
Making the lead magnet
How often should you contact?
What kind of content works?
Legal and ethical obligations
Nailing the subject line
Main takeaway: Once someone has trusted you with their email address, don’t abuse that trust.
Links
www.petsitterconfessional.com/epsiodes/334
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
email, clients, people, pet, pet sitter, week, lead magnet, booking, link, update, email marketing, spam folders, reminder, subject line, open, content, book, unsubscribe, service, information
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:10
Hello, I'm Meghan I'm Collin. And this is Pet Sitter confessional and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Hello, welcome to another episode of pet sitter confessional. This is episode 336. Hello, thank you to pet sitters associates and our Patreon members for supporting today's show.
Collin 00:30
If you want to learn about what it means to be a Patreon supporter, and all that comes along with it, you can go to pet search professional.com/support. I know we're looking forward to our December monthly meet up. And we'll have details coming out to supporters soon about that.
Meghan 00:46
Yes. So today we are basically doing a lead magnet Part
Collin 00:50
Two follow up continuation Yes, a follow up to episode
Meghan 00:54
334, which was about lead magnets and how to form them what to do with them.
Collin 01:01
So if you haven't listened to Episode 334, we really encourage you to do that there'll be a link in the show notes. Very basically, again, a lead magnet is offering something in exchange for the contact information of a client or a potential client, you get their information and an exchange, they get a downloadable video or PDF or guide or something along those lines that they get for free. And then you can take that contact information of theirs and do something with it. And that's actually what this episode is going to be focused on the doing with it.
Meghan 01:40
Yeah, so we didn't talk about how to create the actual item.
Collin 01:44
That's a good point. We didn't touch on that either. So
Meghan 01:47
we typically create hours in Canva. There's a free version of Canva. There's a pro version, which you have to pay for. But I think either one you can just say make a document in there and save it as a PDF or whatever you need to save it as
Collin 02:02
you can. And we like Canva because you can add the infographics, add the coloration brand coloration, add the brand fonts, and then export it as all sorts of different sizes of PDFs as well. And then you can reuse that as an actual physical product. If you go to an event or meeting or meet up. If you don't want to go the Canva route. And you want to stick more simple with more text and some basic imagery, you can use a word document or a Google Doc and then export as a PDF or from there.
Meghan 02:28
If you want to use a video, you can store it in a private YouTube link that you only give people access to who have given you their contact information. Or you can even stick it on your website, right.
Collin 02:40
You can embed a private YouTube link on your website so that whenever that somebody gives you the contact information, it redirects them to an unlisted website address that has an embedded YouTube player on it, that they can then watch the video that you've asked them to that they've requested from you. You can use YouTube, if you want to keep it more private and secure more have more control over it. You can even use something like loom or store it in a Google Drive where people get the link to download directly from there as well.
Meghan 03:11
Overall, though, you need to keep it simple and straightforward. Unless your offer is crystal clear about being a bigger item, then you can make it into an ebook or a multi page guide or whatever. But ultimately, simple is going to be best not a ton of pages, not a ton of words, crammed on pages, lots of images, and very concise. So now that you have the item and people are signing up, yay. Now what? So there's a few options. There's email marketing, text marketing, and then physical mailers. And obviously, this is going to be dependent on what kind of contact information you have requested from
Collin 03:52
them. Yeah. And today, we're going to focus mostly on email marketing, but a lot of the principles that we're discussing can be shared across both text marketing and physical mailers.
Meghan 04:02
And the first point is, how often how often should you contact your potential client or your client? How, how often is too often? And it really depends on the purpose of the list. So why did you want to contact these people in the first place? What is the purpose of it? What is the goal in the end, it also shapes the kind of content that you put out. So you if you email, you can send out a welcome email every time somebody signs up as a new clients.
