In this week's episode, we have the Fresh Princess of Email, Liz Wilcox. We talk about how you as a business coach, consultant, or beginner business owner can start building and nurturing friendships in your INBOX to turn your subscribers into customers.

Liz Wilcox is an email strategist, a keynote speaker showing small businesses how to build online relationships, package up their magic, and turn it into emails that people want to read and most importantly, purchase from. 

We chat about:

➡️ How to come up with newsletter topics effortlessly

➡️ The "Email Staircase"

➡️ The process of writing a STAND-OUT newsletter

➡️ How to be relatable and stay top of mind without sending out LENGTHY emails

➡️ Do subject lines really matter? 

➡️ Best tips for email list building

Get to know more about Liz Wilcox and use her FREE subject line generator:

Lizwilcox.com

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If you want to learn more about my signature program, get in touch with me at mariam@mariamtsaturyan.com

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Hello. Hello everybody. We are back with another episode of Not So Risky Business. This week's episode is going to be amazing. So if you are an entrepreneur, a coach, business owner who cares anything about their business and growing it, Through something like email marketing, then you might wanna stick around and I would get that notepad to take some notes because I am having an incredible guest with me today who's going to impart a lot of knowledge on this topic.

With me today is Liz Wilcox. Welcome Liz.

Hey, I am so excited y'all. First of all, when I was asked to be on this podcast, I was like, not so risky business, I'm in. The name alone is so fun and y'all better buckle up cuz we're about to have a good time.

Well I better bring my A game. Liz, like, I gotta match your energy.

She's gonna bring it. Don't worry. She's gonna bring it.

You're known as a ball of energy.

That's so funny cuz I'm, I'm feeling kind low energy today. I turned off the air condition y'all. I live in Orlando, Florida. And we're recording this in May and it's already hot, but I wanted this to be perfect, so I turned the air conditioning off.

We should have no distractions. I'm ready to go. I'm so excited.

Perfect. That's what I love to hear. Well, for those of you who might not know Liz, let me tell you little bit about her, so you know who. Who you're listening to today and understand why you should take her words seriously. Liz is known as the fresh Princess of email marketing.

She's an email strategist, a Keynote speaker showing small businesses how to build online relationships, package up their magic, and turn it into emails that people want to read. And most importantly, purchase from. Your bio is exciting even.

I wonder who wrote that? Wow. That person. I wonder,

tell me about your nickname, fresh Princess of Email Marketing. Who came up with that?

Okay, y'all, no lie I came up with that. I'm shameless, and if you're watching the YouTube video, you can see I've got the fresh prince on my mug. If you can't see it, love it. You can just imagine the cool little sticker I've got on my mug. But y'all, so I went to a conference and they surprised me with some kind of like special award for being like an inspirational member of the community and they gave me, And if you can't see me, just Google me.

I'm very nineties theme, so I'm wearing, like, currently I'm wearing like a Seinfeld hat, you know, I've got the fresh prince on my mug Nsync in the background. and so they crowned me. They made this out of pipe cleaners. It was this special Etsy artist. And it was like a pipe cleaner crown and it had NSYNC on it, like all five guys, right?

And they literally like, you know, had me get down on my knees so I could, I could put the crown on, or they could put the crown on me. And they said, Liz Wilcox the queen of email. But I already know a bunch of people who are the queen of email, Tarzan Kay, Kate Doster. To me, those are queens, right? Like they really know their stuff.

They reign supreme. And I stood up and something in me, I said, I'm not the queen, I'm the fresh princess. And so for me, and it just kind of stuck. And the more I think about it, the more fitting it is because. You guys remember that Fresh Prince of Belair show? He came in, he was kind of the new guy. He was a way different than everybody else, and he just had this fresh perspective on life that he would give Carlton and all of his cousins.

And in school, you know, he wore his uniform inside out and so he had a fresh look. And really what I'm trying to do is just usher in this fresh way of email marketing this new tank, this new look, that people are just drawn to. And so hopefully we get to talk a little bit about that today. That's a perfect segueway.

You guys need to pause this and give Mariam five stars because she's an amazing host already.

Thank you. And I love Fresh Prince of Belair. That's one of my guilty pleasures. Keep rewatching it whenever I run out of new shows to watch. Liz, since we're talking about email, Now email marketing, fresh Prince of email marketing or Princess.

See what happened there. Fresh Princess of email marketing. Let's talk about email. You are known in the community, with coaches, entrepreneurs, online, business owners, a lot of bloggers, as this person who is a group who is an expert who writes emails. Without a thought, without difficulty. While it is such a problem for a lot of people to sit down and come up with a topic for an email, tell me about your process a little bit. How do you come up with all these topics?

Yeah, so first I wanna give you guys a little background, y'all. I did not start off as, you know, like the typical service provider, digital marketer, where maybe they work at an agency or they're working under some kind of seven figure entrepreneur and just kind of cutting their chops, you know, learning their craft.

I started off just like you in the trenches. I was actually an RV travel blogger, and when I started y'all, I had about $0 to invest, right? And so I didn't get a chance to buy all these digital marketing courses and you know, I just had to listen to awesome podcasts like this and just kind of pick up what I could pick up when I could pick it up, right?

