Transcripts
Hello, welcome to the Close The Loop podcast.
Kevin Dieny:Today, we're going to be talking about how to build an email list.
Kevin Dieny:This is uhh one very popular question.
Kevin Dieny:I think for businesses who are just starting out, but it's also
Kevin Dieny:a big deal for businesses who are,
Kevin Dieny:asking,
Kevin Dieny:how can we, supercharge our sales in the next, 90 days or something,
Kevin Dieny:or how can we start emailing people?
Kevin Dieny:How can my business go from, I just interact with people when they
Kevin Dieny:come into my store or my shop or my business, or whatever it is and
Kevin Dieny:now we want to start emailing them.
Kevin Dieny:We want to open up that channel.
Kevin Dieny:So that's what we're going to be talking about today.
Kevin Dieny:I've got my two fantastic guests.
Kevin Dieny:I'm going to be throwing it mostly over to Ronn Burner, who's here with us.
Kevin Dieny:He's our email specialist.
Kevin Dieny:So welcome Ronn!
Ronn Burner:Thank you very much.
Ronn Burner:Happy to be here.
Kevin Dieny:And besides Ronn, I've also got my colleague, Matt Widmyer with us.
Matt Widmyer:Thanks, Kevin.
Matt Widmyer:Good to see you guys.
Matt Widmyer:What's up Ronn?
Ronn Burner:Hey, bud.
Kevin Dieny:Heh, so as you guys know, we've, all worked together.
Kevin Dieny:We're all colleagues.
Kevin Dieny:We all know each other very well.
Kevin Dieny:This is also a topic that we've all worked on together.
Kevin Dieny:This is one of those interesting things where Matt has worked
Kevin Dieny:a lot with email in the past.
Kevin Dieny:I do a lot of email right now.
Kevin Dieny:Ronn is always entrenched in email it seems like.
Kevin Dieny:And, it comes together for us, a lot of the times in the size of the list
Kevin Dieny:when we're talking about and then why it's important for a business
Kevin Dieny:to consider how big is my email list, how many people can I email?
Kevin Dieny:Well, I just want to set the stage a little bit on this topic and say
Kevin Dieny:that having an email list really enables a lot and not only opens up
Kevin Dieny:the email channel for your business to be able to send out these messages.
Kevin Dieny:Which can be promotional emails, just reminder emails, notifications,
Kevin Dieny:it can be a lot of things.
Kevin Dieny:It could be brand building.
Kevin Dieny:It could be, sales, offers, deals.
Kevin Dieny:There's a lot of stuff you can do with email, but not only that, the
Kevin Dieny:email bit of information is also a really important, unique identifier.
Kevin Dieny:And by that, I mean, when you're building up a database CRM, any kind of database
Kevin Dieny:like that, it's hard to know one John Smith from another John Smith, I think.
Kevin Dieny:How do you usually distinct these two things?
Kevin Dieny:And there's usually two really important data points across every business.
Kevin Dieny:Obviously there's social security numbers and stuff like that in some
Kevin Dieny:industries, but an email address and a phone number are both usually really
Kevin Dieny:unique to a person and they're only usually assigned to one person at a time.
Kevin Dieny:So that's why they're really important bits of information to have.
Kevin Dieny:So not only do they help you keep your database clean, you
Kevin Dieny:know, find out who's a duplicate.
Kevin Dieny:But it also allows you and opens up the email channel.
Kevin Dieny:So we're going to be talking a lot about how to build an email list, but mostly
Kevin Dieny:we're going to focus this on building a legal consent driven email list.
Kevin Dieny:So the white hat of the email world.
Kevin Dieny:So Ronn, we'll throw it over to you.
Kevin Dieny:Why can't a business just go buy lists of emails?
Ronn Burner:Uh, they can, if they don't want to be in the
Ronn Burner:email business for very long.
Ronn Burner:It's just simply bad practice for a myriad of ways.
Ronn Burner:Think about it for a second, if you are going to buy a list, do you think
Ronn Burner:that they were holding that number of people and those number of email
Ronn Burner:addresses simply for you to call?
Ronn Burner:No, they've sold them many, many times over and then they pretend
Ronn Burner:to specify they're quality leads for your business and for your
Ronn Burner:industry based on nothing whatsoever.
Ronn Burner:I'm in the email marketing world, so I'm very, very anti, list purchasing.
Ronn Burner:I think that there's better ways to go about doing it, but the bottom line
Ronn Burner:with purchasing a list is it's effects.
Ronn Burner:First of all, they haven't opted-in explicitly or even implicitly.
Ronn Burner:So what you're doing is reaching out to people that are not even aware of who
Ronn Burner:you are and blindly going through them.
Ronn Burner:If they're not spam traps already, which I would suspect the majority
Ronn Burner:of them are, and the reason I say the majority of them are, is because
Ronn Burner:the reason they get the volume of emails that they're selling to you is
Ronn Burner:because so many of them are spam traps.
Ronn Burner:They're not going to eliminate them, because it's part of the volume.
Ronn Burner:But what happens is if they are spam traps you are going immediately to spam,
Ronn Burner:which is going to negatively affect your reputation and your sender score.
Ronn Burner:And if not get you blacklisted altogether from sending emails.
Ronn Burner:But even if they get through the people, receiving them, are going to spam you
Ronn Burner:probably because they don't know where you came from and it's being had.
Ronn Burner:And if their email is on one list, it's probably on multiple lists.
Ronn Burner:So they are aware of being caught up in that kind of storm.
Ronn Burner:So they see it immediately and spam you.
Ronn Burner:All of that is really, really bad for you as a business and digital
Ronn Burner:marketing in terms of reputation score.
Ronn Burner:Once you damage your reputation and once you get blacklisted, those type of
Ronn Burner:things are really difficult to overcome.
Kevin Dieny:So the audience is squared away on some of the terminology you used.
Kevin Dieny:What is opting in?
Kevin Dieny:What is consent?
Kevin Dieny:What is blacklist?
Kevin Dieny:You know what I mean?
Kevin Dieny:What are some of the terms that you're using there?
