The Email Marketing Process that Gets You more Sales by Transforming Your Leads into Customers! – with Dan Faggella

OWEN: My guest today is Daniel Faggella and he is the founder of CLV Boost which is a boutique marketing automation and strategic email marketing consultancy. Daniel, welcome to the show.

DANIEL: Thanks Owen, glad to be here brother.

OWEN: So let’s get right in. And before we even start the show let’s tell the listeners what they would discover by listening to this entire interview.

DANIEL: Yeah, for sure. Today, you and I kind of chatted back and forth via email even beforehand. I know marketing and systemization’s a big emphasis on your own end. Today we’re going to talk about a little bit of the 4 quadrants of email marketing, marketing automation. We like to focus on the collection of leads that connecting with them, converting them into sales and then focusing on lifetime value and sort of circulation messages. Newsletters, things like that. So we’re going to try to touch on all the basis today and make sure that people have actionable steps to plug-in to their business no matter what they sell.

OWEN: And so, what will say is like a mind-blowing result you or some of your clients have gotten by implementing your new process of email marketing?

DANIEL: Yeah, big time. One of the first sort of kick-offs for us was I was running a small-town martial arts gym in order to pay for grad school. So I was at University of Rhode Island in a very small town of only about 8,000 people. And I ended getting into U Penn for grad and I could’ve gotten a job, but I decided to run a small Martial Arts gym in my town. Turns out that’s kind of a bad idea because there’s only 8,000 people there. But I still got the thing to about 100 students with marketing automation, but the bigger kind of mind-blowing stuff that really kicked me into full gear in terms of implementing this for other people’s businesses was we use the same systems of follow-up and segmentation to build a $35,000 a month learn jujitsu online business. And that was really by segmenting front-end customers, determining what they really were there for and their major goals, appealing to them with specific courses, and programs, and membership models. And then having really good up sells in the back-end and we took the time in the front-end to build it. And when we let the machine go, it was like 5 months in we’re at 17 grand a month, and I was like, “Man, I need to automate more.” So we started doing for other customers and clients. Now, since I moved up to Cambridge we worked with a lot of startup companies and software folks. But that was the real first kick-off was 5 months in and I was making as much as I was making in my physical gym. And I was working on this thing for years online just by turning on the traffic and making sure the backend was really well automated. So that was definitely a light bulb.

OWEN: Wow. And so, why is the old way of email marketing not working anymore?

DANIEL: Yeah. There’s sort of 2 ways that the old way of email marketing goes. And I don’t want to necessarily hate on anybody out there who’s doing these particular things. I’m sure if anybody who is the world champion of SEO went into the back of my website, they’d be like, “Oh, you don’t know what you can do with–” So for email, and this is just my area of focus. But I’ll tell you right now, generally speaking email’s done in one of two ways in terms of the old way. So the old way is either just pure broadcast messages or one vanilla sequence. So here’s what a vanilla sequence is. A vanilla sequence is no matter who I am, how I get in touch with your business, what I’m interested in, what my major goals or values are, what benefits I’m seeking, no matter how I opt-in to learn more from you, I get the exact same string of emails over, and over, and over. So, let’s say, I was chatting it up today with a software company that is a productivity kind of software type company, more for domestic stuff. It’s not for work, it’s more like grocery list to-do, friends–

OWEN: Personal stuff, yeah.

DANIEL: Yeah. And they have a lot of folks who are actually teachers like high school and college teachers is really kind of caught on with that crowd. They also have folks that are spouses that they juggle grocery list back and forth and things along those lines. And then they do have some work teams that kind of use this for organizing some stuff out of work that’s like a little bit less formal, or whatever. So, those are some of their major demos or avatars, and the folks that are using their stuff. But even now when you opt-in for a free trial with these guys, you will get the same whatever it is, 12 emails, no matter what benefit it is. Whether you are trying to keep a relationship up with your students in a college or high school setting, or whether you’re looking to juggle grocery list with your spouse, you’ll get the same used cases, the same education, the same education, the same testimonials, the same calls to action when in fact there’s [Unintelligible 00:04:49] different things to appeal to for those folks. Like the folks who are married and they’re going to use this in a household, they want to see examples of how parents and kids, or two spouses have sort of used this. And it’s a younger crowd, this is like married couples who are in their early 30’s generally speaking, kind of tech savvy folks. So why don’t we have videos of those kind of people doing the kind of used cases that are useful here. They don’t need to know about the kind of at work functionality they’ve explicitly said they don’t want it. The best way to get stick rate, the best way to keep them plugged in on this app is to make sure we’re educating them on all the useful stuff that’s relevant to them. But again, the other way of doing it is no matter who you are, no matter where you find us, no matter what you’re interested in, no matter what your benefits are you get the exact same sequence. And that to be frank is rather antiquated. So the reason it’s outdate is because the ability to branch off and to make email more relevant, have a much higher ROI is so easy now with all the technology. So, since 5 years ago, that stuff has got to be dinosaur times. It’s over now.

OWEN: Wow. I must say, I use to think I talk very fast but with you, woof, it’s like a rush. I love that. Let me go to the next question.

DANIEL: Okay.

OWEN: What is your new process for email marketing? I know it’s based on like a framework of 4 steps, and so let’s just touch them a little quick.

DANIEL: Cool. So anybody can think of their business as just framework. In know Owen, the big thing for me is stuff that people can think about for their own biz. So anybody can break down what they’re doing in terms of email and automation into these 4 steps. I’m going over it briefly. So collecting is the acquisition of leads or new customers. Some people do customers on the front end, most people do leads on the front end, so we use the example of leads. Although e-commerce is pretty much the same thing. Now, front-end conversion rates. So if you have, let’s say, web form and a free thing that people can download, are we split testing the button. Are we split testing the placement  of the web form, are we offering different things on the front end and seeing which ones catch on the most in which locations, or to which lead sources. Is there optimization for acquisition? If there isn’t, there’s a big opportunity to get more. So that’s a big factor of collection. The next step for us is connection. So connection is building a bond with the folks that you just got to opt-in. So now that they’re a lead, we want them to open their emails, and you know this for being a marketer Owen, and we’re talking off mic about kind of marketing principles, but they want to get a message and say this is for me, they want to be relevant. It shouldn’t be like, “Oh, this is the message they send to everybody.” It should be, “Wow, this is for me.” Now one of the ways that we do that in the connection phase is thinking about segmentation. So, if we were to break-up– let’s say you’re selling a business-to-business software and the used cases for this software are going to be very different for a company of 1 to 5 people, a company of 6 to 20, a company of 21-100, and a company of 100 plus. You have case studies of each type, but really you’re communication is going to have to be specific to how big they are because that’s going to determine what they can use. Well, what we can do in the connection phase is either in our first email, or right there on the opt-in form we can say, “Hey, now that you’re with us, let us know how big you’re company is because we can really show you how to make the most of blank, blank, blank. Or we could give you the most helpful steps for blank, blank, blank. You can either do that right on the opt-in which I recommend. Or you can parse them out over the course of the first two or the three emails, and really coax that out of them. Hey, click which one is the most relevant for you, are you a 1 to 5-person company, blah, blah, blah. And then we’re going to talk about conversion. So we went collection, connection, and now conversion. Now when we convert, if you convert without connection generally speaking it can come across as pretty abrasive. So if people feel like they’re being sold but you’re not talking to them or what they care about it’s a little bit rough. So if we use the software example, let’s say HubSpot which is very popular marketing automation company here in Cambridge, we’re just using them as an easy example. If I tell them I’m a 1 to 5 person company and they send me an email sequence, and a sequence of cool used cases and videos about very small companies, they’re doing wonders with HubSpot, doing amazing. Here’s how this little mom and pop shop here, here’s how this tiny startup company got out of the basement. And they show me these great examples of how– even with one guy with the founder using it, their software can be amazing. That stuff that’s going to connect with me. And then when they make the conversion pitch, which for them is on the phone, for other people is right on e-commerce that call to action is now going to be received better. And what we need to do now is we need to split test the call to action. What is the phone script, where is the sales page, what is the text and the email that’s driving them to the sales page? All of those things can be tweaked and refined. And we can build an automated system that’s more effective. So anyone who has a business out there, you can think about conversion that way as well. Are you testing those factors, if not, make a to-do and can go check those boxes because that stuff that’s really going to matter in your bottom-line. Then lastly, here Owen is we talk about circulation. So circulation is actually a term from the kind of magazine, or the catalogue marketing world. And this has to do with the circulation of more broad task type messages. Most people refer to this as blast messages. So, how are we using sort of monthly, weekly, quarterly type updates, or releases, or offers, and rotating them to different sub-segments of our list to vet out new business. To not just say a lot of people have these circulation emails like, “Blank, blank software, February update. Hey, we were featured in this website and we gave a presentation here. It’s going really well. Thank you. Here’s a link to our Facebook page.” It was just like boring, there’s no ROI, there’s no anything. So we focus on turning newsletters into moneymakers, into something that not only encourages engagement with your blog, with your site, with whatever it is. But if they’re current customers, we want those newsletters to actually be secretly focusing on retention.

