In this episode, we speak with Email Marketing specialist Liz Wilcox.

Liz's Links:

⭐️ https://lizwilcox.com/

⭐️ instagram.com/thelizwilcox/

⭐️ facebook.com/groups/emailmarketingwithliz

Get ready to dive into the ultimate weekly live stream party with Lisa, Mark, and Neil! It's super laid-back, and they're all about bringing creative minds together for an hour of amplifying the Ecamm Fam's talents! 🎉🎨🚀

🤝 Get involved and be a guest on our show! https://creative-amplifiers.captivate.fm/booking

⭐️ Link to our bio: https://linktr.ee/creativeamplifiers

About Us

NEIL: youtube.com/ @NeilFarrimond 

Neil is a passionate creator dedicated to providing invaluable advice, tips, and tricks on video creation, editing, and achieving exceptional audio quality. He’s eager to share his insights and personal experiences to help others excel in their creative endeavors.

For Neil, it's not all about the gear - he firmly believes in simplifying the creation process and making it an enjoyable experience for all involved. Trust him to guide others toward producing their best videos and unlocking their full potential as creators.

MARK: youtube.com/ @educationonfire5530 

Mark is a professional percussionist with 25 years of experience and has performed with some of the UK's finest orchestras and theatre companies. He discovered his passion and 'voice' through music, which led him to share his understanding through drum and percussion teaching in schools and his private practice.

Mark's desire to share the creative and inspiring learning he witnessed in schools drove him to start the Education on Fire podcast in December 2016. With over 370 episodes released and downloaded in 147 countries, Mark interviews educators worldwide, enabling parents and caregivers to support their children in living, learning, and growing to their full potential.

LISA: youtube.com/@anappetizinglife

Lisa is a passionate lifestyle entrepreneur, consultant, content creator, and the founder of the lifestyle brand An Appetizing Life. With a strong background in advertising and television, both on and off-camera, Lisa brings a wealth of experience and expertise to her work.

Having successfully created her own jewelry and home fragrance company, Lisa understands the intricacies of building a brand from the ground up. Through her consultancy business, Lisa is dedicated to helping women entrepreneurs aged 50+ grow their brands, elevate their visibility, and celebrate their accomplishments.

So are we're ready to get our amazing guests on, we have Liz Wilcox, and she's going to be sharing the wonderful journey that she's had talking all things email marketing. Hey friends. Creative amplifiers.

Um, I would love to know more about it and how you wound up becoming an email marketing expert along the way. And what was the turning point that got you to go down that path? And become the email extraordinaire that you are. Yeah. Thank you so much. So I've done a lot of different things and I, I love that, uh, Lisa said, did you, did you say creative or diverse?

Yeah. Diverse. Right? Diverse. I feel like that's pretty accurate. Uh, I actually wanted to be a teacher and I wanted to open up my own school. So I actually have a. bachelor's degree in elementary education and a master's degree in leadership. And then my lap, but my last job was actually at a gas station that sold fried chicken.

You had craigslist. And so I would go on craigslist, the gigs portion of craigslist. And I would find, you know, deliver food for a restaurant, clean somebody's house, you know, nanny and babysit. And so I was doing the gig economy. Like right at the start, uh, I eventually got married, decided I didn't want to be a traditional educator.

I didn't want to go into like being a teacher, um, because of basically time and money, right? It was a lot of time for not a lot of money. And I, I had a child now and I wanted to be a good mom. So I went back to the sort of the gig economy and I started trying to figure out how I could make money on the internet.

So I started an RV travel blog. If you're in the UK, you might call it a caravan. And so, um, you know, I, I had never traveled in an RV before, but I had just bought one. And so I figured why not chronicle my journey, create some products, create an email list along the way. Cause that's what, Podcasts and streams like this were telling me to do, and I did that for over three years.

And by Cart closed night. I had made 141 sales. So if you're not familiar with average conversion rates, the average conversion rate for a launch is between one, maybe 5%, maybe 10 percent at the max. If you're doing a really good job, I had a hundred percent conversion rate. So that's how I And I started to realize, Hmm, maybe I know something that other people don't.

You know, again, everybody tells you create your own digital product. That's how you're going to make the most money. And mama didn't raise no fool. I'm nothing if not efficient. So I said, okay, I've been building this email list slowly, but surely I had about 300 people on my email list and I realized that.