Kevin Dieny:Ronn?
Ronn Burner:Basically, if somebody goes to subscribe to your newsletter,
Ronn Burner:subscribe to a piece of content that you have, they are voluntarily
Ronn Burner:providing their email address to you that is essentially an opt in.
Ronn Burner:You can then in GDPR and then I know in Canada and other countries, not in
Ronn Burner:the United States, but there's a double often required in, Canada, for example.
Ronn Burner:So, if they subscribe to your newsletter or blog or any, any piece of content
Ronn Burner:whatsoever, you would then be required to send them a follow-up to verify
Ronn Burner:that they are in fact opting in.
Ronn Burner:That would be the double opt-in and that's complaint and that is them
Ronn Burner:opting in, and now you are compliant with GDPR and the compliance of
Ronn Burner:that is you're doing it legally.
Ronn Burner:And now you can reach out to them with marketing, because they've asked to
Ronn Burner:receive that and it could be discounts.
Ronn Burner:They could be opting in for discounts.
Ronn Burner:They could be opting in for a weekly or monthly newsletter.
Ronn Burner:Whatever it is that you're offering they're letting you know
Ronn Burner:that they would like to receive it and follow along with you.
Ronn Burner:The blacklisting is when you are no longer able to, it could be like a DNS, which
Ronn Burner:is do not send, like it's a distinction that happens to your IP where you're not
Ronn Burner:able to send you're simply not allowed to send because you violated the compliance
Ronn Burner:rules that are in effect legally to contact people and to reach people.
Ronn Burner:You've breached that by going over why with too many dings, too many
Ronn Burner:spams, too many non-compliance, which is not following the legal opt-in.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, that's really, really good points there.
Kevin Dieny:ISP or service providers or email service providers like Gmail, AOL, Yahoo, they
Kevin Dieny:keep track of people who are sending emails into their consumers inboxes.
Kevin Dieny:There's also networks that keep tabs on spam scam emails, and they keep track.
Kevin Dieny:There's blacklists out there that will mark businesses or companies or people
Kevin Dieny:sending fraudulent or too many emails in a certain succession of time or too many
Kevin Dieny:into spam traps, like you mentioned, Ronn.
Kevin Dieny:Which are, honeypots and to clarify are email addresses that are not used anymore.
Kevin Dieny:They're just sitting around.
Kevin Dieny:And these email providers and these reputation monitors, they know which ones
Kevin Dieny:aren't sending emails because they see the emails coming in and emails going out.
Kevin Dieny:And anyone who's not sending emails out anymore, those become
Kevin Dieny:traps and they keep track.
Kevin Dieny:They keep track of that.
Kevin Dieny:And then companies that are consistently sending into inboxes
Kevin Dieny:that are not sending out stuff that are not opening and clicking on these
Kevin Dieny:emails, they start to think, hmm...
Kevin Dieny:This is probably lower reputation for this kind of business.
Kevin Dieny:And that means.
Kevin Dieny:You're not going to go into the inbox anymore.
Kevin Dieny:You're going to start moving into the junk or spam or then even blacklisted,
Kevin Dieny:like Ronn mentioned altogether, which is sometimes like a temporary hand
Kevin Dieny:slap, but it could also be a permanent like no go anymore type of situation.
Ronn Burner:Well, plus it has the residual effects of
Ronn Burner:lowering in your sender score.
Ronn Burner:Now you're more susceptible to being screened or spam marshals
Ronn Burner:because your reputation is so low.
Ronn Burner:Now, you can't get through it for that.
Ronn Burner:The problems keep compiling.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, it can be really rough for a business who's
Kevin Dieny:like, look, I don't have the money to build up a list organically.
Kevin Dieny:I'm just going to go buy a list.
Kevin Dieny:So that will lead me to a question for you, Matt, should you trust vendors
Kevin Dieny:that claim to sell clean, great lists.
Kevin Dieny:Should businesses be trusting vendors like that all over the place?
Kevin Dieny:You have some experience there.
Matt Widmyer:Yeah.
Matt Widmyer:I have some experience there and it's not the greatest experience either.
Matt Widmyer:To answer your question, should they be doing it?
Matt Widmyer:That is a resounding no.
Matt Widmyer:And here's why.
Matt Widmyer:Once upon a time, we were tasked with finding email lists and to me, by the
Matt Widmyer:way, a request like that, that comes in from somebody, that just shows impatience.
Matt Widmyer:Right?
Matt Widmyer:Cause you want to just get quick results and quick, you don't have
Matt Widmyer:this gigantic list without actually working to build it organically.
Matt Widmyer:I had vetted and I asked a lot of questions.
Matt Widmyer:We had a separate research SOP that we followed and asked them this, ask
Matt Widmyer:them about their methodology, ask them about what fields are included
Matt Widmyer:with the list and everything.
Matt Widmyer:So, this one company I went to, won't say the name of the company for
Matt Widmyer:this, even though I probably should.
Matt Widmyer:They checked all the boxes, right.
Matt Widmyer:So I was like, okay, cool.
Matt Widmyer:You guys, you guys remember this?
Matt Widmyer:I forget what we paid it was $2,000 or $3,000 bucks.
Matt Widmyer:We put this thing in our email marketing machine and I think it was Ronn or Kevin,
Matt Widmyer:it was one of you guys came up to me and you're like, what just happened?
Matt Widmyer:There was like a 60% bounce rate.
Matt Widmyer:We're probably still recovering from that, and that was probably
Matt Widmyer:three, at least three years ago.
Matt Widmyer:That is that's one example of why you don't.
Matt Widmyer:Now I'm sure there are reputable vendors for this, but they still
Matt Widmyer:are not opting in to your business.
Matt Widmyer:So it still is a bad idea, any way you slice it.
Matt Widmyer:They're not opting into hearing from you.
Matt Widmyer:It could potentially be a starting point for certain types of businesses,
Matt Widmyer:but I still think you're better off just doing it organically.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah.
Kevin Dieny:I second that.
Kevin Dieny:The feeling is I want to go, like you mentioned, it was impatience.