And one of the things that I learned was you know, everything out there in the digital marketing world, it's all to build the email list. And if you can make those connections in your email list with your email list, you can make real money. So y'all mama didn't raise no fool. I just cut the line. I was like, all I'm gonna care about is my email list.

I have enough blog posts, I can get people to guest blog. I'm just gonna focus on building these relationships inside of my inbox. And that's what I did. And given that I didn't have a lot of money to buy copywriting courses and marketing courses, I just had to come up with my own way. And I heard this advice one time where it was like, write an email to your best friend.

And I thought, again, guys, I was in the RV space, caravan, travel. I was like my best friend is a single man living in downtown Chicago. He would never go camping. I would never write this email to my best friend, but I could write this email to someone who is geeking out, who is really obsessed with RV travel the way that I have become obsessed with it.

And that's how I started writing my emails. That's what I mean by this fresh take. It's not writing to your best buddy. But it's writing to someone who has this mutual interest, and you're working together to get closer to the solution. Right. And this is great, especially for, you know, course, course creators or consultants and coaches who really need that intimate sort of relationship before someone's gonna invest.

Especially if you're doing high ticket stuff. I need to know I really like you, not just what that, I like what you have to say. I really like you. I like your methodology. I like the way you talk about things. And so, Sending emails where it's just, you know, like let's say, you are a fitness coach, right?

And if I'm just sending emails or I'm getting emails from you that are just, you know, quick connection points, you're sharing what you learned that week, you're sharing what you did. You know, maybe you're sending outbound links to either your content or someone else's that you like, that feels like a mutual type of relationship versus this sage on the stage.

I know everything. I only share my own blog posts. I only share my stuff versus this, you know, thing I've just described where it's just, you know, Hey, this is what's going on this week. This is what I have to offer, this is what I'm. You know, is upcoming, you know, will you join me? It's just such a different way of speaking to your list, and especially for coaches and consultants, it's a, it's a better way to connect quickly.

Absolutely. Absolutely. I agree with that. So, basically your journey into this was a lot of trial and error. You experimenting, but what works, what doesn't?

Absolutely y'all. You just gotta get out there and see what works. Even, you know, I sell templates and you know, I can give you all the advice in the world right now, but unless you take action on it and you just see what works for yourself, you're never gonna know.

I always say, you know, take my advice. And then throw it in the trash can if you don't like it or if it doesn't work for you. That's the thing about, you know, the fresh Princess or like keeping it fresh in your inbox is not being afraid to just try something. And, you know, see what works out.

Not being afraid to deviate from some formula so that it actually sounds like you, and doesn't sound like Liz Wilcox. Right.

Absolutely. I think that's the problem with a lot of templates because everyone has their own voice and sometimes when you use templates, that voice gets lost because it's so automated and you know, it's almost.

Copy paste. That's not the case with your stuff. I'll admit I've used a lot of your templates. I'm in your membership. I'll admit to that freely. It's a great membership to be in, and we'll talk about that in a little bit because I do have some questions on that because what you have done was nothing short of incredible, and you are what I call a trendsetter in the online space right now.

But we'll get to that in a little bit. Let's address some of the questions about specifically email marketing, email list building, writing email, the copy, and then we'll get back to the membership talk, which I think a lot of people will be interested in as well. Liz. Let's talk about when somebody builds an audience, right?

We, we use our emails to build an audience. That's what it's for, to connect, to create that like trust factor with our audience so that they can hopefully, one they buy from us. What happens when you build an audience? What's the next step?

Yeah. So I follow something called the email staircase.

So first you have a follower, right? Somebody finds you on a podcast on social media, you know, wherever you're showing up online, and then you get them on your email list and you turn them into a friend. Right? We kind of touched on this a little bit. And once you have a list full of friends, you can turn them into customers because you know what they want.

They're talking to you, you're talking to them. And so you can basically say, Hey, I heard, I heard you. You keep talking about X and Y. I just created a workshop about X and Y. Or you know, my new offer is all about X and Y is the bonus. Right? Something like that. So how do we turn people into friends?

What does that actually mean? Liz, you really only have to do. Three things. Number one, show that you are invested in them. Right. This could be, you know, sharing, Hey, I just bought a computer so that I, you know, have better quality. Or, you know, I be, I can write better quality posts cuz I'm not hunched over anymore.

Or, you know, I just bought a new phone so I can make better Instagram reels or tiktoks. You might think they don't care about that, that's about me. But it actually is showing how invested you are in your business, which means you're invested in them, right. Also show that you are invested in the vision that you have for your clients or students.

For me, my vision is you make money with email. I don't care about anything else. All I care about is you making money with email. So I'm constantly telling people in my newsletters, You know, Hey, I just spent three hours, you know, watching this webinar on upcoming trends in email for the summer. I just, you know, read this book on ABC, you know?

I just had this conversation with Mariam on, you know, Building friendships in the inbox, I'm sharing what I'm doing so that they can succeed. And yes, this works across all industries. When I was in my RV business, I would tell them, I'm trying to get you a thousand people on my email list. You would think, yo, it was men in their sixties on my list.

That was pretty much it. And, and they still cared because it showed how invested I was in them.

