Emily McGuire | AWeber
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Beyond open rates, what metrics should you be using to measure email performance?
AWeber customer evangelist Emily McGuire has dedicated her entire career to email marketing and knows what it takes to craft a good email.
In this episode, she explains how email tracking has changed in the wake of recent IOS updates and which metrics you can use to determine whether your emails are actually performing, including:
Click rates
Click to open rates
Conversions
She also offers tips on things like formatting your email, whether and when to include rich media, how to write your email to elicit a response, and more (including a KILLER tip on allowing your recipients to opt out of specific campaigns they might not be interested in receiving - don’t miss that one!).
Get the details on all of this, and more, in this week’s episode.
Resources from this episode:
Learn more about AWeber
Connect with Emily on LinkedIn
Emily and Kathleen recording this episode
Kathleen (00:12):
Welcome back to the inbound success podcast. I am your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Emily McGuire, who is the customer evangelist with AWeber welcome to the podcast. Emily.
Emily (00:25):
Thanks. Happy to be here.
Kathleen (00:26):
Yeah. I'm excited to talk with you. I am, uh, very familiar with AWeber. I think a lot of people who listen here are, and you are the customer evangelist, which is such a cool role. And I wanna talk about that role, um, but we're gonna have a great conversation about what people should be measuring when it comes to email marketing. And we're TLDR, not just gonna talk about open rates. Um, so stay tuned as we get into it with Emily, but first Emily, can you start out and tell my audience a little bit about yourself and your background and what a customer evangelist is?
Emily (01:02):
<laugh> yeah, so I have been an email marketer, um, for about eight years now, started out in digital marketing before then, and then found my passion with email. And I've literally sent thousands of email campaigns, tested hundreds of variables and, uh, made every mistake under the sun. Uh, so I love to show people how not to do the same <laugh> and, uh, I have been in a Webber now, uh, as a customer evangelist and, um, I help them, or I help educate our customers on the product, through Mar our marketing channels. So, uh, that helps drive retention and reduce churn. And also it just helps. Uh, it's so lovely to be able to actually get to know our customers and see how the actual impact we're making through, um, email channel. And then also all the anecdotes we get in our Facebook group. It's so much
Kathleen (02:04):
Fun. I, I, first of all, I love that there is even this role in the company. Like it's something I'm kind of passionate about. And, and I think there's something so powerful about finding somebody who's sort of within the user community, but who's really been there, done that to like speak from firsthand knowledge. And when you said I made all the mistakes, I just sort of chuckled inside because like what marketer worth their salt has not made a, a million mortifying mistakes <laugh> and exactly so many of the worst ones do happen in email because like you hit send and there's just no going back, right. It's not like, oh, there's a typo on the webpage, go in and edit it. It's like, Nope, I just sent this to 5,000 people and now I can't take it back. And so right. I mean, I am in a lot of marketing communities and the number of discussion threads, I've been a part of where people share their horror stories and like psychologically just come there to support each other through the trauma of having sent an email, they wish that they could turn back. So I love how you said that.
Emily (03:07):
Yeah. Well, I mean the more I do this work, the more I'm in marketing and email marketing, and I had a consulting business for a while and I, and I talked to people about marketing, the more I see the, the way that perfectionism gets in the way of doing it, just doing the work. Right. And like, we're so terrified of looking bad and it's like, I've done it enough to not feel totally terrible about it. <laugh> yeah. Anymore. Cause it's just gonna happen. Right. We're human, we're human. And no matter how many eyeballs are on something, checking it behind you, mistakes still happen.
Kathleen (03:44):
Yeah, it is. Uh, it is one of the worst feelings in the world when you realize what has occurred. <laugh> um, so we could have a whole nother conversation around that, but that's a topic for another time. Um, so shout out to all of you listening who have done this, who have lived through the email nightmare. Um, I feel you, I see you, I think Emily does too. We're all in this together. So yes, moving on from that, um, uh, obviously AWeber is an email platform. A lot of marketers use it. Um, and you know, obviously we use email for different things, but I think most marketers, when we think about measuring the performance of our emails, I mean, I do always start with open rate. Cause I feel like that's the gateway drug, right? Like if you can't get somebody to open it, nothing else really matters. Right. So that seems to be the starting point, but then there's like click rates and click through rates and all kinds of other things. Maybe you could just start by like breaking this down for us and let's, let's pretend we know nothing. And let's start with what are the, all the, the important metrics and what do they really mean?