So I ended up creating an ebook of. different, uh, stories about the black tank, which is where your sewage goes. Uh, different stories about how, you know, when RVing goes wrong and I put it into a collection, they were all funny stories, you know, you got to learn to laugh at yourself, right? And I sold it. I ended up.

So just sort of, sort of take us in sort of those numbers and actually the reality of, of actually the sorts of people that you need before you can start really selling. Yeah. The reality is as long as you start to create community and you create a bond with your subscriber from email, number one, you.

Can start monetizing your list and you should start monetizing your list as soon as possible A lot of people to mark's point they wait a little too long, right? You've got to start quickly and start now. So as long as you're getting leads in, you should be warming them up at least bare minimum, warming them up to the idea that you're going to sell to them.

Like she's a real business. I'm going to get real solutions and real help from her. Right. Um, and so to answer Mark's question, like starting that right away is the best way to create a firm foundation and like a lovely monetized community right from the get go. Thank you. That kind of slides into my, I'm sorry, Mark, let me cut you off, um, into my next question.

So how do you teach people to stay authentic in their emails and keep that personal connection and build that community? So That the people getting the emails don't feel like they're being spammed or that they feel good. Yeah, listen, I was just telling these amazing hosts, uh, right before we came on, Neil was directing Mark to make sure my camera was all perfect.

and so When I'm sharing about personality, it's not Oh share all these stories and you know Segway into whatever, whatever, you know, a lot of email marketers will tell you, tell stories, but this is personality. Like, you know, what's your favorite mug, right? I mean, this is one of my favorite Disney Pixar movies.

Okay. What if you are, you know, if your subscribers are graduating from you university, right? Like you're, you've got the degree in your hand, you're going to hand it to them. What is that degree that you have for them? For me, it's make money with email marketing, right? Uh, you know, we're all big fans of e cam here, right?

They want your videos and your streaming to look, you know, pristine a plus, right? That's their vision for you. So sharing your vision throughout not only lets your. Potential customer know where they're going with you. It's also, you can't help but be authentic and be yourself when you're sharing what you're passionate about, where you want to take people.

So something that I learned and was ingrained in me during my bachelor's program is that everyone has a right to an education. That's why I have such inclusive pricing. 9 a month and serves almost 30 countries. That comes from the value that I have of that right to an education. I believe email marketing is just one of those things that if you master it, oh my gosh, like the limit is endless.

Do you have, or could you share a couple of tips on how people would get started in, uh, what they should do in order to start collecting these, those emails and then they can obviously put in their personality and maybe then sell to them at some point. Yeah. So. There's a million and one ways to grow your list.

The number one way I use is doing this. I do a lot of podcast guesting. This is actually my third interview today, and I'm sure I've got one or two more, uh, this week. Now you don't have to, again, you don't have to have. personality, but basically when it comes to building your list, what you have to know is it's like, you know, raise your hand.

So doing things like guesting on a podcast, hosting your own live stream, um, you know, doing link swaps. Let's say, you know, Neil and I, I say, Neil, I know you have a lead magnet. Which we'll talk about in a second. And I have a lead magnet. Why can you share your, my lead magnet with your audience? And I'm going to share yours with mine.

And that's a great, simple way to get started. Uh, now. Do you guys want me to share kind of how people can come up with the lead magnet? That'd be great. Yeah, if you don't mind, okay All right, so i've got it. Can you tell I do a lot of these podcasts? Uh, so remember what we talked about, you know, someone is walking across the stage of you know Lisa university nahaku university roberto university, right?

That's your lead magnet, okay? So for example, I want you to make money with email. Uh, no offense. I don't care about your live stream. I don't care about your layouts. I don't care about your microphone or your video or your lighting. All I care about is that your email list is monetized and growing, right?

We already mentioned podcast guesting, but you can also get visible on Pinterest through SEO, uh, Guest blogging is a great way, especially when I was a blogger, I was too scared to do stuff like this, right? But I knew I could write. And so, uh, as content creators, you know, anyone who is willing to come on or help you write something, you usually say yes to if there's a certain level of trust or authority there.

