How to Write Your Weekly Emails Without Going Insane (with Tanya Brody)

Angela Frank: 00:00:00

Welcome to The Growth Pod. Today on the pod we have Tanya Brody, who is a full stack direct response copywriter and email marketing consultant.

She has worked with numerous marketing technology companies, information marketers and other small to medium sized businesses to improve their email marketing and overall messaging.

Tanya works with business owners to help them write their regular nurture emails so they can grow their relationships with their subscribers, get more sales and create happy, loyal customers. Tanya, welcome to the podcast.

Tanya Brody: 00:00:31

Thank you so much for having me. Angela.

Angela Frank: 00:00:34

I'm very excited to chat with you today.

We haven't spent any time to date focusing on emails, so this is going to be a great episode and I'm really excited to hear everything that you have to share. But before we get started, can you share a little bit about why we should be sending regular nurture emails in the first place?

Tanya Brody: 00:00:53

Okay, so email marketing is sort of like the sometimes considered to be the redheaded stepchild of marketing these days just because everybody's like, oh, social media, oh online ads, blah blah, blah. The truth is email marketing is actually has the highest ROI of every marketing channel available, especially in the digital space.

I believe it is: 4400

That is literally the highest return on investment you're going to get out of any of your marketing. The problem is a lot of people ignore it because they're all about getting that first time customer right.

You're out there, you know, you're doing your social media, you're doing your Google Ads, you're doing your Facebook ads or whatever, you know, TikTok, whatever it is you're doing, you're doing print and you're trying to bring new customers in. What most people forget, like let's say you have 100 people look at, you know, your product or service.

You're lucky to get one to three of those people to actually say yes. One to three of those people will probably be ready to buy. They're like, yes, great, let's do it.

That leaves like 97 to 99 people who might still buy your product because they might still be interested but aren't ready right now. So that's the reason to have an email list.

That's the reason to be sending emails regularly so you can nurture those people along so they can become paying customers later.

Which means you have a nice steady stream of people coming into your business as opposed to like, you know, only when you Launch or only when you do a huge ad buy, you know, you've got these people sort of sitting in reserve and you're not paying a small fortune to talk to them.

Angela Frank: 00:02:46

I love that.

So it sounds like we should really be leveraging our email list to help nurture people through their purchasing decision and also make it so we can communicate with people without having to do a large ad buy or if we're, you know, getting buried in the algorithm or something like that with an organic social post. So I'm bought in. How do I start building an email list?

Tanya Brody: 00:03:09

All right, there are two very simple ways to start building an email list.

The first one is actually this is something that, you know, most people recommend, you know, when starting your email list is actually just start with people you've got, right? You have a list of current customers. If you don't have an email list at all, start with them.

Start with people you know, if, like you're a brand new business owner, you don't have customers yet, start with your family, start with your friends, start with people who have said, oh cool, you're doing this thing. You have their email addresses, Send them a personal email that says, hey, I am starting an email list.

I'm going to be talking about whatever it is you're going to be talking about on your email list, usually related to your business. And if you want to be on it, I'm going to add you. If you don't want to be on it, email me back and tell me you don't want to be on it.

That way I can just start sending you emails and you can help me spread the word or you can find out what it is that I'm doing. It's a very simple email. I recommend doing it individually.

If you're going to do this without ever having started an email address, you know, email list, just because that way you're not breaking any rules about, you know, bulk sending from your personal email, which is bad. And then what you do is you take all those people and once you have that list and you've taken out the people who said, no, no, thanks, I'm good.

You take all of those email addresses and you upload them into your email service provider or esp.

So that's, you know, Mailerlite, Drip, Klaviyo, whatever email service provider you're using, that's how you send the bulk emails without getting in trouble and being in violation of the Can Spam Act. Yes, that's the real name. And it makes me giggle every single time.

But you upload that email list and then you start sending out a regular email like once a week to those people talking about your business and what you're doing once you got that going. So you're in the habit of actually emailing people. You start by coming up with a.

And you can start this way too if you don't want to do that basic list. You start with coming up with what's called a lead magnet or also known as an opt in bribe.

