How do you make sure you get better results, more engagement, and more sales using email marketing campaigns? You need to understand the psychology of marketing.

We’re Kennedy and Fifi, and today we're going to share the 9 psychological strategies that we successfully use in all our email marketing campaigns.

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Want to connect with Fifi?

Fifi is a personal brand and visibility coach who works primarily with introverted coaches and impact makers. She helps quieter people - those who have ideas they want to share with the world but struggle to put them out there. Fifi empowers them to find a way to share in a way that aligns with who they are. You can find Fifi on her website.

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How do you send promotional emails without being afraid of annoying people? That's

what we're talking about in today's show. It's email marketing Wednesday. You ready

heroes? And this is the email marketing show.

It's time for a no bullshit look at how to make more sales from that email list of yours.

Let's do it. Hello and welcome to the show.

I am Fifi Mason from FifiMason.com. And I'm Kennedy from

emailmarketingheroes.com. And we really want you to put what we're talking about

today into practice. We want you to go and use this stuff. Otherwise, what's the point?

So if you're not already a member, a free member of our free email marketing show

community, then head over to Facebook, search for the email marketing show

community.

Come and join us. We hang out in there, talk all things email marketing and making sure

you can apply it to what you're doing, what your business is, the way your business

works, your offers and all sorts of good stuff. Just go to Facebook, search for email

marketing show community, and we will see you in there.

left a review. So if you would like to do that, go to your podcast player right now and

leave us a review. And sometimes we will give you a little name check on the show.

Love it. What have you been up to this week then? I am in preparation to launch my

virtual summit. So all hands on deck.

Yeah, lots going on right now. Quick plug for the virtual summit. What's it about? Who's it

for? It is called the Quietly Impactful Summit and it's for introvert coaches and impact

makers.

And it's to help them to develop their personal brand, like get clear on what they're

going to do with their personal brand and how they're going to put themselves out there.

I love it. I love it.

Where do we go to find out more? May as well do a full plug. Okay, full, full plug. It is

QuietlyImpactfulSummit.com QuietlyImpactfulSummit.com Love it.

Great, great, great. Okay, so that's coming up. Yes, very, very soon.

How about you? What are you working on right now? I use the summer, like August. I use

this sort of time of year to like go into email campaigns and just rebuild, retweak. And

that might be making them perform a bit better if some of the particular sections aren't

working very well, or we've got room for improvement.

Or it might just be rebuilding them because over time things get complicated and ends

up being a bit of a spaghetti mess inside of them. So we're doing a bit of that at the

minute, which is actually quite therapeutic. I'm really enjoying it.

I'm really enjoying it. That sounds good. Yeah.

You've probably noticed that a lot of email marketing platforms are putting their prices

up. And the more subscribers you've got, the more you pay. I've made a quick free video

to show you what you can do to save a pile of money before your next bill goes out.

Go watch it for free at emailmarketingheroes.com slash cleanup,

emailmarketingheroes.com slash cleanup. This episode is sponsored by Zero Bounce, the

email cleaning and verification service. So what we're talking about is sending

promotional emails, obviously the thing that we need to do, but we know that for some

people, it's a bit of a hover your finger over that on the mouse and not click send or don't

even send the damn email, write the damn email because you don't want to feel like

you're being a salesy, pushy personage.

Yeah. This is something that I hear a lot from clients and just having conversations with

people that they really struggle to send an email in the first place because they feel like

it's going to irritate people that when they get emails, they kind of feel like it's disturbing

people and interrupting their day and things like that. So it's a real struggle to just send

any kind of email.

But then when it comes to being promotional in email, it's a real struggle because they

worry they're going to annoy them, that they're going to be seen as salesy, that they're

bragging in some way, that they're just being an inconvenience. All these things come

up. And what I find is this is actually one of the reasons why people self silence.

And that is because they're taking on the responsibility of other people's feelings. And it

really just means that they don't take action. They rather than take action and rock the

boat, that they will just hide away and not do it.

So that's something that we're going to talk about today. Get into. What you said there

reminds me of something.

Believe it or not, when I was younger, I went on an assertiveness training course.

Imagine that I needed that, right? And I was probably about 18 or something like that. I

was doing some stuff and assertiveness training.

I went on this course. And one of the things they talked about on that was this

statement. And it's kind of one of my things I've always lived with through my life.

One of my mottos, one of my impact rules, you would call them, right? And it's that I am

not responsible for other people's feelings. I am responsible for my actions. And that's

the thing.

