The New Rules of Email Marketing with Matt Paulson

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like Content is Profit. Today, we'll be breaking down the new rules of email marketing. To drop these value bonds, I brought Matt Paulson into EO Fire Studios. Matt is a founder and CEO of MarketBeat. He is also the author of Email Marketing Demystified. In today's foundation, we'll talk about the big shift that email marketing is undergoing, the best practices that many marketers either don't know or forget to do, a ninja tactic that most marketers don't even know about, and dollar, dollar bills, y 'all.

0:42And so much more, Fire Nation. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Matt and our sponsors. Marketing Made Simple, hosted by my friend, Dr. JJ Peterson, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy, and more importantly, make it work. A recent episode all about how Liquid IV is using marketing to shake up the beverage world, dives deep into the strategies that have propelled Liquid IV to remarkable success, a must listen. Listen to Marketing Makes Simple wherever you get your podcasts.

1:13From their all-in-one e-commerce platform to their in-person POS system, Shopify helps you sell from everywhere. Sign up for a$1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash onfire, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash onfire now to take your business to new heights. Matt, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hey, Fire Nation. Good to be back after a long break from being an entrepreneur on fire, but glad to be back. One thing that I think you need to be successful that most people disagree with is you always hear this phrase that millionaires have multiple streams of income.

1:59They're making money from all over the place. I just don't think that's true. I think people that are truly successful make a lot of money from one place and that is where they make their money. And then eventually that money flows into other things that generate income. But there's always one thing that is kind of the breadwinner and kind of the primary source of income for most truly successful people. Fire Nation, there's a reason why I always use the word focus on the show. Follow one course until success. You want to start with multiple revenue streams right away, you're not going to make it because you're going to get distracted.

2:32The bright, shiny object syndrome, you're going to stretch yourself out too thin, dial down into one niche, dominate it, create the number one solution, Fire Nation, to one real problem, not 10 okay solutions to 10 average problems. And that's why today we're talking about the new rules of email marketing, because this is one of those. Email marketing, Matt, is going through a big, shift in 2024. Tell us more. Absolutely. So if everybody remembers kind of what Apple did a couple years ago where they blocked tracking pixels, and that was a huge C change for email. And before that, you know, Gmail added the promotions tab, that was a huge C change.

3:13And we are going to see a C change that is of the same size and scope of those two things this year, primarily with Gmail and Yahoo, but a lot of the other ESPs are going to follow suit. So they're putting some new rules in place that will make it harder for people to get their messages into the inbox. The new rules apply to anybody that sends to a list of more than 5 ,000 people. So if you're serious about email, that is definitely you. They're putting tighter spam thresholds. So they want less than 0.1 % of people to report your message as spam. They're making it so that you have to have a big link on the top of your email that allows people to unsubscribe with one click.

3:54They're requiring what's called a DMARC record, which is basically a DNS record on your domain name that tells them what to do with your email and that your email is legit or not. And I think most email marketers are sleeping on these new criteria and they go into effect in February with enforcement starting in April. So I think the people that are sleeping on these are going to find their messages in the spam folder and people should be paying attention to these rules pretty soon. And Fire Nation, you want to be ahead of these type of changes, ahead of the curve, because these are going to have massive impacts for all the reason that Matt was just sharing.

4:30And so I do want to dive into best practices, Matt, because a lot of marketers either don't know these best practices or just forget to do these best practices for some reason. So break those down for us now. You know, the biggest one that most people miss is that, you know, when you want to send an email, you just send an email to your mailing list and kind of call it a day there. But what you really want to do is email your most active people more often and your less active people less often. So if you're emailing every day, that means like your daily email should really only go to people that have opened an email from you in the last 30 days.

5:07People that maybe haven't opened in 30 days, but maybe have opened in 90 days or 180 days. You can probably email those people weekly. If somebody hasn't opened an email from you in six months, you should email them once a month, once every other month at most. Cleaning out the email list, getting the people who are inactive off your list, it's not really going to negatively impact you because those people aren't opening your email anyway. But it will help you in that you're going to show better engagement metrics to the ESPs. And then there's some other things as well. You really want to find ways to show engagement to Yahoo and Gmail and AOL and Hotmail and all those ESPs.

5:47So you want to get people to interact with your mail like they would if a person is sending you a message. So anything that you can do to encourage people to reply to your email, to click on links in your email, and just really engage with it. So a great thing to do is every now and then is to do a survey in your email, but don't send people to SurveyMonkey. Just say, you know, hey, John, I am, you know, doing a survey about what people are thinking the stock market is going to do in 2024. Could you just reply to me and let me know what you think is going to happen? And then I'm going to take this information and compile it and put it in a report on a market website.