It's that thing that you give people and trade for their email address, right? So if you're an e commerce company, the obvious thing is a coupon.

You know, you probably see that thing, that box pop up that says get 15% off your first order if you sign up for our mailing list. That's really, really common. If you are a business that's more digital, I recommend something that people can download.

So, for example, I'm in email marketing. I'm encouraging people to write emails to their subscribers. My lead magnet is a list of 30 subject lines and writing prompts.

And what it is, Basically it's called 30 subject lines to keep your subscribers opening and reading every email, right? So that's something that helps people do whatever it is they're coming to you to do.

And you want to give them what's called a small quick win, something that they can open, go, oh, okay, I see this, I get this, I can do this. And you give them that win, that experience of having done something successfully, and then they come back to you to learn what's next, right?

So you give them like maybe the first step or as part of the solution to their problem, and they come back going, I need the rest of the solution now. I need to know what's next.

And then as people join your email list, right, you keep writing to them, you nurture them along and you make sure that you know the way you deliver your lead magnet is also through that esp. So you have an automated email sequence which is called your email welcome sequence.

I usually recommend between three and four emails and that gives you the ability to send it out automatically as opposed to every time someone opts into your email list, you have to send it personally. That just becomes a pain, especially if people suddenly get very excited about whatever it is you're offering.

So you have this email welcome sequence.

They go through that sequence and then after that they go onto your regular email list and you write to them every week and you nurture them along until they start clicking on your links and buying and Then, depending on what you're offering, you either put them in a customer list and you email those folks separately, or you just keep sending out the broadcasts, especially if you're selling new products. Hey, this is what we have on special this week. And that way you've got that steady stream of customers coming in.

You know, some may be current customers who are buying again.

Some will be those people who haven't made the decision at all yet and who are now coming in to your environment and actually making their first purchase.

Angela Frank: 00:08:22

I love that everything was laid out so step by step. So we've got our email list set up, everything's automated, and now it's time for me to sit down and write my emails. How do I know what to write?

I feel like I always have writer's block. How do I get through that? I never know what to write kind of feeling.

Tanya Brody: 00:08:43

That is the most common complaint I get from business owners. When I say, so, do you have an email list? They say, no, I never know what to write. And I like, that is the number one complaint I get.

And I will not, you know, I will agree entirely. Figuring that out can be really difficult.

When you're sitting there staring at the white screen of death in front of you in your Word document or your Google Doc going, it's blank. I have no idea what to write. Which is of course part of the reason I give you subject lines and writing prompts so you have something to start with.

Honestly, if you're staring at the blank screen of death, what I recommend is start with all of the questions your customers ask. What is the first thing your customers ask when they come into your shop or when they contact you? You know, what is that first thing?

It's like, people are like, I need to know X before I can make a purchase. That's the easiest thing to start with.

The next thing you want to start with, and personally, I think this should be part of your welcome sequence, is an introduction of who you are. Hey, here's who I am. Here's what I do. Here's what I do when I'm not running my business.

You know, we all want to buy from people we know like and trust, right? Yeah, that's. That's normal.

You're more likely to take a recommendation from your friend when you want to make a purchase than you are to take a recommendation from Google.

Or you're at least probably more likely to validate that recommendation from Google before you go make the purchase because you want to know people legit.

Well, the nice Thing about using email marketing and specifically nurture emails is this gives you that chance to build that relationship, to get that know, like and trust factor going so that people, when they finally are ready to make that decision are like, oh my gosh, yes, Angela has been so helpful. She's totally helped me figure out what's going on with this problem I'm having.

And I'm going to turn to her as opposed to some other company because I trust her not to steer me wrong, to actually help me solve this problem. So that is the way to figure out how to break through that. I never know what to write block.

Now I actually have a system of what I call the email types. And there are several email types and your subscribers will be more likely to resonate with one or the other.

But these are just really basic formulas that help you figure out what to write, you know, and that's going to be able to again help you just push through that. That writer's block issue of where do I start? And I think once most people, once they start, don't have a problem.