OWEN: And it sells too, right?

DANIEL: What did you say? And it’s a sales tool.

OWEN: Yeah.

DANIEL: Everything is a sales tool, everything is marketing. And if they’re not customers and while they’re getting a broadcast, the secret calls to action in that message, whether it’s in the blog post, in the email itself should be to [Unintelligible 00:11:08] . So we need to think about how circulation is rotating to our different list so that we’re always squeaking the most out even in the long-term from existing customers and prospects. So thinking through collection, connection, conversion, circulation are sort of the 4 phases that we rotate through in our business. And again, anybody could put on those goggles and look at their very own business through those lenses. Very helpful to think about it that way.

OWEN: So I’m glad you gave us like an overview of the framework, and the 4 steps. Let’s dive right in to the first one. So what exactly, and let’s get as much distance as we can. What exactly is the collecting or acquiring leads part of the email marketing process?

DANIEL: Yeah, for sure. So, what we’re looking at here is, again, how we can maximally bring people into our list, or get people subscribed. So, the real basis here are– let’s look at some essential examples. So it might be, “Sign-up for our blank on our front page. And are we split testing what the blank is. If it says, “Enter here for our newsletter”, A, that’s just bad marketing and people need to change, period. So have a legitimate call to action and let’s rotate those, let’s test those and see what works better.

OWEN: And real quick, how do we determine what that call to action should be, or what that offer should be?

DANIEL: Got it, great. Okay, so let’s say, recently we are working with a chain of physical therapy clinics in the United Kingdom. So what these folks have, he’s got a website and on one of their landing pages, it’s really all about knee pain. So he deals with a lot of knee pain folks. So, what he has for knee pain, what’s going to get somebody to opt-in in general, anyone out there can ask himself this exact question. What short, digestible chunk of content can I deliver to my prospect that will instantly give them benefits and show them that I’m an expert in what I’m talking about? So in his example that could be video, it could audio, it could be text. And you can test those. But in his example, it is an eBook for relieving knee pain. So he talks about some exercise and circulation stuff, he talks about hydration, he talks about different factors like that. I haven’t gone into all the details, but it’s something designed to be helpful. He could’ve done a short video series on diet and hydration, or other things that could help with their knee pain as well. Or what kind of companies make the best braces, or whatever else. Either way, it has to be short and digestible. So that the “things” that gets someone to opt-in, the calls to action are generally short, digestible chunks of information, they’re going to instantly benefit people. Nobody wants to opt-in for an encyclopedia, nobody does. Let’s say, “Hey, we have a 500-page soup to nuts human physiology text book. And in here, you can actually go into the exact nerves– nobody wants it. But if you say, in this quick 4-page white paper we actually cover the 3 biggest irritators to knee pain that very few people even realize are the heart of the matter. And in this, you’ll be able to bop, bop, bop. People like that it’s 4 pages, they like that it’s short and digestible. Generally, you see higher conversions with those kind of things. Now, of course you have to let them know that there’s also a newsletter. “Hey, by the way, if you don’t want to hear from us anymore all you have to do is click a button and you can get rid of us. But I hope that this is going to helpful and we’ll teach you more about knee pain.”

OWEN: And during that also, I’m thinking to myself is another way of thinking of this like, okay, whatever that big pain your product, or your software, or your company, or your service offers people as a solution, think of the quickest and easiest way you can get them like bite-sized solution that regardless of whether they use you or whatever, that should be a content. Just like if you go in to one of all these stores like [Unintelligible 00:15:08] clubs or whatever, and you walk by them and you taste of the samples, so you can taste to see how it tastes first.

DANIEL: This is true, yes. There’s a lot of analogies, there’s the food analogy, there’s the dating analogy. You want to go to a dinner before you try. We’ve all been there in college and whatnot. So, there’s a lot of analogies to draw but that’s a very apt one to think about, it’s also, what is the biggest pain they’re struggling with and what’s a bite-sized solution that will give them some benefits, and also, increase your credibility in their eyes. Now of course, now that’s your connection point. Now one thing that’s important to do and anybody out there who’s listening should be doing is what are multiple and or different versions of that, that you could supply people with. If you look at a company that does this really well, again, we could go back to HubSpot, there’s plenty of other ones.

OWEN: Is there like personas that you’re talking about now?

DANIEL: Personas, yes, so you can appeal to different personas but you can also appeal to different benefits. So one of the factors of collection that a lot of people neglect. So neglect to collect is where people are finding them. So one way Owen that you can determine what someone wants out of your product or service, or what really interests them is you can let them tell you. And that’s why providing a drop down or a radio button. Hey, what hurts on your body? Is it your knee, do you have back pain or do you have neck pain. This is what we help with. Boom, they select it. Now that helps determine what email sequence we kick-off. The other way Owen is what we call situational parsing. So situational parsing is if I’m running this physiology website, and I’m learning about all these different people that might treat my knee pain, and I’m reading a knee pain blog, then at the bottom of that knee pain blog if there is an opt-in I already know that should be a knee pain opt-in. It shouldn’t be a back pain or a general pain one. Because if you read to the bottom I know who you are pal and I know why you’re here. Same thing with you selling software. The fellow I was telling you about, he’s selling this software and he has an  entire article about how college teachers and high school teachers have hacked their productivity and be able to get messages out to their students quicker by doing these 3 simple tricks, then at the bottom that opt-in is going to be for teachers and instructors. It’s going to be for exactly who’s going to read that. So he doesn’t even have to give him a drop down, he lets them opt-in for what resonates with them. It could be benefit, it could be role, it could be their major problem, it doesn’t matter. You can situationally parse by whatever criterion will help you sell.

OWEN: Can you combine that to say, “Okay, the role of the person, the situation, and the pain–“? How do you do that, I’m just curious.

DANIEL: Yeah, you can. So here’s the question. The question I like to ask Owen in terms of initial segmentation, generally speaking, A, if you ask too much information on the front-end you’re going to have a hard time getting sign-ups.

OWEN: Yeah.

