How can you write better emails? Do you think your emails are boring? Do you need to be funny? Or should you try and be more interesting? And if so, how?

We're Kennedy and Carrie, and we're sharing the little things you can do to make your email marketing less boring.

Ready? Then buckle up!

SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: 

(0:30) Want to carry on with the conversation? Join our FREE Facebook group. 

(3:05) Make everyday life sound interesting. 

(4:35) Take people on a journey with you. 

(10:27) Stay relevant to your audience. 

(13:37) Deliver value (and selling is value!) 

(17:37) Send emails using your name (not your company's). 

(18:41) Show up regularly and don't shy away from expressing opinions. 

(22:37) Tell stories (and start from the action). 

(26:16) Join The Email Hero Blueprint.

(26:33) Subject line of the week.

Useful Episode Resources

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Tap Into The Mind-Blowing Power Of Familiarity Exposure Psychology In Your Emails To Boost Sales In Your Business.

FREE list 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. Here's a 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.

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Join The Email Hero Blueprint 

Want more? Let's say you're a course creator, membership site owner, coach, author, or expert and want to learn about the ethical psychology-based email marketing that turns 60-80% more of your newsletter subscribers into customers (within 60 days). If that's you, then The Email Hero Blueprint is for you.

This is hands down the most predictable, plug-and-play way to double your earnings per email subscriber. It allows you to generate a consistent sales flow without launching another product, service, or offer. Best news yet? You won't have to rely on copywriting, slimy persuasion, NLP, or ‘better' subject lines.

Want to connect with Carrie?

You can find Carrie on her website or at Fully Leveraged Business. 

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Unknown 0:24

Hey welcome back Today we're going to talk about little things you can do tiny tweaks you can make to make email marketing less boring. So buckle up here we go

Unknown 0:35

around heroes. This is the new email marketing shows with Kennedy and Kerry. tune in each week and learn the email campaign strategy and what's working right now to make more sales from that email list of yours

Unknown 0:50

unbarring your email marketing and make it more fascinating Of course, you're gonna want to think about how do you apply this to your style. So it's not just our style. I'm gonna try and give you all of that in today's episode, of course, I want to make sure you're supported and you've got any questions at all about how to apply this to your niche to your voice to your audience to what it is that you do and how you make these change and implement them. Make sure you support it by coming joining us inside of our free Facebook group is called the Email Marketing Show community. Just go to Facebook, search for the Email Marketing Show community request to join join us and we'll have those discussions right over there. So you're completely supported on really applying and actioning all the things we'll talk about on this episode anteater wants to

Unknown 1:25

Okay, everybody, I am Carrie founder of fully leveraged business.com I'm a longtime business owner, and I'm super excited Kenny I don't know if I've even told you about this, but I have a trilogy coming out because why release one book when you can have three I'm based in Dallas, Texas and super happy to be here.

Unknown 1:40

Wow, I didn't know you have that going on. So call me to hear more about that. I'm sure we talked about more on the show as well. Hello, I'm Kennedy from your marketing heroes where we help you to make more sales. From your existing email list. And I have decided recently that I prefer appetisers or starters as we call them in the UK over main courses. I'm based here in Newcastle in the Northeast of England to rebel. I know I'm the person who like I'll go to the Indian takeaway, which I'm gonna do tonight. By the way, we've got the Indian takeaway instead of ordering like a main course. I'm gonna order like two starters. And basically the Indian tapas I thought decided, I love it. I love it together. There you go.

Unknown 2:09

So this is the place where I would read a review if I had a review from you, but instead I'm gonna have a review for my mom and my mom's gonna say sit up straight. She says speak better into the microphone. And also I love that fella that you're having a chat with. So so that we don't have to read reviews from our parents. Could you please submit a review and we'd be ever so grateful.

Unknown 2:25

I'll be lovely. So I think next week if we'll have a review for anybody next week, I'm going to read a review out from one of the cats that's that's that's making threats. Now.

