Get Radical With Your Business

Ep. 74: Achieve Greater Profits With Email Marketing (Guest Janet Fish from Break Through Your Profit Ceiling Podcast)

December 07, 2021 Heather Zeitzwolfe Season 2 Episode 74
Get Radical With Your Business
Ep. 74: Achieve Greater Profits With Email Marketing (Guest Janet Fish from Break Through Your Profit Ceiling Podcast)
Show Notes Transcript

Are you using email marketing? If so, are you using it effectively? None of us want to spam our subscribers, but when we find that happy middle between being annoying and hardly showing up, it is this sweet spot where profits can grow through this powerful means of marketing.  

On this episode, we are digging into the power of email marketing. To discuss this subject, we are joined by Janet Fish who is a business coach and the host of the Break Through Your Profit Ceiling podcast. Not only is she an email marketing enthusiast, she has coached over 1,000 entrepreneurs in 16 countries and is the author of several books including her most recent, Quit Your Day Job – 10 Steps to Financial Freedom.  

SHOW NOTES:
Contact and Follow Janet Fish: Instagram - LinkedIn - Linktree
Break Through Your Profit Ceiling Podcast: WebsiteBook Marketing Audit – Register FREE Break Room Zoom Party
Breakaway Business Coaching: WebsiteFREE Tool Kit - Email Marketing Master Class: Register
Book: Quit Your Day Job – 10 Steps to Financial Freedom
Free copy of Your Message Matters by Jonathan Milligan
 Episode Referenced: The Importance of Email Marketing (episode 13) Guest Elizabeth Case.
Shout Out to Adam from Podcasting Business School

 For more information, see the complete show notes here https://www.getthebalanceright.net/blog/episode74

CONTACT HEATHER:
Contact Heather: Instagram - LinkedIn
Get the Balance Right Coaching: Website
Book a Discovery Call (via Zoom) - Click Here
Heather & Get the Balance Right - Link Tree
Zeitzwolfe Accounting: Website  - Facebook

Contact Heather: Instagram - LinkedIn - Email: heather@GetRadBiz.com
Get Radical With Your Business: Facebook - Website
Book a Discovery Call (via Zoom) - Schedule
Zeitzwolfe Accounting: Website - Facebook

Conversation With Guest Janet Fish (Episode 74)

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Hello, and welcome to get the balance right podcast. I am here with my Pod Pal friend, Janet Fish. Welcome to Get the Balance Right podcast.” 

Janet Fish: “Hey, thank you, Heather. It's great to be here.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Thank you so much. I was on your podcast. Now. You're going to be on my podcast. I don't know if this is very exciting to be on the other side of the microphone.” 

Janet Fish: “It is pretty weird to be on the other side of the microphone.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Janet, for the people in the audience that don't know you, you are a podcaster, you are a coach, you are an author.

There's a lot of things in there. Tell us a little bit about your business, your podcast and your book. “ 

Janet Fish: “I have been an entrepreneur and a business coach since 2005, I've coached over a thousand people in 16 different countries. So I've been doing this a really long time and I love serving people. I work with entrepreneurs, my favorite entrepreneurs, although;  big big, big companies and things like that. But my favorite entrepreneurs are the one who are making, I don't know, under $300,000, the solopreneur who is starting a business, or just trying to grow their business. A lot of my clients aren't even making that. My big thing is to get them to six figures.

And then once they get there, they got a lot more options as far as how they can grow. That's a little bit about the business. Podcast breakthrough your profit ceiling podcast. I'm coming up on two years in January. Wow. Wow. It has been since January of 2020. So I've been doing a podcast for awhile. It is all focused on entrepreneurs.

We talk about challenges and overcoming them. And I like to talk about how overcoming challenges makes us better. And then I love to do something called the marketing audit, which is what I did with you. Bring on entrepreneurs. We talk about their marketing strategies. I give them some advice and what they might do to increase that.