I can't decide how somebody else is going to choose to feel about something. But

obviously, I'm not like, well, I can do what I want. And people can choose how they feel.

Obviously, you can choose your actions. But then some people are going to receive

promotional emails and go, thank goodness you told me about this thing. That's the

thing I need.

Some people are going to receive them and go, piss off. I hate you. You can't choose for

them how they're going to feel.

And as you say, I love that way you put it, about taking on the responsibility for how

they're going to feel. And that's, what if they feel this? What if they feel that? And I am a

real chronic overthinker. I'm the person who, if I think for a second I've upset somebody,

I will be the one texting them going, oh my God, I feel awful.

And how many times I've had a text back from saying, I haven't even thought about it

since. I don't even know what you're talking about. And I've literally laid awake at night.

It happened to me last week. Laid awake all night because I was like, oh my God, I hope

they don't think this. I hope they don't think that.

And I had a text and I'm going, I need to tell you. And they were like, I can't remember

you saying that thing. And I'm like, okay, fine.

So yeah, this idea of overplaying. Well, I'm curious to hear what you think about this,

because you've thought about this. This is a lot of your work that you do with clients.

One of my sort of pieces of thought here on this, we think people think about us a lot

more than they do. Because they're busy worrying about what other people think of

them as well, right? So, and that's really interesting. Like, oh, what if they think this?

What if they think that? Truth is, they're probably not even thinking about you.

Yeah, I actually, this was an email in one of my campaigns talking about this, how we

kind of think that people are judging us all the time. But if you were actually to look at

your own behavior and realize, well, you're not judging other people. So why would they

be judging you? I mean, I am.

I'm judging. I mean, it's natural to do it to an extent, but it's not always the instant

negative. And it's not always when I get an email through from someone, I don't go, oh

my gosh, I've just got this email.

And that's so annoying. It's to serve my day or anything like that. We're not behaving

like that ourselves.

So if we've signed up to someone's email list, we're going to expect to get those emails.

And if we get them, we're not going to be upset that we've got it. And we're not going to

be upset based on the content, even if they're selling to us, because that is what it's all

about.

Like we understand that being part of someone's email means that we're going to hear

about their offers. We're going to hear about the value that they can provide. So it's

really just noticing your own behavior and thinking, well, I don't act that way.

So why do I think that they are acting that way as well? And also, I've had a situation

where I wasn't able to send my daily email a couple of times just because of time zone

differences, getting delayed on flights, that kind of thing. And I've had people emails in

saying, I thought I got an email from you every day. Where's your email? So there is an

expectation that people have of like, I'm supposed to hear from you every single day.

And most people would just actually inquiring, is everything okay? Are you all right? Kind

of thing. What's happened? Or have I been accidentally unsubscribed? Well, you know,

that kind of thing. But people do want to receive those emails.

And I think it's easy to forget that you are having an impact on people. And it's easy to

think that the impact you're having is a negative one, that they're all getting uptight and

shirty about the fact that you're promoting to them. But actually, you're having an

impact in another way, which is the inspiration you're giving.

And it might not just be that you're inspiring people with the content. And I don't think

I've ever said this before, but I think this is really important. It might just be that you're

recalibrating somebody's compass to think about that again.

So in our world of email marketing, we're all busy, right? We're all thinking about all the

elements of our business and email's one element of that. But we're also thinking about

our sales pages, our sales calls. We're thinking about our social media.

We're thinking about our finances. We're thinking about the bank balance. We're

thinking about the tax.

We're thinking about team members and freelancers, and those graphics, and the

program we're teaching, and are we getting results, and that problem that that

customer's having, and we're trying to solve that. We're solving all these things all the

time. And so each day when I send an email to people, and I'm not saying everybody has

to email every single day.

I do encourage it because it's a really good practice to get into for a bunch of reasons.

But what it does is every single day that I send an email, I get to bring people back and

go, remember email marketing is important, and set them back on that road again. It's

like people say, I'm going to start my diet again on Monday.

Well, if you had a little email that reminded them to start their diet again this morning, or

this afternoon, you're just putting people back on that track again, and you're guiding

them. So even if your email had nothing in it, and it was just the subject line that said,

remember email marketing is good, or remember today's about you, or whatever it is, it

was just that. You'd still be serving people by repositioning them back on track again,

thinking about your subject matter.

And I haven't really expressed that before, or really thought of it in that way before.

Yeah, it's a really great way to approach it. It's like, it's just focusing on helping people,

and the impact you're going to make, rather than thinking that it's going to be a

negative thing.