Unknown 2:34

How many but you have to two cats. Yeah, you have two cats. I have a rescue cat and two dogs. So we've got five weeks covered. How about that? And then you guys there we go. But

Unknown 2:43

you don't want to hear two professionals making animal noises on a podcast. Get your fucking review said

Unknown 2:50

that. Okay, so let's just jump right in. Speaking of which, let's talk about why people think their email marketing is boring. It's because maybe they don't think there's what he is us. They don't think there is riveting. They don't think they have an interesting story to tell. I know a lot of speakers fall into that. They're like, Oh, I don't have a tragic story. Oh, I don't have some big transformation. So what are your thoughts on that?

Unknown 3:07

I think what people forget is that as soon as this microphones not on, I don't talk with this amount of energy. Mostly sit and doom scroll through Instagram and I also watch that Netflix show and most of my life is not that interesting. But whenever I'm putting a keynote together, or wherever I'm putting a training together, or whatever, I'm sharing something on this podcast, I find some of the less mundane boring things and share them or talk about them in an interesting way. So I think you'll remember is we're all like making dinner and we're all doing mundane, everyday admin stuff like checking the bank and all the boring stuff we all have to do. We're all doing that. But every now and again, something slightly interesting happens. And we just collect those slightly interesting things into a document like a note on your phone, and you get to share those things. That sounds like you're actually quite interesting didn't about you. I have to often watch comedians who like been around a long time and I always do make a new show. Every year, I think, how do you attract so much crazy shit into your life? Or you've gotten you funny things to talk about? The truth is, most of its made up so they don't is the answer. And here's the thing and talk about comedians and stuff. One of the big misconceptions people have about making their emails more interesting and like less boring is people think they need to be funny. They need to be witty, they need to be irreverent and get my emails happen to be funny and irreverent and fun. But that is because that's how I like to write because I'm gonna be honest, I'm writing for me first. Yes, I'm gonna write in for conversion, but I'm also writing in the style that pleases me and I find keeps me engaged. So by making it less boring to read, I make it less boring for me to create as well. It's a cycle it serves as both but you do not have to be funny. You don't have to be fun to be interesting. In fact, I was talking to one of my mentors who sadly passed away a couple of years ago, a guy called Max Maven, and he's the guy who got me into being the psychological mind reader thing, but I used to do as my full time gig of conferences and stuff. Like after the show. I remember having dinner with him is a big, imposing highly intelligent man. And I remember having breakfast with him in like an IHOP or something somewhere in the States, and we will have those in the UK. And I said to him, there's this big thing people talk about when you're a solo performer, whether it's a comedian or a magician or a mind reader or a mentalist or whatever you are, but you have to be likeable. And I said, I feel like you don't have to be likeable. And he's slammed his fork down and said, You're writing lead across the table and he dipped his beard into his pancakes and said, You don't have to be likeable. And therefore you don't have to be funny. And he said, and he's really deep voice he said you just have to be fascinating, huh? Isn't that interesting? And

Unknown 5:27

I might say that we need to work less on being interesting and work more on being interested. Oh, Dale Carnegie. So that's one thing but also I would say I think there is a fascination that people have in going on a journey with you. For instance, I have a harder time attracting followers now and subscribers now than when I first started, because when I first started, people were on the journey with me. And now there's a perception that I have arrived at whatever. And so then there's a healthy scepticism of oh, I can't do that or do that. Or of course you can do that. Of course that's easy for you. People love to be on a journey with you. We are seeing on Tik Tok and YouTube and any social platform really, the people with the highest follower accounts typically except for celebrities. The people with the highest follower accounts are people that are like hey, come along with me while I work on lowering my blood sugar come along with me while I am working on improving my posture and increasing my muscle mass. There are people that have not arrived but are willing to like link arms with you and journey with you. So I think that makes you fascinating because you're willing to invite them in. I love to think of that as like the Mr. Rogers effect. Mr. Rogers every day on television was like, hey, never come on in. I'm gonna put my sweater on and we're gonna walk out and check the mail. He hadn't already checked the mail. He wasn't like woohoo, I get better mail than you. He was like let's go check the mail together. This is how we feed the fish like we saw him beat the fish every day for 30 years. Not that I watched it for 30 years but probably I did. But that being said we put too much stock in the Polish and not enough in the progress and

