Amy Porterfield!! Her NEW Email Playbook!💥 Guru Conference Session | Ep. 466

0:00Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast from marketers. We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode. We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out. All right, this is a special episode of Do This, Not That. There were a couple of sessions this year at Guru Conference, which is our giant free virtual email marketing event that were just awesome. I did a fireside chat there with Amy Porterfield. For me, she is one of the best marketers in the country. She has taught me so much about email marketing. And this year in particular, Amy really changed how she is doing her email marketing.

0:43And this discussion that we have here, she goes through so many quick win tips that I wanted to take this session from Guru and put it out here as an episode. Hope you dig this one. Amy is incredible. Check it out. All right. I feel bad saying this, but there's no session I get more excited about than when Amy Porterfield is at Guru. We've never done a Guru conference without her, and we're not going to, by the way. She's stuck with us. But if you don't know Amy, I don't know who you are, but let me give you a little bit of background on Amy Porterfield. First of all, she is the ultimate entrepreneur.

1:15I mean, and at the core of everything she's done to build her incredible business is email marketing. But a few things you need to know about her. First off, in the world of digital courses, she is it. She has had over 100 ,000 students, and she took her business from$0 to$120 million. Okay, all with digital courses, and you want the stat that's going to blow your mind. 85 % of her revenue comes from just two digital courses, and all at the core of this thing is email marketing. By the way, her podcast, she didn't tell me to say this, the Amy Porterfield Show, if you don't listen to it, I don't know what you are doing.

1:52It is my favorite show. It's had 60 million downloads. What does that even mean? That is wild. So Amy is a big deal. We're so excited to get into all things email marketing. Amy, welcome to the show. Well, thank you. Welcome to the conference. Oh, thank you, my friend. The fact that I've gotten to be on every Guru event is the coolest thing ever. But this, I have to say, is my most favorite topic you do. So this one, I can't wait to get into. I love it. I'm so excited. And we're also going to dig into 90s, 2000s stuff because I feel like you could tell us all What is the, you know, the real way that you could have dressed and done all of it.

2:28So I can't wait. All right. Let's get into email, though, because I think this year I've been following you for years. And I'm not just saying this. I think this year for email, for your business, for you has been more of a change year than any year I've ever seen from you. And it really starts at the core with your your newsletter. It kind of feels like your email newsletter, like you like completely did a do over. Is that a fair statement? Yes. I think it's becoming like my whole personality now. So yeah. And I have to say this, not just because I'm on your event, but you are a huge catalyst to this.

3:01So I'm excited that we kind of get to talk about it now because it all started with you telling me to do this. Oh, no. It's my fault. No. So when I say you've changed it, though, let me give everyone a little bit of a sneak peek. And I want to know your process in changing. So your email newsletter is out to hundreds of thousands of people. It's a big thing. But Amy, you said a very regular newsletter. Oh, here's my podcast episode, very structured, kind of whatever. And let me give everyone some ideas. So she had a subject line that she sent out recently that says what it looks like to give zero Fs.

3:31Okay. She had, she talked about throwing back to a team beat quiz. She, she recommended watching Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. She talked about super eye lift patches. I mean, you've gone like a 180. So how did this happen? Okay. So what was happening is that I had a newsletter. It came out every Thursday and it was about my podcast. And this worked for years. So I'd send out the email and say, hey, I've got a new podcast episode. Here's what's in it for you. Click here. And if that email didn't go out, my downloads would go down that week. That's how well it worked. And it worked and worked until it didn't.

4:05And we started to see 15 to 20 % open rates. That is like the death of me because I teach this kind of stuff. That's not okay. And so when we saw 15 at like one week, I thought, oh, no, we're changing this right around the time that you were saying, Amy, I've got this newsletter. It's kind of unhinged. And I read it and I'm like, what is he doing? But then you said, why don't you do your own version of it? My CMO was like, bring it on. So that's what kind of sparked. Let's try something different. And it's wildly different than anything I've ever done before. And how has that impacted your your business?