Kevin Dieny:I want to go as fast as I possibly can.
Kevin Dieny:I want to start emailing.
Kevin Dieny:I want to start doing these things.
Kevin Dieny:So before a business really gets that far, let's say before we get to the point
Kevin Dieny:of, okay, we want to build this list.
Kevin Dieny:Ronn, what are some of the things a business should be thinking about?
Kevin Dieny:Like, what kind of audience they want, how are they going to acquire that?
Kevin Dieny:What are some of the things that a business should be thinking
Kevin Dieny:about before it gets to that?
Ronn Burner:Well, value proposition is number one in my book.
Ronn Burner:As far as segmenting the audience, if you have four different
Ronn Burner:segments that you could just say, male, female, over 40, under 40.
Ronn Burner:If you want to look at it like that.
Ronn Burner:Whatever the value proposition is that speaks specifically to that demographic
Ronn Burner:is very, very key because you want them to want what it is that you have and you do.
Ronn Burner:And the best way to do organic is, make it easy, like always make it easy.
Ronn Burner:So how they can subscribe or how they can provide their email
Ronn Burner:to you is as easy as possible.
Ronn Burner:And then it's incentivized.
Ronn Burner:So then it can be done at the same time.
Ronn Burner:So you can incentivize it, I always think of this in terms of ads.
Ronn Burner:There's an ad with a specific thing, so you can have four different
Ronn Burner:ads for each of those four demos.
Ronn Burner:And whichever ad is hitting, is the ad that's working.
Ronn Burner:Specific ads at the places, the locations that you think that
Ronn Burner:you can find your demographic.
Ronn Burner:They click on it because there's some sort of a promo code or some sort of
Ronn Burner:incentive, some sort of an offering.
Ronn Burner:So now they want that.
Ronn Burner:They see the ad, they like it.
Ronn Burner:They click it.
Ronn Burner:I do this daily.
Ronn Burner:I mean, my business is marketing.
Ronn Burner:I literally, daily am downloading PDF files from there's so many sources
Ronn Burner:out there that are tremendous.
Ronn Burner:I'm willingly offering my email address to them because what they're
Ronn Burner:going to provide to me is tremendous value for me and for my business.
Ronn Burner:So I gladly do it.
Ronn Burner:And that is that value prop right there is enough for me to
Ronn Burner:then give them my email address.
Ronn Burner:Now, how you move along with that and how you build a list of which we're talking
Ronn Burner:about specifically, that's the lead gen.
Ronn Burner:That's how you got them, but how you build your list is that's the volume coming in.
Ronn Burner:Once they offer you their email it's how do you treat them?
Ronn Burner:How do you make sure that you're continuously providing value to them?
Ronn Burner:And now you want to nurture them.
Ronn Burner:You want to be personalized.
Ronn Burner:Once they gave you their first name, last name, email...
Ronn Burner:if you can get that is really what you should be doing now.
Ronn Burner:Now you're personalizing it.
Ronn Burner:Now you're talking to them by name and you even know which
Ronn Burner:ad source they came in from.
Ronn Burner:You can get real dynamic with this.
Ronn Burner:You can specify it down to what they were exactly looking at.
Ronn Burner:There's different ways to do that.
Ronn Burner:A good tactic for that is if they go to your website, whether it's through
Ronn Burner:an ad or anyway, they scroll down halfway down your page, and then a
Ronn Burner:quick pop-up comes up to ask them to have them subscribe for something or
Ronn Burner:to give them that discount or promo.
Ronn Burner:Another way is if they're on your page for 10 seconds or longer, you can also
Ronn Burner:have a little pop up that comes up.
Ronn Burner:They're there and they've invested 10 seconds or longer, or
Ronn Burner:they're scrolling down your page.
Ronn Burner:So then it becomes like, okay, they've seen enough to stick around because by
Ronn Burner:the way, 10 seconds on a page is good.
Ronn Burner:Very good.
Ronn Burner:So if somebody comes to your website and they are there for that long
Ronn Burner:to then ask them if they would like to see more, obviously you want to
Ronn Burner:dress it up in a way to incentivize to attract that email address, and
Ronn Burner:then you just run them through.
Ronn Burner:And let them profile themselves through the email nurture where
Ronn Burner:whatever they were looking at.
Ronn Burner:You're again, providing value.
Ronn Burner:You're not talking about, all the cool features on your product.
Ronn Burner:You're talking about all the cool benefits and not only the benefits of it, you're
Ronn Burner:talking about what, not, what it does for people, what it will do for them.
Ronn Burner:That is building a list that will down the road, as it builds, you're going to
Ronn Burner:get tremendous engagement, tremendous response, and tremendous hygiene
Ronn Burner:in your database and money for your organization and the money is in the list!
Kevin Dieny:Yeah.
Kevin Dieny:That's like the most common term I've heard about it.
Kevin Dieny:And what Ronn's talking about specifically is making sure that
Kevin Dieny:there's really high relevance for your website, for your content
Kevin Dieny:that matches up with your audience.
Kevin Dieny:So a part of that equation is getting your content right.
Kevin Dieny:And that usually starts with understanding your audience really well.
Kevin Dieny:Matt, do you have any ideas around, how do businesses research their audience?
Kevin Dieny:Like how do they even get started with researching their ideal audience target?
Matt Widmyer:Yeah.
Matt Widmyer:So I think if you've been a business for a while, one of the exercises
Matt Widmyer:you can do is you can look for commonalities within your own client base.
Matt Widmyer:That's an exercise we did a few years ago.
Matt Widmyer:You can do some research and if there is something like there
Matt Widmyer:might be something that you aren't necessarily capturing in a field.
Matt Widmyer:It's just drawing commonalities or who do you want to target?
Matt Widmyer:So you should think about these things before you even start
Matt Widmyer:trying to collect, because, it's another question you can ask too.
Matt Widmyer:So I would say go in with an idea of what it is that you're looking for.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, no, that's really good audience building is tough.
Kevin Dieny:I would say a tip I have is to figure out, what is your audience,
Kevin Dieny:your consumer, your ideal audience, what are they trying to get done?