Unknown 6:53

and you really don't have to be funny. I think a great example was when he was not funny, but his incredible is Seth Godin. Seth Godin. He is like the Yoda of marketing isn't he's like the most wise man in marketing, but he's never funny. I've never seen him be funny, but he's like, sincere

Unknown 7:11

and he's smile not sure I've seen

Unknown 7:14

no no format I'm still gonna post called has anyone anyone ever seen Seth Godin smile

Unknown 7:21

you know like Mr. Clean but a little less bulky. I mean, Mr. Clean is see that the Americans are like nodding their head because he's like Mr. Clean but less muscle. So here it goes. This you don't even have to be celebrity attractive. You don't have to be super polished. You don't have to be dressed in the I couldn't even tell you what Seth had on last time. I saw him appear somewhere I couldn't tell you about his speeches. One thing that I love that he says though is you guys don't know all the books I've written that you've never read. And it didn't make it for all the things I've developed that you've never heard that didn't make it. It's about being prolific. I mean, we don't expect you to be Taylor Swift right out of the gate. But what Taylor is going to do is outwork you. What Dolly Parton is going to do is outright you What Will Smith is going to do is I'll audition you, right? They just keep showing up and doing and then by that nature, they become these characters and fascinating and then successful. So I think it's really important just to be you the best compliment I ever get when people meet me in person is oh my gosh Carrie you're exactly the same in person as you are on stage as you are on video as you are on podcast. This like sarcastic humour wit snarkiness like I was the baby of the family. I have all brothers. They're all ginormous. It was a very military patriotic goal. Kind of family. Like these are all guys. These are all just coping mechanisms because I couldn't afford therapy for so long. I mean, this just is who I am. This is who I am. I'm not pretending to be anybody. I'm not practising at being anybody. I just am who I am. And I think that's what's important and that's what your people want. But I think at our route, we're afraid of somebody not liking us, but I would say Please embrace people not liking you bless and release them, let them unsubscribe, it's okay. Because the right people will come.

Unknown 8:47

I think as far as not having to be funny. You have to remember that. The reason you have to be funny is because it doesn't have to be about you like it can about them. Right. That's one of the best ways of making it less boring when someone's talking to you or something you care about if you're sitting having dinner with someone or you're talking about a topic. That's the reason I carry on is it's good friends, is because we can talk for hours on musical theatre on vocal technique on marketing. Mike Carey is not boring to me, because we're talking about something mutually interested in, right. So make sure it's about the problem that you can solve for them. Make sure you're being relevant. I remember I was once on someone's marketing list, and we were talking about marketing, marketing, marketing. And then one day he changed into actually being very faith based, which is not the reason I was on his email list. So I was like I was out so his emails became boring to me, not because of any of the reason that it was now irrelevant. So talking about irrelevant stuff that's actually interesting to them is a default simple as hell way of staying not boring. Yeah,