Emily (04:48):
Yeah. So, uh, like you said, most people start with open rates and usually that's because that's the data they have available, right? Not everybody, uh, gets to work in an organization that has amazing data cleanliness and reporting and all of the things at your fingertips that you can dig into things. So, you know, every email service provider provider is going to give you your open rates and they're gonna give you your click rates. And, um, you know, obviously data is never perfect and open rates have never been perfect, but they've sort of lost their legitimacy, uh, after apple, uh, introduced their iOS update last fall, where they stopped tracking opens. And so that sort of threw everything into question, but I will say it's still a really good benchmark to see. And what I think is really about the, the health of your list, um, cuz I've seen people try to really manipulate their subject lines to get those higher opens. And sometimes they, they don't land that well. And even though they might get a better open rate, um, their unsubscribers might go up, um, and their conversions might not do anything right. They might not change. So, so open rates are their own animal. Um, and I like to encourage folks to benchmark their open rates themselves because there are all, all these other reports out there about industry average, open rates and all those kinds of things, but it's all unique to your business. So,
Kathleen (06:25):
And I would just add, like to me, when I, you mentioned the iOS update and the fact that now you can't really trust like the absolute number you're given, um, I've always thought of it as like you should focus more on directionally what's happening with your open rates as opposed to like it's a 35%, right? Because as you said, 35%, what does that really mean in the context of the world? But if you have a 35% open rate and two weeks later, it's 15% on the same list. That's meaningful. <laugh> exactly. Versus if it goes from 35 to 45, like, you know what I mean? Those, those sorts of changes are the things that I think really can tell you something that's useful. But yeah, that absolute number, I mean, unless you have like a 2% open rate, in which case I'd say like, yeah, maybe you need to work on <laugh> exactly making it better, but
Emily (07:11):
<laugh> exactly. And yeah, that's why I say benchmark your own because like people will give you all of these numbers about email campaigns and email marketing and I mean marketing in general, but you don't know what's going on behind the scenes with those businesses and what it is exactly they're doing. So I think it really depends on what you're doing. And so I, I like to tell folks, look at the last three months, that's your average, that's your benchmark. Whether it's going up and down, that helps you decide what action you take next.
Kathleen (07:41):
And then you mentioned people playing with subject lines to get more opens and I've definitely done this, but I also am aware that there's like a fine line and you, you need to sort of like pay per click advertising. Like you want the content of your ad to match the content on the landing page. And I feel like email is the same. You need your subject line to be a, an accurate representation of what somebody's gonna find inside. But I also feel like, and I'm curious to get your take on this. I feel like marketers are horrible, horrible writers in the sense. And I hate to say this cuz like, they're not like in innately, they have good skills, but like I always say as soon as we put our marketing hat on, we forget that we're human. And so people write these like super official snay marketing, sounding, email, subject lines.
And one time I was doing an interview on the podcast and I think it was, um, another email marketer who said, there's this thing called the rule of one, which I've always found to be really useful, which is you picture one person in your head that you're writing the email to and you craft the subject line around that. So it doesn't sound like you're like a nameless faceless company. So I don't know. There's a lot of things in what I just said, but I would love to get your thoughts on the subject of open rate, uh, or sorry, um, subject lines, because I think that that is such an interesting area.
Emily (09:02):
Yeah. And I love the other advice you got from the other email marketer. Cause that's exactly how I look at it too. And really, um, the trick I tell people to do. And it's when I heard a long time ago, um, is to put, just think about putting the word you in the subject line. Like you are addressing a person cause it like, it flips the switch in your head and you know, obviously your reader, all they care about is what's in it for them. Yeah. So if you're thinking about, you know, what is the benefit that you will get from opening this email? What's the outcome? What, what great information are they gonna get or, um, goal they're gonna achieve? Um, just thinking about putting the word you in there will help you re reframe your writing in instantly.
Kathleen (09:52):
Yeah. Okay. So, and then last question, emojis. I always have to ask this question. What are, what are you team emoji or no in subject lines.
Emily (10:02):
I mean, if it makes sense for your brand. Yeah. Right. If you're not the kind of brand where the people you're talking to, uh, are interested in emojis then yeah. Leave them out. But if they, if they, if your audience would appreciate an emoji, then, then do it go for it. It's fun. People like it. Um, just make sure it makes sense. Yeah.