Kevin Dieny:And how do they go about doing that and reducing the amount of steps
Kevin Dieny:they have to take, making it easy.
Kevin Dieny:Like Ronn said, throwing a pop-up.
Kevin Dieny:Obviously popups are one of the things that piss people off, but if you're
Kevin Dieny:trying to be like, hey look, here's something you might be looking for.
Kevin Dieny:And the person's like, yeah, hey, I was looking for that.
Kevin Dieny:And I was scrolling over the page to find how to contact
Kevin Dieny:you or where your number is.
Kevin Dieny:And they just missed it in the top of the header or whatever.
Kevin Dieny:That is something you can do to make it actually easier.
Kevin Dieny:That's what they were intended to be for.
Kevin Dieny:Is putting the right information in the right place where it could
Kevin Dieny:be very relevant for someone.
Kevin Dieny:Someone who's just planning on reading through whatever it is going to be
Kevin Dieny:like, oh, get this out of my way.
Kevin Dieny:But one thing that is inherent in what you're suggesting,
Kevin Dieny:Ronn there too was a website.
Kevin Dieny:So I had a question about that.
Kevin Dieny:Some businesses don't really have websites, let's say.
Kevin Dieny:Is a website paramount or important to building an email list?
Ronn Burner:I do because SEO.
Ronn Burner:Almost everything that is being said in your email, is being said or should
Ronn Burner:be written somewhere, either in a blog post, or as part of the descriptions or
Ronn Burner:any one of the pages even testimonials for that matter, on your website.
Ronn Burner:So SEO will get organic traffic to you and that's imperative.
Ronn Burner:It's just assumed that you would have a website because you're
Ronn Burner:not going to do email automation.
Ronn Burner:You're not going to be doing these types of things without a website.
Ronn Burner:It all goes together.
Ronn Burner:Same with social media, to try to just build a single email list for
Ronn Burner:one off email blast, is just, in my opinion, the business model and
Ronn Burner:strategy is really, really wrong.
Ronn Burner:You might want to rethink that.
Ronn Burner:The truth is the attractiveness of business is a low return.
Ronn Burner:It's just a, such a low return because you're looking at less than one to 2%
Ronn Burner:of your list of actually converting.
Ronn Burner:Website is absolutely important its, I call it the mothership because everything,
Ronn Burner:your social media, your landing pages, your incentives, your demand awareness,
Ronn Burner:as well as your lead generation.
Ronn Burner:Everything goes through the website and all the messaging and the brand.
Ronn Burner:What your brand looks like in ads and in email headers is all based
Ronn Burner:on what the website looks like.
Ronn Burner:So the messaging is consistent.
Ronn Burner:That theme, the tone, it's really, really important.
Ronn Burner:And to be successful, let's put it this way, to be successful at lead
Ronn Burner:generation, the website has to be probably number one on your list
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, I think it's, I would echo that and say that another reason
Kevin Dieny:why it's so important is that there are a lot of indexing companies out there.
Kevin Dieny:A lot of listing companies, getting reviews, even to get an email marketing
Kevin Dieny:tool, they will give you a website if you don't already have one, cause you have to
Kevin Dieny:have an opt-in, opt-out kind of a page.
Kevin Dieny:You have to have some form of an interface for keeping track of
Kevin Dieny:your people being able to say, I want to unsubscribe from this.
Kevin Dieny:There is some sort of a need for a webpage to be the interface between that.
Kevin Dieny:So even if you were to say, I don't need a webpage, I don't want a webpage.
Kevin Dieny:And I want a Facebook page, business page.
Kevin Dieny:Anything.
Kevin Dieny:If you get an email marketing tool, you're sort of going to end up getting one.
Kevin Dieny:Go ahead, Ronn.
Ronn Burner:No, I didn't mean to cut you off, but it's so funny because
Ronn Burner:it's a conversation I would have.
Ronn Burner:This has not entered my brain in a hundred years because it's just assumed
Ronn Burner:you'd have a website, but you bring up really, really, really good points.
Ronn Burner:The whole point of sending an email.
Ronn Burner:Is a very specific, direct goal.
Ronn Burner:If you're not sending them anywhere, what does that direct goal to
Ronn Burner:call you to call your cell phone?
Ronn Burner:Like they don't even know.
Ronn Burner:There's no way for them to order your product, except for simply
Ronn Burner:calling you, which is not a call to action, which then goes back to
Ronn Burner:sender score, sender reputation.
Ronn Burner:Email analytics are really, really poor, which will send
Ronn Burner:you into the spam box again.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah.
Kevin Dieny:So let's start talking a little bit about, the list building.
Kevin Dieny:Now Ronn, you already mentioned the basic setup that every
Kevin Dieny:business should be thinking about.
Kevin Dieny:You have some sort of an advertisement promotion.
Kevin Dieny:You have something driving people, driving traffic to a place
Kevin Dieny:where they can fill out a form.
Kevin Dieny:It's always some sort of a form or some sort of transference of their information
Kevin Dieny:in exchange for something else, like a newsletter, or an offer, a PDF.
Kevin Dieny:Those are usually the offer things.
Kevin Dieny:So the technology that we're talking about is okay, you need to
Kevin Dieny:know who your audience is first.
Kevin Dieny:Second, where does your audience go?
Kevin Dieny:Where are they?
Kevin Dieny:Are they on Facebook?
Kevin Dieny:Are they not online?
Kevin Dieny:Are they reading newspapers?
Kevin Dieny:Are they reading a specific type of magazine?
Kevin Dieny:Are they watching a certain type of video on YouTube?
Kevin Dieny:You can figure this out by throwing some money out there and seeing, okay,
Kevin Dieny:where am I getting a good return?
Kevin Dieny:But you could also do some preliminary research or ask your current
Kevin Dieny:customers like Matt had mentioned, these are called placements?
Kevin Dieny:Where should I go to where my audience is?
Kevin Dieny:You know, is it just a local area?
Kevin Dieny:I should send mailers.
