In this episode, Chris and Gena interview Liz Wilcox, an email strategist who helps small businesses and authors build online relationships with their audience. Liz shares her journey into email marketing and why authors should have a newsletter. She explains that a newsletter allows authors to stay connected with their readers, build hype for book releases, and own their platform. Liz also provides tips for creating engaging newsletters, offers a framework for writing them, and discusses her email marketing membership where she provides templates and trainings to help authors market their books effectively.

Links:

• Liz Wilcox email marketing membership
• wmdeal.com/liz
• wmdeal.com/lizannual
• Get your FREE Move the Needle goal-setting for authors ebook at https://www.writingmomentum.com
• Write with us! Join Chris, Gena, and Rene each Wednesday at noon Central and let's get our writing DONE! https://www.writingmoments.com

Hey, and welcome to the Writing Momentum Podcast.

I'm Christopher Maselli.

I'm here with my wife, Gena.

Gena, how are you doing today?

I'm doing great.

I'm really excited about our guests today.

Oh, this is super exciting for me too.

Today we have a special guest.

This is the fresh princess of email marketing, Liz Wilcox.

So Liz is an email strategist and she shows small businesses, including

authors like us, how to build online relationships, package up their magic

and turn it into emails that people want to read, and most importantly...

purchase from and check this out in the span of five years.

She grew and sold a successful blog, she got bought out of her second company,

she built the third into a multiple six figure business, but what she's

best known for maybe is her 2,000 plus users in her email marketing membership.

What you're gonna hear about today and we call her our best kept

secret because of how she helps us every week with our newsletter.

Welcome Liz Wilcox!

How you doing?

Oh my gosh, that was an excellent bio.

Who wrote that?

I think that was your bio, but it was written so well.

Wow, this lady's good.

But I do want to say we're now at almost 4,000 members.

Is that right?

You've doubled that.

Wow, that is amazing.

That's fantastic.

So you've gone up another, like this bio I think was written like

even less than a year ago, right?

So have you doubled that much in just a year?

Yeah I have.

Wow.

That sounds like I want to scratch my tongue cause it sounds so braggy.

But yeah, I did that.

You have earned the right to brag a little bit, I think.

So that is really cool.

But so tell us, so a lot of our listeners may not know, you may not know how

you got started in helping authors and small businesses with newsletters.

And that's what we're going to talk about today's newsletters.

Can you get started in all this?

Yeah, so friends, like you, I'm just a writer at heart.

I love writing, and when I figured out you could make money on the

internet from writing, I thought, okay, I'm gonna go all in on this.

So I started an RV travel blog.

Cause for my research people said, Oh, a blog makes more money than

books or something like that.

I don't know.

I read that.

So I said, okay, I'm going to just start blogging.

But my very first digital product was a book, it was called Tales

from the Black Tank, which if you don't know what the black tank

is, that's where your sewage goes.

I know Chris and Gena are very familiar with black tanks.

And so it was just a collection of hilariously crabby RV stories.

It sold something like $7,000 worth in the first few months

directly from my email list.

But then...

Yeah, so I, after the book, and this is a story I don't tell very often but

I really do consider myself a writer first, so I went to a writer's conference

called Tribe Conference with Jeff Goins way back when he was doing that, and I

realized that there was so much unlimited potential, but y'all, I was broke.

I had to charge my credit card to go to this conference, and, I just knew

there was something I didn't know.

And so I actually got I'm, I tend to be a little aggressive.

And so I actually got Jeff Goins to hire me and I was his customer service manager,

whatever you want to call it, for years.

And so to answer their question about, like, how did I get started

with email with authors specifically?

Goins had an email list of a hundred, two hundred thousand people, and

I was the person, if you hit reply on one of his newsletters, I was

the person reading it and replying.

Of course, I was doing that under my name.

It wasn't, we weren't pretending we were Jeff.

That guy's pretty unique.

Nobody can beat him.