Unknown 9:43

and I think back to what we've talked about in other episodes about the unapologetically you you would not have been surprised about his face angle if he had mentioned it more often, or sprinkled it in other places, but it probably felt like a bait and switch at that point because it hadn't been about that. Yeah, we talked to Isabel recently on an episode and I love what she said about her emails is that she became so frustrated that her list her people weren't developing their full experience or their full potential by what they had received from her so far. So she wasn't emailing them so she could get more money out of them. She was emailing them more because she wanted to serve them better for them to maximise their experience. So go listen to that episode, if you haven't, but I think she she shifted why she was emailing and so in my market and as a speaker and as a coach, I say this often, your y has to be bigger than your why bother your Y has to mean by that. What do you mean when you say that? Well, there's a couple of different ways to look at it. We're not going to email unless there's a reason why we're emailing beyond that dollar. Most of us are not motivated by the actual dollar is what the dollar facilitates or enables, etc. Isabella's case she was motivated by the fact that she felt like people were not experiencing wine no way that they should be experiencing and could be experiencing wine and I love that so that's why you have to email more is because what does it make possible for you but your audience has to know that why do I need to bother opening this email? Kennedy's gonna make me smile today or I always have a bit of a lightbulb go off when can an email is or Katie's going to you know tell me how to XYZ right there. Why why bothering the email? Why not save it for later and watch it later? Oh, no, why bother? So you're the y has to be bigger than the why bother? And it should be related to what you saw. If you're looking at it and just mercenary terms you're going to have a hard time motivating yourself in my opinion, but let's talk about value. We hear that a lot. deliver value, deliver value, deliver value, give away three things I want to shift how we think of currency. Emails are not free. YouTube content is not free. Facebook platform is not free. There is currency being exchanged. And when we recognise that, when we're sending it, we're asking them to pay with their attention or their click or their time or their timeshare. Yeah, and I think we might write in a different way. We might make it a more high priority item on our list of daily things to do. If we recognise that they're paying you want to talk about the value on that. Yeah, I

mean, one of the things you'll remember that people are paying with their attention, of course, and they've paid to join your email list with their email address. But remember, every time you send an email, it's not free. Even if you don't pay your email platform per email you send every time you send an email, there's a damn good chance someone's unsubscribing a lead a contact that you paid and invested in some way to grow your email list just left, right. And that means if you're gonna send an email you want to make sure but you are getting value from it, and you're also delivering value. And there's also different ways of delivering value. Remember, people join your email list to educate themselves to solve problems, but they also join your email list to feel things to feel not alone to feel like there's hope. So it's about feelings and thoughts what other than you thought you can give to people as as value and what are the feelings you can give people? Can you allow them to escape from this feeling of I can't do it? Or can you allow them to feel that they can do it? So what are the feeders well before what are the new thoughts you can give people? But when you're delivering value, make sure you're not just giving value for value sake. In our emails. In all of our communication. We are directing people's attention so don't just be giving valuable things to just distract them and be like, Oh, what's the thing over that? Make sure you're maintaining people's attention on the things that you're talking about. So don't be just willy nilly sending stuff out. If your thing you're talking about right now is a water filtration system that make sure the education the feelings the thoughts that you're sharing, are leading people to really think about that water filtration system and the importance of water filtration or whatever the heck it happens to be. So make sure the value is really well directed and not because you feel guilty that you need to deliver value and please remember, please please please, if I'm a one thing that I say today remember when you offer people something to buy, that is also valuable. A lot of people think of like when you say how you can go and buy this thing. It's valuable when you signpost, people to the best possible solution to their problem that is valuable because without that they wouldn't be able to go all in on something they wouldn't know where to go for that best solution.

I wish you guys could see how amped up Kennedy is right now. Like passionate, excited if we had a cure for something, if we had a cure if we had and if we really believed in that we would not be shy about sharing it and we wouldn't be apologetic about it and we wouldn't be like shrinking and ourselves about it. We would be shouting about it. We would be excited and we would congratulate them when they made that wise decision. Right? We have to stop thinking of sales of our product or service as a one way street that it only benefits us you are changing the population you are changing perspective. You are changing the power of them to be able to create their own bread or fabric or body or income or whatever it happens to be and if you don't believe in your offer like that, then maybe you shouldn't be offering it maybe what you need to work on is not your email marketing but your actual product and or service. So here's another thing to make your email list boring. Something super simple, super easy fix is I tend not to open emails from companies. Do you open emails from companies? So

I mean, it's gonna be a receipt, it's going to be telling me that you know then you often no, absolutely don't.