4:41huge. So number one, it's so cool when people talk about my newsletter now, like I'll be on a Q &A and they're like, we're loving your newsletter. I love what you said, this or that. Or even my friends are sending me texts. Like I mentioned, you mentioned this in the newsletter, tell me more. So I love that people are genuinely engaged with it. But I think the big thing was you gave me permission to just be myself and be a little unhinged and talk about things I normally would never. I come from a very corporate background. So for me to talk about eye patches and Mormon wives, like that is very weird, but that's my life.

5:13You know, I love reality television. So when my personality started to come through, people started to say, Amy, this feels so real. And I look forward to it every week where no one said that about my podcast email. So that's when I started to realize, wait, I'm connecting with my audience more so than I ever have before. And when you're teaching your digital course about how to build your courses and about email marketing. Are you, is this because of AI? Are you telling people to kind of lean into themselves more? Is this actually a strategy and a tactic? Really, truly meaning be more of yourself in all of your copy essentially.

5:49Yeah. Yes. 100%. I think where the world is going in, you're right with AI and everything's kind of changing with that. We could easily lose that human perspective. And so I just have noticed people want it more and more. And so the more you let them in. I mean, we're all nosy. We want to go behind the scenes of everyone's businesses and everyone's lives. And so the more we let them in, the more they kind of lean in. I've been saying this for a while, but I think we're in a trust recession right now with the online space. So the more real and open you can be, the more that trust is sealed. And so I do think it's increasing my trust with my audience.

6:27Okay. So I'm sure that when you're hitting send now, and because you've changed it so much. Yes, you get a lot of, this is great and people lean in more, but I would imagine there's a population of, people have been following you forever. They're like, what is this stuff? I even saw one of your newsletters, you put out there some negative comments that you got about that. Have you gotten like way more unsubscribes? Is this hard to process? Like, what do you do with that? Definitely, we've had some shedding and I call it shedding season and I'm totally fine with it. But you're right. One time, a bunch of people wrote in after my first few newsletters with some negative feedback.

7:02And someone wrote your cringe, but they wrote it Y-O-U-R. So I was like, oh, I'm fine with that one. So I took the Y-O-U-R cringe and made it my subject line. And that was a great email open rate. And I just talked about what people were saying. One woman said, you're not writing this, which is not true. I am writing it. Another woman said, this is so not you. What are you doing? And I thought, you just didn't know me. I didn't show you enough of me. But funny enough, she didn't like me as me. So she was gone. So I had to just get some thick skin and say, it will all balance out. And then we'll start attracting even more of the right audience.

7:38So allow yourself to be in that shedding season, because it doesn't last that long. So first of all, I love the word shedding. And along those lines, and you mentioned open rates. Let's talk about metrics for a second. Because I love the fact that you still care about open rates because I care about open rates, but a lot of people don't care about open rates. Now that you've changed your newsletter, kind of changed your marketing, what are the metrics that you really look at in terms of your newsletter, email marketing in general? Okay. So definitely we're looking at open rates. We're hitting in the high thirties and 40%, which is a big deal for me knowing I got down to 15 % at one point.

8:16So that happened pretty quickly. And our goal is to get at least a 40%. So we're just so close on average. Another thing that we look at is that click rate. And we've noticed that we're getting so many more clicks in our emails. And I think it's partly because of the newsletter. So we make sure we have about five or six different places to click, whether it be an affiliate link, going to my podcast, something I'm loving on Amazon, whatever it might be. But we put them throughout the newsletter. And it's so cool to see what they gravitate toward the most. It's usually the stuff I like on Amazon.

8:50I should be an influencer. Who knew? But also we look at the best time to email and you and I have gone back and forth around what you're seeing and I'm seeing. So, Jay, I haven't told you this, but we've landed at 11 a.m. Eastern. That is for us the time that is the best to send. And it took a few months to get there. So that's another thing when you're starting to look at your data, give yourself some time to figure it out. We have done so much experimenting, longer subject lines, shorter, spicier ones, ones that make no sense. like we've tried it all. And so what I'm loving about this is that ability to experiment in real time and having the courage to do so.