And so guest blogging is actually a lot easier than you think. I think all this ties into the email. Um, having newsletters, which I have, I have questions and Tatiana, I see you had said something about newsletter in the, in the comments over there, but these are all things you own that. It can't not be taken away from you.

Usually one person or just one board owns the whole thing, even with YouTube, right? YouTube is constantly, uh, you know, Changing things up and creators are the ones to have to adjust with email. It's a decentralized platform. We've got Google, Yahoo, Microsoft. We've got little players, the email service providers like ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, MailChimp.

Does that make sense for that first part of the. equation here. Yes. Awesome. And that's what I mentioned about being consent based, right? Lisa opts in to hear more from Neil. Neil opts in to hear more from, you know, Liz, right? It's a very consent based form of marketing, which is why on top of owning it, you should Consider email.

We're sharing things that help people people get to the vision, right? It's not just about sharing our vision in our newsletters. We're sharing, Oh, you know, I just did this podcast. I did this live stream. I bought a new microphone so I can, you know, better serve you. Things like that in your newsletter really, really help.

And it's going to give you the highest return on investment when it comes to all the different marketing channels. Yeah. I have a question cause there's mixed, you know, schools of thought. Do you monetize your newsletter? Right away. Do you build it and wait? Do you not? What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, there are two different ways of thinking, you know, it's number one the more traditional Thinking I think is to you know, wait, right?

At least offer them to your audience immediately. They're active, you know, they have a scrape, they need a bandaid right now or whatever, right? We're not going to wait. Oh, I don't know if they're going to trust me and trust this Band Aid. You know, why not just go for it right now? What do you guys, I would love to know y'all's thoughts.

Well, it sounds like making a mindset shift about what email. How, how it affects people. 'cause if you're like, oh, I don't wanna do it. I don't wanna do this and do that, instead of just going for it, and, and putting out what you have that's valuable to people. I, I'm hearing that from you and that Yeah. I, it seems like the, the right way to do it.

Uh, you know, everybody wants to be, like, to hand the permission slip to someone. Sure, technically we consent to ads on YouTube, we consent to it on Facebook, but, you know, the algorithm is churning out what we see, right? It's not what we actually have followed. Uh, with email, There's not really an algorithm.

It's churning out what we opted into, what we consented to. So when you think of it less of, oh my gosh, am I gonna look stupid? I don't really know what to say. When you change your mind from that to, oh, Lisa opted in. She wants to hear more. She saw something valuable and what I have to say is You know, I better go in and serve Lisa today.

And I've got my, my email, um, sort of nurture sequence to begin with. How much sort of further down the path do you need to sort of plan or be aware of within yourself to take people on that journey and to keep giving that value? Or is it really like you said, it's the combination of the, the personality and the general understanding of what you're able to offer?

Yeah. I think what Mark is trying to get at is don't overthink it, my friends. Uh, Liz Wilcox right here, I have an entire year planned out. But guess what? I've been in business for eight years and now I'm in a sort of rinse and repeat model. This is my first year having this calendar. You do not need this.

And the beauty of that is when you start your email list, maybe you've got one, two, three, 10 subscribers and, you know, half of them you're related to. Right. And so don't be afraid to just hit send. It's about practice. It's the same as hitting the go live button or hitting publish on your blog. Or, you know, if you're trying to.

He's, I just love him. Hence why I call myself the Fresh Princess, right? Uh, he says, you know, when people ask him, when people ask him like, Oh, how did you become the biggest, uh, you know, superstar celebrity in the world? He said, I never set out to do that. Uh, when I was a kid, my dad had a building and he tore down a wall and he said, we got to rebuild this wall.

And. I, after a few days, I told my dad, it's impossible. The wall is gone. And he said, son, you don't build a wall. You just lay, you know, one brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid. And soon you'll have a wall. And that's the same with email marketing. You don't try to go for a year long funnel or even, even a month.

I'm glad you just brought that up about the calendar because, you know, we get overly emotional where you're like, I didn't get this done and you know, I'm behind. And so maybe tell the audience how you combat that happening. And you know, we got to keep the self care in here when you're trying to be a content creator.

Well, if it was easy, I would just hit send. If it was easy, I'd just, you know, go live, right? But sometimes, like, stuff just isn't easy, right? We've got our own head drama. You know, the tech ain't teching. The email ain't emailing. And so, I have a follow up question. And usually between the two, I can come up with something good.