DANIEL: The second issue is generally speaking most companies don’t want to write 34 front-end sequences. They want to be able to boil it down to 7, so they have to distill it. So here’s a way that we can think about that Owen. The question is “Do we do role, do we do benefit, do we do size of company. God there’s so many different–” you’re right. And we can always pull them after they opt-in and ask them those questions and we could use that data in different ways. But what I like to ask companies is this Owen. I would ask is if you were to ask this to anybody who’s listening is if I am on your website and I give you my name, and I give you my email, what other single individual data point would help you sell the most? Is it the size of my company? Is it the problem I’m struggling with? Is it the role of myself, and my company, or what kind of company I run? What is the data point? Tell me the data point, and that is essentially what the buy button’s going to be. And I’m going to push that buy button over and over and over, and that’s how I’m going to get people to take action. So let me give you a situation where role was actually most important Owen. So, just to go with your question because I think it’s a very good one. And a lot of people under think their front-end segmentation. This is like strategically if you get this wrong, this will very much not do fantastic things for your business. If you get this right, you’re hitting the nail on the head with every email and you’re seeing higher open rates on everything you’re sending. So, one situation where role is relevant, we work the consulting company in a crowdfunding space. So, go figure. There’s people selling $35,000 gigs on doing filming projects and funky stuff like that. They’re a small consultancy but it’s a big ticket item. And now you realize that the people that are buying from them Owen fit into essentially– the people that are buying from them all want to do crowdfunding, some of them have a project in health, and beauty, and fitness, whatever it is. There’s a million different kinds of projects. But they decided not to go by what kind of project, fitness, health, whatever. They went by role and here’s why. Because if 3 types of people that were buying from them, and this involves knowledge of every customer, is number 1, entrepreneurs, number 2, content creators, and number 3, marketing agencies. Entrepreneurs want their invention, or product to blow up so they can make money. Content creators are excited to share their cause, they’re excited to convey their art, they’re excited to build a project with some meaning, some purpose. And the marketing agency wants to bring them on-board as kind of white label solution to the marketing agency looks like they’re film experts when really they never hire a film person, they just kind of pay this company in the back end. Now, you market to each one of those people very differently when you’re trying to get them to open their wallet. So, what they needed to do in order to get these people to convert into phone appointments is segment their front end communication by role, not by is this fitness, is this beauty, is this whatever? So it’s a strategic decision Owen, is that clear?

OWEN: Yeah. So basically determining your type of customer and figure out what is the best way to go after them. Is it by role, is it by– what’s the other two?

DANIEL: Benefit.

OWEN: Role benefit.

DANIEL: Size of company, there’s a million different criterion, but generally speaking we’re talking about role, benefit, major problem, industry, it could be things along those lines. You just have to think about if I only had one category of data point, what would be the one that would help me sell the most?

OWEN: Awesome. And so before we end the segment on the collection part let’s talk about 2 things. First of all, what are the common errors, the front end funnel errors that you see?

DANIEL: Yeah, great. So again, with the consulting company I was talking about, what are the front end errors was they were only giving people one vanilla option. So, a common error is, hey, you can opt-in or you cannot opt-in. That’s the only data I know about you. All I know is your email address how you’re getting the same message as everybody. That’s a mistake. Generally speaking there are better options. And the technology makes it so darn easy to do that. Another common mistake Owen is when people are not split testing whatever their front end offer is. So we’re working with an apparel company, and they’re actually printing company. So they kind of do the printing for apparel folks, and they work with nonprofits, or businesses, or bands, whatever. And they have an initial kind of interstitial add that pops up when people land on their site. And they weren’t really testing it, they just sort of had this opt-in thing. So another common error is not testing. So what we did with them is we split test kind of free t-shirt just pay shipping offer with a coupon. And we found in general folks are converting higher on this new offer, this t-shirt thing. So, shucks, that’s our new control. And now we can test against that. But they would have never gotten beyond a 3% front end conversion rate, 2% front end conversion rate if we hadn’t tested something different. So that’s another very common mistake.

OWEN: During the pre-interview you mentioned the thank you page error as well as the first email error. Let’s talk about those two.

DANIEL: Yeah, the thank you page error and the first email error, so these are really big. Another thing that’ll happen in the collection phase. Obviously, we’ll get going with this for days, and we’ll really make it short here, is if you have a blank thank you page, or you don’t have a thank you page, you have a problem. So if I sign-up on someone’s website, they have a little opt-in at the right and it says, “Sign-up for blank, blank, blank.” And I enter it, and a little green box appears underneath the opt-in form and it says, thanks. Or we got your email. That’s generally speaking not best practice. And in fact I would argue with essentially anybody that would think that is good practice because that person just made a step forward. They just tippy toed closer to your business. We now want to take them to a page where if nothing else, and I mean nothing else. Now I prefer things other than this. But if you’re freaking lazy and you’re listening to this then the thing you take them to is an explicit CTA page on where to find your email in their inbox and how to whitelist you. If you’re bored, and lazy, and a terrible marketer, that for creating out freaking loud. Because if you’re sending them to a blank page it’s like, “Thank you, got email.” There needs to be an explicit– we need to be helping them along this process so that they just opted in for, let’s say a coupon code on baby supplies for and e-comm company. Well, why don’t we give me the coupon code right on the page and already forward them right along to our top 3 selling categories of baby supplies. So it’s like, “Okay great. Hey, which category are you most interested in, you can use that code right now. Why don’t we do that?” Or let’s say it’s a free trial for a software. Well, if it’s a free trial for a software, is there some semblance of the initial training video that’s going to be most useful for these people. Is there some semblance of initial used case based on what they’ve told us now. Again, that goes to segmentation, based on what they’ve told us that’s going to immediately make this software connect to their goals. Can we forward them right to that as soon as they sign-up for the free trial. Why do they have to go to their inbox, remember to open it, go into Spam if they’d ended up there, open that in order to get educated? We should be moving them along the buyer’s journey right on the thank you page. So that is a very big, big commonly looked area of email marketing as well.

OWEN: Let me also share a real quick example of what we personally use at SweetProcess is after someone signs up for our checklist which is a free [Unintelligible 00:25:14] like an opt-in pdf that they get. Immediately after that we take them to the thank you page and ask them, “Oh, do you have a moment to check-out SweetProcess?” and literally send them to a page where they can learn about SweetProcess and also opt-in for the free trial. Hey.

DANIEL: Oh, hey, if nothing else, worst comes to worst even if it’s not tailored or targeted, at least you’re putting it in front of them.

OWEN: Yeah.

DANIEL: A certain percentage of people are going to convert right away. Maybe not everybody does but at least you can say, “Cool, hey, if you’re interested in the checklist, we have a software that automates it too.” You’d have to tie it to the checklist. But if you can at least relate the benefit, hey, it’s better than a blank page that says thank you, you know.

OWEN: Yeah.

DANIEL: Yeah, exactly.

OWEN: Before we end this segment on collection, what of the first email error?

DANIEL: Yeah. So another thing with first email error that’s relatively calming is subject lines that aren’t making it obvious who it is, or what it is, or whatever else. Generally speaking you don’t want to say, “Hey, Bill’s automotive thing here” in every email you do. But if someone just connected to you it shouldn’t be confusing. It shouldn’t say like, “Cool, here’s your new–” A really big like, “Waa, [Unintelligible 00:26:32]” Generally speaking [Unknown word 00:26:34] off the bat is a little bit of a push-off and often times it’s not even going to get opened as often as something like, “Thanks for learning about our– Here is your free–” whatever the thing is, like very explicit. Like, “You connected with us, here is what you got.” So first email usually we want to flag them in a very sort of forward way that lets them know, you signed up for this and it’s here. It shouldn’t be confusing, it shouldn’t be so casual that it tries to look like it’s from their best friend or something. It’s not like that’s wrong, but generally first email-wise subject line, we usually want to make it really relevant and connect right to that same darn part of their brain that found you online. You know, same company name, same thing they opted in for. We want to make that connection hyper logical because the open rate on that first email is often very indicative of the open rate of number 2, 3, 4, 5. So if we can jack the open rate on email number 1 by not being kind of mysterious, or by actually split testing then we can generally see much bigger results. So a lot of people kind of go with whiz-bang, they use all caps, they use exclamation points, things like that, that are going to get them thrown in the spam filter. We want to go with safe kind of white hat best practices at least for email one because that open rate is going to be indicative for everything else that happens generally. There’s a very big correlation there.