Collin 04:30
And this can be great to include helpful links about your business, about your policies, other information that they'll need or links to pet related resources in your community. Just a Hey, thanks for signing up. Here's a welcome to the company. Additionally, you could send out a confirmation email or confirmation text messages message. Once they have booked or bought something, they'll get an email confirming that action and this is a really great way to make another touch point with them because it provides confidence to the client that They did something right, it went all the way through. And it can actually be used as a reference later for the client, if anything happens, or they need to get in touch with you about that particular booking or purchase for whatever reason,
Meghan 05:12
well, and if you have software, a lot of this is going to be taken care of in the software, because they will be the ones sending the reminder to the client, if you have that toggle on, they will be the ones reminding the client, Hey, your booking is in 24 hours or whatever. And this is, you know what you need to do to prepare, but a separate email is a good way to continue to keep in front of clients eyes, so use something like MailChimp, yet again,
Collin 05:35
the welcome email or the confirmation email, this is an instantaneous response in communication with them. If you're doing something like having somebody sign up for an educational course, or pet care tips, you may be emailing them every day or contacting them every day with a new tip that they've signed up for.
Meghan 05:53
And if your lead magnet was a challenge, those usually go on for about a week. And so then yes, you would be emailing them every day with a new prompt for that day or a new task to do,
Collin 06:04
maybe all you want to do is have your email list to serve as a way to get in front of clients as a reminder to book during busy times. At this point, you may be only sending out an email once a month or contacting them once a month, or maybe even less than that. So that you can say, hey, it's it's we're going into a fall make sure you're booking Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's and you don't remind them again after that, however you want to set that up. But you can have this as okay, this is only my reminders list. And so I'm only going to contact them relatively infrequently.
Meghan 06:35
Well, it is important to remember that email has been out for almost 30 years now more than that as well. And so people are very used to this, you know, you see some people have like 1000s of emails just sitting there notification wise on their phone, and they just Yeah, no, we are proponents of the zero email inbox. But you know, some people just don't ever open emails. And so it is a good reminder to not spam them necessarily of overdoing it with the communication, because then they're just not going to open the email.
Collin 07:10
And that's a good, that's a good way to get put on a spam list. Many email providers will look at the open rates for particular emails that go out on blast. And if it's very, very low, you may start being found in junk folders in spam folders, you do have to do your best to keep your open rates relatively high. Because otherwise, you will get auto filtered into the spam folders, which is where we don't want to end up
Meghan 07:35
well. And I've also heard that calling through your email list every so often, I think they might even recommend like every six months or at least once a year to comb through it and make sure that those people are still opening your emails. And like if there's any spam on spam emails on your list, or people who are just consistently not opening it week after week or month after month to just remove them altogether, because it does lower your percentage of open rates.
Collin 08:01
Same thing with delivery rates, a lot of if you have a few sent out an email that goes that does not have a good delivery rate. So you send it to 100 clients and own is only delivered to 40. That's a good sign to cut out that 60. So that you can raise that delivery rate, which is going to prove to the email service providers that you are a much more legitimate kind of service and that the emails that you are sending are real and need to be opened and viewed.
Meghan 08:28
It could be that you are trying to push a new service and you want to get a bunch of people to sign up for it. So using a promotional email to maintain that awareness of the new service and kind of tease a little bit of what's going on. That is a good way to drive the open rate as well. Because they people say oh, what is this new thing? What you know, how long is it going to last? Is it what am I going to be able to get out of it is going to entice people to open it. If you are updating your clients on the status of your company, and maybe some events that you have planned in the coming months, you could send out a newsletter once a quarter more like a true email newsletter of you know, these are the major updates the the quarterly updates from my company that you need to know about.
Collin 09:12
Well, that's a good good reminder of we're talking about individual purposes of the email list, you could take that and split this up across different times that you contact. So you could have the quarterly newsletter which thinks about more long term talks about events months ahead or bookings months ahead. And then you could have the monthly updates or even the weekly updates depending on how things are going or things that you need to get in front of them. So you can use this in a bunch of different ways as well.