6:26Let me know what you think. Get somebody to reply to you. And that is like gold to the ESPs to show that people actually want your email and then they'll put it in their inboxes and not in the spam folder. Fire Nation, I hope as Matt's going through these things, you're thinking to yourself, these are things that I am doing. Good, let me keep doing them. Or these are things that I need to start implementing for the obvious reasons because things are about to get real and you will exponentially benefit from doing the right things while everybody else is doing the wrong things because your stuff will actually get read, their stuff will actually get blocked, and you're going to have a lot less competition for the inbox if you're one of the few people doing things right.

7:06Now, there's a lot of talk, Matt, about whether one email service provider is better than another. I mean, what are your thoughts on this? If we switch email service providers to help us get to an inbox better, is that a smart move? Give us your overall thought process on this. I mean, that's kind of the question that every email marketer asks when first get started is, you know, which ESP should I use? And is one better than the other? And does one ESP have better deliverability than another? And generally, you want to pick an ESP based off the features that it has. Like ConvertKit is a great one for creators.

7:45Klaviyo is great for e-commerce. ActiveCampaign is a great general one. MailChimp is great if you're just have a small listing or just getting started. But in terms of like who can actually get your messages to the inbox. It's really more about you and what type of email you're sending than who's sending it for you. Because if you are big enough, you'll get your own kind of dedicated IP address that's sending your mail. And then your reputation will really be your reputation. It won't be anybody else's kind of impacting you. And you can do that on any ESP. So you really want to pick an ESP based off the features that it has and not whether or not you think they can get to the inbox better than another one.

8:22Fire Nation, some of you are going to take a big sigh of relief because you realize you're probably doing the right thing when it comes to this or some of the other things that Matt's talking about. But believe me, you need to stick around because we're going to be talking about some real specifics on ninja tactics, how to make more money with our email list, and more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Things change fast in the online business space. And when you have a team to manage and a business to run, it can be tough to keep up with all the latest and greatest marketing trends.

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11:16Plus, they've got Shopify magic, your AI-powered all-star that helps you sell more with less effort. Need help? Shopify's award-winning support is there for you every step of the way. Sign up for a$1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash onfire, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash onfire now to take your business to new heights, no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com slash onfire. Matt, we're back and I want to talk dollar-dollar bills because business owners, that's Fire Nation, that's my listeners here, they want to make more money with their email list. Let's talk about how we can do that.

11:56Absolutely. I think many people are afraid to send sales emails to their list to try to generate a transaction because they feel like it will upset people or unsubscribe people or cause people to unsubscribe. And I really want to encourage people to not be afraid of the unsubscribe. Because it's just, it's a natural part of life. People get on your email list. Maybe they're interested in your topic for a little while. A year goes by, they change, you know, interest. And then they're, you know, not interested anymore and unsubscribing. And that's okay. So I really want to encourage people to send, you know, for every content email you send, you can send a sales email.

12:31And I think that's okay. You know, you are paying attention to your stuff all the time. and most people are not paying attention to your stuff all the time. So you think you're being too annoying, but the reality is most people will only read one out of every five messages you send them. So it's okay to be a little bit more aggressive than you think is okay to try to generate a transaction. Of course, there's lots of ways to make money from email. If you have a product or a service or you're a consultant, don't be afraid to send people an email just saying, hey, this is what I'm selling. Do you want to buy it?

13:03Or, hey, this is what I'm selling. If you sign up today, I'll give you this bonus or this discount, but the offer is only good today. Anything you can do to create that sense of urgency really matters. For MarketBeat, we have had really good luck being an affiliate partner for different financial products and services. And for us over the years, we have just tested so many different things and have identified the core affiliate marketing offers that work best for us. And we just keep sending them. We may send the same email once a week for over a year because we know that it's going to generate transactions.

13:39And people that didn't see it last time will see it this time or maybe they saw it before and didn't buy, but maybe this time they'll buy. And once you kind of land on the thing that works, don't be afraid to send it multiple times or multiple variations of the same thing. You don't always need different stuff to promote. You need to find the thing that works and just keep sending it. Fire Nation, keep on sending it. And I think that is an attitude that you need to have as well as, yes, there are going to be unsubscribers. People are going to change their attitude, their desires. They're going to unsubscribe.

14:11Don't take it personally. Just say, hey, I know who I'm looking to serve. And if that person who unsubscribes is not looking to be served by my content, they're not the right person for me anyways. And I want to improve my deliverability, my click-through rates, my replies from my audience, from people that are on my list and it's not going to happen with people that are on your list that don't want to be there. So they unsubscribe. Look at it as a good thing. We are always, every three months, doing a massive email pruning of people who aren't engaging with their emails because of these reasons that Matt's talking about.

14:41Now, I want to hear, Matt, not just a tactic, but a ninja tactic in this area of email marketing that most marketers don't even know about. The ninja tactic that's made us millions of dollars last year is triggered email campaigns. So maybe you have the one or two offers that are just crushing it. And when somebody clicks on a link in your email, you just send that. You know they're in your inbox. You know they're reading email. That's when you send them another email. If somebody is reading your newsletter, they click on a link, you've set up a trigger right then and there to send them a sales email when they're in their inbox.