Kevin Dieny:Whatever it ends up being, you drive people to a place they can sign up
Kevin Dieny:or get in contact with you, right.
Kevin Dieny:To move it along the path, along the way.
Kevin Dieny:But along that process, you should also consider how are
Kevin Dieny:you going to capture emails?
Kevin Dieny:How are you going to capture their information?
Kevin Dieny:What information is important to gather?
Kevin Dieny:And if email is part of that, if it isn't already, it should be because when you
Kevin Dieny:got, when you've got the email now and unlocks that channel for you, right.
Kevin Dieny:There's another way.
Kevin Dieny:I was hoping to mention, I don't know if you guys know anything about it.
Kevin Dieny:It's called list rental.
Kevin Dieny:Do you guys know anything about that?
Ronn Burner:Only what you told me, is this the swap, the swap game?
Kevin Dieny:Yes.
Kevin Dieny:Do you want, did you want to highlight it, Ronn?
Ronn Burner:You find a like-partner who has a quality list, and you
Ronn Burner:guys basically do an exchange like trading baseball cards, except for,
Ronn Burner:we're doing it with a mailing list.
Ronn Burner:Obviously you trust each other and we respect each other and you have
Ronn Burner:a relationship with them, so that relationship can continue and can cycle.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, the basics are you find someone who has a list, let's
Kevin Dieny:say you don't, or it's not big enough.
Kevin Dieny:You go find someone who does, and you ideally want to find
Kevin Dieny:like Ronn alluded to a partner.
Kevin Dieny:Someone who's kept a good list hygiene, which we'll talk about
Kevin Dieny:in a little bit here, but once you find a partner who's willing to say,
Kevin Dieny:Hey, I'll send an email to X amount of people for Y amount of dollars.
Kevin Dieny:So let's say they're like, Hey, I'll send an email to 15,000 people.
Kevin Dieny:The email will have links to your website to sign up for your stuff.
Kevin Dieny:You'll get a bunch of these people to come to your website.
Kevin Dieny:And they'll sign up there and that's usually what's called a list
Kevin Dieny:rental and you usually pay per send.
Kevin Dieny:You might pay per lead.
Kevin Dieny:A lot of times an agency who is in your industry will have that kind of a hookup
Kevin Dieny:and then you'll be able to grow...
Kevin Dieny:That's pretty much the fastest way I know of to grow a list legitimately through
Kevin Dieny:consent, like overnight, and that's not free, but it is a way, it is a method.
Kevin Dieny:It is a really good alternative to just buying a list and this way, you know,
Kevin Dieny:boom, I'm getting legitimate people who are signing up, who are in the industry.
Kevin Dieny:Who are the audience I want and you're getting all of that stuff.
Kevin Dieny:And sometimes if it's an agency, they'll even put the email together
Kevin Dieny:for you and the landing page.
Kevin Dieny:Depends on what kind of an agency it is, but they do exist and it is out there.
Kevin Dieny:So that, that is an option.
Kevin Dieny:So I guess, since we mentioned it list hygiene, Matt, I think
Kevin Dieny:you'd be a good resource for this.
Kevin Dieny:What goes into list hygiene?
Kevin Dieny:Why is it so important?
Matt Widmyer:Yeah, what goes into list hygiene.
Matt Widmyer:It is basically just making sure everything is maintained
Matt Widmyer:to a level of satisfaction.
Matt Widmyer:The best way to make sure your content is still relevant is make
Matt Widmyer:sure that all the information is still relevant to the person.
Matt Widmyer:Any kind of data or lists or records of people or businesses are not static.
Matt Widmyer:They're dynamic, they're always changing.
Matt Widmyer:Right?
Matt Widmyer:People move, they typically keep the same email addresses and the phone numbers
Matt Widmyer:are typically the same, but people do leave and email addresses go bad and they
Matt Widmyer:usually bounce after that person leaves.
Matt Widmyer:It might forward for a little bit, couple of weeks or whatever.
Matt Widmyer:But it'll eventually just go bad and you'll get a hard bounce there.
Matt Widmyer:The way we do it on the phone is we'll verify some of the information that we
Matt Widmyer:have make sure it is still, up to date.
Matt Widmyer:You don't have to verify every single thing.
Matt Widmyer:Right.
Matt Widmyer:Verifying the email address you do have on record, if you do have one, and if you
Matt Widmyer:don't have one, then good opportunity.
Matt Widmyer:Hey, can I send you a quick email?
Matt Widmyer:Now you just got another email address that, is now relevant
Matt Widmyer:to what you're sending.
Matt Widmyer:You need more than just an email address though, right?
Matt Widmyer:You need a little bit more information about that person to keep it up-to-date
Matt Widmyer:and relevant, but air to caution here, because the more information
Matt Widmyer:you have on somebody and the more information you're gonna want to verify
Matt Widmyer:and collect about somebody, the more you're going to have to maintain.
Matt Widmyer:So it's kind of like a double-edged sword.
Matt Widmyer:And it makes it a lot more difficult to maintain and you can have somebody
Matt Widmyer:whose full-time job is going through your whole database and verifying everything.
Matt Widmyer:But by the time they're done, they're going to have to do it all again anyway.
Matt Widmyer:That's how quick stuff changes, as we all know.
Kevin Dieny:The precursor things that Matt's talking about help you maintain
Kevin Dieny:and think about, you know, how you're going to store all this information.
Kevin Dieny:Another little tidbit here is just by sending an email out, the hard bounced
Kevin Dieny:emails, they don't exist anymore.
Kevin Dieny:So you shouldn't keep sending to them....
Kevin Dieny:Having a process in place for doing that, it's important.
Kevin Dieny:Even the ones that soft bounce, those are a little bit like a yellow flag.
Kevin Dieny:Maybe not a full red flag, but like a, okay, something's going on there.
Kevin Dieny:Maybe we should keep track of how many times these continue to soft
Kevin Dieny:bounce before we're like, this is just going to keep bouncing forever.
Kevin Dieny:There's a lot of reasons for bouncing.
Kevin Dieny:A lot of things are involved in that.
Kevin Dieny:And when people opt out, I don't think it's a bad thing.