If you are not a writer, I recommend using this. Go to your, your voice memo and instead of writing, start recording. Just, you know, have someone say or say to yourself, so what is it?

That and whatever that normal question that people ask, then start answering that question. You've got a recording, upload it to Otter AI or whatever your transcript program is, there are billions of them now. And clean that up.

So you get rid of the all the ums and the ahs and the ers and the pauses. There's your email. Add a call to action to whatever it is that you're doing. And I strongly recommend adding a call to action to every single email.

And you've got your email, you're good to go.

Now regarding that call to action, the reason I recommend including one in every single email is because you want to train your subscribers to click on the links in your email. Right? And you want to.

That's actually the reason I recommend using your email welcome sequence to send your lead magnet is you are training people to click on that button or that link in your email to get whatever it is they want to download. That's also by the way, training the ISPs.

So Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Apple Mail, that not only do people want to receive emails from you, that you are a valued person because they've opened your email now and so they're going to move your emails through the spam filters into your, their inboxes more, you know, as opposed to getting caught and people going, you know, never hearing from you again.

And as you do that more and more that increases what's called your sender reputation, which means even people who've never, ever subscribed to you before are more likely to get that first email, open it, and encourage their email service provider, their isp, to actually let you through into their inboxes. So there's a long story short, or short story long, as the case may be.

Angela Frank: 00:13:29

Yeah, I think that's so important, what you were saying. By sending your lead magnet in your welcome sequence, you're training people to take the action that you want to take.

And by continuing to sprinkle those CTAs in every email that you send, you are continuing to reinforce that behavior. So I think that is so important.

But I want to go back to something that you said, and that was that people know, like, and trust you after reading your emails. Something that I'm curious about is do email subscribers really want to hear from me regularly?

And on what cadence do you generally recommend for, like, regular emails? To just kind of keep abreast? Not necessarily the welcome sequence.

Tanya Brody: 00:14:10

Right. So it really sort of depends on your business. I know people who email every single day. I actually used to email every single weekday.

And then I realized I had no time to write blog posts, so I started emailing twice a week instead, so I could actually send out blog posts as well. The reason you should email regularly is to remind people of your existence. I'm completely serious about this.

First of all, not everyone is going to read every single email that shows up in their inbox. I don't read every single email that shows up in my inbox. And I will confess, my inbox is a mess.

My mother, who is on my email list because, you know, she's my mom and she loves me, does not read every single email I sent. So someone might not read your email, but they'll see your email and your name in their inbox and go, oh, yeah, Angela, right.

Okay, I need to get back to that. Maybe they don't, but maybe they get to the next one, right? So it's that constant reminder of, hey, I'm still here.

You expressed interest in something about my business, about this product or service, about, you know, whatever, some thing that I sent out, I'm still here. Check this out.

The other thing is, when it comes time for you to actually make a sale, because not every single one of these emails has to go to a sales page. They can go to blog posts. They can Go to podcasts, they can go to articles about your business, they can go to a.

Schedule a call with me and schedule a consultation. They do not all have to be buy my stuff, buy my stuff, buy my stuff. In fact, most people get annoyed with that.

So I wouldn't recommend doing that, but I would recommend sprinkling those in the. What you're trying to do here is, again, build that relationship.

So it's like, you know, that friend that you see once a week at the gym, or that, you know, person you see in class, or that person that you wave to regularly on as you're out walking your dog, it's like, oh, yeah, they're there. I know them, I trust them.

The other thing that it does, sending your emails regularly is, like I said, when it comes time to make that sale, the ISPs, the ones who are letting the emails through the spam filter go, oh, yeah, this person's used to hearing from Angela, I want to put this in their email box. And they'll go, oh, yeah, Angela, click to open so that they know who you are as opposed to.

If you send them one email delivering your lead magnet, and they don't hear from you again until you want to sell something, then they're like, who are you and why are you in my inbox? What? You know, you have to remind people who you are.

I don't know if you've ever had the experience of someone you see, you know, infrequently, but you know each other and you both have to go, what's your name again? You know, it's. It's that constant reminder.