But I got to know, outside of myself identifying as a writer, I got to know

so many other writers and authors and people, and maybe you can identify as you

listen to this, people that really just believed in their book, but maybe didn't

believe in themselves as much, didn't really understand, you know how this

online business thing worked or how you know, I got my book on Amazon I guess I'm

a millionaire now and didn't understand how to jump from putting it on Amazon to

actually getting people to buy to building an audience like Jeff's and I spent years

I mean I must have I've talked to tens of thousands of writers and aspiring

authors really getting to know them and getting to know their individual needs

and roadblocks and all manner of things and so I feel like a certain kinship

and I identify so much with writers, so I'm really excited to be here today.

I feel like I finally made it I'm talking to the Masellis and

I'm like, oh my gosh, I made it.

This is awesome.

That, that's something I did not know about you and what a mentorship, right?

To be able to start there and learn from that.

And the Writers Conferences too.

Gena and I are always talking about Writers Conferences and how important

those are, because they really, they change your whole, I guess like mental

idea of what it's like to be an author and the fact that you can do it, right?

You always get encouraged in those things and you realize, Hey, this is possible.

Yeah.

And I think also we always talk about how you find your tribe when you get there.

All of a sudden you're in this writer's conference and there's people that

are just as excited about their books and about their message and

about, their passions of bringing characters to life or their nonfiction

message, bringing that to life.

And yeah, I completely understand the idea that you go to a writer's

conference, you start talking to writers and you're like, Oh, we get one another.

We understand one another on this very, deep level that we just

understand and root for one another.

Absolutely.

Yeah we were talking about newsletters and I was mentioning this a little bit

before we got started today because a lot of writers, when you start talking

about newsletters, they think I don't have anything to sell, or maybe I just have my

one book, so I don't need a newsletter.

I just need to put it on Amazon.

So what would you say to that writer who questions whether

or not they need a newsletter?

Okay, so raise your hand.

I can't see you, but raise your hand if you were alive in 2022.

And you remember there was a billionaire that decided he wanted to own a social

media platform, so he bought it.

And then it imploded upon itself, and now it goes by a different name.

People are leaving in droves, and it's a wasteland over there.

And I mention this because a lot of writers, especially journalists,

authors people like you and me, That was an important platform.

That was, where writers went to find people, to find that tribe, like

Gena said of like minded individuals, to find our audience, to find

people to help us grow et cetera.

And now that platform is not as strong , we'll say . So I can't see

you, but I bet you're raising your hand.

'cause I think you were alive last year and I think you remember that.

So that's the power of the newsletter.

That's the power of owning your own platform of having the right

people say you found them on that platform to get over to your

email list and say, Yes, Chris.

Yes, Gena.

Yes, Liz.

I want to hear more from you.

Imagine also your favorite novelist, your favorite author.

If you could hear more from them, if you could read more of their work every single

week, even just once a month outside of the books that they're publishing.

Wouldn't that excite you?

I'm thinking of my like seventh, eighth grade self when the Harry Potter books

were coming out and we had to wait a year or two years for the next one.

If I could have read a newsletter from that lady, even a few times a

year, I probably would have bought 10 books instead of just the one, right?

I would have been super jazzed.

So that's the power of the newsletter.

It allows you to stay connected while you're writing your books, while you're,

working on other marketing efforts.

It allows you to keep in contact with those people that love

your writing and you own it.

No billionaire can come and tell you, hey, this is how we're going to do things now.

Social media is a very centralized platform, and as we saw, one person

can literally change everything.

Email is a decentralized platform.

There's a lot of players, and so it would take hundreds of thousands of

dominoes to actually change the platform.

So you really do own it.

So when you're talking about newsletters, you mentioned you can send out a

newsletter while you're writing your book.

So do you see newsletters as more than just a sales piece?

Because I think that's what a lot of authors get into this idea of,

I'm just going to sell my book.