OWEN: So let’s jump right in to what exactly the connecting part which is the segment and qualify part of email and marketing process.

DANIEL: Sure, so here, and again, the 4 quadrants that we talk about. It’s not like this was written in some kind of book in the 1800’s that was passed down. This is just a process that we use with customers, right? So we like it thorough and we sort of have a little bit of a unique approach. But it is a useful frame or just when the folks are out there that we do with CLV boost. But connecting, so we talked a bit about connecting in the collecting phase because there’s inevitably overlap across the board and there should be. They should blend rather well. So this has to do with the segmentation part of things. And now let’s use an example of a kind of company where we want to qualify leads before we get them on the phone.

OWEN: For appointments rise up. Appointments is the conversion thing.

DANIEL: Yeah, appointments. So some people it’s e-comm purchases, right? So me personally I sell things in e-commerce and I also sell things on the phone. I also sell things in person. So in my in-person and phone stuff it’s all about initial phone appointment, initial appointment, whatever. In my e-comm it’s all about order form, e-commerce page, whatever.

OWEN: Can you throw in a software company in that too? So that way we have 3 different examples for this segment.

DANIEL: What did you say?

OWEN: I was thinking, on one part is the company that maybe have a high ticket item and they’re trying to sell appointments, right? So they can close them by sale. And the other companies and e-commerce that wants to get you to buy something, e-commerce platform. And the third one is a company that maybe is offering free trial–

DANIEL: Yeah, free-trial.

OWEN: …of their software, yeah. So, let’s talk about those 3 companies in this segment.

DANIEL: Oh got it, okay, in the connection phase. Great. So, okay, let’s talk about e-commerce first. So let’s say that I told you I’m looking for baby supplies. I don’t know, but there’s a lot of people that have kids these days and they got to buy stuff for them. So, I [Unintelligible 00:29:46]. Now, one of the things that you should probably be getting from parents who are signing up for something like that is, is this a boy, is this a girl, or do we have both?

OWEN: Yeah.

DANIEL: Because presumably I’m going to be sending you to this stuff that looks blue and not pink if you got a boy. And that’s probably going to up my conversion that fast. So, if the order form is boy stuff, and if the pages that I’m sending is boy stuff, then automatically more money comes out the other end. And generally in e-commerce people like money. It kind of like helps them with bills and employees, all sorts of different things. So an easy segmentation and connection factor is actually just– and again, connection is really like doing your homework. Are we sending things that people care about. Am I sending them to the bonnets and Barbie dolls section email number 4, when really if I knew anything about them, if I was connecting genuinely that wouldn’t happen. So that might be one area, that kind of connection would lead to a higher e-comm purchase. If it’s baby supplies, a potential segmentation strat would be are we talking about a boy, a girl, or do we have both? Do we have more than one child? At which case if you have more than one child I know I can start to move you towards bulk offers, I can start talking about diapers and [Unintelligible 00:30:55], I can start talking about bigger deals on entire clothing sets and things like that. Things that parents really need to clean a dirty house when you got more than one kid. I’m a twin myself so I know that we really wreak havoc on my poor parent’s house when we were little. So you might want to move more towards that stuff. So that would allow you to immediately target your e-comm offers towards what someone with a boy, what’s someone with a girl, what’s someone with multiple children is most likely to buy. Let’s put that in front of them first. So that will be very helpful for an e-comm example. Now, if we’re talking about appointments– let’s use appointments, okay? So CLV boost, we’re rebuilding our entire front end because we’re going to be building a segmentation in video. We’ve actually got a pretty fancy software where we’ll be using branching videos to let people segment themselves and–

OWEN: So we lost connection and we’re back. And you were talking specifically about how you connect with the example of you have a business where you’re trying to make sales via appointment. So, continue from there please.

DANIEL: For sure, alright, yeah. So with CLV boost, our company here, we’re redoing our entire front end. But the way that we’re going to be segmenting is not initially by size of company, although we’re going to get that data because we’re looking to work with progressively bigger and bigger folks. But is initially a actually by their major metric mover. Now what do I mean by that? I mean by that interestingly enough you and I are talking about it. Are they interested in increasing e-comm purchases and retention, are they interested in appointments and phone and in-person sales, or they’re interested in engagement? Because a lot of people in the app world including the guy I was talking to this morning, he’s kind of a buddy. He’s into the app space and it’s really just more about engagement. He’s not going to sell initially, they just need use shipping, they need stickiness, they need attention from an engagement standpoint. So what is the core [Unintelligible 00:32:38] that they really care about, or is it a combination thereof/they don’t know? That will be one of the options, they’re not going to be forced to pick. So when we initially parse them out that way, the way that wherein going to get them on the phone is we’re going to speak to kinds of companies that use that kind of thing as their core metric mover. And we might use different business sizes if we haven’t been able to collect that data, or it might also resonate on the size of their company as well. In order to get them to the phone we’ll talk about here’s how we helped these people here, some case studies of somebody else in e-comm, and some numbers and stats of how we helped them improve. Here’s some easy tricks for encouraging retention, whatever else. And the call to action is all these other folks in e-commerce world, they’re really getting so much out of what it is that we’ve done. Submit your project here to CLV boost and we’ll look forward catching up with you in person. So the way that we’re coaxing we appointment is not like, “Hey, here’s 50 different benefits.” It’s like boom, “You told me that [Unintelligible 00:33:37] automation email is e-comm. Well, here’s how all these other people have made more money because we got more purchases. So, let’s talk sometime.” That’s really the call to action, it’s not so much like, “Here’s a smorgasbord of random things that we could do. And we’ll do a little song and dance for you, would you like an appointment?” It’s more of, “Okay, so that’s what you care about. Well, here’s how we help, and we’d like to talk to you about that specifically because you’re kind of company we definitely resonate with.” Same thing, if they’re also a consultancy sale which mean they’re selling them on a phone, or they’re selling in-person. In other words it’s appointment, not e-comm. In that case then we’re going to be more speaking specifically to how we’ve been able to drive phone appointments. So, hey, here’s a company that they were in the– we could use the crowdfunding folks. They were given everybody the same sequence and we let them segment out so that entrepreneurs  will get this message, marketing agencies would get this one, and content creators would get this one. And here’s how we’re able to get them on the phone more often, or set them up with more relevant messaging so they could get more phone appointments and make more sales. So we’ll speak to them about the metric mover for them. So for consulting sale, which is what I sell, it’s CLV boost, the benefit I offer– I talked to somebody, I have to customize what I do to how we help their business, I don’t sell it in a box. In that case I’m going to give the relevant education and the call to action is here’s other folks like you that I’ve helped and here’s why you might want to get on the [Unintelligible 00:34:58].

OWEN: And I’m curious too like, I get how getting them onto the email list and giving them something as a solution. Maybe like an opt-in that they can chew on and they can get the solution on their own. But now, based on the additional data they gave you you’re giving them a tailored sequence that’s tailored to them. But then the listener listening to this might be saying, “Okay, but where do I start with the tailoring of the sequence?” Do you get the question I’m asking because it can be like a long rabbit hole with different–

DANIEL: Yeah. The distinction there, we’re talking about connection. I’m talking right now about connection based on kind of core metric mover of your business.

OWEN: Okay.