Kevin Dieny:Ronn, How do you look at, the whole unsubscribed, opt-out scenario?
Ronn Burner:I say thank you for letting us know.
Ronn Burner:And people think sometimes there is dirty words, I always say that
Ronn Burner:accountability is not a dirty word.
Ronn Burner:Well, neither is opt out.
Ronn Burner:And the reason being is they're explicitly letting us know that
Ronn Burner:they're not interested in our content.
Ronn Burner:That's important to know.
Ronn Burner:What's the difference of sending to that person versus sending to a spam trap?
Ronn Burner:They don't want to receive your content, so it's better to know
Ronn Burner:that they're not a potential customer, for any number of reasons.
Ronn Burner:So what you do is you remove them and can be debated whether you keep
Ronn Burner:them in your database or not, and put them in a separate section.
Ronn Burner:That's a whole entire other conversation that each institution will have
Ronn Burner:their own kind of thoughts on.
Ronn Burner:The point is they're not marketable.
Ronn Burner:They're marketing suspended at the very least, so they should
Ronn Burner:not receive your content.
Ronn Burner:And here's another interesting point or at least the case for why you
Ronn Burner:would keep them in your database.
Ronn Burner:They can later become unsuspended.
Ronn Burner:They can become marketable again.
Ronn Burner:Whatever your product is and they don't need it, well, a couple of years later,
Ronn Burner:all of a sudden they need a new product because there's crapped out already.
Ronn Burner:Well, they might opt back into what it is for you while they're shopping again.
Ronn Burner:So the idea of an opt out is good information to have, because you
Ronn Burner:do not want to be annoying and you do not want to send to people
Ronn Burner:that do not want your content.
Kevin Dieny:No, no, that was really good.
Kevin Dieny:I look at unsubscribe the same way.
Kevin Dieny:It's a positive thing.
Kevin Dieny:Obviously extremely high unsubscribe rate should be telling you
Kevin Dieny:you're sending the wrong content.
Kevin Dieny:That's not relevant.
Kevin Dieny:So that leads me right to the next question for you, Ronn.
Kevin Dieny:What are lead magnets, what are offers and how, what is their purpose?
Kevin Dieny:How you create them to make sure that they're valuable and
Kevin Dieny:relevant for building the list.
Kevin Dieny:Now, these are people who are coming to the business for the first time.
Kevin Dieny:It could be a dentist website, could be a roofing website, and they're going,
Kevin Dieny:they're trying to figure out, okay, I want to know more about this business.
Kevin Dieny:And this business is going to offer them a lead magnet, an offer of some sort.
Kevin Dieny:Can you elaborate on what all of that is?
Ronn Burner:Yes.
Ronn Burner:I just remember what I was going to say previously was I would have
Ronn Burner:built in cold suppression lists.
Ronn Burner:So people are, I call it proof of life.
Ronn Burner:So if you're sending emails and it goes to the same email address over
Ronn Burner:a 60 day period, and if say, they've received, six emails in 60 days
Ronn Burner:and they haven't even opened, it has been no engagement whatsoever.
Ronn Burner:I would cold suppress them and also suspend them for awhile, which also will
Ronn Burner:help with your list hygiene, because you need that proof of life to know there's at
Ronn Burner:least this person on the other end of it.
Ronn Burner:Cause it doesn't do any good for them to just constantly ignore you.
Ronn Burner:You can still put them in a different bucket and you handle
Ronn Burner:them differently in a drip campaign.
Ronn Burner:As far as lead magnets go, the power of lead magnets are, and I love to
Ronn Burner:say this is, I don't want to tell people what I think they want.
Ronn Burner:I want them to tell me what they want and the lead magnets do that.
Ronn Burner:Ideally you have a number of them from a different point of view, if you will.
Ronn Burner:And the reason for that is this now speaks to them in a way that's different.
Ronn Burner:Talking about a different pain point or talking about something
Ronn Burner:in a very different way.
Ronn Burner:Take them to a form to fill to a landing page to fill out the form, and
Ronn Burner:then you would get more information on them based on their engagement.
Ronn Burner:If that does not work, a different lead magnet altogether, still supporting the
Ronn Burner:very same product, is just talking about it from a very different angle, with
Ronn Burner:different analytics and a whole different perspective that if the first one didn't
Ronn Burner:work this one, oh, that's interesting.
Ronn Burner:I don't need that value offering.
Ronn Burner:But this see this product also does this now that is of interest to me.
Ronn Burner:So the lead magnets, have a way of letting them tell you what it
Ronn Burner:is that they're interested in.
Ronn Burner:And then ideally you would have, now you would have a different series of
Ronn Burner:emails speaking to that specific point.
Ronn Burner:Lead magnets are anything from, PDF, it could be an infographic,
Ronn Burner:it can be a white paper.
Ronn Burner:It depends on what your business is.
Ronn Burner:B2C, obviously the buyer's journey is much quicker.
Ronn Burner:So you want to get right to the point right away and in a way that
Ronn Burner:allows them to speak to somebody and B2C you often don't, you can just
Ronn Burner:go to a website and just buy right away without speaking to somebody.
Ronn Burner:So that also changes how you would offer and what you would offer.
Ronn Burner:But lead magnets are simply offering value.
Ronn Burner:Like I mentioned earlier with emails.
Ronn Burner:I'll get a massive, massive, a hundred page PDF from like a Marketo
Ronn Burner:or Eloqua or HubSpot, whatever it is, where it's like, I want to see
Ronn Burner:what the new 2021 analytics are.
Ronn Burner:And they'll give it to me for free, as long as I provide them with the
Ronn Burner:information, because of course they want me to move over to their product.
Ronn Burner:So that is tremendous value.
Ronn Burner:And that's the idea of a lead magnet is just find value specific to that audience.
Ronn Burner:If you can't be one-to-one ratio and that sort of specific, it can be more
Ronn Burner:vague, but now it's becoming specific based on which ones they are downloading.
Kevin Dieny:Yeah, the formula for the lead magnet or the offer as Ronn
Kevin Dieny:was mentioning is know your audience.