15:20so these are just called triggered emails and you can trigger based off open based off click you can experiment with them but if somebody goes and reads like a mark beat newsletter or a story and you click on a link within five minutes you'll get another email that's like our best performing ad right now and we make so much money based off those it's it's not i mean it's just hilarious how well it works like you might make a five dollar cpm so for every thousand sends that you send an email, you might make$50 for a triggered email because you know you're emailing somebody who is in their inbox right now engaging with email, engaging with your stuff.

16:00That is the perfect time to hit them up with an ad. So if you can do that with your ESP, you absolutely want to do it. Attached to every newsletter, every content team you send out, you set up a trigger for some kind of ad, some kind of offer, and you'll get a 60 % open rate. it'll perform awesome and everybody should try it. Fire Nation, think about that. It's so simple, but so effective. Triggered emails. I mean, you are top of mind. They are consuming your content and they're going to be like, wow, look what's happening. Like, here it is. I was just consuming this content. Now there's an offer for a next step, you know, from the exact same person and or company that I was just consuming their content.

16:39And man, it makes sense. I mean, that 60 % open rates, the high conversions. I mean, that is really exciting stuff. If you take away anything from this episode to implement, try that triggered emails. Now, Matt, actual nuts and bolts. Can most ESPs provide this triggered email access? Like how does that work behind the scenes? These days they can. 10 years ago, there was kind of a difference between CRM software and kind of email platforms. And they've kind of all converged into doing the same things. So it's basically when you set up a new email campaign, and obviously it's going to be different for each ESP, but you're kind of looking for the section that says marketing automation.

17:22And basically you set up an automation for you're going to send out an email to your whole list. If somebody clicks on a link in the email or they open the email, however you want to do it, then you just set this, you know, you set up another email to be triggered right then and there. So all the big ESPs can do it now. There are some companies trying to, like, make this a product. One of them is called Inbox Mailers. You can check them out. But I think anybody can do it now if you have any of the modern USPs. So it's there for sure. I want to end strong by talking about your book, Email Marketing Demystified.

17:59What does Fire Nation need to know about this book? Email Marketing Demystified is kind of the nuts and bolts of how to launch an email marketing program. So everything from getting opt-ins on your website to getting people to sign up through different ways like co-registration platforms, from what to send in your autoresponder series, what frequency of email you should send, how to make money from your list, how to keep it healthy and happy. Really kind of all of the basics that you need to know in your kind of first year or two of getting an email list going. It's all in a book. It's available for 99 cents on Amazon.

18:38so you can go find it there or just type in myemailmarketingbook.com as well. We'll get you there. It's definitely not there to make money at 99 cents, but hopefully it's a resource that you all can use to kind of take your email game, either get it going or take it to the next level. It's not there to make money per se, but it is there to get leads for Matt and his company, Fire Nation, which is a great and brilliant marketing strategy that you should look at, that you should say, hey, how can I apply this to my business to give a great value, a book for free or 99 cents or close to it? And now you're getting people into your universe, consuming your content and turning those leads into customers, into sales, et cetera.

19:20It's very exciting. Matt, give us one key takeaway, one single takeaway that you want to make sure Fire Nation really gets from our conversation today? Absolutely. I think most people don't send enough email. If you have a list, you should be emailing once a week at minimum. And if it's something that people are highly engaged with, consider sending email every day or at least five days a week. I think a lot of people have email lists on their websites, but they don't put into work and maybe email once a month, once every other month, and then the list gets stale. And then people forget that they subscribe and then you email them and then they forgot about you and wondering why you're emailing them.

20:01So if I can encourage anything is just to establish a regular cadence of emailing your list, even if it's just sending content or like, hey, here's some interesting stuff that I found online. Check it out here. Really simple stuff. You have to keep emailing or people will forget about you and come up with that cadence and just kind of stick to it. And one more time, Matt, What is that call to action? My email marketing book.com. Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with MP and JLD today, so keep up that heat. For links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com.

20:38Type Matt in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up. Matt, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Matt for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, are you ready to rock your very own podcast? Check out our free podcasting course where I will teach you how to create and launch your podcast for free, freepodcastcourse.com. I'll catch you there or on the flippity flip side. Marketing Made Simple, hosted by my friend, Dr.

21:13JJ Peterson, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Marketing Made Simple brings you practical tips to make your marketing easy and more importantly, make it work. A recent episode all about how Liquid IV is using marketing to shake up the beverage world, dives deep into the strategies that have propelled Liquid IV to remarkable success. A must listen. Listen to Marketing Made Simple wherever you get your podcasts. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Sign up for a$1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash onfire, all lowercase.

21:46Go to shopify.com slash onfire now to take your business to new heights.