DANIEL: So how I say, I’m not segmenting by someone’s role, I’m not segmenting by someone’s size of company, not initially. But what I’m doing initially is the core benefit or the core metric mover of your business. In other words, what’s going to ultimately make you the most bucks and make your business the most successful if I increase which of these 3 things? Or is it all, or you’re not sure? And then of course I’ll have an all or you’re not sure option. So, when you’re talking about do I build a sequence or do I determine the segmentation, you must determine the segmentation first, and you and I had already talked about that, the question there is what one data point, if you knew it, would allow you to sell the most relevantly and communicate the most meaningfully, Generally, I like that to be between 3 and 7 options, not 55. So if it is 55 we got to find a way to clump them down so that drop down menu is viewable in a mobile phone, and/or is reasonable if someone’s on the desktop.

OWEN: I think that’s good but that was not really my question. It was more about now you’ve figured out what that big selling pain point is that you’ve got them to segment themselves, but I’m talking about the actual content that goes in over the period of days. How do you do that? Do you understand what I’m saying?

DANIEL: Yeah, I got it. So, what are we sending home, what is that content, why do we send it in that order, that kind of stuff.

OWEN: Yeah.

DANIEL: Alright, great. And this is all about a connection which is what we’re covering, and we’re leading towards conversion here. But essentially, any email sequence in general is going to have to do with 3 things. It’s going to have to do with– and we could break this down to 12 things but I’m making this simple because this is a 45-minute podcast. We’re going to be looking at education, testimonials, and calls to action. Or education, social proof, and calls to action. So, we’re going to find a mix of those 3 food groups and feed them to the process. So it’s not just going to be like, “Here’s a cool article you can learn from. Here’s a cool article you can learn from. Here’s a cool article you can learn from.” That kind of gets boring, most of the time it’s also not– here’s somebody else that loves us and here’s what they have to say. People generally in order to buy– general best practice is to include both not only here’s something that’s immediately helpful for you but here’s proof that other people have gained a lot from our service and product. So both of those are imperative, and then of course our call to action should also be relevant. So if I’m a crowdfunding consultancy, which is one of the folks that we’ve chatted with and we’ve done some of our advisory level stuff with. Their call to action for an entrepreneur, it’s not the same as the marketing agency. Their call to action for an entrepreneur is “Let’s blow your product up and make sure that when you do your Kickstarter, this gets your business to the next level. Get on an appointment with us–” If you’re a marketing agency we’re going to say “We’ll seamlessly complete this project and make your agency look like a champion. And we’re the easiest company to work with because we work with other agencies in the past. Make sure you catch up with us this week, and here’s how you can get access to our calendar and find the time. So generally before/as we’re doing the CTA, which is one of the 3 food groups, we’re also education and providing testimonies. So we want to find a delicate mix in balance. Now, if someone said, “Give me the mix Dan.” [Unintelligible 00:38:54] it kind of has to depend upon the business and that’s a very strategic decision. But generally speaking, if I’m going to give you a default, educate, and then educate/testimonial, and the testimonial, and then either education or testimonial, and then CTA, CTA.

OWEN: Okay.

DANIEL: So I like to have a couple [Unintelligible 00:39:09]. It’s different per company but those are the 3 ingredients.

OWEN: I like that. So the main ingredients for the follow up after you’ve given them whatever they opted in for is testimonial, education, and the CTA which is call to action to what you want them to do. So you’re about to use the example for the software company which they want you to sign-up for a trial. So what would that mix be in the connecting part before we jump to the next.

DANIEL: Yeah. So this trial, just to be clear, this is not pay us money this is give it a shot.

OWEN: Yeah.

DANIEL: Okay, so it’s just try it out. So I’m not sure if HubSpot actually does this. HubSpot might just ice cold get you–

OWEN: I think this is pay us money.

DANIEL: Get the card out, yeah, like alright– A company like MailChimp will do something like this. So, we could be doing in that particular case in order to even get a free trial to happen. I think a lot of the time just to bring this up for the folks in the audience here, a lot of the time a software company actually won’t have an opt-in outside of the free trial. So MailChimp, I don’t know, MailChimp might have like a MailChimp Letter. I think that’s just a monthly thing, it’s not actually succinct what we call yellow brick road in order to force the trial. It’s just like pure content. So a lot of the time many software companies have a just pure, it’s trial or nothing pal. Like if you want to get emails from us, we’ll give this thing a shot. And then we’re only going to talk to you about that. Or HubSpot for example where ain’t no free trial on this thing [No audio 00:40:43], it’s complicated, you’re going to buy it all– if you’re going to get it on at all you got to throw down the cart first.

OWEN: …use us as an example because the reality is what we’re trying to sell is– people, they think of systematizing their business as the last thing that should ever do, and you’d sense the whole work of systemizing your business is work itself. So we figure out the best thing to do is educate them first and give them some checklist. And so, using those as an example, what do you think will be the best thing to–

DANIEL: Okay. I just want to be frank to everybody, to run a software company and all you have is a trial to go straight in, don’t worry I guess. Don’t surrender to it. But at the same time if we’re talking about your kind of situation where it might be a little bit more relevant. So some things a trial is like the only obvious CTA and that’s all they want to deal with, and it’s in or out. Other folks might have some kind of other drip and feed that’ll get them into the trial. So what we could do there is we could speak what it is that you’re interested in. So for SweetProcess– I’ll riff just half a second here, we’ll keep it brief. But what are some of the categories of folks that want to get in on your stuff. What if they want to get out of it, what are they there for, what kind of people are they? Give me a little bit of a brief as to the types of the folks that buy your thing.

OWEN: Okay. So most CEO’s they own the company. The COO’s, the chief operating officers. And also when we’re talking about big companies that have multiple departments like the head, the managers of the departments. That’s what it usually comes down to.

DANIEL: Okay, cool. If I took 12 people that are paying for your software. And I line them up with most of them say yes, I work for a big corporate– and I have X number of people under me, and I’m a manager of blank. Or would most of them say, “Hey, I’m in my garage and I sell these handmade jewelry things that I make in–” which generally are we working in?

OWEN: So most of them will be a company that has 4 more full-time in-house employees, usually less than 100 employees.

DANIEL: Less than 100 employees. Okay, it’s fine. Some people go the enterprise game, some people– So in that case what you might do is maybe for your segmentation and we could be talking about size of the company. Because I’m just thinking if you’re talking about departments, and I have 4 employees, I might be like, “Oh cool, [Unintelligible 00:43:03]” Are there different end goals people have for the SweetProcess app, or is it essentially kind of like this is what you’re getting out of it? Is there like a different goal, or is it like mapping out your business and your processes is pretty much it, period? Or is it, for the [Unintelligible 00:43:25] example again it was I want to manage my domestic affairs with my spouse.

OWEN: Great question. So for the CEO’s I know that the main thing is they’re tired of being the bottleneck, the one who everyone is depending on because they can’t get anything done without them, So they want that freedom and they want a way to literally map and bring [Unintelligible 00:43:44] their brain on how they do their work. For the COO what we found is that, the CEO has all these vision of where they want to take the company but then the COO has to do the– the devil is in the details, and how do they actually do that? They need a tool to actually do that, right? And then for the managers of bigger firms that have multiple departments, while they are the head of their departments and hey, you’re a manager you’re dealing with all the managers, you want to make your own division like the shiny rock star so they need to systemize the vision.