Meghan 09:39
We've talked about that with social media before but I think a really important aspect is to be consistent with your emails. If you get somebody's email and you send them a welcome email and you then send another follow up one but then you don't email them for three months and then you take you email them for two weeks like if it's very inconsistent. That is not trying to set up a very good rapport with your client or potential client. So if you want to do a weekly email newsletter, great, make sure that it's weekly and you're not missing too many weeks. If it's you know, every month, make sure it is every month,
Collin 10:12
right. So thinking about if it's going to be multipurpose, or single purpose, another single purpose that you could have for your email list is just using it as a way to contact and get in touch for surveys, we've done a whole episode on sending surveys and how to make a good survey for clients. This is another type of email that you can send to your email list. These kinds of emails communicate to your customers that you value their opinion, and that you want to create an experience a service, whatever you're offering, that they will actually enjoy. You can take their feedback from the surveys, and very importantly, apply them to your offerings to create, hopefully, to hopefully create something that's much better for them in the end.
Meghan 10:50
But again, if you're doing a survey, don't just do it once, don't just send it out one time and then be done. You're gonna because not everybody opens every email every time. So maybe send it out to or you know, probably Max three times so you don't annoy people.
Collin 11:03
Exactly. Basically only send when you need to, because once somebody has trusted you with their email address, don't abuse that trust. Yeah,
Meghan 11:13
I mean, we all know those spammy companies that email you every single day, I'm trying to unsubscribe from one at the moment at ease is emailing me every day. And I can't seem to, there's no button for that. So I'm pretty ticked off.
Collin 11:26
Flooding your clients inbox with ridiculous emails, and needless emails will cause them to lose interest and actually unsubscribe entirely, which is what you don't want, you want to keep them captive and updated. So focus on sending them relevant, engaging messages about the stuff that they like, and they'll be loyal for a lifetime.
Meghan 11:46
So for us, we blog every week, or we really, really tried to really try every single week. And so our email newsletter, it goes out once a week on Fridays with three goals, we have three goals for our email newsletter, one, we would, we'd like to share a funny story or a photo from the week two, we remind our clients and potential clients about bookings and travel. And when you have a specific link to book, that's very important, because I don't just want them to, you know, trash the email, and this is not useful. Yeah, I'll get to booking around you know, whenever I can find it whenever I can figure it out. But I want them to hear is the big book now button, click this. So the second one is remind about bookings and travels. And then the third one is sharing out our blog posts. Because while we do share our blog on social media, not everybody sees that because the algorithm and so we hope to capture more eyes with the email.
Collin 12:37
And we think our blogs are valuable content, and we want to get them in front of our clients, our audience. And that's one reason why we make this a weekly newsletter because we're making something valuable. We want to give value and give more value to our clients. And this is one way that we can do that. The second
Meghan 12:53
piece to email marketing is the content. So what are you actually going to put in here, and we've already mentioned some of these in Episode 334. But the content that you put out, like you just said has to be really valuable and helpful. You know, you can include a top pet tip or something that is seasonal, we are going into winter now in the northern hemisphere. And a lot of ice melts are not pet friendly. So that could be a great tip of making sure your clients use a pet friendly ice mountain and then knowing why it's important. And along that same line of seasonal tips. You know, you can also say we're heading into winter. So here is a reminder about our winter weather policies. And you could include your a snippet from your contract about your cancellation policy in winter weather or you know that they must clear a path for you or whatever you have in your contract about winter weather.
Collin 13:41
The seasonal reminders are really helpful for both the path tips and the policies that you have structured around them, you're including them and updating your clients, both long term and a brand new people forget maybe they never knew in the first place. It's another method for you to get information in front of potential clients. So putting them in an email newsletter really helps again, build out that content. You sit there and go, What do I What on earth do I put in this? I've built my newsletter, I've got 100 people on there, what do I put in here, or five or five or one, put information about your company help them understand about how you operate? Yes, they've already agreed to your terms and service and your your policies and procedures. But nobody read that in the first place. And they're gonna forget about it because it's been a year. So help remind them by putting it out there and just block texting it in the middle and going here's a reminder, or here's a new update about how we're going to be doing this XYZ here it is
Meghan 14:31
and if you are blogging or creating other content, if you love being on social media and creating infographics, you can use your email to reshare that again to get more eyes potentially on your content.