I'll start my newsletter when I've got my book done, and I'll let

people know that it's out now, and I'll send out maybe five or six

newsletters right in a row, let them know I've got my launch kind of thing.

And then...

And then I guess then what, right?

Maybe wait until the next book's ready?

That's such a missed opportunity and my best friend is an author.

And I keep telling him, oh, you got to start a newsletter.

And he said the same thing.

When I get, I just got to get my first book done, Liz.

And now he's doing all this, email marketing, trying to build a list,

collect emails at fairs and festivals and things where he's selling.

And he said, Oh, I wish I would have gotten these people

excited while I was writing.

We all see these marketing campaigns for.

Big names like, let's say Beyonce, she worked with Adidas a few years ago,

and before the clothing even launched, they're sending out newsletters,

they're making commercials, they're saying, this is the date, this is

the date, this is the date, the same with movies, the Barbie movie, look

at that marketing that happened in the spring and summer of 2023, right?

It was everywhere, before the movie was even released.

So that's what you can do with your newsletter.

You can gather interested people who have opted in, who have

said, yeah, I want to hear more.

And you can get them hyped for the release.

That's how a launch works, right?

We don't just say, oh, hey, here it is, and, everyone

just runs to the store, right?

Black Friday back in the 90s, it was the store doesn't open at 6, so I'm

going to get there at 4:00 AM right?

'cause the store is going to launch its sale at 6:00 AM So

that's the power of the newsletter.

It's not just about sales.

Sure, it all leads up to a sale eventually, but it's about getting a

group of interested buyers or, potential customers onto a list, nurturing

them, getting to know them, just like you're listening to this podcast.

You're getting to know me right now.

Every time you tune in, you get to know Chris and Gena a little bit more.

That's the power of the newsletter.

That's why you should have one, because it's just this way of turning

those interested people into a sort of friend that, is much more easily

sold into a customer later because they are invested in the vision,

they're invested in your book launch as much as you, because they've

been on the journey the whole time.

I love how you bring in pop culture references so many times when you teach

things 'cause it like, it's so grounding.

'Cause we're all surrounded by pop culture stuff and I'm almost like, oh yeah, now

it makes sense when you say it like that.

That's, it's really good.

But, okay, so what if you don't have a list at all though?

Okay, I'm, let's say I'm an author and I'm like, okay, hey,

I'm not even on MailerLite or any of those fancy platforms.

I'm not even sure where to start.

Do I?

What do I do?

How do I even start this whole thing?

Or should I start yet?

Yeah, you should definitely start right now.

Pause this, go ahead and follow the next advice.

So what I suggest is if you don't have anything yet, just go to the

social media platform where you are most active right now and just say,

Hey, I'm writing a book about XYZ or, I'm starting something over here.

If you're interested I'm going to be sending out, I don't know, a

weekly or a monthly newsletter.

The timing really doesn't matter.

I don't want you to commit to something you can't do.

I'm going to be writing, keeping people updated on the book.

I'm really excited, share your excitement with people and they'll be excited too.

If you're interested, I'd love for you to follow along on my book writing journey or

as I launch this thing, I'll put the link in the comments or something like that.

And that, of course you're not going to get a million and one

followers or subscribers right away.

But number one, It's going to start you in the act of, right?

You don't just write a book.

You have to sit down and write the first 500 words, right?

This is the, that equivalent.

You don't just have an email list of buyers.

You've got to start somewhere.

So you might get two or three, but it, and it's going to motivate you.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

I'm doing this thing.

And I'm sure Chris and Gena have a lot more ideas on how authors and writers

specifically can build their lists, but that's how you really get started.

That took a mind shift for us, I know, when we started doing our newsletter.

Because we really were thinking, Okay, no one's really going to be interested

in just what we have to say week by week.

We need to have something to let them know about.

Something we've created, whether it's a book or a membership site

or online training or whatever.

We have to have something.