DANIEL: Cool. So let’s just say if you and I sat down for an hour we might figure out a whole bunch of wacky stuff. Let’s just go with roll or what have you. If we want to do this connection thing, to get them to give this software a try what we might do if they say I’m a middle manager of blank. Then that’s their deal. Then what we’re going to educate them on is the education that’s most relevant to a manager. So it’s not going to be, “Are you tired of being a CEO and have everybody come to you as a bottleneck?” We might use something similar but it’ll be, “Are you tired of being the manager on top and everybody asking–” It might just be a change of words but all of a sudden that guy reads it and he says for me. Even though it’s the same email we just copy paste and a lot of these sequences Owen, when I fork things 3-ways, 4-ways, 5-ways, many of the emails are templates with 3 words pulled out and 3 words stuffed in. See you later. And all of a sudden– wrote it for that guy. So, a lot of the time we might talk about this and word them in different ways. Are you tired of the lower level employee folks that are– the middle manager will talk about those things. The testimonials that we share. Like Jeff Stevens, well what is Jeff Stevens going to be? The testimonial that’s going to make this middle manager by, Jeff Stevens  better be a [Unintelligible 00:45:37] middle manager for crying out loud. Otherwise we’re not giving him the most relevant testimonies. Here’s how other middle managers have used our blank. So the education videos, the education articles, the wording in the subject line, the wording in the first paragraphs, the used cases and testimonials are going to be exactly what’s relevant to this guy. The problems he’s going to run into in day-to-day life. CEO-wise, if we don’t know the size of the company and we’ll just say leader of the company, then we’re going to talk about man on top type of stuff.

OWEN: Yeah.

DANIEL: Like, you really want to grow in scale, or you really want to free up your time, or you really want to– all the problems that CEO’s run into. And you’ll have guys that are running small mid-sized companies that say something like, you know it’s under 100 so you could have a guy running a 50-person company [No audio 00:46:20] size of company we can kind of vary it but it’s all under 100. If you say something like before [Unintelligible 00:46:27] implementing SweetProcess to our systems, meeting with managers was reiterating the same thing over and over. And then they’d have the same problem trickling down. And by implementing this blank– And it’s going to be CEO talking about this. And it’s going to be like this is the CEO’s choice for a blah, blah kind of software. So the trial a busy CEO needs this. And the education and the testimonials all fit to that CTA that speak to the CTO, that speak to the middle manager, that speak to whoever else would purchase what you have. So we’re connecting with both problems, education, benefits, and specific calls to action that appeal to those that tie to who that guy is or what we know about him.

OWEN: So now, you’re about to talk about the converting part of your framework.

DANIEL: Yeah. Okay, so when we talk about conversion, generally speaking at this point we’re talking about what are those, remember I said, call to action being part of kind of these food groups that we’re providing our automated marketing. And we’re talking about email now, but bear in mind you can do this with direct mail, phone, whatever.

OWEN: Yeah.

DANIEL: But if we’re talking about a call to action and email just to make things simple, what is the text for that CTA and what is the click-through rate of that email. So, how are we coaxing that click, how are we framing that benefit, how are we wording what this is, how are we getting the people to this page, how can we get more eyeballs on our appointment [No audio 00:47:51] our sales, so that’s a very big question. So being able to split test those emails, split test those calls to action, split test the very values and benefits we’re appealing to is an important thing. So if we’re talking about a baby supply company and e-commerce is the first CTA, a coupon code to the gender section of blank if they say that have a boy. Or is the CTA like the deal of the week that we run and maybe that’s going to end up getting the credit card out first. So we want as quick to purchase as possible generally in a lot of e-comm scenarios. Is that going to be actually what shakes the card out first? So we might test different initial offers, different initial calls to action. Another factor here is not just the stuff in the email but the stuff on the page. In other words, are we testing our e-commerce, kind of check out flow? Do we have an email sequence that says, “Hey Mary, I know you put blank product in your cart, and it looks like, shucks, you might have left it behind there. I didn’t know if something had happened. You still have your coupon code, make sure you enter it and go right back.” So do we have 2 or 3 emails to do kind of card abandonment, can we deal with that, can we ensure conversion by remarketing, is that in place? If no then we might have a problem. Similarly speaking, if we have a multi-phase appointment setting form, in other words you enter name and email or something, and then you click a calendar date, and then you do something– there’s a lot of these apps that are multiphasic. Then if the fill-out the first phase but not the others, it’s like, “Hey Billy, looks like you were looking at setup an appointment but you might have missed the time clock or maybe it didn’t pan out well. Just to let you know, the time on our calendar actually automatically calibrates to the time zone you’re in. So don’t worry about being confused with that. We’re here in Eastern Standard, but any of the times there open are just as they are in your own calendar. So check it out now and pick the one that’s best.” Boom. Are we doing remarketing like that? Also, are we split testing the actual page. So if we send to the same page where we’re selling cribs, if we’re selling baby supplies here, are we testing this cribs page? Are we testing the images, are we testing the add to cart buttons, are we testing even the coupon code itself? Which one do people like entering? Is it new parent 62, is it spring special, which one gets people to type more. So any of those factors of conversion could, should, and ought to very much be tested and calibrated. So those are the–
OWEN: What of the software company that was offering trial? What would they be doing in this section of the framework?

DANIEL: Yeah, so ideally Owen, this is ideally, right? So ideally these guys, and this goes not just for software but for anybody. I have, frankly, a separate sales page depending on the core benefit, the role, whatever your core front end for front end segmentation is. So the CEO sales page is going to have headlines that call out a CTO. It’s going to have bullet points that call out a CEO. It’s going to have testimonials that call out a CEO right on the sales page. So we’re talking about conversion. It’s not like, cool, we talk relevantly to them in email, then we send them to a generic sales page like a bunch of dummies. Instead of doing that [Unintelligible 00:51:09] what we ought to be doing is we ought to be creating. Because it’s not 50 sales pages here, we’re talking about 3 variations.

OWEN: Yeah.

DANIEL: We should be altering. And even if we all we do is tweak headline and tweak the testimonials, then people get the feeling of what, this is for me, which is what you and I were talking about. So if we’re looking at convert someone from a trial to an actual buyer– okay, you’re trial’s up, or, okay, you can buy now, or, okay, get the premium version, that text should be calibrated inside the emails. But the page they land on should be talking right to a middle manager, right to a CEO. And we should be communicating that right on the page, and then we should be split testing that page with different headlines, and different testimonials, and making sure we can kind of get those numbers up. But that’s one way that you would do it in software for example.

OWEN: I like that. And so, during the pre-interview you mentioned some of the best ways to get conversion, and I think you already mentioned how education, mixing that with testimonials, and CTA, that goes in the email sequence. But I think one of the things that you mentioned during the pre-interview is taking more to boost swings at conversion, what did you mean by that?

DANIEL: Oh wow, I’m actually really excited to talk about this and I’m surprised I don’t talk about this more on interviews. But this is such a big factor for me. Let’s say you’re an accountant or something, I have no idea, I’m just using a random example. And people download white paper, whatever the case maybe, and you’re aiming to get them on an appointment so that you can become their CPA. They can pay you every month for your tax returns or whatever the case may be. What most people do is they say, I’ll write 4-5 emails, and then everybody will get those 4-5 emails. And then in the end I’ll actually ask them for an appointment, and some of them will book an appointment. Sweet, okay, great. So they write 4 or 5 emails. For me, unless you’re like a really advanced email marketer then it’s going to then do a lot of personal categorization, segmentation after that, which is almost never the case because that takes so much attention it’s ridiculous. I highly recommend a longer sequence that oscillates between periods of “Hey pal, time to convert” and periods of education/testimonials. So not just having– a lot of people say, “Okay, we’ll have 7 emails, and the last one will be like, “Hey, get in on this new special. Make sure you get it on an appointment. Look forward to talking to you soon.” And people are sitting there cracking their knuckles, “Oh man, they’re going to get email number 7, and I’ll get them.” But it ain’t really like that. Maybe email number 7 they were in Bora Bora, or maybe email number 7 your subject line was junk, or it just didn’t appeal to them. What we ought to be doing instead of saying, “Okay, well, I [No audio 00:53:49] gave up at mails, the only emails I’m going to send this person is our monthly broadcast of what we did that month.” Well, that’s a really terrible strategy for a conversion to be honest with you. So what people ought  to be doing in nearly all cases where people have short front end sequences is lengthening those and appealing to different benefits, defeating different objections, and going for a CTA again. So if we’re talking about a parent and an e-commerce situation, then maybe the initial thing is a coupon code and then a gender specific series of offers, maybe the next one is like the offer of the month we send them over to. And then we go back to educating, we go back to kind of parent, time and money saving tips. We go back into some other testimonials and fun stories. We go back into other education, useful stuff for housecleaning–