It's okay. Can you hear that? I'm sorry. A little bit. It's okay, don't worry. Okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, y'all, we got some things going on in the back. I live in a place where they do my landscaping for me, and so if you hear it in the background, I apologize, but I promise to make the email stuff so good that you can ignore it.

Okay. So the first thing is invest. You know, share how invested you are in your own business. Share how invested you are in them and the vision you have for them. Number two, just share in a relatable way. Be relatable. Notice I didn't say be interesting. Being interesting is really hard. That's where you get into that storytelling trap and you're like, oh my gosh, what do I say?

How do I segue going to the beach to buying my $3,000 VIP day? I don't know. You know, that's, let's leave that to the copywriters, but for us, we just have to be relatable. Being relatable, like I hope Mariam doesn't edit out me just saying, Hey, there's something going on in the background. Sorry. You can't hear that because it's incredibly relatable.

Is it interesting? I promise to leave it there. Okay. Is it interesting? Absolutely not. Is it slightly annoying? Probably. But it's incredibly relatable and it endears you to me cuz we've all been there where it's like, yeah, I was trying to record something and you know, the UPS guy knocked on the door and my dog started barking, we all have some sort of story like that. So, sharing that in the email. If I was to write my newsletter today, I would definitely share that, oh, I was doing this awesome podcast called Not So Risky Business, and some guy was trimming my hedges right by my microphone. I couldn't believe it. You know, that's a very short personal update.

And then you just segue, you know, anyway, here's what I wanna talk about today. You don't have to go beyond that, you don't have to segue it into some, you know, positive message like you're in advertising, right? We're just talking to our potential friends here. So remember, invest, share in a relatable way.

And then the third way to push them into the friendship is to stay top of mind. Now this might sound like, oh, she's telling me to email every day, or, I've gotta be in all the places I've gotta email once a week. But truly, when you do the first two things really well, when you show how invested you are when you show how relatable you are.

Staying top of mind becomes really simple. I guarantee you, if I, you know, quote unquote ghosted my list for a month, if I got sick or something happened when I came back, most people would probably remember who I was, right? And that's because I do the first two things so well and so often that it's okay to accidentally miss a week or

a couple weeks or, you know, vary the content, right? Because it's easy for me to stay top of mind. I've become relatable. People know that I'm invested in that vision for them. And so when they think about email, they think about me. So those are the three things you really need to put into your newsletters, to turn them into friends and to get people to actually open up and care about your emails.

This hits so close to home because I absolutely agree with what you said. I didn't think about it in this way to be honest with you, but, I stepped away from my mariamtsaturyan.com business, which is my business legal coaching site business, for about a year and a half while I was building my law firm.

So for about a year and a half, I very rarely, if ever sent out emails to my, other email list, to my coaching email list. And, you know, I, I didn't even think about them. Like I didn't think it, it's a big deal. Like once in a while I would just pop in, send an email just so my email marketing software wouldn't count me as spam whenever I do send emails.

And recently like about two, three months ago, I had this big pivot in my business. My law firm's doing well. So I was like, okay, it's time to come back to concentrate on this business because eventually this is something that I really wanna grow, and this gives me the opportunity to spend more time with my family as opposed to my law firm because it's all one-on-one, right?

And as soon as I started sending regular emails to my people again, To the people on my email list, I started getting responses from them. A lot of them saying like, oh, we're so glad you're back again. Like, we're used to hearing from you. We love hearing you speak, we love hearing you do all of these things.

So it made me feel very appreciated. And honestly, for the first time I felt like, wait, like these people are actually friends. I don't know them. I, I really don't know them. I probably have seen very few of them. I know very few of them with their faces, you know, from social media profiles and all of that.

But I feel like I have friends when I'm talking to them now. I don't feel the need to be extra fancy or to really try hard with copywriting or, you know, The whole marketing thing, I just tell them how it is. and I guess like that trust factor is there with my audience because I'm like always honest with them.

They like that they're used to that. I guess that's something that they identify me by and I get this wonderful emails back from them. And I do feel that I have friends that I made friends in my inbox, as you said. So it's a wonderful thing to have and I love that you have that similar approach to your email list.

Yeah. Wow. I love that for you. And yet, you know, she must have really just, when she showed up, she was showing, you know, Hey, I'm relatable. I'm invested in you. You know, here's the thing I think you need. I. And then, you know, respected the inbox. You know, get in and get on with it. Right?

I mean, that's the hope.

We all hope that's what we're doing. But you know, I think maybe, maybe I'm succeeding there. And actually my podcast name that you commented on, one of my email list members came up with that. Because I offered a few names, like a survey. I was like, you guys, I'm starting a podcast.

I can't decide on a name. Here are the names. Can you vote on your favorite? Or if you don't like any of them, you can gimme other options. And one of my people, to respect their privacy will, you know, not say by name, but she knows who she is. Like, I appreciate her so much. She gave me this idea. And I loved it because originally I wanted my podcast to be named Risky Business, you know?

The movie like Tom Cruise movie, right? I think it's right. Tom Cruise. Yeah. I, I just love the name. I wanted it to be called Risky Business, but it was already taken, there were too many podcasts with that name. I was like, okay, no, I'm not gonna go with that. And then she was like, how about not so risky business?