Kathleen (10:24):
Now we, I promised everybody that we were gonna talk about metrics beyond open rates. Yes. So, uh, let's get there. You let's say you have a decent open rate. What are the next things that marketers should be looking at?
Emily (10:40):
I mean then obviously you've got click rates. So a lot of email service providers have switched to click rates instead of click to open rates. Um, and so people saw, I talked to a lot of people who saw their click rates dive in the fall because email service providers started making their default, um, click rate to click rate instead of click to open. So if you're not familiar with that, um, a click to open rate is the number of clicks divided by the number of opens. So it's only measuring who clicked the email based on who opened it. A click through rate is number of clicks, divided by the number of people you sent the email to.
Kathleen (11:24):
So, okay. So back up and which one are you saying is more meaningful?
Emily (11:28):
Uh, well I like to look at the click to open rate because I think it's much more representative. Yeah. Uh, based on who actually saw what was in the email, did they take in action? Okay. However, since the iOS update, a lot of people are just throwing the, that out and saying a more accurate measurement is the number of clicks to how many people you send it to.
Kathleen (11:51):
Okay. Okay. Because you can't trust the open rate. So like why this, your whole formula. That makes sense. And I hadn't really thought about that cuz I, I do like click to open better in a perfect world. Mm-hmm yes. You're like if you have a horrid open rate and that really changes dramatically, the meaningfulness of if you have X number of clicks versus if you had a really great open rate.
Emily (12:15):
Exactly. Okay. And so that's why we're dealing with a lot lower click through yeah. Uh, numbers, um, in this whatever year it is 2020. <laugh> like, what time is that about? Yeah. Um, so, so to me, when you're looking at that, and again, I said a benchmark right of your personal or your business' numbers, what are you averaging over the last few months? And then looking at, um, you know, what, how many links are you putting in your email? <laugh> if you're putting a ton in there, um, it's gonna water down the effect, right. People you're giving people too many choices and um, you're asking them to make one choice out of too many. Right. So,
Kathleen (12:58):
And that's, I'm assuming that that's for, like, you're talking more about emails, like where you're trying to get somebody to take a very specific action versus like a newsletter where you would naturally have a lot of links.
Emily (13:09):
Exactly, exactly. Yeah. And I mean, and that also then, you know, leads us to, you know, conversions. So, uh, a lot of people I talk to when they they're saying their emails just aren't successful and I ask them, you know, well, what do you define as success? Or what would it look like if they were successful? Don't really have an idea of what the goal is for the emails they're sending out. And now each email might have a different goal, but they don't take that sort of global view and think of, okay, well what, what action, action am I really trying to get somebody to take? And how can I measure that? I mean, in the eCommerce world, it's much easier in email cuz typically you can easily tie revenue to each email that's going out. Um, but in other industries really thinking about what is it you want people to do once they click through your email.
Um, and how do you back in to measure that? So that means you might have to change some processes, um, connect some data sources or um, even some tools. So like in the B2B world, a lot of, um, a lot of people want to book sales calls from their emails. Well, uh, if you have a tool like Calendly or an appointment setting tool of some kind, you can, you can connect, uh, or do tagging right between your appointment center and your email service provider to start measuring, okay, how many calls are you booking? Um, or you know, how many, uh, deals in your pipeline have email attributed to them, um, as a touch. And so again, like a lot of people don't really have an idea of how or what their goals specifically are or how to track them. And so that's where that work really starts to play or pay off because now you can start saying, okay, this particular email has this goal. This is what we're trying to get them to do. How do we track and measure that? And um, and
Kathleen (15:25):
I feel like that's kind of like going back to your first point about not having a lot of links, it's a little bit like putting a call to action on a landing page. Like that's why we as marketers know this, that's why you strip out the nav on your landing pages. That's why you have one clear call to action. And that's why your CTA generally has like either a UTM or some kind of parameters to let you know somebody came through it. And so it's funny how we do all this on landing pages, but then we forget to do it all in emails.
Emily (15:54):
Exactly. And that's, I mean, I kind of like, I like to think of emails as kind of a landing page, right. Having similar structure and a user experience, but the advantage of emails, you can be a lot more conversational. Right. Um, and you can really, um, tease out what you're trying to get people to do and get them excited about it. Not that you can't do that on a landing page, but um, I like to think of that, of it as more of a conversation that you're, um, that you're having with folks to try and get them to do that call to action and really simplifying it and getting them to focus on what it is you want them to do.
