How to Convert Your Email List into a Cash Flowing Party
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Email marketing doesn’t have to feel sleazy or unnatural. That’s why we’ve brought Liz Wilcox, an email marketing strategist and copywriter on to today’s show.
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Table of Contents
Welcome to the course consultants show I am super super excited to have Liz Wilcox here with me today. Liz is a super cool person and human being. And just a little bit about her, Liz is an online entrepreneur and copywriter who specializes in email marketing. She helps freelancers and professionals alike package up their magic and turn it into emails that convert. In a previous life, Liz was actually an education major and like many before her never actually got a teaching job. Instead, she found her way to the online space and fell in love with sales and strategy.
Today, she helps people build online relationships to attract their ideal buyers. She actually is part of a mastermind group that I’m a part of, and she brings so much to the table and I was so excited to have her on the show because if you do not know Liz, you seriously are missing out because she has so much interesting cool stuff to do and tell you about. When she’s not bringing in high ticket sales she likes to run, yes, actually for fun, eat steak, and hang out at a local beach in Destin, Florida. Listen to the podcast for the funny story on how we met and our first introductions.
How to Convert Your Email List into a Cash Flowing Party
Liz is an expert copywriter and email conversion person, so naturally the first question that I jumped into was, What is important to include in emails when it comes to actually converting into sales? Followed by, How do you start that process?
A common theme that Liz was reading or listening to was the biggest mistake that entrepreneurs made, that they didn’t take their email list seriously. Liz found that a lot of them were saying, if they would have just started selling to their email list or using their email list to get ideas for a course, or a product, etc, that they would have succeeded much earlier. So as a person who hates waste and is very efficient person. Liz took that as, she just needed to focus on email and do that really well. She decided not to create free content and worry about Pinterest or slide up into everybody’s dm. Her focus was just emails because that’s what the gurus were saying, the money’s in the list……
Convert Followers to Friends
Liz quickly realized the money’s not really in the list, it’s in the relationship and effort put into that email list. Her three part framework, is really simple, but it really works. first you have a follower, somebody that joins your list. Then you turn them into a friend and not your best friend, someone that you’re chit chatting with and you’re writing basically love letters to, and your weekly newsletter. No, who has time for that? Once you turn them into a friend, like someone friendly, then you can turn them into a customer. She found this framework because she realized and learned that people buy from people they trust. And if you can gain that trust, if you can create a sort of friendship, a friendly thing in their inbox, then they’re much more easily converted to customer. Follower, friend, customer.
Email Welcome Sequence
How do you turn them into a friend? With a solid like a rock solid welcome sequence. If you don’t have a welcome sequence here’s what happens. After two to three years of business, where you’re doing all the things – you’ve created your course, you’re buying ads, you’re posting on Instagram, you’ve got a Facebook group, you’re listening to this podcast – and then you go to sell from an an awesome affiliate program or you finally create your course with guidance from The Course Consultant, and it’s just crickets and a really low open rate. Then, it’s completely sunk to the bottom because everybody’s leaving your list like they’re running out of a burning building. It leaves you wondering because everybody said the money was in the list.
If you don’t have that solid foundation, if you don’t welcome them in the right way, if you don’t turn that follower into a friend first, it’s so hard to convert them into a customer. They don’t trust you. So with a welcome sequence make sure you can get people to reply to you in those first few emails. They’re never going to be more engaged than those first couple of emails. And then, you set expectations.
If you create mostly free content, and then suddenly ask people to buy something from you, it can be a little abrasive, like there’s a disconnect. It’s like, you’re just trying to jump through this hoop that is just too high. But if you set the expectation right up front in your welcome sequence That you’re going to offer free and paid products or free and paid advice or free services and paid services, then they know upfront. So when you get into that sales mode later on for your course launch, they already know you’re a business. Even if you don’t have your course created yet, even if you have no idea. if you are going to create a course or an ebook, or whatever your digital product is, that you don’t even know yet, in your welcome sequence, you need to tell people you have paid services or products.
Just a side note, when you get nervous about selling your product, you just think like you have a stomach and your stomach deserves to eat. So you need to sell like, that just puts it in simplest form.