It could be a positive thing. It could be just getting them back on track in some way. It

could be just a reminder.

All those little things that, when you send that email, could be a positive rather than a

negative. It's just something we do, but we always focus on the negative more than the

positive. We just naturally do that.

But that is one of the things that I help my clients understand, is to really take

themselves from that negative self mindset, and flip it to be serving, and putting out

emails that are going to help in some way, rather than it just be about worrying about

what could happen. Yeah, and I think it's basically focusing on the wrong thing, isn't it?

It's like you're worrying about offending people, but actually start worrying about if you

stop doing it, all the people you're actually holding back, and you would be not actually

serving us. And even when you are selling, the way I've always thought about selling is,

all of us have created what we believe to be the best solution to a bunch of people's

problem.

So we owe it to those people to show up and go, if you've got this problem, honestly, this

thing is the best. Like, this is how you solve it. Please, for your sake, buy the damn thing.

And that's how I feel about our Email Hero Blueprint. That's how you feel about your

coaching programs. I really genuinely believe we have created the single greatest

solution for making more sales with emails.

Because if I hadn't, I would still be developing it until it was that. You're the same for

your program. And so you've got to get out there and tell people about that.

And the selling is service. Like, look, if you've got this problem, and you're still having

this problem of whatever it is you solve, not making as many sales from your email list,

your email's not converting, you feel like people are dropping through the cracks, you

feel like your email as a whole rat's nest of mess, then this is the simplest, the best,

highest performing method for fixing that problem. I know that.

It's a fact. And I've got to share that passionately, because that's what people come to

me for, if they have that problem. Yeah, exactly.

And yeah, it's just believing wholeheartedly in what you can provide, the result that you

can get for your clients, and then knowing that if you don't put it in front of them, if you

don't put offers out there, that you're doing them a disservice. You're actually not

serving, because you're not giving them an option to be able to find the solution that you

already have, that could solve their problems. Like, imagine somebody's got a really bad

headache, and in your pocket, you've got paracetamol, or whatever the drug is that fixes

a headache.

And you're sitting there opposite a person who's like, got this crazy headache. Why

would you not put your hand in your pocket and say, here, take this pill, it fixes the

headache? And it's legal, and it's obviously all these things, it's not like, here's a magic

potion. It's not like something you've got from some guy on the street.

You have the solution in your pocket, and you've got somebody in front of you who's got

that pain, who's got that headache, who's got that problem. Hand it over, hand the damn

thing over. And on the other end of this, like in a selfish way, you've paid in some way

with time, effort, expertise, worry, money, whatever, to get these people, every single

person who's on your email list, you have worked and invested, you've gone first to get

them on your email list.

Every single person you have earned to get on your email list. And you should be paid

for doing that, in something. You know, you could go back to the bar system, I don't

really care what it's in, it might be money that you need.

But let's be honest, if the person who owns the bank that has your mortgage was on

your email list, and they would take your program, and they would pay your mortgage

off for you, then that would be great. But in lieu of that, it's probably gonna be money

from some people. But I think we all do a little like, hey, I really need some help with

this, you need some help with that, let's swap.

Because hey, I mean, I'm not giving tax advice, but there's no tax on the bartering

system, really, in that way, right? So we need to be paid, there needs to be an exchange

of value. And remember, you've gone first, that's the real thing I wanna say is, you've

gone first, you've taken the risk. They're not taking the risk, they're just on your email

list.

You paid to get them on there, you're paying to keep them on there, to store them and

send these emails. You're going all out, you're doing everything. So don't feel like, oh, I

haven't earned the ability to make an offer.

Holy shit, you've earned it. Yeah, for sure. It's one of those things, isn't it, that we

underestimate how much work and even the cost of having people on our email list, it's

not something you even think about.

And we have this mentality, I know that I did at least at the beginning, this mentality of, I

just need to keep them, I need to have a big list, I need to have as many people on there

as possible. Because then there's a chance that they will become a customer, but that's

not how it is. It should be that if they aren't interested, you actually don't want them on

your list.

Yeah. Yeah, because if you're not serving them, at that point, it would be, you can have

resistance. If you know you've essentially held them hostage, right? And then you're

showing up saying, you can't leave my email list, but I'm going to email you every week,

then you know you're sending emails to people who don't want to receive them.

Whereas there's an unsubscribe link at the bottom of every one of your emails. So by

default, since that's there, they chose to get on your list and they're choosing not to

leave. So you've opened a door and said, do you want to come in? And they've gone,

yes, please.