Kathleen (16:33):
So I have a million questions cause I'm, it's so funny right before we got on this interview, I was actually writing an email, um, that's going out to our database. So this is like awesome timing. Um, and, and I, in no particular order, selfishly, I wanna ask this. So like you're writing your email, how important is it to kind of in journalism terms, like not bury the lead? So like I think about when I write LinkedIn updates and, and now LinkedIn, you know, the best practices, like your first sentence needs to be very impactful because in the case of LinkedIn, it like cuts off the rest of it. And there's like a Seymour, but I feel like our brains do the same thing. Like they have a Seymour inside of them. And if you, like, if you don't really catch somebody with the first sentence, people aren't gonna keep looking. And so I don't, do you have any sort of evidence or any, even if it's anecdotal on like how important it is to, to put that really punchy thing right up front.
Emily (17:27):
Yeah. Uh, and it's, it works the same way in email, you know, you have to hook people in that first sentence and it needs to be, um, either around a pain point that they're having, that you can help them solve, um, some sort of, um, objective or, um, transformation you wanna help achieve or, you know, whether you have some exciting event going on with some squashy name, right. Um, you have to lead with that. Uh, and then you can launch into the, uh, the details, the, um, the adding authority and testimonials and all that fun stuff. But, you know, in, in digital marketing, we, we know this, that we are competing with a million different distractions and, um, making sure that you hook people fast to get them to continue is just as important in email as it is any other digital channel.
Kathleen (18:27):
And then I feel like there's perennially a debate and I, I have it everywhere I go with just about every like sales team I work with about whether you should or should not include images and, or like links to video or thumbnails of videos, or like all rich media, essentially like to what extent does, including that hurt your deliverability. I mean, we know that it can very much help kind of tell the story you wanna tell and add to the, the context of the email and, and make that a better experience, but like that has to be weighed against getting the email into somebody's inbox. And so is there any kind of best practices you can share there?
Emily (19:06):
Yeah, so I, I mean, from my experience and my testing, I've seen all of that have very varying results. <laugh> sometimes a text only email works a lot better than a more, you know, beautifully designed image, heavy one, um, sometimes, but I do see people actively engaging with video content across any channel and email is not an exception to that. Um, the challenge with email is that you cannot play videos in an email. Yeah. I mean, there are tools out there that are, uh, that are allowing you to do that, but they're very expensive. <laugh> right. Um, most
Kathleen (19:44):
Of them kind of trick you, like they put a thumbnail in that looks like it has a play button, but you click on it and then you go off to the actual page that has the video on it.
Emily (19:52):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So then you have to be really careful about where is that video living. So are you, do you really wanna send someone to YouTube or do you wanna put them on a landing page that has the video in it? Um, so again, what I've seen is, and, and what I actually do as practice since I've seen this very so widely is I, I have just various templates. So some, some emails might make sense with a more, uh, more designed, right? Yeah. More graphics, um, like a newsletter where you're doing a digestive things. Um, some emails, particularly when you're focusing on sales, um, are much more successful as a text based email. Um, but again, like it depends on your brand. Some brands are very visually focused, um, and that makes sense for them. Um, but again, I, I like to switch it up. I, I think because, um, I have seen such varying results, sometimes texts when sometimes graphics when, um, I think it's fun to just play with it and then test it yourself if you have those resources.
Kathleen (21:03):
So that is the perfect segue into my next question, which is that in the last few years, I feel like there's been this move or return to doing mass emails through platforms, but formatting them to look as though they just came right out of somebody's individual Gmail. And so they might have the can spam language, but it's like pushed way down. So it's not as obvious. And the text is formatted to look like Gmail's default text, uh, et cetera, a, is that a good idea? B when should you do it and C if you're going to do it, any particular tips that you have?
Emily (21:43):
Yeah. I think that makes sense, especially in a B2B world world, if you're doing sales outreach or sales follow up, um, it, uh, if it's coming from a particular sales person, it makes a lot of sense to keep it stripped down. So it does look like personal outreach, um, especially if it's automated, um, and, uh, because yeah, you want it to look like it's coming from a real human being who wants to have a real human conversation. Uh, and then, you know, if you're doing something maybe more, uh, promotional, um, you know, again, that can, it can vary depending on your brand. Uh, but I have seen that work for some folks, um, you know, doing a buying guide, if you're an eCommerce company doing it all in text, seen it work really well. Um, but then again, you know, if you're a brand who focuses on very beautiful imagery, then it might not make as much sense for you.