Collin 14:42
If you had a social media post that has blown up and you've gotten a lot of interaction on it, share it again on the email or maybe send out a photo collage of all the fun that you've had that week and mention each pup by name, make this engaging and something that they're going to be looking forward to every week or every time they Do you send it out so they know, oh, when I get this email from dog walking company, I know there's going to be cute photos, there's going to be all this stuff, there's going to be good reminders, they look forward to this coming out,
Meghan 15:11
the pet care tips that we have shared have usually been a pretty big hit. So if you take care of a wide range of pets, rabbits, turtles, fish, dogs, cats, whatever, each week, you can share out a tip for caring for them. So rabbits need to eat what what do they eat? What What kind of bedding do they need, you know, anything, it's endless, really,
Collin 15:32
from basic to complex, share that out and just one or two tips every single week, so that you know that you're talking to a small subset of every single clientele that you have. And it helps share a lot of knowledge or a lot of research that you have done. So your clients again, continue to trust you and grow in confidence in you and your ability to help them in whatever they need. And the
Meghan 15:53
tip can only be you know, four to five sentences like it's a microblog, basically,
Collin 15:57
exactly. That's, that's key. We're we need to buy a lot of content and value. But keep it short, people don't have a whole lot of time. But they're going to be looking forward to this. What else am I going to learn today? So it's an additional resource that we can give to them?
Meghan 16:10
Can you embed videos in an email, know,
Collin 16:13
you can give links to videos that they can then pop up. So you can have a show a thumbnail of a video, that you click on that. And that takes you to a link to a web page where the video will be stored.
Meghan 16:24
And I talked about this a minute ago. But another thing to include is a link to book you. So you need to include this people don't often want to go to your website or have the app or whatever ready available. But when they click on that email, it should be just another reminder of Oh, yes, I need to book them for this. And a lot of our clients actually that is the way that they book us.
Collin 16:47
Yes, they will go back and they will dig out an email to go and find us because they know that's where it is. That's where they last had a touch point with us. So that's where they go back to look for is that email.
Meghan 16:59
And it's the same link that we embed on our website. Yeah, Nothing's different, it's just a different place to access it for
Collin 17:05
client as many places as you can get that in front of the clients, the better because then they're going to always have a way of getting in touch
Meghan 17:12
with you. We use email as a conversation with our customers, there are times where people will hit reply to that email and tell us a funny story or tell us something that we need to know. So while it can feel like it's just one way of you speaking to them, it really can be a conversation. So it's a great marketing tool. And it can help your business in other ways as well. But if you feel burned out, if you feel like you know, you set yourself up on a one week, every every email one week, that's too much. Consider taking an occasional break from I mean, really, this applies to anything from your regular marketing contact mean, even social media, emails, whatever it is, send out surveys, you can tell your customers how much you appreciate them. You know, if you are having brain fog one week, and you just have no idea what to put in your email or in your text message or in your flyer that you're going to be printing out, you can just send a thank you to them. Thank you, and I appreciate you and you are great. And I love caring for the animals.
Collin 18:12
Yep, it can be quite, that's one part of this is realizing that this can be quite a burden to realize I now have to produce content on a weekly or a set to at least a set schedule,
Meghan 18:22
yet another thing to produce content for.
Collin 18:26
And so you can take that week or two that break and just send out thank yous, I appreciate you and share maybe just a few photos. And that's it. And that really put a lot of intense or pressure on yourself to make this something this big, big thing. So realize that you can do that as well.
Meghan 18:44
Well, not only does it give your audience a chance to provide you with valuable feedback, but it allows them to get more insight into the person behind the business. So it's important to share your face as well, just like we talked about with social media, it's important to do that on your email as well. Something that always provides a ton of value is pet sitters associates. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members, pet sitters Associates is here to help. for over 20 years they have provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Because you work in the pet care industry. You can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote today. At pets@llc.com. You can get a discount when joining by clicking membership Pet Sitter confessional and using the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again at pets@llc.com.