And then it gets released as an episode of the podcast. So they get some notoriety and some exposure with that.” 

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Tell them the podcast name it's called...” 

Janet Fish:Breakthrough Your Profit Ceiling podcast.” 

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “And what is the name of your business?” 

Janet Fish: “And then break away business coaching is the name of my business.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Awesome. And then there are books. We'll go deeper into your books, but right now, can you just say the title?” 

Janet Fish: “I've actually published five books, but my most recent book is called quit your day job, 10 steps to financial freedom. So during the course of coaching people, you know, 16 years, I came up with this 10 step process that most entrepreneurs go through.

Not maybe not always sequentially, but they go through. So that's really the focus of the book is those 10 steps to. And conception or starting a business, or just being kind of stuck in your business and wanting to get to that next level, kind of the 10 steps that people go through. So that's where the book.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Very nice. I'm going to have to pick up a copy of that. Very intrigued by this. All right. Well, today we're going to be talking about email marketing and we've talked a little bit on the show way, way back, and it was more about newsletters. We focus more on newsletters, but today we're going to talk about the importance of having an email list and maybe some nuts and bolts in there as well.

But. Jenna, what do people need to have an email list? What is the main point of having an email?” 

Janet Fish: “I literally am obsessed with email marketing, the very high percentage of clients that I work with either. They don't have an email list or they have an email list and they don't do anything with it. They don't email anybody.

I'd say it was maybe a year and a half ago when I changed email service provider. I now use active campaign, which I love. And I had to redo all of my automation. So an automation or an auto responder is a set of emails that you write one time. And then they, you know, something triggers them and they go, and so I had to rewrite them all because I was moving to a different platform and I just got.

Obsessed with writing automations and writing good emails and the best practices about what makes good emails, because I mean, there's all these statistics that say they're the, the return on investment for email marketing is 44% higher. Like any other marketing strategy. So why wouldn't you do that?

Right. And then I'll also use the occurrence of Facebook and Instagram going down. Right. But it went down for a day. How many hours it was? Well, your email list is never going to go down and you own your. Like Facebook doesn't own your email list, but it owns all of your followers. Right. They can kick you off that platform tomorrow.

So I just think that email marketing is a really, really important part of growing a business. I don't know, I'm looking in my email box right now and I got it full of it's cyber Monday, today. Right? So it's full of cyber Monday offers. I just sent out my cyber Monday offer. So I just think it's a great way to communicate with people.

And it is a huge asset.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “One of the reasons why people feel hesitant about using email marketing is that they feel like they're going to be bothering people. They are spamming them. They're not really sure how often they should send them or what they should send them because there's a lot of questioning and maybe it's a mindset issue that they have to kind of get over this.

I would imagine that when people get your email, they're going to only open some sometimes not always. So what are some of the barriers that you feel like. Clients who may have to get over to actually embrace email mark.” 

Janet Fish: “So let's just start with the fact that email marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies you could have.

That's just bar none, secondarily like my best practices that I talk about and I teach, cause I do a workshop on email marketing is the one in six rule, which is you send out five emails that are really good. That are informational for the challenges of the problems are what you solve in your business.

What your target market needs. Send them five emails that have really good content. And then the sixth one can be an ask. Get on the phone with me, buy something from me. Do something. So if you really provide great content, most of the time, you know, five out of six times, they're not going to be like, oh God, not another email from Heather because she's just trying to sell me some stuff.

No one wants that. So I think it's, it's a great way to communicate with your clients or your prospects. It's a great way to stay in front of them. Let's say. Decided that I don't like my CPA, my accountant anymore. And I want to go look for somebody new. Oh, I remember this woman that she had just crazy hair and she was super outgoing, but I can't remember her name.

And I haven't heard from her. And I don't know how long, right. She has my email address, but I haven't heard from her. But if you're sending me, Hey, like, this is what you should look at. It's the end of the year. And you should have a meeting with your CPA to plan for what you're going to do this year or next year.