Kathleen (22:47):
Yeah. I'm fascinated by this stuff, cuz like I think it was probably five or six years ago. I started seeing particularly the company that stands out in my mind is Drift. They really went all in on this. Like every email looks like it just came right out of somebody's, you know, send folder and not only do they look very native to Gmail, but the subject lines were intentionally written to look like individuals wrote them, not just in terms of the verbiage, but like I noticed for example, they would play with like all lowercase subject lines. So no sentence case, no leading caps, none of that like very informal, very like extreme rule of one, if you will. Um, and they also lean heavily into emojis and that's their brand for sure, because they're a conversational marketing company, although I think they have a new name now for their category, but, but that was really what they were trying to push back then. And so I, I, I'm curious your thoughts around like going to that extreme, is it just really kind of like if, if that's your brand great or are there times when that's a very useful approach to take?
Emily (23:50):
Yeah, I think it, it makes a lot of sense for um, behavior based triggered sequences. Right. If you're really trying to get that high touch experience in, um, you know, we, we are marketed to every second of the day <laugh> and so I think we, uh, most adults probably have, uh, uh, antenna up when they feel like they're being sold to. And you can tell, you know, just looking in your inbox, which emails are personal correspondence and which aren't, um, so it's a really great way to do, um, to break through that noise right. In, in the, in the inbox. So I, again, I've seen that with like very per, like, uh, very high touch campaigns where, you know, maybe somebody became, if you're using contact scoring, uh, somebody becomes a, a sales ready lead and you have a sequence that you're sending out. Um, that works really well there. Um, yeah. And again, especially those higher ticket items that are more enterprise level.
Kathleen (25:06):
Yeah. I will say this though. It's funny cuz I've been in some jobs where I'm marketing to marketers and the one thing I've noticed is marketers see straight through it. Right. As soon as they see can spam language, they're like, yeah, Uhhuh. That's definitely not one to one, but what I've seen work really well. And I've mentioned this a few times before in the podcast. So if folks are listening and they've listened before they may have heard me say this, what I've seen work really well in those cases is like actually acknowledging it. So you still do the plainly formatted Gmail. You still make it sound very one- one. But then like towards the end and I was just working on an email along these lines where it says, you know, while this is an automated email, I'm a real person and I really do read every reply kind of thing. Like, so you're kind of, you know, being very, um, upfront about the fact that, you know, Hey, it looks really one on one, but I totally automated it, but I'm still gonna read your response if you hit reply. I love doing that when the audience is marketers. I don't think you have to do that for all audiences, but if you're sending it to, to people who understand the tactics, I do think it's important to be transparent like that.
Emily (26:10):
Yeah, absolutely. And I also think that like, it just adds that humanity to it. And I think that a lot of folks just get in their heads or we often see, you know, marketing campaigns in general and think, and don't think about that. There are people behind it, right. There are real human beings behind it doing that work and writing that copy and putting it together and sending it out. And so if you can humanize the experience at all, you're gonna gain some trust right away.
Kathleen (26:43):
Now, speaking of replies, um, do you have any advice for how you can write emails in a way that they actually do get people to respond? Because it's interesting. I think one thing is your click rate or your click through rate or what have you, the other is like reply rates, which I think is an interesting metric to look at.
Emily (27:05):
Yeah. I mean using language, like you just said, like, or asking a question at the end, uh, with, you know, I'd love to hear more about blah, blah, blah, um, being very specific about what you want to know. Um, and, um, being direct with your, your question and then like you said, I read all the responses like seriously, I wanna hear from you
Kathleen (27:30):
<laugh> yeah. I love a good PS for that reason.
Emily (27:32):
Yes, exactly.
Kathleen (27:33):
And throwing it in after the signature lines that it's the very last thing they see, you know, and you said a question, it can't even be a question that has nothing to do with the email.
Emily (27:41):
Exactly.
Kathleen (27:42):
Yeah. That's interesting. All right. So what are some of the other things we've missed that email marketers should be looking at?