OWEN: So let me see if I get this right, because I want to make sure the listener gets this to. So if we’re focusing on a specific role on the software, example now. And we chose the CEO role, right? And then we went through a sequence of emails with testimonials, and benefits, and all that. And also a call to action for the CEO, but we focus on one benefit throughout this whole period, right? No longer being the bottleneck in your business. And if you go through that sequence and they don’t convert on that, maybe the next thing to do is, well, we’re still focused on the CEO because we know that’s the person who’s receiving this email. Now let’s look at the next benefit which might be making more money. Maybe that’s why they want to systematize their business and follow a series of sequences on that.

DANIEL: Yes.

OWEN: That’s what you say basically by multiple ways to convert that.

DANIEL: Totally, multiple swings. So, and now that’s not to say that you first CTA has to only focus on one benefit. But generally your initial sequence has kind of, A, sort of flavor. You’re appealing to–

OWEN: Yeah.

DANIEL: Yeah, and you should be Owen, you should be appealing to the benefit that gets you the most buyers. So if you’re talking to your customers, if you’re a good marketer, then you should know what makes CEO’s push the buy button. And really, that core benefit is generally is the best practice, the best one to go for a first swing. However, in the following emails you might go into a different benefit. Like you said Owen, we might talk about making money, we might talk about relieving stress, who knows. But we could also go into explicit objection beater emails. Like “Jeremy Stevens ran this shoe company for 9 years and never systematized anything because he had good managers. And the reason he didn’t want to do it is because he thought [Unintelligible 00:56:24] much time. And here’s what Jeremy has to say.” And Jeremy says something like, “Man, I always thought it was just going to take way too much time and this really wouldn’t pan off. And why don’t I just go and make more shoes and sell them. But at the end of the day, SweetProcess made this process so darn easy for me that in an afternoon, riding shotgun in the car with my wife to a friend’s wedding, I had half of my business automated by the time I got back. And, man, this was amazing because it was already in a check listed format. And to be frank, the bottleneck for me was the time taking thing, but there’s nothing like this for saving that time. And now I’m freed up with so much more time at work and I can’t believe I didn’t do it earlier.” So that’s beating a specific objection. Now the question is Owen, what objections do you want to be? And the answer is the ones that are most common. So we want to start fighting the ones that are the most common. We don’t want to pull something out of our butt if we don’t have some idea that the customer actually cares about that. So we might have our second swing, our education testimonial sequence after our initial real push for that time to go premium push is now focusing on a different benefit, a different objection, a different set of testimonials, and then we’ll go in for another overt swing later on.

OWEN: And just to let the listener know so that they don’t feel overwhelmed with this is an ongoing process. What I’m getting from this is an ongoing process. So you start with the one that comes top to mind first and give them the education and the testimonials around that one that comes top of mind. And then keep adding all this additional sequences to it, right? You keep adding and keep adding.

DANIEL: Yup. And there’s some kind of threshold. Some people have sequences that go on forever, other people have sequences that are a month long or what have you. The general phase I aim to push for folks no matter what they’re trying to sell or what they’re trying to encourage with their emails is take multiple swings. You have a minimum of 3 swings. Play baseball with your front end sequences. If you have 7 emails, and you appeal to this one benefit and you try to take a swing– Owen, to be honest, I almost hate to say it but there’s so many easy plug and play stuff with the CLV boost business I could literally have a business where this is what I do. People pay me, I do an assessment, we get X thousand dollars, and we come in, and then we say, “Alright great. Thanks for paying us.” And what I’m going to have you do is your front end sequence it’s 3 emails long, we’re going to lengthen that to 23 and here’s the different benefits we’re going to appeal to, and here’s the call to action, and the sales pages that are going to go with them. Pretty much write something similar to what you have and here’s how we’re going to change-up the initial subject lines and make this longer, and call me 3 months. If you haven’t made more money, I’ll give you all your money back. I can literally run a business right off of that, have short coffee meetings with people and just run away, and people would make more money. The fact of the matter is most people are blatantly leaving money on the table by not taking multiple swings and I very easily encourage any business tuning it to do exactly that. I don’t care if you’re the best copywriter in the world or not, if you’re getting a little bit more of an opportunity to get in front of somebody, and you’re now converting 2, 3, 4% more people that go through your chain, guess what that looks like in your bottom line at the end of 12 months Owen.

OWEN: Wow, that’s awesome. And so, let’s jump right into because we’re about to run out the interview. So let’s jump right in to the circulating and retention engagement part of the framework.

DANIEL: Sure yes, so now we’re talking about sort of longer term communications. So you can make your automated chains as long as you want, you can have all these behavioral triggers and interesting things. We could go on to for days. But really, one of the more important components, again, another factor of the email game that’s often just blatantly directed, sort of newsletter and ongoing circulation aspect. So a lot of people say, okay, once they end the automated sequence I send out an email every month talking about what we did that month. And there’s no real call to action. What I like to encourage here Owen is the following. What do we know about these subscribers, and can we make our regular communication consistent to them? So let’s use the software example because we’re on a roll here. If we got folks that are paying month to month for software, should those emails have a call to action at the bottom to get them to buy the software? No. We would be what we call idiots. So instead of doing that, what we need to be doing is have the subtlety Owen, it can’t be overt. But the subtle CTA and the subtle purpose behind the educating and behind the connection and all of that, and making sure open rates are high, or to encourage that usership, to encourage that usage, and to even up that usage if it makes sense. So what we’re going to be doing in a kind of software as a service deal is we’re going to be encouraging usage. And maybe another CTA we could do Owen is kind of a referral price. Now, are we going to do a referral price for someone that’s never signup for a trial? Of freaking course not. But are we going to do a referral price for someone that’s paying? Yes. So now those monthly newsletters, all we do is we take the same monthly newsletter, we use different blog links, and each one to be relevant to our groups, we use a different headline, our subject line. And we do a slightly different CTA at the bottom, it could be a very soft CTA where we do a slightly different CTA. And now these emails become something that’s a driver of revenue, not something that we just do to say, “Oh yes, we have a monthly newsletter, we’re so professional.” This becomes something that every month drives consistent sales and encourage customer lifetime value.

OWEN: And let me see if I can get that right. So the person, in this case, in the software example, they’ve sign up for the trial and they’ve even become a customer. But because they’re on my email list and they’re receiving my email for my blog, instead of just sending them the same thing someone else who is not– the CTA which is the call to action in the bottom of the email, instead of it being the same as someone who has now sign up for a trial to sign up for a trial, they might just be, okay, showing them more feature that they have not yet used because their customer is showing them how they can refer all the people. So basically trying to drive them down even more stages of the funnel past than just being the customer at this point.