But who do we open emails from human beings, people with names, people with names that we like, or that we find useful? Right,

right. The big thing that gets emails open is the sender name. It's not the subject line. Look, if I get an email with no subject line with from my mom, I'm opening the email. So that's because of the way I see my mom's name. My emotional reaction is I'm going to open this. So think about what is someone's emotional reaction when they see your name and their email inbox. It's the first column they see not the subject. Most of the Western world we read left to right, right. So we see the name first. And then we see this. So if when you email people, you're pissing people off, you're misleading them and that's what they feel like they see your name they have this feeling of dread doesn't matter how good the subject line is. They are not only real as a few people that I'm sure we all get emails from like I've never gotten that jokes email again. Or

conversely, our next point is you have to show up regularly. You don't want to be like the email booty call. Like you only hear from somebody when they want something from you. Or you're only like, Oh my this guy abandoned my phone. Why is this person you know, I used to tell the story about my little brother. I was the youngest for 17 years, and then my parents decided to have one more go and they adopted a baby. And so my little brother, I would hear from him most often when he was broke. When he was a teenager or college age, it would be like hey sissy, and it was always 50 when he needed somebody like hey, Stacy, do you need the car detailed or can I help with the kids this week or whatever? Like don't be that human show up even when you don't want something or need something? Because if their hackles go up when they see your name, or when they get the notification, or when they see you on social media because they know this signals a launch this signals and ask this signal, the dreaded need something then they're not going to open you or they're going to open you and they're gonna be so sceptical that it won't matter how good the email or the offer is. They have bad feelings about it. Yeah,

totally. And this basically means you can show up regularly with value as we talked about before, but what do you do? Another really good way of actually making that email manual as boring is to actually express your opinion stand for something like I don't like this. I do like this. Especially opinions people often think that means you have to tell me what you don't like you guys. Something's about loads of you do like I love this thing. This is brilliant. I love drinking this drink. Oh, I'm really obsessed with musical theatre stand for something and people go even if they don't like it, they get to hear more about you. And that's got more dimension more depth. It's more shades of colour, not just black and white anymore. You're lots of shades of interesting grey and even other colours because you're now much more interesting person. Yeah,

and we haven't like I said entire influencer accounts based on you guys. I'm obsessed with this lip gloss. You guys are obsessed with this concealer versus this concealer and people are just showing up to be on the journey with them to get their opinions even if they disagree with it. And if you think you are not going to irritate people, then you need to just be offline because I can promise you controversy can come from everything from I saw today. Kennedy, you have two cats. I have a cat. Someone today that was talking about their bougie cat and how their cat likes to have a cat Pacino every morning with them that they use whiskers milk to blend with the National Day to blend some frothy milk for their cat and they served it and I know it gets better in a glass cup for the cat and it was really a cute day. So every day when they make their own they also make their cat one. So what's funny is you might think what could possibly be controversial about that? What could paw the AW when

it gets an emotional reaction though, doesn't it other people like the

comment section was off the chain. Let me just tell you the comment section was not to be that person. But okay, perceive that person not to be that person that cats can't digest milk bla bla bla Well, if they had watched the whole video they used like a cat approved brand of milk but then other people like digging into the ethical components of the whiskers company and then other people saying your cat is on the counter drinking that that's so gross. You don't have any sanitary and then other people saying why are you letting them drink out of glass while you must be in a whole different tax bracket. I mean, seriously, it was a cat having foam out of a cup. And nobody was expressing an opinion in the actual post but I guess actually expressing opinion because how divisive the post was. So if you're afraid you're gonna offend somebody let me just go and let you off the hook. You're gonna offend somebody if you're breathing There you go. You're done. You're welcome permission to post whatever you want email what you want. Have your opinions about tacos or Wakka moly or soft versus crunchy tacos or tacos any time of day versus breakfast or to you know, Texas we do love a good breakfast taco. But anyway, here's the one thing that I think is important. It's to tell stories. This start in the middle of the action you guys need to ignore everything your English teacher told you when you've been writing your email for about 15 minutes and you pass all that but first and then that and then whatever. So he sat down and threw his cup away. That's where you start highlight and delete the rest of that start with the so he sat down and knocked the glass off the counter because he could tell it was whiskers milk and not almond milk. Right. That's talk to us about that. Kennedy. Why do we need to ignore all the things we've been taught. When