Emily (27:53):
Yeah, so you, you know, uh, you briefly mentioned deliverability, uh, earlier in the conversation and, uh, I wanted to talk about that because, um, a lot of people, um, you know, I've worked at places or talked to people who, uh, really want to get super creative with their, uh, subject lines, uh, to increase those open rates. And it's often, um, a really hard conversation to have, especially at a large organization. And, uh, what I've seen end up happening is when people try to take shortcuts to increase their open rates is that they, you know, like we mentioned earlier, they try to get, um, a little, uh, a little tricky, a click baby, right. With their, their subject lines. And they might, the subject line might have nothing to do with what's inside the email. Um, and so people feel tricked. Right. And what, again, what I've seen happen is even though the open rate might go up, um, conversion doesn't, um, but what does also go up is unsubscribes and complaints.
Yeah. And, um, that part, um, the complaints is what is going to end up hurting you in the long term. And a lot of, I know a lot of marketers already know this, but it can be really hard to explain it to some really key stakeholders, uh, that, uh, you know, those complaints affect your ability to end up in the inbox. Um, and can, uh, if you're not careful, uh, permanently serve you to the spam folder or get you on a block list. Uh, so I just wanted to bring that up, um, because there's also a lot of misconceptions about, you know, putting specific words in a subject line is gonna trigger a spam filter. Um, it doesn't right. That your deliverability, your standard reputation is more dependent on healthy engagement, those opens and clicks yeah. Than anything else.
Kathleen (29:59):
Yeah. So deliverability is a factor, both of being honest with your recipients in terms of honesty, in terms of the language you're using in your subject line, so that when they open it, their expectations have been set properly. And then we talked earlier about some of the rich media elements, anything else around deliverability?
Emily (30:21):
Yeah. So, and that's also another part about, uh, having a really great open rate is, um, is looking at your list in terms of its health, which also impacts your deliverability. So, um, you know, when I, when I talk to people who are like, my open rates are terrible, they're under 10%, you know, to me, anything under 10%, like that's a red flag. And when I go in and dig deep, there is no cleanliness to their list. They have contacts on there. Who've been on the list for years and haven't opened, clicked or interacted with the brand in any way in over a year. And so, uh, cleaning your list, although some people get real scared about it. Yeah. I, I get it. Um, is going to improve your open rates and improve your deliverability, uh, because you're gonna have higher engagement metrics attached to your sender reputation, uh, which again helps get your emails in the inbox instead of the spam folder. So, um, to me, open rates and click rates, um, are as much about, uh, keeping a pulse on the cleanliness of your list, uh, as it is about, you know, assessing the overall engagement of your emails,
Kathleen (31:45):
What is your feeling about, let's say you send out a mass email about something like, let's say you're promoting a webinar and 20% of your recipients open the email. How do you feel about resending that email sometime later, maybe it's days later, who knows how long with a different subject line to the people that didn't open it the first time.
Emily (32:09):
So I send, I resend emails to everybody unless they converted on that one, because I think another assumption we have about opens is that, um, if somebody opened an email, we think that they a read the email B uh, remembered everything in the email and C took the action. They meant to take again, we're dealing with a lot of distractions in the world. And so somebody may have gotten your email and said, oh yeah, I really wanna register for that. But didn't right, because life <laugh>. Uh, so I, uh, that's why I like to send out if you have a campaign going that's, um, time sensitive around special promotion or webinar, like you mentioned, I like to send at least three emails, um, to promote that goal. And I send it to everybody unless they converted on that goal action. Um, be because I've done that where I have sent the email to only non openers and I I've tested it non openers versus everybody else, if you send it to, um, everybody who did not convert. So I think there's a lot of, we make a lot of assumptions about how people interact with our content. And again, as people who are building our thinking, building and creating that content, we're way more into it than our audience is. And I think it's very easy to lose that perspective.
Kathleen (33:41):
Yeah. That's a great point. I love that. You talked about sending it to everybody because I've definitely done the resend it to people who didn't open it. Um, and certainly have dramatically increased my response rates. Like when you add up the first email with the second email, if you think of it as one audience, like it, it makes a huge difference. But, um, I like the idea of sending it to everybody. And, and, you know, in this case, I'm assuming you're sending, you're also then changing the body of the email as well.
Emily (34:08):
Yeah. Um, yeah, changing it up a little bit. You don't have to change it up a lot. Um, again, not everybody reads everything or remembers what they read.