Uh, number two, what would this look like if it was fun? So first, what would it look like if it was easy? What would it look like if it was fun for me with email? Especially when I first started out? Yeah, I would watch podcast or listen to podcasts and watch webinars. And I, I saw all these people like way up.

If it was fun, I would just show a little personality, right? And so, Always remember those two questions when you find yourself, I don't know, like feeling tense or, you know, sick in your belly about something, uh, that's the best way I can help you to make a quick, simple decision. I think there's, there's always been a, a concern, especially from me anyway, when, when it comes to, um, creating emails and maybe creating a newsletter, there's always in the back of my mind and, and to your point about making it fun and injecting your personality is, should I be sending an email or creating a newsletter that's always going to bring some value?

To the people that are reading it. And that doesn't, from what I've heard today, that doesn't always have to be the case. There's nothing wrong with saying, Oh, and I'm just doing this today, or I've just bought this new gear. And what do you think about this? And maybe just, as you said, inject more of the personality.

What can I write about? What, what can I send? So do you have any sort of pointers on that? Yes, this is my, Oh gosh. I love when people ask this question for talk about a mindset shift. Uh, What is the definition of value? Does value equate tips and tricks? Does value equate, you know, a content piece that's heavily curated?

I know that, you know, that feel, Oh gosh, I didn't have nothing to say. I didn't get that blog post out. I, I didn't do this, you know, I'm behind on my Instagram. What am I going to put out to them? But sometimes the highest value you can give is that extension of your hand, right? That connection. It's the same as why, you know, Mark, Lisa, Neil, and I are still talking.

We met in person at creator camp before we hit the live button. We were talking about, Oh, I hope to see you again there. Uh, you know, it, there's just simply value in following up with your buddies. Right. I remember when I left camp, I DM Neil. Hey, it was So good to meet you. I remember a couple of months later, he DM to me.

So in your emails, instead of thinking of it like, oh, I've got to have this curated piece of content and I got to tell a story that segues into whatever, just remember that, you know, sharing and relating human to human is incredibly value, valuable. So now thinking of email as a. extension of building your community.

I think if we start thinking about it that way, cause we're all, we all want to build our communities and, and have that connection and think of it on those terms, um, rather than just, you're trying to sell somebody something or, you know, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And let's talk a little bit about, you know, like community.

Right. I don't know about you, but my paid offers are where I really can serve, where I can pay attention to you, where I can, you know, see who you are and how I can help. Right. And so, you know, we want to be of service. But the thing that I think a lot of people get wrong about community is they think they have to create the community and then the customers will come.

And I think that especially for YouTubers, you would think, Oh, well, when I get this many hours of watch time and this many subscribers, YouTube is going to monetize me. Uh, you know, when I get to 10, 000 subscribers, maybe then I'll launch a small digital course or something. But here's the thing. Community doesn't, or I'm sorry.

Yes. Uh, thank you for that. Customers do three things. Number one, they invest. Right? And when they invest, you can invest and it's this awesome thing when they invest, they take action, right? Anybody can watch a YouTube video, but when they're invested, they're going to take action. When they take action, they're going to see results.

And what happens when people see results? They share with their friends. That grows the community versus me just trying to get on a million and one podcast to promote my show or my email list. If I just start converting them right away, like Mark and I talked about earlier, then I'm going to be in great service of them.

I asked him lots of questions and like, we just love the content, just keep doing what you're doing. Um, But I was always thinking, well, how can I monetize that? And you can do the Bamier coffees and all those sorts of things as well. But I think the way you've managed to describe it today is really sort of really succinctly made it really clear for me that there are two different ways of going about it and actually starting by giving that value and then being a customer to create the community rather than the community first to then become a customer.

It's not something I've heard put that way. So thank you for that. It's a really, really helpful sort of articulation of something which I've not really come across before. Yeah, you're so welcome. And it's just I, I love being on the show and I was so excited because I am a creator at her at heart and I love creators.

And I, I believe the last time I checked it was. 85 percent had posted, commented, or liked something in the last, uh, 30 days. I'm barely in there, but because everyone in that Facebook group has purchased something from me, it's a community. They're taking action. They're helping each other. They're sharing, they're sharing with outside sources to come into the group.