So yeah, one of them came up with my name for the podcast as well, so that's pretty awesome. I always ask for feedback from them, like whether it's my podcast name, whether it's a graphic or a book cover that I'm working on, and I'm working on a book, secret's out. Anyways, Liz, we've talked about, newsletters, how, like you said, if you were to write a newsletter today, you would include what happened during today's episode. Let's talk about newsletters because that is again, something that some people struggle with because we get into our heads, like, what can we talk about?

How can we sound interesting as you said? How can we differentiate ourselves or not be boring? How can we offer something to stand out in this, you know, field of emails that they're getting. Like, we wanna stand out in the inbox. So tell me about your take on newsletters. What do you think should go in there and how do you usually approach the process of writing a newsletter?

Yeah, so I filter everything through that email staircase and those three things we just talk about, am I showing that I'm invested? Am I relatable here? And of course, staying top of mind is just hitting send, right? Mm-hmm. So in the newsletter itself, remember, we're just trying to be relatable, not super interesting.

Everybody wants to relate to everybody else. We are human beings. That's actually pretty simple. So this is a kind of, I call it like my 20 minute newsletter framework. So just, you know, simple greeting, you know, Hey, Liz. And then do a short personal update. This is two to three sentences about something that's happened to you.

Or in your business since the last time you emailed these people. And this is where the investment and the relatability come in. You can say something like, oh, you know, my fridge just broke. I, you know, while I wait for the repair man, I figured I'd send you an email that shows how relatable you are.

Your fridge breaking again. Is that interesting? Absolutely not. But it's incredibly relatable. And then saying, you know, so I sat down to email you, that shows that you're invested in me, right? You're sitting down to email, suddenly I'm picturing you doing that, right? It's a very active thought. And then just segue into whatever content you have.

And if you say, oh, I'm terrible at segues, I'm not a writer, what I want you to do is just hit the caps lock on your keyboard and type in anyway, dot, dot, dot. What I really wanna talk to you about is, and then this is where you come in and, you know, share whatever content, if you're doing a sale. If you are, you know, you.

You saw this hilarious TikTok that you know, only your certain type of people will understand. Like it's a really funny thing in your industry where, you know, you read this awesome, wall Street Journal article that you just have to have your readers, take a look at. Or you created your own Instagram or you wrote a blog post, you've got a new podcast.

You're running a sale, whatever it is, whatever kind of content you wanna put out that week. It could be yours, it could be someone else's. It could be like, Mariam, I need to name my podcast. Please hit reply and let me know. Or click A, B, or C, right? It'd be whatever you have on your agenda that week. Get your people involved in that, and then just get out of there.

Super simple. I always say it's a newsletter, not a novel. You know, get in there. Get out and get on with your life. Because just like Mariam said, that's what everybody wants out of your newsletter anyway. They're checking their emails and they're just looking for anything valuable, right? Spam, spam, delete, delete, delete.

Oh, Liz sent me something. I wonder what's inside. Right? And when we do that sort of framework, when we just do the little personal update, and then we vary the content on the bottom right, which is simple to do because every week you got something new on your mind anyway. That's gonna get that those people, oh, Liz, that's gonna get that reaction for you.

Absolutely. That's great. Liz, you kind of touched on this very briefly, referring to storytelling, and then we, you know, segued into a different conversation from that. But I know a little bird told me that you are not big on storytelling. Now this is a little bit of a controversial stand on emails because what we hear in a marketplace from like, you know, all this gurus and copywriters and you know, well-to-do entrepreneurs, it's all about story.

Like, have a story, tell your story, repeat your story, or, you need to write an email that has a story in it to get it read like by your audience and so on, but you are not big on that. So tell me your take on storytelling in emails.

Yeah, just like I said, everybody, I mean, especially now, post pandemic, everyone and their mother is so bombarded with emails, social media, advertising, you know, their personal life, and so we wanna respect the inbox.

Now, I'm not going to say stories don't work. That would be a lie. Stories do work. Right. So if and when you have a great story to tell, I want you to write that email. I want you to tell that story, but for the other 50 weeks out of the year, what are we supposed to do? Right? You know, like I, I think I mentioned, you know, oh, I'm at the beach.

How am I supposed to segue that into a story that, you know, evokes emotion and gets you to buy my VIP day or whatever? That's really hard. And so instead, again, go, really going back to just how can I, what would I say if I was just writing a friend with this mutual interest, right? For me, like, how can I, what can I say to this person that's gonna help them inch closer to making money with email?

What can I say to them to get them to really understand how important this email thing is? Right? And a lot of times I don't have a story with that. I just have some tips or tricks or I just have some encouragement. I sent an email the other day. It was just a picture of me. I made a standing desk outta shoe boxes.

I put like my keyboard and my mouse on shoe boxes and I said, I've really been stunted creatively lately, so I made this shoebox thing. Here's a picture if you, you know, Just a reminder, you always have more resources than you think. Peace out. Sure. I guess a professional storyteller would say, Liz, that was a story.

But when we think of stories, it's like, you know, our 10th grade English teacher who's telling us five paragraphs, and don't you dare say anything at the bottom that you didn't say at the top, and what is your thesis and all of that. So I want you to hit the pressure relief valve on that kind of storytelling.