Kathleen (34:15):
They have very short memories and I speak from personal experience.
Emily (34:19):
Exactly. And what I recommend people do, who are concerned about annoying their subscribers with that and thinking they might, unsubscribe is if you're running a longer campaign, like let's say you're doing a campaign over, you know, a couple weeks or a month. Um, and you're afraid that people are gonna get sick of it. You can have people pause their subscription during that campaign. Something I do often where basically I set up a, a separate landing page, um, and, and put above the unsubscribed button, Hey, if you're not interested in this right now, you can pause, um, your emails for while this campaign is running. And so they click, uh, the link and I auto tag them if they click it. And then while I'm running that campaign, I just, uh, suppress anybody who has that task.
Kathleen (35:15):
Oh, that is right there. If you're listening, I feel like that is the number one most valuable thing in this entire podcast. Like that is so great. I never thought to do that. And you don't need tech that like right. Pauses things for you. All it is, is like a workflow or a rule set in your, in your marketing automation platform. Yes. Oh my God. I'm totally doing that for now on <laugh>.
Emily (35:42):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I just, uh, yeah, I was just actually running one right now, uh, with a at AWeber we use, uh, AWeber for our customer base and I was just setting that up and it's like, uh, it's actually the easiest one I've ever done because you can go in and, and you can set it up so that if somebody clicks a particular link, it auto tags them, uh, while I'm scheduling the message. And
Kathleen (36:06):
So now now one clarifying question on that, I would think if they're likely to tag that or to, to click that, that they probably would have initially gone to hit unsubscribe in which case that is a little trickier, isn't it? Because most people, if you're using an email sending platform, your unsubscribed page, isn't something that you have really the ability to play with as much. So are you saying, you're you put a pause button on the unsubscribed page too? Or is this just a separate page?
Emily (36:34):
It's just a, it's just a page that confirms the action. Um, so basically I'm putting a button above the footer section that says, Hey, are you not interested in this right now? That's fine. You can pause your email. So it's, before they even get to the footer where the unsubscribed link is,
Kathleen (36:55):
Oh, in the email or in, is this a button in the email or a button on a landing page?
Emily (37:00):
It's a button in the email.
Kathleen (37:01):
Oh, okay. Totally. That makes complete sense. Okay. Cause I was like, how are, yeah. I'm like, how do you do that? If they hit the unsubscribed page that always scares me. It's like, I would rather them hit manage preferences. And I'm a big fan of having like multiple email subscription types so that nobody feels like they have to press the nuclear button. Exactly. Um, but yeah. Okay. That is amazing. And I'm so glad that you mentioned that. Thank
Emily (37:21):
You. Yeah. Feel it, feel it, feel it cool.
Kathleen (37:24):
All right. Well, we're coming close to the end of our time. So anything else that I didn't ask you that I should have that you think is really important for people to be aware of?
Emily (37:32):
Yeah. I mean, I, I feel like I've been talking about perfectionism a lot lately. <laugh> and it's something like, I, I feel like the more I talk to people about it and the marketing, they do, the more I realize how much stress there is around hitting the sun button. And I think a lot of that comes around or back to making mistakes. They're afraid to make mistakes. You know, you might have a database of several hundred thousand or whatever your audience size is or a hundred. Like, I just wanna tell people like, if somebody who's been there done that it's gonna happen. Yeah. And it sucks, but we all survive it. Uh
Kathleen (38:15):
<laugh> we need a support group for email mistakes. We really do. It's just such a, such a horrible thing when it happens. And yeah. I mean, like I'm in the women of email group on Facebook and I, the number of times I've seen these conversations. If I had a dollar for everyone, I would be so wealthy right now. <laugh>
Emily (38:31):
Exactly. And, but the really cool thing is when you send out, oops, email afterwards, people love it. Totally Love it. Yes. But like the engagement is through the roof and I've even heard of some folks who do it on purpose, which I'm like, oh no, don't oh yeah.
Kathleen (38:48):
That's a little dis
Emily (38:49):
Ruin that.
Kathleen (38:53):
Yeah. But it's like, it's the same concept as restaurants that get bad reviews on Yelp. And there's a ton of evidence that restaurants that only have good reviews are not nearly as beloved or trusted as restaurants that have some bad reviews cuz like nobody's perfect. And we all know this and when you look too perfect, it's like, eh, you know, did their cousin write all of the reviews? And I feel like it's the same thing with email. Like we, we, as a, as a culture have a tremendous capacity for forgiveness, but it, you only forgive if somebody like owns up. Right. That's the first step. So yeah,
Emily (39:27):
Exactly.