9:28Well, I do love the courage that you have, because I think you're also showing people what they can do. And don't be afraid of unsubscribes. And also, when you talked about open rates, I love the fact that you're talking about beating yourself, because everyone's like open rates aren't important. But you know, when you're measuring against yourself, that's, that's really all that matters. I need to know those subject lines. And by the way, I love when you send out your newsletter and you sometimes don't have a preheader that stands out to me, that crushes it. What are subject line and preheader tactics that are like Amy's like, OK, these are working?

9:59OK, so I really love the idea of the no preheader because you're right. When you look in your inbox, it's so flooded and then you see that little white space and it just catches your eye. So we've played around with that. But also, we've noticed with subject lines, anything with a twist or something that, like you said, when I talked about giving zero Fs, I don't say, I say the F word in real life, but I don't say it on my podcast or in my video. So when they see that, they're like, that's a little different for Amy. Or one of the subject lines was around what I overheard my husband telling our coaching, our marriage counselor, when I wasn't supposed to be listening.

10:38We worked that into a subject line. that always does really well. So, and also anytime I mentioned I've got an AI prompt or a download, those work really well. Now this is for me and what I do, but what you've really encouraged me to do, Jay, is just try it out, but don't just try it out, track it, see what you're seeing across the board. So we have decided that one of our values in our business is data into impact. We don't make any decisions now without true real data. And like you sleep, breathe and eat this. Like if I were to have dinner with you, I think that half the conversation would be numbers and data.

11:13You're just natural at it. I'm not. So I had to get into the habit of check the data, check the data. So that's been working. Also, shorter subject lines are working well for us. We used to do these really long ones and then shorter copy in my newsletter. So we've been trying to kind of cut it down. I'm pretty long winded. So that's hard too. The new format is awesome. I like want to steal every tactic. And something else that I heard you talking about, I think it was on the podcast, was that urgency has changed. So just for context for everybody, Amy has digital courses, okay? And she opens them up, I think, twice a year, right?

11:52Is that right? And then if you don't get in, you don't get in, and she builds up all this urgency via email, sign up now, and on social media, sign up now, time's running out, all this stuff. but I heard you talk about the fact that kind of this classic, you know, cart close surge is changing. So what's going on with urgency? So what we're noticing, and I've been in the game for 16 years, and what we used to notice is, let's say you do a 10-day promotion. You've got a usually pretty good cart open day because you've been kind of anticipating it with everyone, but on cart close that last day, we tend to see 50 % of our sales come in on cart close, And I do multimillion dollar launches.

12:30So imagine five million dollars coming in on just the very last day, which is so much stress to have to wait for that. Hopefully it happens. Well, over the last two years, it hasn't been happening. We've seen bigger opening days, but slower cart close days. And I don't what I think it is, is number one, people are just making a decision faster. If you warm them up, if you prime the pump before you launch, they're ready to make that decision. But also, I don't know, that urgency we used to see is not there. So does that change like your go-to-market now that you know it's like that opening day is bigger?

13:06Do you build up to the opening day more? Is that the plan? We front load more on opening day. So I'll do four live webinars, the same webinars, just different days and times within the first 48 hours of opening a cart now. So we're going to front load because the greatest thing about front loading webinars in the beginning of a promo is after the webinars. Now that email marketing that's going to happen afterwards, it is more connected to something that just happened. So you get to build off of that. They're already thinking of your program or your offer. So you get to sprinkle it in. So I've got now six days to use email marketing to get people to buy.

13:43So front loading, I think, is working right now. Um, okay. So do you also, I'm just curious, like, do you also build up urgency around your, I mean, let's talk about webinars about around your webinars as well. I think webinars are still a great tactic. I hate the word, but give us the, you know, Amy Porterfield 2025 heading into 2026. How do we feel about webinars? Okay. Obsessed. So I just got done with my big launch and the number one mover were my webinars. And I've got a little tip here. So what we, what we saw is a really high show up rate around 30 to 35%. Back a few years ago, we got down to about 25 % on average.