To let them know about and I actually think it was after we met you that we

started to realize okay no I think we need to actually just let people have a

window into our world because if they're raising their hand and saying they're

interested in our newsletter that probably means they want to know a little bit more

about us as uncomfortable as that was right we're still uncomfortable today

posting a lot about ourselves on social media or anything because it just feels

so strange and yet it's been something we've had to realize, okay, maybe we need

to get over that a little bit because if people, if they are raising their

hand and saying, hey, I'm interested then maybe they want to build that

relationship and we can't go out on dates with our people on our email list if we

don't, show up right in the first place.

Yeah, so for writers specifically, I know for me, I don't speak for everyone.

When I'm writing, and even, I'm a very personal person.

If you look at my website, you'll probably laugh and say no you're

not Liz, you're everywhere.

I just have a loud personality.

That doesn't mean you know everything about my life.

But, it can appear that way.

Let that be a testament to, you don't have to go into details to connect with people.

Especially when you're first starting out.

Just sharing surface level stuff, like what you like to drink in the morning or

a little bit about your writing routine.

You don't have to go into your relationship status or, how you parent.

Most people don't know any of that about me, but they still

feel incredibly connected to me.

Because I love the nineties and I wear headbands and I'm a little silly.

Again, that's surface level stuff, but it's enough to make a deep connection when

you show up and follow up all the time.

But what if you don't have time to write a newsletter?

What if you're like, hey, I don't have time, I don't have any ideas.

I, because it is hard sometimes to come up with something new.

If you want to do a weekly newsletter, let's say every

single week and you think, oh.

What am I going to write about this week?

Yeah we made it to about week four and we were like, yep, I've said everything.

I have nothing else to say.

And it really was not until we found you that I can listen to you talk

about, and I know you're going to talk about email marketing membership.

But when I found you, it's like all of a sudden you just spurred ideas for

me for writing that draft or coming up with ideas and strategy and things.

So yeah, definitely.

Thanks.

So I'll give you a little bit of a framework before I shamelessly

promote my $9 membership.

So if you want to go the do it yourself route, you're a writer.

I know you got this.

Something that I tell people to follow is the email staircase.

So first you have a follower.

Get people on your email list and turn them into a friend.

And once you have a list full of friends, you have a list full of customers, a.

k.

a.

people who will buy your book and your next book, and your next

book, and your next book, right?

So how do you make a friend?

Number one, just show that you're invested.

Number two, share in a relatable way.

And then number three, stay top of mind.

So in order to, write from that friend level in your newsletter,

I always say if it takes more than 20 minutes, you're doing it wrong.

So again, show you're invested or share in a relatable way.

That is a greeting and a short personal update, two to three sentences

about something you've done since the last time you emailed them.

I was on a podcast.

I wrote 2000 words last week, I walked my dog, I learned

about Amazon Kindle publishing.

And I didn't cry last week about it.

I think I'm gonna be able to publish this thing soon, right?

That's just two to three sentences.

It made them laugh, it connected, it showed I was invested in

the book for them, right?

It's gonna be out soon.

And then just segue from that personal update into whatever you need to share.

If you, if your book is up and live, you share that link.

If you wrote a blog post, share that.

If you did an interview, or you just got on Instagram for the

first time and you want, people to follow you over there, share that.

If you don't have anything else to say, just say, Hey

that's the update on the book.

Thank you so much for being interested in it.

I can't wait for it to come out, express that gratitude and get out of there.

So in short, remember, we're turning those new followers into friends by

sharing that we're invested in the book.

We're relatable and we're going to stay top of mind.

So just that personal update, segue into whatever content you have for them that

week, or whatever message you want to share, and then get the heck out of there.

That is so good.

I, when you say 20 minutes, if you said if you spend more than 20 minutes

working on it, you're doing it wrong.

That is...

Both freeing and very scary.

I'm thinking of friends who are probably listening to this right now.