Kathleen (39:29):
Oh, this has been so much fun. Um, I can talk to you forever and nerd out on email, but we are coming to the end of our time. So I wanna switch over and ask you the two questions that I always ask all my guests, the first being that, you know, a lot of the marketers, I talk to say, they're overwhelmed with the flow of information and how digital marketing is changing. And we've touched on things like this, like iOS changes, et cetera. So how do you personally keep yourself educated and stay up to date on everything when it comes to digital marketing?
Emily (39:59):
Uh, I, so I subscribe to some newsletters, uh, to keep myself abreast of all the issues. And then I found communities, you know, email geeks, and I'm also part of women of email that, um, I get to see what people are struggling with and as much as things change, uh, I have learned that there are still so many foundational pieces that marketing programs miss. Uh, and so it feels like I don't feel like I have to keep up as much because there's still like really core strategies that can be nailed down and iterated on that make even more impact than chasing all the shiny new. And so I try to, I have learned to try and keep that new information, um, as minimal as possible because the, the foundational strategy is much more important.
Kathleen (41:00):
That's so true. Now you mentioned a few of the communities you're in. Are there any particular newsletters that you really love?
Emily (41:06):
I've been, uh, I subscribe to The Click. I don't know if you've heard of that one.
Kathleen (41:10):
No, I love what I hear about new ones though. This is great.
Emily (41:12):
Great. Yeah. It's uh, digital marketing newsletter and that's where I get all my up to date things on, um, digital marketing <laugh>, uh, that I love. And it's click with two Ks instead of a C K. Ooh. So yeah, I, I absolutely recommend that one.
Kathleen (41:28):
Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that. All right. Second question. This podcast is all about marketing and the way I define that, cuz that everybody has their own definition is anything that naturally attracts the right customer to you. So with that being said, is there a particular company or individual that you think is really setting the standard for what it means to be a great inbound marketer these days?
Emily (41:51):
Oh, wow. Yeah. I mean there's a lot of 'em <laugh> um, wow. Uh, who am I following right now? My mind went blank. Just totally blank. There's so many of 'em
Kathleen (42:12):
<laugh>
Emily (42:14):
Um,
Kathleen (42:14):
Or any AWeber customers that you think are really doing an amazing job with their email.
Emily (42:20):
Yeah. There are so many there's um, um, I don't know if you've heard of Jay Baer
Kathleen (42:27):
I know Jay Baer very well.
Emily (42:28):
Yeah. <laugh> yeah. He's got a great newsletter and um, and Anne Handley is also an amazing.
Kathleen (42:36):
I love Total Annarchy. Her newsletter is amazing.
Emily (42:39):
Yeah. Yeah. Yep. She's an AWeber customer. Um, so yeah, those two folks are great to keep up with. I love their newsletter content.
Kathleen (42:47):
Yeah. And in fact Ann's a good one to follow because she talks a lot about like how to write better also, which if you're writing emails is a really good resource and has an awesome book called Everybody Writes or Everyone Writes. I can never remember which one, but anyway, good resources. Okay. So if somebody's listening and they have a question or they want more information or they wanna learn more about AWeber, what is the best way for them to connect with you or learn more?
Emily (43:10):
Yeah. So you can head to aweber.com. If you wanna play with the platform and see what features, um, it might have, that would be appealing to you. Um, you can create a free account. Um, I'm always, I'm very active on LinkedIn. So if you ever wanna connect with me on LinkedIn, I like to post a lot of things about email. So feel free to find me on LinkedIn. I'm happy to connect and answer any questions about email marketing or AWeber
Kathleen (43:33):
Awesome. All right. I will put all those links in the show notes, which are available kathleen-booth.com. Uh, and of course, if you enjoy this episode, I would love it if you would head to Apple Podcasts and leave the podcast a review. And if you know somebody else who's doing really fantastic inbound marketing work, send me a tweet at @Kathleenlbooth and I would love to have them as my next guest. In the meantime, that's it for this week. Thank you, Emily. This was so interesting.
Emily (44:00):
Yeah. Thank you. I had a blast.
