Today on the podcast we chat with Cody Burch. Cody is a member of The League and helps course creators and membership site owners launch their programs with funnels and Facebook ads through agency done-for-you work, a membership, live events, and courses. He's here to tell us how he increased sales with email marketing by a whopping 1,000% just by implementing two of our campaigns.

Ready to have your mind absolutely blown? 

SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:

(0:10) Want to get more sales from your email marketing? Grab our FREE download, Click Tricks.

(3:34) Fancy a 14-day FREE trial with Keap? (We give you TWO of our campaigns for FREE with it!)

(4:42) Cody's email marketing before he joined The League.

(11:44) Implementing our campaigns (and increasing sales by 1,000%!)

(17:57) Cody's success with the Time Lord campaign.

(20:22) How does Cody feel about his email marketing now?

(22:45) The one action that had the most impact on Cody's email marketing.

(24:28) What's next for Cody's email marketing?

(25:52) Has email marketing taken over Cody's life?

(28:03) Subject line of the week.

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That's why we're giving you 12 creative ways to help you get more clicks in every email you send. It's a FREE download, and it's called Click Tricks. You can grab it here. 

Cody's email marketing before joining The League 

When Cody started his business over 5 years ago, he didn’t have a funnel, an email list, or any presence on the Internet. It was only about a year later, when he wrote the book The One Hour Funnel to help people create their online lead capture system quickly, that he started collecting email addresses. His book has been one of the biggest list builders for Cody - one he's been using for years.

But while Cody was growing his list, he wasn't nurturing it. He wanted his emails to be perfect and was putting himself under so much pressure that he'd only send emails to his list sporadically and when he had something to promote. Even though the front end was working (and Cody was collecting leads through funnels and ads) his approach wasn’t structured - with no system or strategy behind it. He might promote something similar to what people had downloaded from him, but when that worked, it was random and lucky. 

Nothing horrible was happening - he wasn't getting haters or huge amounts of unsubscribed. But soon enough, Cody realised there was a gap in his marketing. His front end was working, but he had no real plan on how to nurture his list. And that was until about a year ago when Cody downloaded our Daily Email Strategy (now the Bottomless Email Strategy) and from there he eventually joined our membership, The League. 

What did Cody's emails to his list look like?

Cody's emails weren't story-based or personal – they were completely promotional. Whether it was Cody selling his own products or sharing affiliate links, there was no backstory or consistency with his emails. He would go so long without emailing that his subscribers probably forgot who he was, what he did, or what they'd downloaded from him. 

And that's why people weren't opening Cody's emails or clicking his links with consistency. When somebody downloaded a lead magnet, Cody would send them three days' worth of emails trying to sell them the next relevant low-ticket offer, but other than that, he had no automation set up. His promotions were sporadic, and this meant he was making money in his business asymmetrically – people would opt-in and may or may not buy something from him over the next 6-12 months. But when he was asked what a new lead was worth to him in the first 30 days, Cody had no idea how to even track that. 

It wasn't until October 2021 that Cody committed to one email a day. And when he started doing that, everything Cody thought might happen didn’t happen, while everything we said would happen did happen! Amazing, right? Open rates, click-through rates, and replies went up, and he started receiving more and more replies from people saying that his emails spoke to them.

Implementing our campaigns 

So we now know that Cody had a sporadic email strategy for about 3 years before joining our membership. After that, he started sending out 3 or 4 emails a day and getting more comfortable with the practice. But he still hadn't fully committed. As Cody described it, it was like a new baby giraffe learning how to walk. 

Then finally in February 2022, Cody implemented the Getting to Know sequence (our welcome sequence) and deleted his original three-email sequence. Following that, in just one night he wrote the Overture sequence (which is one of our direct sales campaigns).

Since then, people who join Cody's list receive their lead magnet and over the 4-day email sequence, Cody informs them that he'll send a helpful piece of marketing advice every single day. People are of course free to unsubscribe, but if they choose to stay, they now know what to expect. 

How Cody increased his sales after implementing our campaigns

When Cody looked at the data, he noticed that in January 2022 (before implementing our campaigns), he made 10 low-ticket sales. This meant that, on average, one person every 3 days would buy from Cody. Then in February 2022, after implementing our campaigns, he made 110 low-ticket item sales, and then another 97 in March - for a total of 207 sales over the course of two months. That's now an average of 3 and a half people buying from Cody per day! And that's after he generates an average of 35 new leads per day via his Facebook ads.

In short, Cody spend around $7,500 on Facebook ads over the course of two months, and, for the first time ever, he generated $10,669 in revenue. The days of Cody making money asymmetrically are officially over! With a structure and a plan to nurture his leads, Cody makes money more consistently. He's also confident in the knowledge that while he spends money growing his list, he can also make that money back in no time. Cody is now cash flow positive on building his list.