[00:27:34] Liz Wilcox:

And you don't need a bunch of stories. To do that, you just, you need check-ins, you need accountability. You need to encourage, you need to show you're invested, become relatable, all of that. You don't have to tell big, long, you know, 10th grade essay stories to connect. You just have to be relatable and, stay top of mind.

I love that. I love that, makes me feel better because I don't always have a story and you know, like, okay, what am I supposed to talk about now? Liz, the other topic that we need to touch upon, this is something that, again, is a big thing with emailing. I'm talking about subject lines. There is so many opinions on this.

What's your take on subject lines? Do they matter? What type of subject lines should you send? Should you even ab test them? Like, tell me, your approach to this.

Yeah, so for me, Subject lines come secondary to the sender. If you, I guarantee you, if you open up your Gmail app right now, or whatever the heck you use, you're looking at who's sending, not what the subject line is, even the way that your email is set up.

It highlights the sender, or puts the sender first before the subject line. That's for a reason. It's because we're searching for who, not what. Right. We're searching for that person or that company that we need. So think about it, like the inbox is the same as the mailbox. I go out to the mailbox and, oh, that's a bill.

I don't, I, I don't have to open that until the 12th. That's gonna go in the junk pile and, oh. That's for Jeff. He moved out three months ago. I really wish they'd stopped reminding me of my ex. Right. Like junk pile and oh my gosh. Liz sent me something. I'm gonna open this right away. Right. We're looking at who it's from, right? And so we do the same thing in the inbox. Oh, that's, that's my power bill. That's on autopay, delete. And, oh, that's spam. How did it get in here? Marcus? Spam. And, oh, Mariam sent me something. I wonder what she has to say. I'm gonna open this right away. So if we are, if we know, like, and trust Mariam, we're gonna open up those emails.

We're gonna look at who it's from first. Of course, in order to help along with that, your subject lines, especially at the beginning of the relationship, are really important. So in your welcome sequence, Making sure your subject lines are optimized. They're intriguing. You know, we've all heard like, oh, keep an open loop.

That would be a subject line. Like, saw this on Facebook and thought of you. It's like, saw what on Facebook, I have to open it. Or asking a question like, did you use that freebie yet? Or, you know, have you seen this yet? Things like that. Making sure your subject lines in the beginning are really important.

But truly making sure your emails and the content inside are really, really good. So it doesn't matter if you forget the subject line next week, they're gonna open because it came from you.

Makes sense. Makes absolute sense because I don't personally look at subject lines, but I know it's so important and I've fallen into that trap before where, I'll spend hours on, you know, there's several tools that help you generate and regenerate subject lines.

I think co-schedule had one. I don't know. And now with AI too, like you can type in like generate an interesting subject line on this topic and sometimes like it can take hours of your time.

Yeah. I was gonna, the last thing I'll say is, again, going back to the friend thing, write your email first and then write your subject line.

What is the gist of this email if you were sending it to your buddy? What would you write? Like if I was sending an email about, let's say a sale, right? Let's say I'm doing a VIP day and I'm doing buy one, get one half off, and it's a, it's just a straight sales email. Then I gotta figure out what's the subject line gonna be.

It's gonna be, you know, maybe the sale you've been waiting for. Right. Because I know some of my friends, they wanna hire me, but I'm still kind of out of their price range. Right. So the sale you've been waiting for, or, you know, do you wanna save a thousand dollars today?

Something like that, right? I would literally write that to a friend. When I launched my membership, which I know we're gonna talk about. I wrote my subject line, can I have $9? Because the membership's $9. So it was just, can I have $9? That's what I would write to you, like if I was just talking to you. Hey man.

Because I have a sense of humor, so I can, I have $9. And then you open it and it's like, oh, she's literally asking me to sign up for a product. Haha. That's so funny. Liz is so funny. Right? And when in doubt, honestly, guys, you can go to lizwilcox.com, scroll about halfway down, and I have a subject line generator that has, I think like, 50 or 60 subject lines in it.

You can just keep hitting that button. You don't need to have AI or co-schedule or whatever else. Like, I have so many subject lines to give you for free. You don't even need to opt in.

Oh, I, I didn't know that actually. Well, there you go.

Always forget about it, so I'm glad you brought it up.

Is there a link to that or it's just on your homepage?

Yeah, it's just on my homepage. You can go to lizwilcox.com, scroll down halfway, and it'll say, need a subject line, and you can just, it's like playing a slot machine. You just keep pressing the button and keep spitting them out.

Wellthe link to Liz's website again, lizwilcox.com will be in the show notes in case you need help with the spelling or whatnot. So make sure to scroll to the show notes section to click on her link and visit her website, which is fantastic, by the way. So colorful and vibrant. Tell me about that. Like how did you come up with your branding? What is, what was it influenced by? Tell me a little bit about that.

So I paid someone a lot of money to do it. Yeah, I'm good at emails, I'm good at writing. I'm not good at visuals. You might think I am based on my sense of style, but that took me 30 something years to come up with. So basically what I gave the designer was, I just want, again, I use this word fresh a lot. I just want something that looks fresh, that looks fun, looks like a good time, because I know email feels like none of that for you, right?