14:22So we're back up to about 35%. I think we're seeing this across the board, not just with my business, because I look at my students stats all the time. But another thing is one of my webinars converted at 12 % well on live, which is pretty strong. It's a really strong webinar. And what happened was that same webinar that I did the day before, um, converted at 3 % less. But what I noticed, and this is a trick for everyone. And I know I've said it probably before to your audience, but it's worth saying again, when you are on a webinar, you've got to get to the selling portion of your webinar by 45 minutes.

14:54And those last 15 minutes, you can go well beyond. Sometimes I do a two and a half hour webinar because a lot of it is Q and a, but by 45 minutes, I'm talking about my program, inviting them in, and I'm sharing all the most valuable, sexiest stuff before that 60 minute mark. Because no matter who you are at a 60 minute mark, people are jumping off. Even if you said it's 90 minutes, which I do. And so I've seen it over and over. And what I made a mistake last time is I created a new suite of AI tools called Porter, which will answer every question they have about creating a course, write their emails, write their social.

15:28It's so cool. And my team was reviewing their work this time with this offer, things I've never offered before. I didn't get those two really big things in until 75 minutes in. When I moved them up in that pocket of the 15 minutes before the hour was up, boom, 3 % increase in conversion. And I knew it was exactly that. So it's so important you get your best stuff in and the URL for where they need to go to buy before that 60 minute mark. And okay, but do you, how do you keep them engaged the whole time. Are you like waiting to share the good stuff until the 30 minute mark? Are you coming out of the gate with like a hook?

16:03No, you're coming out of the gate strong. You're delivering on what you promised. So as long as your copy and your messaging was good to get them there, start delivering on it right away, have them make decisions throughout. So you're saying, okay, here's a decision you're going to make and you explain what it is. All right, make the decision. For example, in my case, there's three different types of digital courses you can create. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Here are, here's what they are. Here's how to know which one is right for you. Make a decision now. So they're really engaged. Also, I've got about 250 slides for 60 minutes.

16:34I'm going quickly. We're not staying on any slide too long because we're going to grab their attention and bring them in. So those are little things that I've done too. And I move pretty fast and I give them a workbook though, Jay, this is big. I give them a workbook when they show up live to say, you don't need to take notes. I've taken notes throughout the PDF for you. You can stay engaged with me right here. And I think that helps as well. Dude, 250 slides. I thought I've lost life. That is wild. Yes, yes. It goes fast, definitely. Holy crap. All right. So you mentioned Porter and I wanted to talk about Porter for a minute here.

17:10So what Amy's got going on with her digital courses is within her digital course now, she's offering something called Porter. Very creative name, by the way. Porterfield, Porter. I like it. But everybody out there, I don't care if you're a business marketer, you're a consumer marketer, what you're doing. Everyone's like, oh, we need an AI component to our business, right? Everybody does. So what is Porter? How hard was it to stand up? And just what is your vibe on why you went this route? Yeah. So I've got to give full credit to my team. They created it. I didn't. I came up with the idea. They ran with it.

17:44So that's the harder part for them. But the reason we wanted to do this is I wanted to get in the AI game. I want to be cutting edge. I want my audience to know I'm embracing it and they should do. So anyone that's watching right now, where could you add AI? So your audience thinks, oh, they are on the cutting edge. They are paying attention. And they're not like, we're not doing that. We're old school. You just can't be these days. And so I thought, how can we embrace this? We can take 16 years of my IP, everything I teach about courses and list building and all of that, put all of that into Porter.

18:18And most of what we put in there, you can only get behind a paywall. So it's not like you could have found this for free. Anyway, it's my paid courses in there. We trained it. We let it know Porter, if they ask a question, first pull from my content. And if you don't, if it's not in there, then you can go out to the web, but tell my students, you took this from the web versus my program. So we even got to program it that way. And so now it became even smarter because it went out into the web when it needed to. And it wasn't that hard to create. It took a while and it was a little hit and miss.

18:50We don't know how to create AI tools, but we used a tool called FormWise. So FormWise allowed us to put this into a format or a platform that made it so easy, even for people that don't know AI. And we get charged just a tiny bit for usage. Totally worth it. Now, first of all, that's amazing. And did this come out of how you are using AI? Yes. So I love that question. So my team and I have embraced AI fully, meaning I've made it my mission that they feel 100 % competent to embrace AI. And so we all are using it the same. We're getting really good at prompts. So as I was using it to do all my research, all the learning I needed, I thought this is exactly what I want my students to have.

