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We hope you enjoy this webinar with Cory Miller and Brian Krogsgard as they share high impact ways they’ve built their email lists.
Here are the companion slides (.pdf).
Here’s the video:
Full Machine Transcript
Cory Miller 0:03
Here we go. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another commerce journey webinar. Today’s topic is going to be five ideas to build your email list. Now emails are part of my history, building the company called iThemes, and I’m really pumped to be able to share this with you today for those of you that are eCommerce entrepreneurs. But first and foremost, let me share the good news about our sponsor GoDaddy Pro I’m pumped to have GoDaddy Pro as a sponsor, you can go to commercejourney.com/go, and check out the deal that our friends over at GoDaddy Pro have they’ve got a great eCommerce hosting package that includes WooCommerce and I’m pumped to have GoDaddy pro as as a sponsor and a partner of ours. They’ve been excellent to this. I’ve got a couple of people that have done this particular plan that I’ve helped with you So you get three months for like a penny or $1 or something like that free. And so it’s a great, great package. I hope you go to commercial e.com forward slash go.
Cory Miller 1:12
Let’s dive right in today. So, you know, in this whole conversation around five ideas to build your email list. Let me give you a quick background. So if I could for 10 years, share a graph with you that just showed sales over the last 10 years of the company and build call nine themes. You’d see spikes along those periods of time over 10 years, this would be a long graph, it has to be a panoramic view. But for each of the spikes in our revenue, I could say that’s a day we probably sent an email. Email is still the way to build a business online, particularly eCommerce business also share some stories as we go but the first idea is always start your digital marketing strategy with email. Make it your foundation for everything you’re doing. Too many people start their digital marketing strategy, particularly with eCommerce, and they use email as this afterthought this bolt on. But that’s not the way it works. The way it works best is if you have it as a central core strategy that you build on to build your website, build your blog, build everything you do, from a marketing standpoint with the center for email. The reason for this is a lot of people get enamored with social and social channels are great. I think they’re part of a digital marketing strategy. But they’re not a platform that you own. Email Marketing is a platform that you own, that you have permission, hopefully, if you do it the right way to be able to send messages out to your audience.
Cory Miller 2:49
So you own the audience, in a sense, still a permission right to have someone’s email address, but social you get that can change with the algorithms, the policies that are Facebook and Twitter. gram, LinkedIn, Twitter, all the social platforms can change overnight and leave Yagna out in the dust. But if you build on top of email, use it start with email as your core foundational digital marketing strategy, you can really truly build a business. When I left the company, we had hundreds and hundreds of thousands of email list emails, and we took great care of those emails. We had a very active block, emails are something we guarded, really protect those email address. We didn’t spam those emails. We’re very thoughtful methodical about it. And so I hope you put as much time as you put into your website and even your products and say this is the the way to shop. The good news about what you do with your products is through email. Just think about this. You still today, now I’m in August 2020, do you still need an email address to get a Facebook account, right? So it’s pretty key, I would say. So with that, I want you to be intentional. And that means having a content calendar just for email, we’ll share a spreadsheet through one of my other projects called Digital Marketing Kitchen, where you can actually work through a content calendar. For instance, several projects that I have and clients that I have, we have a day by day day, for the end of the year, at least, content calendar where we’re like, this is the email it’s going to sit every Tuesday for instance, and here’s the topics we’re going to have in it and I’ll share later on some ideas to put into the your content calendar for your email marketing. But the key is being strategic thoughtful about it, not making email an afterthought, but the core thing that you start with. And by the way, back on that whole rant about social so many people get so enamored with social and I’ve talked to businesses to have great social phones to say a Facebook group Don’t have to have a middle school email list. And that’s so backwards, right? You want to push people from social to your email list strategically, often can consistently. I’m gonna share some ideas for how to continue to build your email list. But the first thing is just more mindset approach and that is start with email as your market your foundational marketing strategy.