The other thing is, imagine it this way, that person that you remind each other who your name is, but you know them and you like them, and you know, you, you know what, you see them at gym or you at dance class or whatever it is.

Maybe you might not remember everything about them, but there's a familiarity and you want to engage with them versus that person who only shows up with their handout. They only show up when they want something from you.

You know, and there's also the difference between if you're sending emails that are helpful, that are delivering value, that are actually helping someone get closer to achieving their goal, you know, that's helping, as opposed to the person who shows up going, you know, I need your help. I, I want you to give me money. I want you to give me something. Which one of those people do you want to hang out with?

Which one of those people do you want to support?

Angela Frank: 00:18:04

You know, yeah, absolutely. So I want to go back to what you were saying about somebody that you hadn't seen in a long time and you need to refresh yourself about them.

If I have an old email list that's been sitting around for years, should I bring that back? Should I try and resuscitate it or should I start fresh?

Tanya Brody: 00:18:25

Okay, the answer is yes, you can refresh your email list, you can start over and you can basically reintroduce yourself. I actually did this with an old email list of mine.

I used to be a professional touring musician and I'd stopped playing music and so I'd stopped emailing my list because I wasn't promoting any shows. And like it was literally a 10 year old list. I mean, it was really old.

But I had been emailing them consistently up to that point point and I'd said, I'm not really playing, I'm going to let this fall off. Well, 10 years later I started playing music again. So a few years ago I sent out what I call my apology sequence.

And believe it or not, I actually got people who opened the email and read it and were excited to hear from me, who literally emailed me back going, oh my God, I haven't heard from you forever. I'm so glad you're playing music again. Which is kind of crazy from a 10 year old list, but it works. There are three things you need to be aware of.

Number one, people change their email addresses all the time. You know, I personally have email addresses that I rarely ever check.

You know, I have them because like they're my, my spare email address or my, what I call my swipe file. You know, the one that's full of emails that I go and I look at for ideas. And I don't check that regularly.

It can just disappear sometimes and I have to restart it. So email addresses disappear. You're going to have a bunch of emails that bounce, a bunch of emails that never get opened.

So you need to make sure you clean your list after you've sent this email. The other thing is you're going to have people because you haven't heard from you in a while who may unsubscribe or mark you as spam.

That is a fact of life. You can recover from that pretty easily. You're also going to have people who may respond going, why are you emailing me?

Start a conversation with those people, remind them who you are and they'll go, oh, oh my gosh, okay, yes. And they may just go, you know what? I solved that problem ages ago. I really appreciate it. I'm going to unsubscribe.

But you may get some really good feedback from them about how they solved that problem and what you could do to improve your business. Or they may go, oh my God, I have not dealt with that.

I'm so glad you contacted me because I'm going to start reading your emails again because I need help. So what are you doing now? So be prepared to engage with people because again, that's building that know like and trust factor.

So the answer is yes, you can revive that email list. Be prepared to clean the list.

In fact, I would actually, before you even send, if it's a really, really old list, and I did this too, before you even send that first email, put it through a list cleaning. So you can download every email in your email list and put it through a list cleaning service. I think I use Neverbounce.

There are several of them out there. But basically what it does is it just goes through and verifies that that email address is still valid and that someone's opening it.

And that way at least, you know, right. It's like, okay, so I've got, you know, at least a 50, 50 chance. Be aware that you will probably have maybe 10 to 20% people open the email max.

I mean, that's being generous. Honestly, don't be offended. You know, some.

Some of this may just caught in the span filters because these people haven't heard from you in however long. And it's a really good idea to do this if it's. Even if it's been just a few months and you just go, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry.

I fell off the bandwagon. Life got in the way. Here's what happened, here's what's going on.

It's just a good way to reintroduce yourself to again, you know, make yourself human. We are all human. This happens. So I do encourage you to reboot that email list. It's a good way to get yourself started again.

You should also continue building that email list once you've done that so you have new people coming in.

Angela Frank: 00:22:42

So in your example, you went from a touring musician who dropped off for like 10 years, you said, and then you brought your list back. What happens if you have a list that you've built in a niche that you're no longer in because maybe it's kind of related, but not really what you do?