And they've come on in. And then you leave the door open behind them and said, and at

any point you want to go out into the street and not be in my little club, then you can

leave. And they go, okay, great.

Therefore, they are choosing to stay on your email list to hear from your emails. Yeah.

And if they stay, that's probably most likely because they are getting something that

they think is valuable, that they enjoy, or they are interested in working with you at

some point.

It's just, they're not at the right stage. And if they are getting annoyed, all they have to

do is unsubscribe. But that is a difficult one.

Sometimes I remember early on when I only had maybe a hundred subscribers and

every unsubscribe, that really hurt. Oh, it hurts. It's painful.

So I totally understand that. But it's just remembering that you did pay for them to be on

there. You are paying for them to be on there.

And especially if you've got tiers with your platform where you've got over just over the

amount and you're paying extra for it every month. And you've got to keep that in mind

that you can just send emails just to not put them off, but get them off your email list if

they're not the right fit. And that's what we should be really thinking of.

But making sure that your content is valuable so that they won't if they enjoy it and

they're getting something from it. I know you've, do you want to share your question and

technique for what happens if you did annoy people? Well, it's more around if you're

feeling that hesitancy. So you're about to, you've maybe written an email and you're

about to send it or start your campaign.

And you're not able to just press post on it. You're not able to publish it and send it. So

these three questions are, it's more of a reframing technique to help you kind of really

think about it a bit more.

So the first question is, what is the worst that can happen? Then the next one is, what is

the best thing that could happen? And then the final one is, what is most likely to

happen? And when you've answered all those questions, it becomes clear what is the

worst case scenario, what could be the absolutely amazing outcome. But then you have

this realistic expectation because what is likely to happen is probably none of those

things. I mean, the best would be amazing.

The worst would be probably not very nice. But the most likely to happen is gonna be in

between that. It's gonna be, you might get some people click on it.

You might get some people click on the links in it. You might get them replying to your

email if you've asked them a question. All of those things, they're just the likely case

scenarios.

The worst that could happen is you get a really nasty email with someone that says, why

are you sending me this? Which is not likely to happen. And the best case, well, that

would be a direct sale from that email potentially. And that could happen.

But when you've reframed it, when you've put yourself in this position of, well, what is

like most likely to happen? It just helps you to say, these are my expectations. And the

worst case scenario is probably just not gonna happen and not something I need to

worry about. I love those three, worst, best, likely.

I love that. Another question I read in a book, a little while ago. And I really wish I could

remember which book this was in because I do keep quoting this question because I use

it.

I use this question. What I like about this question is, you don't even need to answer the

question to feel relief from it. So just the purpose of asking the question, you

immediately feel like, and the question is this, what am I trying to control? When you ask

that question, your brain suddenly realizes, I've never had control over anything anyway.

Literally, can't control any of it. And then your brain might go and try and seek an

answer to that. But really, when I send this email, what am I trying to control? Because

actually, I can do my best in the email.

But apart from that, as soon as I hit send, the email platform could not send it. Right?

That's what could happen. It could send it and people will love it.

They'll all hate it. They will be offended by it. But what am I trying to control? And you

just realize, I can't control any of those things.

It's a really powerful question. Yeah. I like that one.

That one's really good. I wish I could remember the source of it. I really do.

I know I read it on my Kindle, but apart from that, absolutely no idea. If anybody knows

what book that was in and who came up with it, do let us know. The same with that

reframing technique, actually.

I've heard it many times. I can't find who is the first person that came up with it. So it's

interesting where these come from.

Yeah, it is. One of my favorite ways of getting over this idea of feeling over promotional

is to think about email campaigns as a leading with content. So lead with value.

So oftentimes what we'll do is, let's say we're going to launch a new class, okay, a new

course, a new workshop, something like that, a new program. Instead of like the first day

of the promotion to tell people about the workshop they should go and buy, most people

will show up and go, hey, I'm doing a new class. It's called thisamazingclass.com. Click

here to go buy it.

What I do instead is I want to lead with value because the chances are the last thing they

heard from me, if I'm doing lots of promotions, will have been an offer closing. So that's

been quite promotional in style. So I want to make sure I don't go from that thing closing

to the next thing opening.

It just feels like here we go again, here we go again. So what I do instead is I lead with a

bit of content. And what I mean by that is you could do a bunch of emails where the

content is right within the email.

Here's six ways to, and then you're sort of teeing up what it is you're about to talk about.