You're front of mind for me. If I'm starting to look for somebody else, Heather's the person I'm looking for. So I just think there's so many reasons. And when you do automation, let's say somebody opts in to get your free newsletter or your checklist or whatever it is. You can create a string of emails that go for the next, you know, I don't 20 weeks, 30 weeks that you write one time and just go, you don't have to do anything.

But you're in front of those clients. So I think it's really important. I've lost clients way back in the day, because I didn't stay in front of them. And when they decided they were looking for me, this was when I was doing real estate, but when they decided they were looking for me, they couldn't find me because I hadn't contacted them.

And they went to somebody else. Let's keep people in your world, not in your competitor’s world.” 

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Okay. You have some great examples of, I guess you'd call it maybe a funnel where they get. You know, their email for some kind of downloadable thing. Let's just say in my situation, maybe I might give them money tips or something like that.

Then finally I give them my offer. So I'm not just emailing them constantly with just my offer. That sounds very effective. What about utilizing video in these emails? What do you think of the idea of video and email?”

Janet Fish: “I would say I would mix it up between video image and bulleted, short emails, right?

Like, I don't know about you, but if I get an email that looks like I opened up a page of a book, I'm not reading that. Right. I need something that is catchy, easy to read bullet points, small sentences. I'll skim that. So skimmable is a great, it's a great characteristic of a great email. Those work much better than long, long emails that, you know, no one wants to.

What about emojis? I'm not a big emoji fan. However, some of the great digital marketers they use emojis. So I think if that fits your personality and that fits your business, then emoji- away.” 

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “With email marketing, half of the trouble is, or maybe 90% of what stands in your way is that people don't even open it.

So getting someone to actually physically click on that email and open it and look at it. I dunno, I'm going to say it's 90% of the effort goes into it.”

Janet Fish: “It absolutely is. I'm in a good subject line is critical.” 

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Yes. The subject line I've seen different types of software or apps to figure out what would be the most clickable line.

There's certain words like I've heard that video is a word that people will be more apt to click on. I guess it's knowing your audience, but do you have any tips on subjects?” 

Janet Fish: “One year. Absolutely. Right. Like know your clients and know what they want, know what their needs are. But I think any subject line that either satisfies a need or peaks your curiosity, or like anything that you look at and say, Hmm, I wonder what she's talking about.

So I'm going to click to find out they say tips and lists and things like that work really well. They say really short, provocative. I don't know that I'd go super far down controversial unless you really know your target audience and who you're sending to. I have signed up for a lot of people's lists, mostly marketers, because I want to see what makes me open.

I'm an entrepreneur, I'm my target market. So I look at what resonates with me with the emails. Make it something that someone would go, Hmm. I want to learn more or I want to find out what she's talking about. Never do anything that like, you've got some kind of cool subject line and then I click on it and nothing in the email matches the subject line.

Cause I will unsubscribe like. The heck with that, like, don't do anything you need to, to get people to open them, make sure that what you're talking about in the subject line you're talking.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “About in the yeah, because otherwise that's kind of click baity, I guess, call it. Yeah. Now this is another area where I think people are like, well, what am I even going to talk about?

You gave some examples of doing some value and then we could do a newsletter. That would be another. Well, what are some things that you can talk about usually looking at what your audience is struggling with is that perhaps what you want to write about.”

Janet Fish: “It could be struggling with or just information that was a couple of suggestions.

One is every email that you send out. And like I said, five or six of them are nothing but good content should have a clickable. That sends them someplace because you want to teach them that every time they open an email from you, they want to click on that link to get something that they need or something that they want or something that teaches them something so that when you send them that six email, which is the get on the phone with me.

And let's talk about your marketing strategy, they're going to click on it because they've been kind of taught that when I click on it, I get good stuff and I would only have one click. I would only tell them to do one thing. I go here to learn more. I wouldn't have him do a whole bunch of things because confusion leads to no action.