What do you recommend in that case?

Tanya Brody: 00:23:03

Oh, be totally upfront, totally just say, my whole life has Changed. In fact, I actually did this. In my eyes, I said, I am no longer a professional, full time touring musician. I am now an email marketer.

But I still play music and I still, you know, if you want to keep up with me on that, stay here. If you're interested in finding out about what I'm doing as a copywriter and email marketing, click over here. And I sent them to my lead magnet.

But seriously, if, just be upfront about that. I actually, my sequence is, I am so sorry. That's the first email. The second email is here's why I disappeared.

And that gives you the chance to explain whatever life happened to you.

Whether it was you had a huge life pivot and now you're doing X as opposed to Y, or you know, you got really sick, or, you know, you just stopped doing whatever it is that you were doing. And then the third one is, here's what's going to happen from now on.

So that way people are prepared for, I'm going to email you every week or, you know, you're going to hear from me, however often, you know, once a month, once a quarter, whatever it is, you know, every twice a week or every other week or what have you. And you're going to be able to just re familiarize them with who you are.

And again, it's building that relationship, it's making you human and it's helping them understand why. But I would absolutely tell them the truth. If you go from playing music to, you know, doing rocket science, it's a strange, random example.

Then you want people to know that you're now doing rocket science and you're helping NASA and that's why you're doing this or whatever it is.

So I think that you can absolutely explain whatever your life pivot has been and the folks who are not interested will unsubscribe and the folks who are interested will hang out.

And here's something really important to remember about an old email list is these people may not be interested in whatever it is you're offering, whether it's because it's something new and they're just, it's not their thing, or it's because they've already solved the problem, but they may stay on your email list and they may recommend you to other people. That's also true of that starter list that I was telling you about. You know, my mother is never going to buy services from me. She's my mom.

You know, she knows that if she needs help, I'll just give it to her. But she may forward my email on to someone she knows who does need my help.

So that's another way to think about it, is this isn't just outreach to your immediate customers. It's also a chance to get referrals onto other people who can become customers.

Angela Frank: 00:25:57

I love that. I feel so excited to go out and revive an old email list that I've had sitting around and also get more serious about my weekly emails.

But I'm curious, what's next for you, Tanya?

Tanya Brody: 00:26:11

Well, I am of course teaching people to write their emails. That is my primary thing. I help small business owners write their emails every week.

I have something called the 30 Minute Email Workshop, which is where I literally teach you to write an email in 30 minutes using those email types that I mentioned earlier.

By the way, I also have a course on reviving that old cold email list and I have an entire training on writing welcome sequences so that you can get that going and getting into your esp.

But my next thing is actually I am playing around with AI and using that to, for instance, come up with a list of subject lines and writing prompts that are specific to your business so that you have something that you know exactly every time will work for your audience. And in the meantime, come check out what I'm doing because I think you'll find it very interesting.

Angela Frank: 00:27:10

That sounds very cool. If someone's interested in checking out what you're up to online or just keeping up with you, where's the best place for them to do that?

Tanya Brody: 00:27:19

The best place for you to do that is actually@tanyabrodiecopywriter.com and that is copy all one word. Tanya Brody, Copywriter. And you will find my website.

You will see my lead magnet pop up on that page and you will see my email welcome sequence so you'll know what one looks like. Check out the blog posts, check out the lead magnet, find out what it is that I'm doing.

And I would love to help you continue or grow your email marketing.

Angela Frank: 00:27:50

Amazing. And that link will be in the show notes.

So if you're listening and you're interested in seeing what Tanya's up to, joining her email list, that's there for you as well as the links to the two courses that Tanya mentioned. But definitely go and check out her stuff. She is a copywriting email wizard. Tanya, thank you so much for joining us today.

Tanya Brody: 00:28:10

Thank you so much for having me. It's been absolutely lovely, Angela.

Angela Frank: 00:28:13

I agree. I really enjoyed our conversation. If you enjoyed this episode of the Growth Pod, please leave us a review.

Thank you so much for listening, and I look forward to seeing you in the next one.