It's like, oh my God. Email. It's like outdated, antiquated, you know, hard, lots of steps, but that. You know, hopefully you understanding by this podcast episode, but if you spend more time with me, you'll know. Like that's the opposite of Liz Wilcox. So I figured if I could have a fun brand that, you know, gets people kind of in this fun, nostalgic mood.

If you go to, it kind of looks like Saved by the bell, that nineties show. Right. You know, you can start to, oh yeah, this reminds me of those days, and if I can get you feeling that excitement about, you know, that nostalgic feeling, that excitement about, you know, the olden days or whatever, then. Maybe you'll be more apt to talk about email, which feels really hard, but you're in this fun mood that it's like, Ooh, this is great.

Especially the subject line generator. It's like, oh, the subject lines, this takes me hours. You know, Mariam just said, it takes me hours sometimes. It's like, Nope, it's gonna take you about 30 seconds. Just click, click, click two, see something and it'll be good. So everything with my brand is very intentionally set up so that it feels good and simple, so you actually start taking action.

Easy, easy is the word I associate when it comes to your templates, your emails, your tips, it's very accessible and quick. All right, so we've been skirting around this for a while now. You know, I told you like I am going to ask you questions on this because. This is a topic that a lot of people are interested in.

Of course, we're talking about your low ticket membership. For those who might not know, I did say that Liz is known as somewhat of a trendsetter in the online community. Now, when it comes to low ticket memberships, Because she made them cool again, a lot of people are creating low ticket offers nowadays because they saw how super successful Liz was with hers.

So they're trying to mimic, they're trying to replicate that success. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm definitely happy about the trend. Tell me about your membership. How did you come up with that idea?

Yeah, so I have a $9 newsletter template membership, and just like we talked a lot today about how to write a newsletter that just seemed like the right offer for me.

It's something that's simple, it's something that comes naturally. So of course, why not have this template club? And as far as you know, the low cost went. Something that Miriam said maybe two, three minutes ago is I want everything to be accessible. I don't want to be exclusive. If you Google me, you're, yeah.

This, there's nothing exclusive about Liz Wilcox. I really love getting to know all sorts of people. I'm not an I'm, and I've never been an exclusive type of person. I was in all different friend groups and you know, I'm just, I love talking to all different people. And so that $9 offer, that $9 price tag allows me to get to know lots of different people from lots of different walks of life. I think I currently serve 23 or 24 countries. I never could have done that with a larger priced offer. Right? It would've priced some people out simply because, you know, conversion rates are so outrageous right now.

I mean, even the US dollar value is going wild. And so it really just allowed me. To not only be inclusive, because that's just what I love, but also allow people who are normally, you know, they have to save up years of money to, you know, learn email marketing, right? And it's a, it's a great skill.

I'm not saying, you know, charging a lot to write emails for people. That's not a bad thing. It takes a lot of time. But for me, y'all, when I learned I could click a button and make money, I was like, move over Jeff Bezos. Liz Wilcox is in town. But here's the thing, I grew up incredibly poor. Even to this day.

I have three leases in my name, like I. I know there are other people out there like me who maybe didn't have, you know, I was willing to work in the margins of life, and maybe you're just too tired to do that, or, you know, you just, you don't have the support or the drive. I know I'm an incredibly ambitious person.

Maybe you need a little bit more support. And so offering it at that $9 price tag allows me to talk to people who are like I was right, who don't have a lot of money, don't have a lot of personal support, and just need someone to give them a leg up so they can get started, and so that's why I love the membership.

Why I love that it's newsletters because I feel like newsletters really are the key to launch success. It doesn't matter if you have an invite to the last supper. Okay. In your emails, if nobody's opening them, if nobody cares, nobody's coming to that dinner. And so, newsletters and really what we talked about with subject lines about like making sure the sender is most important.

Newsletters allow you to do that. And if I can offer that for a low cost and get as many people in on this action as possible, Oh my gosh, wouldn't that be so amazing? And so that's why it's $9. That's why I keep it going and keep it simple, and I just love it so much

that is beyond amazing because as I said, I am a member of that membership, for quite some time now, and I use your templates and I love them.

Sometimes I don't even use the actual template, but you know, it gives you an idea of where to start, what to write, and that's what I love because your emails are still yours. It's still in your voice. It's not super templated where everybody's email sounds similar. But I mean, $9 for a membership is a crazy low price if I say so myself.

Did you know at the time when you were pricing it that you would be as successful with it as you are now? Did you predict that success?

Absolutely. But not so quickly. I'm the type of person that I believe in myself. I know if I just put my shoulder to the wheel and I keep going, eventually something's going to happen.

Right? But of course, you know, I say that with privilege. This was like my millionth digital product. I had a lot of, I had a lot of experiences. This is my third business. So you know, creating the membership felt not so risky. It felt like, yes, of course this is gonna take off because I was comparing myself not to other people in my industry, I don't really pay attention to what people in the online business are doing.

I pay attention to, like, I love musical artists and tech and you know, larger industries. Like I was looking at Netflix, like, if you're watching the video, you saw me just look to my left because that's my tv. That's where I watched Netflix and I was literally just sitting there and there's the TV and I'm like, well, Netflix used to charge $9.