Collin 19:39
You may hear people talk about email campaigns. And those are
Meghan 19:43
just emails that you set up with new information that go out at set intervals.
Collin 19:49
So you have your generic email newsletter list. This is the one that you cultivate. You send out that newsletter that has all the information all the stuff that we've talked about. You can then copy that list and paste it into a separate list and say campaign addresses, then what you can do is we're using MailChimp using Squarespace using Active Campaign, whatever that is, you can set up automated emails to go out at set intervals from a set time period. So take all those people, plug them in and go, Okay, the first email is going to be about Welcome to my company. Then three days later, an automated email that you've created goes out that says, This is how my software works. Then four days later goes, here's what my here's how to set up your client profile, then here's what a typical update looks like, then my policies and procedures, then here's how to book online. And then here's when you need to book for certain dates, and you're guiding them through a series of information with the ultimate endpoint of them, booking all of their visits with you. And depending on the kind of lead magnet that you have brought them into your company with, you can automatically have that set up on different campaigns. So when we set up our, our lead magnet on our website, they get an immediate email to them that says Welcome to Funky Bunch, here's information you need to know. And there's a newsletter that you're going to get that has XYZ information, I expect to get that every week, here's the things to look forward to another email then immediately follows not immediately, but several days later that follows with a guide of how to set up themselves on our software. Hey, welcome to this, this is what it looks like, here are screenshots of how everything looks. And here's a link, oh, here's a link to go and do this for yourself. They get brought into the company and they get immediately acclimated with everything going on. It also keeps you top of mind and reminds them of what they signed up for and who you are, so that they are more likely to book your services more more quickly and more immediately than delaying them for later. We've talked about the fun aspect of email marketing, the purpose of behind it is to help grow our business and get in touch with our clients. There are other legal and the ethical aspects that we have to discuss when it comes to email marketing as well, Megan relate a story of she's having a really tough time of opting out of an email. And really, legally, you are required to offer a way for clients to opt out in a very easy, straightforward manner. You have to allow that for them so that they can stop receiving your email. So it doesn't become spam or harassment in many cases.
Meghan 22:30
And that's because you're collecting private information. Now, even if it's an email address, it's somebody's private information. So what are your obligations when collecting it?
Collin 22:40
Well, you have to not only provide a way for them to opt out, you also have to include an address and a way of contacting you about that email, which is helpful anyway, we want to share information and contact information with our clients as well, their artists legal legal obligations for the client to understand who is sending this to them. And make sure that you are adhering to any legal requirements and applicable laws in your area when sending these kinds of emails. There's something in the United States called the can spam Act. In Canada, they have the anti spam law or CSL. And then there's a relatively expansive law of the General Data Protection Regulation, the GDPR for the European Union, which handles the treatment of personal information. And you have to remember that the regulations here are based on both your location and the location of your subscribers. And it's your responsibility to know which laws apply to you. So if you are residing in the United States, and you have somebody who signs up for an email that lives over in the European Union, you now have to abide by the GDPR rules and regulations, and vice versa.
Meghan 23:47
So for anybody who just fell asleep during that with all those acronyms. Your email host should automatically include that, is that correct?
Collin 23:56
Yes. If you have a reputable email host, you should have all of this stuff included in it. So that would be something like Squarespace. Squarespace has an email system built into it and MailChimp has another is a is a really popular one that handles these in an automated inappropriate way. Because they are subject to those same regulations for how things are stored, how they're accessible, what you can do with them how people opt out the information that is or is not included. All of that is wrapped up into each one of these acts and regulations. So basically
Meghan 24:27
go with somebody that is reputable for your email host and don't go with something skeezy Exactly. I think the single most important part of an email is the title. Yeah, so you need to nail the subject line because if people think it is boring or not interesting or not relevant to them, they will simply not click on it. I think one of our worst emails ever was when we shared out the blog of pets and kids. And that's because our clients just don't really have kids, their pets are their kids, so they don't need to know how to introduce pets to kids.