Cory Miller 5:25
Number 2 is bribe them. Now if you’ve heard the words, lead magnet. The key way to entice someone to get onto your email list is to have something valuable to offer them. Now to mean too many sites to go to including eCommerce sites or just like they’ll put a little subscription form in the footer. Again, this is an afterthought. They haven’t started with the first principle and first idea I’m sharing with you today which is email some additional not an afterthought. So they’ll have an email signup form in their footer that says sign up for an email newsletter. Now, as a guest is it on the side, for the first time, what’s my incentive to even be on that list? Oh, I mean to me, unless you give me something valuable that helps me along the path and I’m traveling, that I’m trying to solve my own problems and find solutions for the things that are bugging me. You know, when you’re looking for products and services, that you should give them something to start with and bribe them with that to get on your email list. And the best way to do that is to add a lead magnet. We build those lists I’m talking about and continue to build lists for Post Status for Commerce Journey, and the different projects that we’re part of with really good lead magnets and tweaking those along the way. Some of the ebooks we created that are the bribes, ethical bribes, to get people on to our email list have thousands and thousands of downloads over time because we use them as the bait, so to speak the bribe to get them onto your email list. So some of the incentives some of the bribes you can use or checklists are great, you know, one page checklist and talk to a lot of people. Let’s say you’re in the service industry. Someone just needs to know, what are the five things you need to know about this? And maybe there’s a blurb with each one unpacking those for a little bit. But let’s say you’re a mortgage. Well, let me think about an eCommerce thing. Let’s say you’re selling watch bands are sort of like that, you know, five ways to care for your watch band, and put that in a little checklist offer enough insights and practical tips to help somebody move along. ebooks are great. We were working. I was working with my wife and one of her clients. And we’re talking about everybody has, you know, a getting started guide most everybody thinks about from estate planning to you know how to buy the right digital camera for like a webcam like I’m using here today. Getting Started Guide is a great way to start. But I want to take this whole lead magnet and incentives and bribe conversation to another level. I want you to think about with whatever you’re signed to eCommerce store. What ask yourself what are prerequisites to buying from you, or buying your products and services. So let me give an example. So when our software company called I themes, we said that we sold WordPress plugins and WordPress themes of the years, there was two prerequisites that most of our customers is broad categories had to have to even be qualified to be a customer. You had to have self hosted WordPress, meaning you weren’t going to wordpress.com. And you had to have a hosting account. We didn’t sell hosting at the time. And those are the two prerequisites.
Now, if you think about that, if you’re trying to, you know, whatever the premise of what you’re trying to sell is, if you think about what do they have to know, do believe, think even feel in order to buy one of your products that’s a great, a great feeding ground to create great lead magnets and content that you can put behind your email subscriptions. So for instance, you know, subscribe to our newsletter and you get the five quick tips. For whatever eCommerce or you’re talking about, but really think about those prerequisites, that’s a great starting conversation and question to ask yourself before, as you’re starting to bribe people to get onto your email list. Now another one specifically for eCommerce that we see often is is the easiest. So if you’re selling a product in particular, one thing you can do today, without even having to build content is just offer a simple 10% off your first order. You can’t go to vistaprint by the way, or for in print or some of those printing companies out there, open up a private window in your browser and go to those sites. And even I think it’s even the gap in any kind of physical eCommerce store and you’ll get a popup within probably five seconds that says, they’ll identify you as a new new site guest and they’ll popup a thing that says 10% off your first order. Now that is a key great strategy to get people i would i would definitely pay 10% off my first order in order to get people onto my email list. have permission to continue to email them with great content. And build that relationship that helps people go from the, you know, unknown to the know, like, and trust me, and you can do that with an email list.
Cory Miller 10:15
Number three, make them trip over your email subscription offer. So we’re building on first as the key strategies start with email. Second is bribe them, offering them send them to get there. And third is you have to make it obvious for people to sign up for your newsletter. So it’s not enough just to put the great practical content behind your email and say, Hey, give this if you just give us your email address in exchange for it. You have to do things that put it make it obvious and put them in their faces so to speak. Now, I don’t think you should necessarily go be obnoxious with it. But most people are taught to hate popups, but popups work, even if you hate them. We did this several years ago and our email list exploded every month. It went on 10 x, we built an email list, we went from dripping people into it to 10 x and then we started really fine tune our strategy with a popup now do you have to make it obnoxious and make it impossible for them to click off? No, don’t do that. I would highly suggest you not do that. But you can do slide-in offers, you can do very elegant popups that by the way, make sure your popups can be closed on a mobile browser, make sure you test your popups with a smartphone. And that there it’s obvious where you can click and close that. But combine all your popups popovers however, you decided to display these with what I just talked about with number two with a good offer. Maybe it’s that 10% off your first or maybe it’s some kind of getting started with ebook or a free checklist or, or a template or a framework or something that