Cody's success with the Time Lord campaign

Cody also shared the story of when he decided to invest in a $10,000 one-day consulting with a mentor, and after looking at his finances, he realised he was $3,000 short on being able to pay this amount upfront. So he decided to look inside The League to see what resources he could use to generate that money, and he pulled out our Time Lord campaign. This sequence has a countdown clock within it and an incentive to sign up to an offer by a certain time. Long story short, that campaign alone made Cody $3,258 in a week in late December 2021, which meant Cody could pay for the mentoring he wanted. 

As a result of this, Cody now makes more offers. More often than not, he’ll hear success stories from other members of The League, look into what campaign they used, study it, and then figure out what he could sell with it. So Cody is more proactive with his email marketing – he makes better offers, he’s more creative with how he’s offering resources to his community, and he's been able to increase his subscribers' upsell average order value.  

How does Cody feel about his email marketing now?

Cody feels great about his email marketing! He’s been emailing every day since the beginning of the year and hasn’t missed a day. He writes his email daily and is proud of being in the discipline of collecting the dots and connecting the dots. He gathers stories and experiences daily and then connects them to something that might be relevant to his audience and that shows some of his personality.

For Cody, it's just like working out a muscle. He uses Asana to collect his content marketing ideas and document everything there. So if he gets stuck at any point, he goes to his list of ideas, finds one that speaks to him, and uses it as a prompt to write his daily email. 

Cody is also getting a lot of positive feedback about his emails. He might be dismissive of his little stories sometimes, but people feel like they know him and know about his life. And getting feedback is extremely fulfilling – it means the world to people like Cody (and us!) who send lots of emails.

The one action that had the most impact on Cody’s email marketing

For Cody, the one thing that had the most impact was letting go of his idea of perfection. He thought his emails had to be perfect – that he couldn’t send an email until every single detail was taken care of. But that was just a false belief.

And Cody still finds that embarrassing to admit, considering it's what his book and podcast are all about. Things don't need to be perfect. It's about getting into the discipline of sending emails. So his top tip is to start sending an email every day with no judgement. Just hit publish with confidence because it won't be as bad as your imagination tells you.

What’s next for Cody’s email marketing?

Cody is now looking at ways to promote his live events and perhaps even a virtual summit through email marketing. So he has ideas for high-ticket items in the pipeline, but at the same time, he's continuously looking at increasing the average sale value for each subscriber. 

He's definitely committed to daily emails – he went from wanting to send more emails to deciding to send a daily email. And that switch that flipped in his brain means he's always going to find a way to send an email to his list every single day. 

Has email marketing taken over Cody’s life?

Cody says his email marketing takes around 10-20 minutes a day to write and send an email. And that's because his ideas are already written down - otherwise, it'd take a lot longer! But now that he does this so often, he knows how to do it. He doesn’t do a lot of editing either – he just makes sure there aren’t any crazy typos in his emails and hits send.

Cody also told us he chooses not to batch his emails. He writes them daily because he feels they’re more in the moment and closer to what happened on the day or the day before. And he also recommended the book Storyworthy, which talks about what stories are worth talking about and how you can build connections with people.

Subject line of the week 

This week’s subject line of the week is “Can’t stop watching these videos on loop.” One of the things Rob tries to do with subject lines sometimes is to make it sound like the thing he’s referring to is in the email. But not in a way that makes them feel scammed or ripped off when they get into the email!

This particular email had Rob talking about the TikTok addition and the fact you can’t help but just watch one video on a loop and then watch the next one and the next one and then the next one... The subject line worked because it hinted at the fact there might be something for people to look at inside the email. And when people click through and read it, he's describing the videos first and then going into the lesson and the offer as he normally would. 

Useful Episode Resources

About Cody

If you want to connect with Cody you can find him on his website. If you enjoy the one-hour funnel idea on how to quickly build high-converting funnels, you can get a FREE copy of Cody’s book here.  

Related episodes

How Dan Greef Made £9k in just 1 Day, Sending Simple Emails.

How Sheila Went from the Starting Blocks to Total Clarity – an Email Marketing Case Study.

7 Essential Email Campaigns Examples For Your Business.

FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketing

If you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. 

Join our FREE Facebook group

If you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.

Try ResponseSuite for $1

This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.

Join The League Membership

Not sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.

Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcast

Thanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about how our amazing member Cody Burch increased sales with email marketing by a whopping 1,000%) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review of the show on your favourite podcast player.

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And please do tell us! If you don't spend time on email marketing, what do you really fill your working days with? We'd love to know!