Yeah. So I personally, I'm speaking of creators, I use convert kit. It's for creators by creators. It has all the bells and whistles you need without the excess. Um, it's a decent price. I always say, you know, when it comes to your email service provider, a lot of people like to go cheap. Oh, I can't afford the 29 a month or whatever.

But listen. When you put money down, you're going to be more consistent. It's like, well, I'm paying for this, so I got to use it. Right. I bought a mic, so I better start my podcast. It's the same thing. So I. I caution against just picking an email service provider, just picking a tool based on, you know, Oh, I don't want to spend any money before I make money.

Yep Okay, that might be a little bit of a stretch, but i'm gonna go for it pick that one and um Eileen mentioned Aweber earlier in the chat. Is that something that you've used or come across on it? It's one I've used but that was mainly because it was recommended again by someone that's part of my community That was using it and and recommended it and like I say just that personal community recommendation Sort of had a lot of value at that time.

Cool. I'm a convert kit person, myself, Neil. What do you, um, I'm actually trialing beehive right now for my, um, Newsletter. Uh, newsletter. Yeah. Yeah. Just to start off, just to try and get something going and see, because I know that you can take Beehive and then it'll roll into ConvertKit when I want to do something a little bit more fancy.

Ooh. Ooh. Look at you. So Liz, we have to ask. You know what I'm going to ask. You just. finished up the television show Survivor. Uh, we don't have to go deep, but I just would love to know what motivated you to apply for the show. And then what was your takeaway after everything? You know, what did you learn from it and how any of those things are going to apply to your business or how you move through your business or life now?

So the idea of having to take, you know, months off of work, it just seemed Impossible. It wasn't until I got my email marketing act together until I really solidified my offer and you know, my email was just. Tight as can be I'd built the wall so to speak that I realized okay Yes, now I can apply and my daughter actually dared me to we were watching they said Oh, you should apply if this is your dream and I said, oh, I think I could be on that show I think I could win and my daughter said are you gonna?

I think that's been a major reset for me, hence the four naps in four days that I talked about at the beginning of the hour. Um, and also something that I learned out on the island is that. And this is not business related, but I think it's going it's helping me as I grow my business and things don't always work out the way I want to Uh is I deserve grace as much as I give grace so No spoilers, but out there.

I am a people person, but I deserve that grace also. And so when my marketing campaign doesn't do well, when I flub, when my lighting is off, when the thing is crooked, you know, Just let it go, Liz. You know, you deserve grace too. So those were my two lessons. Thanks for asking. That was great. Sure. And speaking of your, your photo in the back or poster in the back that's crooked, I know you're a big nineties lover of all things nineties.

You know, he's sitting pretty today. So, you know, shout out, shout out Jerry Seinfeld for sure. We thought you were going to pull a band. That's so funny. We should have placed bets. Uh, I mean, if I, if I had to be someone from a band, I'd probably be Scary Spice because she was really, really cool. She was my favorite, she was in your face, she was unapologetic, she was different than the rest, uh, she wasn't trying to be, you know, I don't know, like a, like a, you know, I guess she wasn't trying to be sexy, she just was.

That's beautiful. Brilliant, um, where can we find mark? Can we pull up that that lovely? Here we go and just just before we do that Because this is um, this is relevant to what people have been saying in the chat Um, the channel was just asking was survivor. Did it come straight after crater camp? I'm, just trying to think how all this sort of fitted in in that.

You can't miss it. You're actually going to get an entire welcome sequence already written for you, templatized again, so you can plug and play. You're also going to get three newsletter samples, one to show you how to type. Click one to show you how to get people to reply and one to show you how to get people to buy directly from your newsletter.

And if that's not enough, I know writing from scratch totally sucks. Uh, you know, email feels intimidating. I'm also going to give you 52 subject lines for a year full of prompts. That's Liz Wilcox. com. Hopping button. Thank you, friends. Yeah, Liz. Thank you for Yeah, passing all that good freebie stuff along and for being on the show.

It's been a real honor. So yeah, thank you for being being here with us as well. Yeah. Thanks friends. Yeah, thanks, Neil. This has been so fun. I can't wait to see what people do with email marketing. Thanks again.