So don't give me a whole bunch of things do, and then tell me what you want me to do. Click on this, to learn more about that. Like, just be really direct with what you want people to do in their emails.” 

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Do you need a copywriter to get started with these emails or I guess it depends on your own writing skills.

That might be a better option for some people is to hire a copywriter.” 

Janet Fish: “It could very well be. I write all my own emails because after all these years, I think I have a really good idea of what my target market or my clients are looking for. If you're uncomfortable with it. And it's stopping you from actually writing emails, then get some help.” 

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “You'd have to get somebody that could be your voice, like emulate what you would sound like.” 

Janet Fish: “Real good copy. That's absolutely true. I think if I was working with a copywriter, I would write down the concepts that I want to get crossed because most copywriters aren't going to know what you and I know about our business.

So you write down the concepts and then they put their magic, spin on it to actually put it into something that people will respond to. But I think you're completely right. If you had some really dry. Copy that you sent out that doesn't fit your personality. Doesn't fit your brand. I too, I'm like a little goofy.

I'm a little bit more laid back. I'm not super duper strict professionally. I like to have fun and laugh and my copy isn't like that. I think you're absolutely right. That's a great, great point. You want it to reflect your personality and who you are?”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “I do like to get on other people's lists just to see what they're doing.

And I love to see how they structure it, the layout, what, what their offers are, the language that they're using, if they're using like animated gifs or a video or something. But I find from watching these things come over and over again. I'm like, I am obviously not their target. Like. Jive with what they have in their emails at all.

So it's interesting to see over time. It really needs to be reflective of who you are.”

Janet Fish: “I think it does. That's another reason why it's so important to put video in your email. I don't see a lot of video in email. Maybe that's why you had heard that if someone puts a video, the word video in the subject line, people are going to click on it because not very many people actually send video via email.

However, that is you that's you on camera, right? So, or hopefully they get to know you a little bit better. And I think that's a really powerful.” 

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “So if people want to get started with email marketing, there's a lot of software companies out there. You had mentioned one, I use MailChimp. Do you feel like one is better than the other, or just kind of depends on your preference or it doesn't.”

Janet Fish: “I used MailChimp and then I went to active campaign. The thing that I didn't like about MailChimp. They fixed it. So maybe I would have stayed if that had been the case, but I don't think it matters. There are some big, big, big ones that if you're starting out, I wouldn't go spend a whole lot of money. I mean, you know, an active campaign or a MailChimp or get response or any of these contents contact, you know, they're $15 a month or something until you get a lot, maybe 5,000 names on.

Or you want some more sophisticated technology, like maybe you want to text the people or, you know, whatever. So, but you can get a really robust database system CRM or email service provider, whatever you call them for a really reasonable price. And then if you need to grow into it, grow into it, they're pretty easy to use.

I mean, they're pretty easy to set up your email campaigns. If that's, what's holding you back because you looked at something five years ago and you're like, oh, that's too complicated or too whatever. Fill in the blank. Look at it again because they've. And, and you just, can't not do email in your business.

I don't like that is just such a powerful marketing tool. And it's the value. Like if someone wants to buy my company or buy your company, the first thing they're going to ask me is how many clients do you have? And you know, where are those? But you don't want to get. Bunch of folders. You want to say, here's my database of clients and I've got, you know, 1500 of them or whatever that number is, that's real value in your car.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Okay. That's really good to know when people are starting off their business, their email lists may be very small and maybe it is their mom is on there or whoever that will subscribe, but to get people to subscribe to your mailing list, we talked about having some kind of download, what are some ways that people can.

People onto their emailing list.”