So need to say hey check this out, you'll love this.

But sometimes I know some friends who will spend three or four hours working

on their newsletter like they want to craft that kind of perfect piece.

I'm cringing.

I'm just gonna interrupt Chris and tell you this.

If you're thinking like, Oh my gosh, it takes me hours.

I have to tell this story.

Remember, it is a newsletter, not a novel.

If you don't have time to write it, chances are.

Your reader doesn't have time to read it.

So if you're spending three or four hours for someone to not open your email because

they know it's gonna be too long and they're just waiting for the book anyway

you know that, that's, I'm an efficient person and that's highly inefficient.

So just, it's a newsletter, not a novel.

Write that down.

I know you're probably driving or doing the dishes or something

but commit that to memory.

It's a newsletter, not a novel.

I want you to spend time on your novel, on your memoir, on your

inspirational book, whatever it is.

Consider this your permission slip.

You don't have to dedicate the brainpower you dedicate to your novel,

to your book, to your newsletter.

It can be much simpler.

And if you want to make it really simple, You can join email marketing membership.

It's $9 a month.

I'm so grateful for Chris and Gena letting me come on and talk about it.

I, that 20 minute framework I just shared, that personal update into content, etc.

I do all of that for you.

Every single Monday morning, 5 a.

m.

Eastern, without fail, you're gonna get a template, and I mean template.

It's fill in the blank.

It comes with a video walkthrough on why the heck you would send this and

how you can vary it depending on what kind of book you're selling or what

kind of business you're trying to grow.

And it comes with samples so you can see, oh, this was written with

an informal tone or this one was written with a more professional tone.

So you can really, especially as writers, I love when writers join

because they can you know, take everything that I'm giving and, spit out

something that chap GPT wishes, right?

You can really get a very holistic view of what I'm trying to help you

with, and you can spit out something that your readers are gonna love

that's gonna take you no time at all.

Every single Monday morning, you can get a new one.

It also comes with live Q& A, some other awesome stuff,

and it's nine bucks a month.

So what do you got to lose?

Cancel any time, like Netflix, baby!

And I want to throw out this, what I love about it, because you mentioned that you

give this framework, but our voice, it's not like we're getting this template where

it's this just this fill in the blank and everybody's is going to sound the same.

It's really a framework.

And I say that because we've been on your mailing list.

We've been a part of your membership for a while.

And so I can tell when I'm there's been a couple of places that I've thought

I think they're using Liz's thing.

And the only reason I know that is because I've been part of your membership for a

while, but because I can see where they're going with it because I've listened to

your short video tutorial on what you're trying to accomplish there, not because it

sounds like anything that I put together.

Not like it sounds like anybody else's.

It's still very uniquely their voice, very uniquely their offer or

their content that they're giving.

But it's still I just, I love it.

I love that it gives you that framework.

I guess that's what I want to get across is just that it's not oh,

I'm going to get this template.

So I'm going to sound like 4, 000 other people.

It's not that at all.

It very much gives you the freedom to make it your own.

And so everybody's sounds different.

Even when I, like I said, I, and I've only received one like that, but I thought.

I bet.

Only because, you know, behind the scenes.

Only because I've seen behind the scenes and I could tell

where they were leading me.

And because I'm studying this, I'm, so I'm using it from that position,

but it was still, I still marveled because I thought that's really cool.

They're in a completely different arena and it's just very much theirs.

It's uniquely theirs.

So anyway, I love the framework.

It takes the guesswork out of what am I going to write this week?

I love that.

I think that's what's made us so enthusiastic about it.

Cause when we started writing newsletters, we always struggled with what do we

write this week and it's like Liz is this helper that comes along and says

hey why don't you write about this?

And it just gives us that idea of okay Yeah, and it's it sparks something and

you know that okay, I don't need to write 20 paragraphs about this very succinctly.

I can write about this here, good, and I'm ready to send it out.