Kevin Dieny:Your audience has pain points.
Kevin Dieny:They have things they're trying to solve, trying to accomplish.
Kevin Dieny:What job are they trying to get done as soon as possible.
Kevin Dieny:There's also a little bit of research in there around what's
Kevin Dieny:that problem worth, what's it worth to them to solve that problem?
Kevin Dieny:What is that?
Kevin Dieny:What's the value there.
Kevin Dieny:And so the offer, the lead magnet is created based on whatever problem they're
Kevin Dieny:trying to solve, whatever pain they have.
Kevin Dieny:It's attacking that.
Kevin Dieny:It's giving people, Hey, look, you've got to solve this problem.
Kevin Dieny:That's the truth.
Kevin Dieny:That's what you need to do, you need to solve this.
Kevin Dieny:There's a couple ways to go about it.
Kevin Dieny:Here's either some information, here's some education, here's a resource here's
Kevin Dieny:a, maybe a 20% off because the values a little bit lower for you, here is
Kevin Dieny:video on this, here's a free trial.
Kevin Dieny:Gosh, here's a tool, here's a calculator, here's something to
Kevin Dieny:help you either do it yourself or get to the finish line yourself.
Kevin Dieny:And there might be a little bit of branding and positioning and
Kevin Dieny:bias there because the company is giving it's like, Hey.
Kevin Dieny:Obviously, we want you to come and buy from us, but you're still
Kevin Dieny:at the end of the day that the aim of it is to help someone.
Kevin Dieny:It's to help that audience with that problem.
Kevin Dieny:And if that audience finds value, actual value there, they often will
Kevin Dieny:see it as, okay, I like this company.
Kevin Dieny:They get me, they get the problem I have, they're willing
Kevin Dieny:to produce something for me.
Kevin Dieny:And sometimes lowers that threshold of, willing to pay and willing to buy.
Kevin Dieny:It might be just that the audience has no idea that they need to get a new roof.
Kevin Dieny:It could be like, Hey, is there pots everywhere?
Kevin Dieny:Or leaking pots in the rain?
Kevin Dieny:Okay.
Kevin Dieny:He might need a new roof.
Kevin Dieny:You might need something, there might be something going on up there.
Kevin Dieny:It's like, oh, okay.
Kevin Dieny:Not, everyone's a genius.
Kevin Dieny:Not everyone knows the product as well as you do.
Kevin Dieny:So helping people get there and get all the way there, helping people
Kevin Dieny:see what the process looks like.
Kevin Dieny:Okay, people are gonna arrive.
Kevin Dieny:It's going to be painless and then they're going to leave.
Kevin Dieny:The dentist office may not be so scary if you can show people what it's like.
Kevin Dieny:There's a lot of fear around that kind of thing.
Kevin Dieny:So that's what the offers, that's what the lead magnets are, persuading.
Kevin Dieny:That's what they're trying to do there.
Kevin Dieny:Which kind of goes right to the next thing.
Kevin Dieny:Something that facilitates the exchange of information, right?
Kevin Dieny:A form has a landing page.
Kevin Dieny:Some of that's tied to your website.
Kevin Dieny:Sometimes you can go get a plugin for that.
Kevin Dieny:But sometimes the easiest way to do all of this is just to
Kevin Dieny:go buy an email marketing tool.
Kevin Dieny:And you mentioned some of them Ronn, but I'm going to shoot over to Matt,
Kevin Dieny:do you think a business should invest in an email marketing tool, Matt?
Matt Widmyer:Yeah, I think absolutely.
Matt Widmyer:Even if you don't even have that list built up yet, I think you should have
Matt Widmyer:that thing primed and ready to go.
Matt Widmyer:I think that's a very necessary, investment for a business.
Matt Widmyer:It depends, on what type of business, but if we're talking
Matt Widmyer:about B2C, most B2C, it makes sense.
Matt Widmyer:It's made sense for me and some of the ventures that I've done off onto the side.
Matt Widmyer:If I did not have any kind of, email correspondence you'd have
Matt Widmyer:to do a lot of manual work.
Matt Widmyer:You have to look at the value of your time versus the value of whatever investment.
Matt Widmyer:I know, like some of the names that get dropped out there,
Matt Widmyer:Marketo, HubSpot, stuff like that.
Matt Widmyer:Some of those are a little bit pricier but there are more cost
Matt Widmyer:effective solutions for people that are just getting off the ground.
Matt Widmyer:You don't have to start in the Cadillac.
Matt Widmyer:Right.
Matt Widmyer:You can start in the Geo Metro and work your way up to the Cadillac.
Kevin Dieny:Oh I love the car metaphor.
Kevin Dieny:So, Ronn do you have anything else you want to add to that or anything
Kevin Dieny:else that we've missed in this conversation before we close out?
Ronn Burner:So we're talking about list building, not to be confused with
Ronn Burner:your CRM or your database of some sort as well as your email marketing tool or
Ronn Burner:solution, whatever that's going to be.
Ronn Burner:You can start with the CRM and some of them will allow you to
Ronn Burner:send from them if it's, it depends.
Ronn Burner:If you're brand new and you literally have virtually no list, you still need
Ronn Burner:your database, you still need your CRM and you and I would venture that
Ronn Burner:you would rather not do it in Excel.
Ronn Burner:So just get the CRM, and then start building from that.
Ronn Burner:Build, get the infrastructure set and then build on top of that.
Ronn Burner:Something like Salesforce is a tremendous tool and it's
Ronn Burner:probably the most popular CRM.
Ronn Burner:You can get it at a basic level to start building that this and that database.
Ronn Burner:I think something we haven't really touched on is, the fields.
Ronn Burner:The questions or the fields in a form are very, very, very important
Ronn Burner:to what it is that you do and what it is that you provide.
Ronn Burner:So some companies doesn't matter if you're male or female, some
Ronn Burner:companies it's, ultimately important because it's a female product, right.
Ronn Burner:Or geography or however you want to do that.
Ronn Burner:Those are the questions that go into the field, which is very key.