Janet Fish: “Yeah. So have an irresistible free offer. Right? So it's free for the price of an email address. So a lot of things that work great. It may be a, a one pager or a 10 tips. Five things you need to know, or five things you should avoid or whatever those things are, but have some kind of a really good free thing that is irresistible to people that there are going to be more than willing to give you their email address in exchange for that valuable information that you said it fits a need or a want for your potential clients or your.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “When people are putting together some sort of funnel where you are mentioning, okay, now we've got this person you've given them some kind of irresistible PDF. They've downloaded it. Now they're in your system, you had. Sending them a series of emails. How do you kind of map this whole journey out? How do you go about doing this and knowing like, what are the next pieces?

What's the cadence of sending these out? How long they should be? Like, are you mapping this completely out their whole journey?” 

Janet Fish: “Yeah, that's a great question. And that's what we do in our workshop. What journey do you want them to go on? What information do you want them to have? And then when do you want to give them an ask or ask them, ask them to buy your, you know, your $7, your, your $11 book, your whatever it is, you know, cause you were talking about a product funnel and how I get them down the product funnel, you would map it all out with some video, some image, some text and make sure that.

You're following the best practices. So don't have, you know, 25 paragraphs of something that someone's going to read through, but you do, you map it all out. And then you write it. Most of my automations, if you get, I have a bunch of lead magnets, which we call those irresistible offers. So if you were to opt in for one of them, you'd get an immediate thank you for getting the 35 ways to build your email list.

And you'd get a delivery of that, that downloadable PDF. I've added you to my email list, welcome to the community. And you're. A series of educational and informational emails over the course of the next whatever weeks. My cadence is the deliver. Wait, two days another email now email. So email number two, another two days, email number three, another two days, email number four.

And then I go once a week for now. My automation is, and most of my automations are. I dunno, I'd say between 12 and 18 emails is usually what my automations look like.” 

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “And do you have a cap on like how many words or does it just as long as it needs to be, or do you like to keep things short and sweet?

How do you go about that?” 

Janet Fish: “I like it short and sweet, but I would say the length of your email should be as long as you need to get your point across and not a word more. So I actually think less is more in any way.” 

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Yeah, I think so too. One of the issues that I've found is you can do the one monthly newsletter.

Now it's coming up with these other ideas. We were just talking about trying to figure out some sort of struggle that the client or customer is going through. Do you have any suggestions on ways to generate ideas?” 

Janet Fish: “Just a couple off the top of my head, a lot of my ideas, especially when it comes to the podcast, cause we're in the same position.

Like what are we going to talk about every week on a podcast is what my clients are asked, what questions are my clients asking me? Or what's coming up in the world of social media or wherever I am in my world. So that's number one, number two. What questions should they be asking me that they're not asking me?

Cause that's one for you. Yeah. We don't know as entrepreneurs, what we need to know. Like we don't know what we don't know. And then if you, then it's, what's going on in your industry? Like what's hot in your industry as far as news goes. And then if you really get stuck, I would like Google. Blog posts about entrepreneurial blog posts or something, just to get some juices flowing about what information is out there.

And then I'd say this other thing, like you don't have to recreate the wheel from scratch. Like let's not do that. So if there's a specific topic you want to cover, go read like four articles about that topic and then take the pieces from the articles that you like, make them your own, put them in your own voice.

And that's great.” 

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Oh, okay. I, cause I have seen people where they curate other people's information and put it in a newsletter.” 

Janet Fish: “And you could do that too. You could do a summation and then link them to the article. That's a great link.” 

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “So do you think that the list size matters?” 

Janet Fish: “It matters, but what matters more is engagement.

And I would say that whether you're talking about your email list or your podcast downloads, or your social media followers or whatever, you know, whatever connections, whatever social media you're in. So I do think that numbers matter. And I think the more, the better, however, at the end of the day, I would rather have a hundred email addresses that I have.

A hundred percent open rate than a thousand that I got a 5% open rate, which I, you know, we're never getting a hundred percent open rate, but my point is I would rather have really engaged email addresses than more that don't ever open it.” 

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Oh, open rate is important. And besides open rate, click rate. So once people open it, did they actually click on your link?

That seems like another one that we really want to gauge.” 