So let's say I was going to do a new course about, let me make something up, webinars.

I'm not, but like, let's just say it was about webinars.

But mostly what I talk about is emails, right? I might show up and be like, hey, a lot of

people use webinars to convert their email subscribers. Here's six tips to get more

people to register for your webinar. No promotion, no thing about my new webinar

course, but six tips right in that email.

You could do this, you could do that. Here's six different things. What's happened? Well,

three important things.

One, you've sent an email that day. Two, you've given some value. Pure, no offer,

nothing, just given value.

No ask, all give. And thirdly, you've used that value to control and direct the attention

towards something that's useful, which is going to be the fact you're going to promote a

webinar course in a bit. So it's not just a distraction, another shiny object.

Nobody needs more shiny objects. We all need our attention controlled to something

that's going to be constructive. But that could be, as I said, that could be points within

the email.

It could be, I've made a quick video. Click and watch the video. And that video might be

you teaching the six points about how to improve webinars or whatever it's going to be.

So it could be a blog post you've written. It could be a podcast episode that you've

recorded. You can start off any promotion before you actually get into sending people to

the pre-launch or to the launch content or the cart page or the sales page or the

webinar.

You can use that opportunity between promotions to give genuine value, which also

doesn't take away and distract away from where you're going to go. It still serves you,

but it comes from a place of giving first. Yeah, I love that.

I love that. And it actually ties to two points that we talked about. So you said about

what you can control and taking on the responsibility.

And something that I talk about is, well, what are you responsible for? And that's the

delivery, the content, the ways that you can actually provide value, all of those things,

they're what you're responsible for. They're the things that you can control. And that's

what this is really thinking of, how you can ensure that you're not annoying people in a

sense by doing what is possible in your way, the tone of the delivery, the content you're

delivering, all of those things.

They're the things that you can actually take control with. Yeah, I love it. I love it.

Have we, I think I've covered everything I want to say on this, but hopefully it's inspired

people to think about your emails as really serving people and remembering you can't

control everything and you can't control how people feel about what you're going to do

anyway. I mean, you also can't control about how people will feel if you don't bother

emailing them. Because some people are going to love that and some people are going

to be really upset with that.

You also can't control that. You can't control any of the outcomes. Sending an email, not

sending an email.

Sending a promotional email, not sending a promotional email. Some people are going to

get annoyed that you keep showing up with content and giving value. Genuinely, that's

going to annoy some people.

Yeah, exactly. You can't control any of it anyway, so send the damn email. Let's get to

this week's subject line of the week.

This week's subject line is one I did over my birthday last month, which was effing stupid

hat. So I put uppercase F hyphen I N G. So I didn't want to type the whole word fucking

because I thought that might get a little bit too spammy and a little bit offensive. Also,

you're going into somebody else's inbox.

Yes, they have subscribed to your list, but also I feel like you've got to have a bit of

respect there. Don't be crazy. If they're expecting it from you.

But for me, effing stupid hat. And this was a lead in to a promotion. We did a special

promotion for my 40th birthday.

And we did a video where I was wearing one of those silly party hats. And I thought, we'll

put a photo or a GIF or something of that in the email. And it's effing stupid hat because

just saying stupid hat doesn't give it any emotion.

It's like, it's stupid. I want it to amp up the emotion. And that's what I did with the effing

bit.

And then it wasn't effing hat because that doesn't really... I mean, that kind of could

have worked, but it doesn't have the same vibe to it. People are opening that up to find

out why am I wearing a hat? Who's actually wearing a hat? Is it me? What's stupid about

it? There's so much curiosity going on there. And it's not effing stupid.

It's a hat. Again, if people know me, people know me for my hair. So me wearing a hat is

kind of a strange idea for most people.

So yeah, yeah. It was effing stupid hat. That's why this was such a line.

How do you like that one? It was really, really funny. But yeah, if you haven't already,

make sure you come and join our free Facebook group. Just go over to Facebook and

search for the Email Marketing Show community.

And we'll continue these conversations. If you're feeling like you're hovering, if you're

resisting sending emails because you're worried about what will people think? Are you

afraid of annoying and upsetting people from your emails? Come and chat about that in

the free Facebook group. Just look, go to Facebook, search for the Email Marketing Show

community.

Yeah, and thank you so much for listening to the show. We'll be back next week. So if

you are new, be sure to hit subscribe to make sure you don't miss out on the next

episode.

See you then. It's the end of the show already. Holy crap.

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Email Marketing Wednesday.