19:36So it really was born after my usage and my team's usage as well. And, you know, people think, oh, I don't need to create that because, you know, people just go to ChatGPT or whatever, but they're wrong because people don't. And if you have to give them something that's a little curated for them, right? I mean, that's why Porter's so valuable. Someone asked me, they said, Amy, why can't I just get this at ChatGPT when they were thinking about buying my program? And I said, number one, again, I loaded it up with my paid course content. ChatGPT does not have access to that behind a paywall. And number two, I wanted it to be 100 % in line with what you are learning.

20:13So my suite, when I say it's a suite of AI tools, module one has its own AI tool, module two. So it will prompt you as to what to ask if you don't even know what to ask it. Yeah, I think any anybody that's out there, business, consumer, nonprofit, doesn't matter. If you make a custom AI tool for your audience, it'll be so appreciated, so used, so important. We have a lot of questions coming in, and we're going to get to the 90s and 2000 stuff, but I wanted to talk, I wanted to talk about Amy's newsletter. First, we're going to do something. Okay. So everybody here knows we're aligned with the V Foundation for Cancer Research.

20:46We want to kick cancer's butt. We are putting the link to Amy's newsletter in the chat right now for every new subscriber that Amy gets today. Okay. Uh, Guru Media Hub is going to donate$2 to the V Foundation for Cancer Research. I want thousands of you to, it's the best newsletter on the planet. That's why you should subscribe. Let's kick cancer's butt. Everybody subscribe to Amy's newsletter now. She's going to let us know how many people subscribed. Let's do this. I love that, Jay. That's so cool that you're doing that. Thank you so much. It makes me want to up my newsletter game even more, knowing that your audience is coming over.

21:20And when I heard that you were giving to cancer research and helping in this way, I was like, I got to be a part of it. So my company would like to donate$5 ,000 to this cause as well. so we're gonna we're gonna get in the game as well for that opportunity that is incredible listen everybody if you didn't love amy before now i mean she's just unbelievable everybody subscribe that newsletter we want to make the biggest donation possible we'll also put amy's instagram uh handle in the chat she's the best following instagram i i mean the volume of amazing stuff she puts out i always am like how come i can't do that every time i see your stuff it's Very frustrating.

21:57Thanks, Jay. All right, let's get into, we're gonna get to some questions from the chat before we do the 90s, 2000s stuff. So we got some questions coming in from the chat and then we'll get into serious nonsense. Okay, one of the questions is on your podcast, you said digital courses are not dead, but they're evolving. How is, what is going on there? How are they changing? Okay, so here's where I stand with this. Definitely things are changing in terms of what used to work isn't working anymore. And I'm on the forefront of that. So I see it every day. So what's no longer working is throwing a bunch of information into your course with very little support and saying, this is exactly how you do X, Y, Z, go for it.

22:38That used to work. But now with chat GPT, you can just say, how do I do X, Y, Z? And it will tell you. But here's where courses trump AI at any time is the support, accountability, and community. AI is never going to give you that. So my son wanted to run a four minute mile and he put into chat GPT, give me a six week plan to do so. He's already a runner. So give me a six week plan. And it gave him a six week plan. Three weeks later, I checked in. How are you doing? He's like, well, I kind of fell off the wagon. I didn't really complete it. Of course he didn't. No one was there to say, let's go.

23:13Let's get going. Where are you getting stuck? Let me answer your questions. So if you're going to create a course or any kind of program moving forward, accountability, support, and that community. This is what gets you to stand out in a very AI market right now. So that's how they're evolving. I think if I asked AI how to run a four minute mile, it would just say don't or no. Same, same friend. Or just like laugh at me. All right. Another question coming. All right. If you had to start from zero, okay, heading into 2026, how would you go about building an email list from zero? Okay. So if I was going to start over, you know, I've always talked about the normal things.