DANIEL: Yup. Again, my whole business, and the only reason that we have a consultancy and are getting paid from companies in these different categories is because we’re increasing customer lifetime value. How much money do you make per prospect and how many prospects do you get? Unless I increase those things– we don’t really get paid for this particular business. It’s one of many that I’m running but for this particular business. So, with that being said, yes, you’re circulating emails, they must do that. They must move people farther down the customer life cycle to encourage referrals and other things along those lines. Another example Owen in the software as a service business, some folks and not everybody, but some folks do– I’m working with a company now, they’re in the toll-free number business. So they have thousands of small businesses and medium-sized businesses, and even large companies like news broadcasters and things like that big companies, that use their vanity numbers. And what they like to do and what I’m working with them right now is a call to action sequence that’s going to encourage current monthly payers, or annual payers, to kind of cash out for like a 4-year, 3-year deal. So that’s a CTA to a monthly payer or an annual payer for an upfront money pump to save money in the long term. So that’s a potential CTA. You’re going to do that CTA from someone that’s never bought a vanity number from you. Of course not. But you certainly wouldn’t say it in the same way. You certainly wouldn’t say, “Hey, now that you’re a current valued customer we’re doing this special deal for our current customer–” You wouldn’t say that to a guy that isn’t your customer. It would have to be framed in an entirely different way. But one of the ways that they’re going to monetize their ongoing communication, the game plan is– now I’m building a sequence similar to this right now, is their regular communication to these folks is going to encourage this upsell level. So again, we’re moving them further down the path, we’re making this thing a needle mover for really kind of jump in that bottom-line rev that we can get from any given customer. So one of many examples.

OWEN: Wow, and so rounding out the interview– this has been awesome and I know the listener’s mind is blowing and they want to just go and start implementing stuff at this point. But what would you say is the very next step that someone who’s listening to the interview up to this point should take in order to get started with implementing your process for email marketing?

DANIEL: Yeah, for sure. So what they ought to do is really kind of think about and consider what the major segments that they’re speaking to really are. Because you’re not really going to be able to tailor messaging [Unintelligible 01:05:08] build out illustrious sequences and drive a lot more money unless we know how we’re breaking up our messaging to be more relevant, to connect better ultimately with the folks that we are speaking to in the first place. So having that strategic sit down with yourself and saying, “Okay, if I was going to break up all my front end prospects into one of 3-7 categories, how could I boil that down and distill it so that I can speak to them very specifically. Not only in the front end sequence but also in the back end when we’re in circulation mode. How can I make sure these emails are most relevant to them. And take half an hour, take a cup of coffee, write down all the different variations and let’s try to make the most relevant clumps of 3 to 7 so that we can get front end segmentation setup. So, if there’s one phase I would encourage don’t segment without thinking, it’s a very strategic process. Sit down with your employee, sit down with your managers, sit down by yourself, whatever’s going to yield the best results for you, grab a cup of coffee, and do some real due diligence here and come up with something you feel really confident with, and then let’s build from that base. So the first thing folks out there have to do is make that important segmentation decision for them. And then that’s the framework for everything else.

OWEN: Awesome. And 2 more questions before we end it. What books influenced this way of thinking for you and why?

DANIEL: Yeah. Influenced my marketing– that’s an awful good question.  To be frank, there really aren’t that many great resources on email marketing specifically, but in terms books that have definitely helped me with copywriting and appealing to the benefits that customers would gain from and increasing click through rates, and effectiveness of sales letters. The whole copywriting game that’s invariably a part of all of this including segmentation is really the work of Dan Kennedy. So I’ve read a ton of different Dan Kennedy material and I could talk about a whole bunch of different factors here, but copywriting is sort of seen as this antiquated skill of people that used to put mailers in the mail and have people send them back. But ultimately it matters as much if not more in your automated emails, because those will work for you forever. So reading a basic book by Kennedy for example, that might be a great place for folks out there to start would be– if you just Google Dan Kennedy book on sales letters. It’s something like the bulletproof plan for writing a sales letter, but it’s absolutely spot on for what you got to know to encourage action, and clicks, and opens, whether you talk about email, whether you’re sending stuff in the mail and just copywriting fundamentals I think everyone could learn from.

OWEN: Yeah, copywriting fundamentals from Dan Kennedy. the listener just Google Dan Kennedy and find books on copywriting from him.

DANIEL: A good place to start for sure.

OWEN: Any books on psychology that might help?

DANIEL: Yeah. psychology. To be honest, I’m a psychology guy, as a lot of people know I did my whole masters thing in U Penn and all that, but to be frank I don’t have any like– Freud ain’t really going to cut it that much. I would really emphasize that books tune in to sharp marketers. So another place to learn from, just to give you something Owen because I want to make sure I’m providing here, is I really like Neil Patel’s blog which is called quicksprout.com. Neil Patel is a very sharp marketer, he’s got both internet marketing and copywriting chops, and he runs a couple of software companies. So he really kind of has both sides of the coin there, I think he has a good balance. And he bridges the gap for newbies very well. So in terms of understanding general marketing tenets and principles, that’s another guy that I have a lot respect for, we’ve actually been able to interview him luckily enough, and very, very sharp. So if folks want to learn from a different perspective than Kennedy and kind of get a gist of more kind of electronic marketing stuff, I think Neil is a perfect place for a newbie to start. And I read him myself.

OWEN: Awesome. So what’s the best way for the listener to connect with you and thank you for doing this interview?

DANIEL: Yeah, sure. If folks have gained anything from this at all, I know you called me [Unintelligible 01:09:05] in the beginning, I talk really quick because I want to make sure I’m able to deliver as much as I can here and make this a valuable event for folks. But if they want to tune in to more and learn more from me, clvboost.com is the website, and the way you get in touch is in the contact form at the bottom. But the other thing with the contact form is a brief white paper and a couple of videos that we actually send out right off the bat that go into the nitty gritty of this. So if people want kind of the plug and play templates for segmentation, plug and play methodology for sequencing and email. A really kind of go to bread and butter strategy for newsletters that’s probably making more money than whatever your average folks are out there doing using MailChimp or whatever. Then the easiest way to get a hold of those resources is at clvboost.com. Just fill out the form at the bottom. And for the folks that want to work with us, again, generally we’re working with people with existing businesses, not necessarily kind of I am newbies, or anything along those lines. We’re kind of working with real companies. But folks that want to take stuff to the next level they can reach out through that form at the bottom as well. But if nothing else, it’s great resources there, and if people want to connect that’s the place to do it, clvboost.com.

OWEN: Awesome. And so final question for you, is there a question that you’re wishing I asked you during the interview that I didn’t ask? And if so, post the question and the answer.

DANIEL: Oh man, wow, shucks. I wish you asked my favorite food Owen.

OWEN: Okay, what’s your favorite food?

DANIEL: It’s sushi man.

OWEN: I love sushi myself. I actually like Korean food too. Have you tried Korean food?

DANIEL: I would’ve enjoyed having a conversation about raw salmon with you, but instead we talked about market– I’m still pretty happy about on the aggregate.

OWEN: That’s good. And while you can try Korean barbecue too, bulgogi and all that stuff. That’s good stuff.

DANIEL: I’ll chuck that one down. I’ll expand my [Unintelligible 01:10:48] thanks man.

OWEN: And so the listener, I’m speaking to you the listener who’s been listening all the way to this point. If you enjoyed this interview I want you to go ahead and leave us a positive review on iTunes. To do that go to sweetprocess.com/iTunes. The reason to leave a positive review is because the more reviews you leave on the podcast about the show that you liked it, other people will come in here and listen to the interview because they read your review, and more listeners to the show. And that also inspires us to go out there and get guests like Daniel to come on here and breakdown, in this case now is email marketing process. So if you know other entrepreneurs that might benefit from this interview feel free to share the interview with them. And finally, if you are at that point in your business where you’re tired of being the bottleneck in your business and want to systematize how you get stuff done, signup for a free 14-day trial of SweetProcess. Daniel, thanks for being my guest on the show.

DANIEL: Owen, thanks very much for having me brother, it was a pleasure.

OWEN: And we’re done.