And it's just, it's freeing to be able to use it to us really more than anything.

It makes doing a newsletter realistic and did you say $9 a month?

Because that's like amazing

. I did.

Thanks Chris . Yeah, nine bucks!

Y'all, when I was first starting out, I didn't have any money.

And I know as writers, there's this myth of the starving artist, right?

And oh, we have to labor our writing, right?

And that often doesn't come with a lot of cash flow at first.

And so I wanted to make this really accessible, and one of the reasons why I

love writers, especially, to join, like Gena was saying you're gonna be able to

make this your own, and so I know you're writing an amazing book right now and I

also know that like the marketing piece like you're so into your book that it's

like I don't have time to market and that's where my zone of genius comes in.

So one of the things Chris pointed out to me year.

They've been in the membership for years.

He was like, it's you're like my marketing strategist.

And so I don't even have to worry about the marketing.

And so every single week I'm piecing this together so that it

can lead to your launch, right?

You don't have to think about that piece until you get there.

And then you can come to the Q and A, and you can say, okay, Liz,

I've used the last three months.

How can I vary this to get ready for my book launch and

I'll be there to answer that.

But I'm doing the marketing for you.

Try to find another expert or whatever, like the marketing

piece, the buildup is always there.

I'm always climbing the email staircase for you.

I'm always writing from the point of, okay, this person needs to invest today.

This person needs to become relatable.

This person needs to stay top of mind.

That is what is in my brain when I'm writing so that you can use the

template and get back to writing, what you're good at and together

we can sell it when it's ready.

Yeah, so highly recommend this.

We absolutely love it.

It's like hiring someone for your team that can help you strategize

your email every week for only nine bucks a month, which is so amazing.

So if you want to learn more about it that sort of thing go to WMDeal.

com slash Liz and you can find out about that.

That's WMDeal.

com slash Liz and we'll have the link in the show notes.

But check this out, she also has another version of this where you can

pay for the whole year in advance.

And when you do, you get all of Liz's other trainings, cause what Liz has

just alluded to a little bit on here.

She does regular trainings throughout the year on all sorts of things, email

and business building and entrepreneurial related that really is a super helpful.

You can find out about that at WMDeal.

com slash Liz Annual.

So both of those links will be in the description.

Definitely check those out.

Definitely.

I love it too.

When you do your live Q and A's you usually do one a month, right?

And I love that because people can get that feedback when they're

having trouble with something.

And even if someone says I don't have a question just coming in

and listening to other people talk about what they're dealing with.

I feel like I learned so much.

So definitely worth it.

So worth it.

I think it's been a lifesaver for us, really, because I did, I was

running out of things to talk about.

I was, and what's really crazy about that, Liz, if I can admit this,

is that we write for other people.

But sometimes it's easier to write for other people than it

is to write for your own stuff.

And you look at other people's work and you go, Oh you could write

about this and we can do this.

And you come up with all these ideas and you start, you can write forever,

but when it comes to your own stuff, I don't know there's that Insecurity that

comes up of I don't nobody really wants to you know Nobody wants to hear this or

hear that and I love that you take that and you go no You're on the right track.

We're gonna do this and we're gonna do that and here's how you're gonna do it

So it takes a lot of that guesswork out.

So big fan.

Thank you I can't wait to see what people do with email.

I really believe in it, especially as, writers we have mouths, we

have stomachs we need to feed ourselves, and email marketing has

the highest ROI, so I can't wait to see what Everybody does with email.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you so much for being with us.

Hey, if you've enjoyed this episode We ask that you would rate, review, subscribe,

and share it with someone else who needs to know about writing their author

newsletter Getting their material out there so others can find out about it.

Let them know about the email marketing membership at WMDeal.

com slash Liz, Part of the reason we do this podcast is because we know

that writing isn't a solitary venture.

It is something better when we do it together.

Because together, what, Gena?

We have writing momentum.

Bye bye.