Janet Fish: “Let's define what a good open rate is. A good open rate is 20% to, you know, 10 to 20%. If you're getting a 40% open rate or something like that, you are off the charts. The average is probably around 20%. So just know that that. That's the average open rate of an email.

The other thing is if you really want to fine tune that you can do AB testing. So you can try of half your people in your email list, one subject line, the other half, another subject line. Cause that's the only thing that's making the difference between whether they open it or not. And unless there's some kind of time of day or day of the week, Kind of thing that might play into it as well.

So I'd say play with it and tweak it, but I wouldn't get obsessed with your open rate. I think if you've got like I did, my black Friday went out, I looked at, I think I had a 19% open rate for black Friday. That's probably not bad. My cyber Monday. If I got, you know, 15% open rate on that, I'd be pretty happy.

So just be realistic about it. And then the one the third day. So it's open rate, it's click rate, but then there's also conversion rate. Did they do what you ask them to do now, if you just giving them some information? Saying, go read this article or go look at this other thing on my website or whatever, and more depth go listen to my podcast, episode, whatever.

Okay, great. But did they actually do that? Did they buy the thing you wanted them to do? Did they contact you with the questions they might have? And it's not always the easiest thing to figure out what the conversion rate is, but that's another thing to look at when you're looking at the stats around your email campaign.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “I want to ask you Janet more about these books that you've written, you've written five books. Are they all business?”

Janet Fish: “At one stage of my business career coaching career, I was working with a bunch of entrepreneurs. I wrote this book called the Slimprenuer and it was all about how to, you know, be an entrepreneur and, and focus on.

Eating well and Putting Yourself First and all that kind of stuff. So that's a book I wrote on that. And then I created this recipe book that went alongside that. So one was a recipe book, but all the other books have been one of real estate. Cause I started out in real estate. And then the last book that I wrote is in its second edition, but I still only consider that one.

So. I like writing books. And when I say I'm an Amazon bestselling author, people are like, wow. Some people are impressed by that. So it's, and it's a great thing. I had sent somebody a copy of a book probably over a year ago and she went and hired somebody else and I'm like, that's great. And then she came back to me and she's like, well, that didn't work out.

And then she said, oh, and by the way, I gave your book because she went to somebody else and that person called me. It's just amazing what a book can do if you're thinking about it and you haven't done it to, it's a good thing to do.” 

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “How can people work with you? You're a coach. Tell us about. Coaching business, how people can work with you.

One-on-one do you do group coaching?” 

Janet Fish: “We do a couple of things. I have some online courses who isn't quite ready to work privately with me. Most of my clients are private clients that I work with one to one. Um, I do do some group coaching and next year I'm going to do a. Push on that. I'm going to do some expanded group coaching and I'm going to create a membership for next year.

So those are ways that people can work with me. I am obsessed with email marketing and I have created this email marketing workshop, which I do right now. I'm doing it six times a year, so did every other month. And so if you want to work on your email marketing a little bit, it's come join me in the workshop.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe:  “Awesome. And we'll have links to that in the show. And we'll have links to your podcast as well, but where's the best place for people to find you? Is it Instagram? And if so, what is your handle there?“

Janet Fish: “Yeah, it is Instagram and I am at Breakaway Business Coaching on Instagram.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Awesome. And clubhouse, you're been embracing clubhouse.”

Janet Fish: “I am embracing clubhouse, so I am there as.” 

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Very cool. So we'll have links to all of that in the show notes. Well, thank you, Janet. Thank you so much for being on the show today.”  

Janet Fish: “Thank you so much, Heather. This was great. Great to chat with you about all the things that I love and I love to talk about email marketing.”

Heather Zeitzwolfe: “Yeah. And I think you've inspired people to start email marketing if they haven't done it yet. So thank you so much.”

Janet Fish: “So they say the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is. So I'll say the same thing. The best time to have started working on your email campaigns was January of 2021. The second best time is today!”