What is a Nurture sequence
Liz’s welcome sequence is just four emails in four days, it’s super simple. Check it out below, but remember she also gives it to you for free in her swipe file, check Guest Resources below.
Email 1 - The Freebie
That first email, you just want to give them the freebie, the biggest mistake I see people make is the first email they like, just throw everything but the kitchen sink at people, nobody actually cares. They just, they just want their freebie or whatever it is they’ve signed up for.
Here’s Liz’s:
“Hey, congrats on getting this mega swipe file. I’m so excited. You’re getting your email crap together. By the way, my name is Liz. And the biggest thing you’ve got to know about me is I love to laugh. So you know, if you don’t have a sense of humor, I don’t know what to tell you. PS, hit reply, whatever question I asked.”
Email 2 and 3 - Great Content, Set Expectations
The second email is kind of best content, give them a little more flavor of who you are. And then that third email is, when you set those expectations. Tell your readers this is who I am, this is what I stand for, and this is what I have to offer. Liz suggests using quick bullet points.
Email 4 -The Invitation
Then in the fourth email, you can kind of mix up and talk a little bit about more about why you’re passionate, why you do what you do. And then invite them wherever you are on social media, or just invite them to reply again, to your emails because once you can get people to reply that is basically like the number one thing you want. then that is we’ll get to out of spam. It’s all this domino effect.
When you create a welcome sequence and subsequent newsletters where you’re writing every week sharing information, those subscribers go from the front of the table to looking at what you have to offer. they’re behind you in your stuff, they want to know more, they want to be a part of it. And that is so powerful. That’s when it becomes so much easier, so much simpler.
Show Up As An Expert
So one thing I really want to just point out for people, is to consider how easy it is to sell your courses and your digital products and your services, when you start to think of yourself as a bona fide professional, as a bona fide expert. New entrepreneurs especially feel like they don’t want to sell to people because that feels crummy or not authentic when you want to serve. what I think we often fall into the trap of is finding out that we have to get stuck on getting out new email blog posts, or getting out new blog posts, or getting out the new video, or getting out the new podcast. When in reality, when we are doing those activities, the point of those activities is to drive people to share with them to work with you in a closer fashion. So whether that’s an course, a one on one service, an intensive, any type of thing that you’re selling, It’s going to help them see the value add that you will be able to provide to them.
I think when entrepreneurs say I’ve got to have 10,000 email list subscribers, run Facebook ads, Or I’ve got to have a following amount XYZ They’re disqualifying themselves from all the sales that they could be making if they actually put themselves out there. It is a lot of work, yes, but there’s a way to do it without being sleazy, without being one of those marketers, there’s totally a way to do it.
Show Up As Yourself
I really liked that Liz provide ways to be funny and show up like yourself. When you’re thinking about who it is that you want to work with, you have to show up in a way that’s true to yourself. That’s true to your personality, that’s true to your core values. And when you do that, and you show up in email, the people that actually vibe with you, are the people that will buy from you. And that makes it so much easier to work with people. What I’ve noticed before is I would try to sound like this person or sound like that person or add in more gifts, and there’s nothing wrong with gifts. It’s just, is that true to who I am? Does that speak to me? Does that speak to what I’m about? And honestly, sometimes it hasn’t been. And so what I’ve noticed, too, is just am I attracting the buyers that I love to me. In the reality I’ve seen, I haven’t really been showing up like myself. So I really just love that about Liz, is that she does attract those people to her. She’s so fun and so friendly and so by the time someone buys, they’ll say, I feel like I already know her and feel like best friends.
Guest Resources
Join Liz’s inbox party if you’re looking for late 90s feel. She makes a lot of MC Hammer, NSync, and Fresh Prince jokes, so if you’re into that go to lizwilcox.com and scroll until you see join the inbox crew.
Also grab her mega newsletter swipe file, where you’ll get her welcome sequence to plug in your personality and niche, and also three newsletters and video explanations for each.
For you folks that want something “done for you” I highly recommend checking out Liz’s email marketing membership!
The Course Consultant Resources
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