you go to the circus? You want to see the Acrobat flying through the air. You don't want to see them stretching up and warming up. We don't want to see that. We want to get in with the thrill when we watch an action movie. We don't want to see the guy sitting on the couch, flicking through TV and his phone buzzes and then he gets a call from his friend and he tells him that there's been there's been a heist he needs to go and collect the money. No, the opening scene of that is comes about because action. Why? Because when something's already in motion, we get like it's like it's a gravity success to it. It's human nature. Like if I'm looking out the window while while we're chatting and something moves my eyes are drawn to it why we are drawn to action. So telling stories immediately makes your emails less boring. It's not just a bunch of facts. We can emote with stories. We can not emote with facts. I can't have any feeling around a list of instructions or the seven points to do XYZ thing. But I can feel something when you tell me the story about when you did it. And then if you start in the action, we forget all of that warm up stuff and we get straight into that meaty bit. Well, it's like Baba, and it's punchy. A journalist friend of mine a years and years ago. Tell me the secret sauce of this. They do this in writing in the newspapers, in the press in blogs, the way the pros do this is they'll write their first draft and then delete the first two paragraphs. Obviously tidy up that third paragraph to make sure it makes sense, but that's basically the technique, tell stories or start in the middle of the action? Yeah,

as somebody who studied a bit of this in college, I was not a great student, but they would say if it bleeds it leads. Don't bury the lead the fastest way to get me not to watch a series or a show on television is to say, oh, it has a slow start. Hang in there till about the third one. No, no, I'm not doing it. Let me either just start with the third one, or skip it altogether or an acquired taste like why do I have to acquire the taste? I just want it to be good from the minute it hits my taste buds. So your emails are the same way especially when you know you're competing for attention and time. Listen, I've sat next to executives from big colleges and companies and watch them go through their email on their phone and watch them skim swipe skim swipe, never even getting past the subject or the preview line, never getting past the subject or the preview line. swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. So if you know that people are ploughing through, you don't have time for build up it has to be like the pilot episode of a really great series where somehow in casual dialogue that they've given you 10 years of backstory without it feeling like they've given you 10 years of backstory and so stop with all the setup your thesis statement, create the ambiance, set the mood, know the habitat, your English teacher is not your target audience so you have to stop it. Yeah,

if you want the shortcuts to do all of this and have the actual campaigns send out to your email list to be automatically doing this. Make sure you check out our flagship programme, the email hero blueprint go check it out over at email hero blueprint.com And now this week's

subject line of the Week.

This week's subject line I sent out was I'm so dirty and and it wasn't You're so dirty or anything like that was I'm so dirty. Why did that work? But people want to know what I really mean they probably know that I'm using an innuendo a double entendre aside like I'm saying something naughty, but they want to know what I really mean. And that's the real key the subject line is what do you really mean? I know you don't mean what you said in this other line. What did you really mean what was dirty? What did you do about it and what does it mean to me? That's why that one works.

And then you can never you can never go wrong with that but you have to know that I wouldn't ever use that subject line. My audience would be very concerned. Very concerned and not to mention my children. Listen, you guys, thanks for hanging out with us today. Thanks for listening all the way to the end. Hope you love the episode took some great notes. Make sure you hit subscribe, leave us a great review and tell a couple of friends that are into email marketing. We'll see you next week.

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