You know, I don't need Netflix money. Right. Netflix money is they, you know, they pay Amazon for their cloud service. They have, you know, Thousands of employees. They have buildings, they have, you know, now they're making movies, they need billions of dollars. Liz Wilcox. I only need a little piece of that pie, right?

And so I thought nine bucks. If I can give it two years, in two years, if I can get a thousand people in the membership, that's 9,000 bucks. What I wouldn't do with $9,000. Right. To me, that was might as well been Jeff Bezos money. I was like, wow, $9,000. That's so much money that's gonna pay my bills, my mama's bills, my sister's bills, my, you know, I was like, yes, we will be set.

Because I knew I'd have other products, but I'm like $9,000 from one offer. And it being a membership, $9,000 guaranteed every month. I was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. So I knew it would pay off for me if I just kept going. It didn't feel risky, but it did feel like I was gonna have to give it time.

Right. I was still like a year into business. I had an email list of 800. I figured in two years I can get a thousand people now y'all spoiler alert. It only took me one year to get a thousand and then, right now the membership at the time of this recording is two years and two months old, and I have about 3,500, people in the membership.

So it's grown much, much faster than I thought.

Incredible. Liz, I'm so happy for your success because your products are outstanding and I'm glad to see you're succeeding. I was actually following, on your last lunch that you've had for your annual membership packages. I was following along on Instagram stories cuz you kept saying, oh, we need this many buyers and that many buyers.

And I kept wishing I wish I wasn't a member so I could buy now

Yeah, well, let's talk about that. So what she's talking about is on Instagram, I had this big goal. I do an annual sale. You give me, you know, a you commit to a year, 108 bucks. That's nine times 12. I give you access to all my other products for free.

It's an incredible deal. I stole it from Costco. I'm not a genius. So I have this big goal. I wanted to sell 675, and then I got really sick and I was just kind of sitting around. I couldn't really do anything. At this point. I've launched enough times that I'm basically repurposing emails, right? And so I said, oh, I'll just get on Instagram. I'll just talk about this. This isn't going the way I want it to go. Sales have really slowed down day two and day three, and of course that always happens, but they were like slow for the goal. I was like, oh, we're not gonna hit it. And I remember at one point I was like, yeah, we've got about 36 hours left.

We are only about halfway there, but you know, I believe in miracles. And the thing that makes Mariam wanna say like, oh, I wish I could cancel and buy again, is because I spend so much time showing how invested I am in the product, how invested I am in Mariam's success. I'm literally sharing the play by play of behind the scene launches, which makes sense for my audience because that's what they want too.

I mean, I was going every hour on the hour, like, you know, wake up to go to bedtime. Hey, this is where we're at with the sales. These are the things that I'm doing to try to make more sales. I just sent out this email. Here was the subject line. I just sent this out to affiliates. Check your email if that's you.

I was sharing every little detail. Showing how invested I was and it was also incredibly relatable. Like, oh yeah, I've been there where our launch was flopping and I thought I was gonna die. You know, cuz I worked so hard on it, we've all been there. And so that kind of transparency in your emails and in your marketing can really help propel you into that friendship with your audience as well, and make more sales. Should I tell them, did I hit the goal or not? You remember?

Yes. Yes. I'm interested as well.

I did not hit the sales goal. My goal was 675. I hit 662, but I feel like that was a win. And the real goal. Yeah, the real goal was a revenue goal for the month. I wanted to make a hundred thousand dollars in 30 days.

And because of renewals for the monthly renewals from the annual sale last March, I did hit that goal and it was so amazing. But it was so amazing to show people what's possible. Going back to the $9 a month membership, y'all, this is a $9 offer that made a hundred thousand dollars in 30 days.

Like that feels when, even when I say it, it's like that's not possible, but y'all, it is just with a little creativity and a lot of. Passion behind it. A lot of belief, like when she said, oh, do you think? Do you think that would've been possible? And I was like, yes, absolutely. No one's gonna believe in your product, whether you're selling it for a dollar or a thousand dollars.

No one's gonna believe in your product if you don't believe in it first. So if you're thinking of a low cost membership, you've really got to believe that this is the solution for your people and it will be.

Absolutely. This reminds me of a conversation I've had recently. One of my online entrepreneur buddies, Devon Rodriguez, he had a Facebook post that said, do you believe belief is essential for your success?

And I was like, absolutely. If I don't believe that I can succeed, if I don't believe in that image or you know, picture that I have for myself, I'm gonna give up because this journey is so full of hurdles and difficulties and exactly like it's not a straight line. You don't just go up. It's always like this.

Like, so if you don't have that belief in yourself, in your services, in your success, What's keeping you from giving up? Like for me, that belief is essential. So I love that that's something that you also, have, in your approach in your business. Liz, let's talk about one last topic and this is a great one because you know, we said email list building like continuously adding to your email list is sort of the bloodline of your business. So give me your best tips for email list building for coaches, consultants, as well as for beginner business owners.

Yeah. First I wanna change your mindset around it, and I want you to understand that list building is a money-making activity.

It might seem like you're doing nothing, right? If you're networking, you're guest blogging, you're on a podcast, it might seem like, Ugh, I could have been doing something else. But list building is a money-making activity. It's gonna be a long-term game, right? I said, oh, when I launched my membership, I had 800 people.