Collin 25:05
Yeah, the title was keeping your kids safe around pets or something like that. And after we sent that out, and the blog was fine, I'm glad we have that blog. It's good content, we can reshare that people who have it or have questions, but for an email title, it was not beneficial. Because most of our clients are retired, they don't have kids, they're too young, or they're young married couples, and they don't have kids yet. None of our clients have kids. And so it was very not relevant to them. So nobody opened it, because they didn't think it was for them.
Meghan 25:36
But it was a learning lesson because we could go well, why did this get such a low open rate, and we go, oh, that title was crap. The title was not applicable to most of our clients. So it, it's a big learning curve as to what exactly is going to work, what is not going to work. But knowing your clients and not being click Beatty with it. I mean, you don't want to be spammy of like, top five
Collin 25:58
awesome ways to become a millionaire, right? Or whatever, whatever
Meghan 26:02
is, whatever is pertinent to a pet parent, so you don't want to be spammy with it. But you do want it to be interesting and engaging. I do like to add an emoji at the subject line. So it kind of pulls the eye toward the actual email,
Collin 26:16
right? Well, if a poor subject line can also cause your email to end up in the spam folder, if it has certain keywords, or if it's too similar to other emails that are coming out that have the same title. That's another way to get really sent into that spam or junk folder. If it isn't captivating, it's not going to grab the reader's attention. And it's going to be deleted before it's even opened at all. The subject line should make your reader make your client want to open and read that email. And here are a couple examples that you might use or ways of getting around that.
Meghan 26:45
It could be something like, we're waiting for your booking booked now to save your spot. So it kind of creates this urgency of like, oh, right, I need to, if you can put something like Thanksgiving or Christmas in there or a holiday that you're almost booked up for and you know, booked now to save your spot like, oh, this urgency I need to get on their list. So I have my pets cared for.
Collin 27:03
If you're offering a new service to clients, you may send out an email that says check out this new adventure of walk gear to make caring for your dog easier, or something along those lines, that gives them a description about something new that you're doing, and how it's going to help them.
Meghan 27:17
Now there's nothing to say there's anything wrong with just saying updates and availability or saying here are some new changes happening in our company,
Collin 27:24
you know, your clients best knew know that how you can get their attention. So you don't have to go over the top flashy, you don't have to go long or anything like that. speak in the language that you use that you're going to be from that's going to be familiar with your clients, they know this is you this is I know who this person is because this is how they do this.
Meghan 27:42
I think ultimately, though, it's a lot of trial and error. So we didn't know that that kid and pet email was going to do so poorly until we sent it out. So you know, the client we didn't get, I don't think we got any unsubscribes from it. So you know, the clients keep coming back, they keep opening the emails, it's just that one was not relevant to most people. So it's a lot of figuring out exactly what people are wanting.
Collin 28:05
And you mentioned that that big scary word there, unsubscribe, don't take it personally, when somebody opts out and unsubscribes from your email, it's going to happen, they are going to drop out, they're no longer going to need your services. And maybe they have finding that it's not relevant to them that it's not beneficial. Or they may be trying to declutter their own personal life and get rid of a bunch of newsletters in general. So it's nothing against you. They're just overwhelmed in their own life. And they're trying to find some space and get some time back in their day. So they can spend it with their family instead of deleting another email. People removed themselves from newsletters for all sorts of reasons. Maybe they moved out of your service area, maybe their dog passed away, and they don't want to be reminded about that every time they look at their inbox.
Meghan 28:52
If you have tried email marketing, or you personally feel like it's not for you, you can send us an email at feedback at Pet Sitter confessional.com. We appreciate you listening to this show today. And if you ever have any topic suggestions or people specific people you'd like us to interview, send them our way. We are always open to new ideas. Thank you also to pet sitters associates and our Patreon supporters for supporting today's show today. We appreciate you guys and thank
Collin 29:19
you for listening and spending your time with us today. We really, really appreciate it and thank you for all that you do and how you continue to improve and make the industry such a wonderful place to be.
Meghan 29:28
We'll talk with you next time.
29:29
Bye