Ronn Burner:So even for a lead magnet, they'll tell you their age or not their age,
Ronn Burner:but their gender or whatever it is.
Ronn Burner:That's very specific that it will help you profile them and move them through.
Ronn Burner:So that data goes into the CRM and now we have it.
Ronn Burner:And then the email marketing tool is getting the behavior, the engagement.
Ronn Burner:So you're getting all the analytics and all the data.
Ronn Burner:So everything that they are doing for those from your website or from the
Ronn Burner:email or both, or even social media for that matter, you are now tracking their
Ronn Burner:movements and their engagement and what they're interested in and where they've
Ronn Burner:been and where they're going next.
Ronn Burner:That is important.
Ronn Burner:That is what the email marketing system will get for you.
Ronn Burner:And that will also allow you to clean up your data, which then
Ronn Burner:keeps it pristine within your CRM.
Ronn Burner:So they, the two tools work together and like Matt said, you can get pretty
Ronn Burner:basic, or at least not the high dollar, the high spend, email tools that
Ronn Burner:can manage you on, on a simple basis.
Ronn Burner:But the idea is to get an infrastructure in place and then built on that
Ronn Burner:rather than wholesale changes.
Matt Widmyer:I did want to actually add to that.
Matt Widmyer:And that was great, by the way, I did want to add to that.
Matt Widmyer:I know the emphasis here is on building up an email list that also
Matt Widmyer:does include what Ronn mentioned, which is the suppression piece.
Matt Widmyer:That's, that's a piece that it's a must have.
Matt Widmyer:It's not like, oh, it would be nice to exclude certain people from my list.
Matt Widmyer:No, because the quality of your list is going to go up if you pluck out
Matt Widmyer:the people that don't really are not relevant to, whatever it is that you do.
Matt Widmyer:Perfect example that we always use is like this, the students
Matt Widmyer:downloading for information for the class project or whatever.
Matt Widmyer:They're just getting information off the internet.
Matt Widmyer:Right now it's not relevant to them.
Matt Widmyer:So timing's also a big thing too.
Matt Widmyer:That's probably the most missed thing and it's something that'll
Matt Widmyer:drive a sales manager nuts too.
Matt Widmyer:Cause they'll, they'll want to message the entire world.
Matt Widmyer:I got a list of 5,000 people let's message these 5,000 and I can expect 10% from it.
Matt Widmyer:No, you can't because you're not going to want to send it to all those 5,000 people.
Matt Widmyer:Because sure fire every single time too, you started going through the list.
Matt Widmyer:Well, I thought you didn't want the HR title.
Matt Widmyer:Oh, that's right.
Matt Widmyer:We don't.
Matt Widmyer:Okay.
Matt Widmyer:Well, what else don't you want before this thing goes in here?
Matt Widmyer:Let's take care of it right now.
Matt Widmyer:Right?
Matt Widmyer:The point of consideration is who do you not want in here as well?
Ronn Burner:Matt, that's a perfect example of why an opt
Ronn Burner:out is not a terrible thing.
Ronn Burner:The class projects, I mean, that's a perfect example.
Ronn Burner:Like an opt out is not a bad thing, that's a great, great example.
Kevin Dieny:I think the big thing that we're trying to get to here is
Kevin Dieny:sort of the undercurrent for this whole conversation is that emails are
Kevin Dieny:very valuable channel for a business.
Kevin Dieny:And it allows you to do a lot.
Kevin Dieny:You can really do a lot, but it does take a little bit of work.
Kevin Dieny:Building an email list I wouldn't say it's the easiest thing in the world.
Kevin Dieny:You're not just building a list of people.
Kevin Dieny:You're building a list of ideal audiences that are showing you
Kevin Dieny:engagement that are opportunities for you to do business with in the future.
Kevin Dieny:And to build that the right way does take the right set of tools, the
Kevin Dieny:right operations, process hygiene.
Kevin Dieny:You have to find your audience to get them in there.
Kevin Dieny:Then you have to craft the right relevant offers.
Kevin Dieny:You have to craft the right emails to keep them in there.
Kevin Dieny:There's a lot that goes on and all that.
Kevin Dieny:But if you can do all of that, and you can do it.
Kevin Dieny:You can, obviously you are not going to do it well right off the gate.
Kevin Dieny:Sometimes it takes people and it takes even the people who
Kevin Dieny:are doing this all the time.
Kevin Dieny:Like Ronn and all of us have done it.
Kevin Dieny:It takes a lot of mistakes.
Kevin Dieny:Takes a lot of learning, takes a lot of experimentation to get right.
Kevin Dieny:It just, the subject line will make people's brains explode about, well,
Kevin Dieny:how many different ways there are to try to craft the perfect one.
Kevin Dieny:It's really not easy.
Kevin Dieny:If you can unlock that channel for your business it unlocks a lot more
Kevin Dieny:opportunities for you to capture value.
Kevin Dieny:It unlocks that ability for you to interact with your
Kevin Dieny:audience in a different way.
Kevin Dieny:And maybe you've never considered, my business type is not, having an
Kevin Dieny:email or having email blast, having email newsletters, not that common.
Kevin Dieny:Well, give it a try, give it a whirl and see what it can come of it.
Kevin Dieny:I would say there's a lot of value there and a lot of potential
Kevin Dieny:in there to, to get it going.
Kevin Dieny:You can build an email list and build one with consent, build one with following
Kevin Dieny:the rules of mass email marketing, and it'll set you up for success down the
Kevin Dieny:road without the crazy nightmares and headaches of having to deal with all
Kevin Dieny:the blacklisting and everything else.
Kevin Dieny:So, everybody, all our listeners, Ronn, Matt, thank you guys so much
Kevin Dieny:for coming on and talking about this.
Matt Widmyer:Thanks for having us.
Ronn Burner:No, thanks for having us.
Ronn Burner:It's awesome.
Ronn Burner:Happy to be here.
Kevin Dieny:All right, everybody.
Kevin Dieny:Get your emails going, build your lists, get your list going.
Kevin Dieny:A lot of money's in the list like Ronn mentioned.