That was two years ago. I'm pretty sure today I'll hit 9,000 people on my email list. I'm really, really close. So in just two years, you know, I more than 10 Xed it and it's just putting in that work. The second thing I want you to think about when list building and just about it in general, is when it comes to list building, it goes hand in hand with visibility.

So the way I like to explain it is, you know, it's like Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen, Tia and Tamara, you know, those twins from the nineties? It's like, yes, I know they're different people, but I can't really tell them apart. Right. That's the same with list building and visibility. So any strategy that gets you in front of people is gonna be a list building activity.

You know, here today I'm doing a podcast interview, you could do a summit, you could write a blog post for someone, get on Pinterest, you know, create reels or, you know, double down on a TikTok strategy, whatever you're doing to get visible is going to help build your list. As long as you create that lead magnet.

You get it on your website. You can go to my website and you can just scroll and you'll see how many times I ask you to join the list. It's five times, five times on one homepage. You know it's a hot pink button. Another hot pink button. It's, Hey, you didn't join my list yet. I'm nineties theme. So at the bottom it says, oops, you did it again.

You got to the bottom and you didn't join the list yet. I'm a little shameless about it, which of course makes sense for my personality, but I want you, even as a coach or a consultant who's trying to book one-on-ones, I want you on your homepage to have it at least two times. Especially at the footer.

People are not coming to our site to book. We are not amazon.com, we are not eBay. They're not coming to buy. They're coming to window shop like, Hmm, yeah, I heard about Liz. I'm gonna check her out, see what she's doing. So we're really missing an opportunity if we don't have a lead magnet on our homepage, specifically, one or two at least two times.

Really two times. I don't wanna say just once I know those, book a call buttons are important, but the lead magnet's important too. We're really missing out on those potential relationships, on those people who are sitting on the fence to use our emails, to make those friendships, to open up those relationships and close the sale later.

So I really recommend, you know, any sort of visibility you're doing, making sure you're telling people, you know, oh by the way, get on the list to learn more. Get on the list for A, B, c, whatever your lead magnet is. but really think about that visibility and list building. They go hand in hand. And the more you become visible, the more your list is gonna grow, the more money you're gonna make.

Absolutely. This actually reminds me that I should do a shameless plug for my lead magnet for you all. Go on my homepage, mariamtsaturyan.com you'll see a big quiz. I mean, the quiz is not big, but the section is, or the quiz is house. Or just go to mariamtsaturyan.com/quiz. This quiz will help you figure out what are some places in your business that you should protect legally based on your responses.

It'll give you recommendations, what to do, what not to do, what you should have in place, and a lot more. So mariamtsaturyan.com on the homepage, or mariamtsaturyan.com/quiz take that quiz because it's gonna help you figure out protections for your business. Liz, this has been a wonderful interview. I feel like we've talked about so many topics, and I just love having you because you're so relatable.

You're so easy to talk to, and I'm sure anyone who's been listening to us feels the same way. You are just fun. So, I wanna conclude this interview, but before we do that, I do wanna ask you my, almost like a traditional question at this point for all of my interviewees, before I let you go, I want you to give one actionable tip to our audience. It needs to be something quick. It needs to be results driven so that they can take that tip applied to their business and see immediate or you know, results pretty quickly, if not immediately. What is something that you can share with our audience today?

Absolutely. So y'all need to go into your welcome sequence, or if you don't have one, add this and set expectations the same way you listen to a podcast and they say, oh, today we're talking email marketing with Liz Wilcox, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

We're gonna talk, discuss A, B, and C. Right. We set the expectations at the beginning of the show. You need to do the exact same thing in your welcome sequence. So some kind of email or some kind of paragraph within the emails you already have written that says expectations that says, Hey, I'm going to email you once a month, every Tuesday sporadically.

Whatever's true. I'm gonna send you these kinds of tips. I'm gonna go live on my Instagram here, you know, whatever's true. And then here's the part that I really want you to add. If you do nothing else, I am going to offer you free and paid services, free and paid resources, free and paid products, whatever word you wanna use.

This is going to flip the switch from, oh, I just got this free lead magnet, or, oh, I just took this quiz right to, oh. Liz is a real business. Mariam's a real business, right? It's gonna flip the switch and let your people know right off the bat that not only are you gonna sell, you're gonna offer real solutions.

And it's expected. That way people know, and when you go to sell, you're actually fulfilling a promise instead of like, oh, should I do this? So again, set expectations in your welcome sequence. Have at least. One sentence in there that says, I'm gonna offer you free and paid resources.

Amazing. Amazing. Thank you so much, Liz.

You've been wonderful to have on as a guest. The conversation just flew. You were amazing because you offered so much knowledge, so many tips on email marketing, on membership, on how to succeed in your business, even the tip of looking outside of your industry.

That was wonderful. That was something that I've never actually done, but I will do from now on because we can get great ideas, like $9 memberships out of that. So anyways. Thank you so much again, I appreciate having you here with me. I appreciate you taking the time to be here today.

Thank you so much.

No problem. And if you've been listening to this episode with us today, once again, my guest was Liz Wilcox. Her website is lizwilcox.com. Her social media links and website link will be in the show notes. Make sure to go and check it out because she is absolutely somebody that you want to know when growing and scaling your business.

Thank you so much for being with us today.