comes out of your expertise in this eCommerce area. I mentioned that popups there’s lots of stuff out there, the one we like and use is called OptinMonster. And OptinMonster is a great, great platform to use with inlinks and all that. But along this whole ‘make them trip over it’ then you know, it’s not enough just to put it on the popup because those can be closed and you know, you might get the timing not right. And if I think about an eCommerce site, I want to make it obvious where they can go find where they can put their email address in and get that ethical bribe that great practical conten-laden, you know, resource. So make sure it is in your filters. It is in your sidebars, you can even do a thing called content upgrades in blog post to help people feed into your newsletter but the best day to start a newsletter email audience building your email on audience is right now today. Don’t put it off doing it. Those are some other suggestions for doing that. The fourth is make it exclusive. So so not just to have you know, get people onto your list. You want to keep them on your list with great content. Now my partner, Brian is one of the best at this is curating really, really good content where people anticipate email, they’re going to get in their box, that’s not just come a labeled spam. It’s not this. When I see this newsletter, I want to open that email and consume that content, but make it exclusive. So this is, this is the velvet rope forgot the less than that sentence. Totally, I think I missed my whole slide up here. But the idea between making an exclusive is just thinking through what is the kind of content that I can reserve just for my email list, and they prioritize that email list to get the best content first. So at commerce training, we’re practicing this principle to where webinars like today and videos, people that are on our email list, get those first that’s the velvet rope approach to email marketing, to make sure that they know that the best is always going to happen first email list and then you can Get it on the blog or the Facebook account. But not everybody sitting there just refreshing your Balt blog. Believe it or not, your mom isn’t just you know, is probably the one and only one that does that my mom still does that. But making it with the most valuable content prioritizing, going back to number one on this list is making it exclusive, valuable thing that you’ve started with that everybody knows best way to do this is through the email. There’s a lot of events that happen virtual events or even conferences. And if you’re not on their email list, you’re not the first to know, on everything I do, it’s typically be the first to know as part of the content that I put on my email subscription forms on my website. And then I talk about, again, commerce training, you’re going to know everything first and best, most comprehensive if you’re on the email list. So again, practicing what we preach. But make sure you make it exclusive Now sometimes means holding back content that you don’t share in other channels that you say you can only get on this. If you’re on it. email list. That’s a way to prioritize that audience, and that your email list and your strategy and practice what we’re talking about.
Cory Miller 15:08
So number five, I want to end the five ideas with what to create and send. This is one of the biggest questions I get when people are looking to build their email list, newsletter list or past the point of being convinced they understand now they want to get their email opt in, we talked about that lead magnet, and now they want to figure out what to send to create that exclusivity and that awesome content for that site. And so here are a couple of approaches I’ve used over the years and general categories to think through as you’re building that content, you know, calendar, and you’re thinking about your email content specifically. And over the course of the next five months, let’s say the first one I’ll just say is, is really a broad principle. Make it personal. I don’t know about you, but I get so irritated when I go to websites, and I know, I can’t find human? I feel the stock photos and stuff, but I don’t know who the people are. Now, do I know Jeff Bezos? You know, personally on Amazon? No, I’m talking about for us, everyday entrepreneurs, eCommerce entrepreneurs, that I want to know, I’m dealing with a human on the other side of someone that has opinions that cares about what I care about that is creating content, goods and services for me. And so one of the best ways to do that in the emails is to sign it with a name. If it’s your marketing director or choose a founder even better, most of the emails we sent over 10 years and I themes included my personal name, and my photo most times now, it wasn’t about ego on that. It was just I wanted people to know, Cory is a real person. There’s a real person behind this that is sharing this news, even if most people know they’re going to be a you know, it’s coming from an address. Not specifically to me. We even created a Cory.e.Miller at you know, I think.com email that would get forwarded. That wasn’t my personal email box, although you can probably guess what it was. But we did respond with another human back to that. Okay, so here’s the four types of content that I suggest sending every day, or, um, in most emails that you start to put together your content calendar. The first is content, I always start with good content focused on what are the frustrations my clients and customers have around my products and services? What are the things they need to know how am I looking out for them and put those into blog posts and lead magnets and webinars and things like that. The first is always earn the right to continue to send emails to your audience’s inbox. So I always start with content. There’s some people that throw out like 444 to one ratio for content pieces to one find that mix With you With what people really want, but always start with content that drives them back to your websites or a blog post or whatever else. The second is promotions with the eCommerce particularly you know, we would we’ve celebrated everything from software birthdays, birthdays and much software anniversaries are for business and of course the hey it’s back to school like right now I’m talking in August 2020. But here’s a back to school Sale In fact, I just did that with one of the projects that I have a part of back to school sale just a reason to have a promotion. And those are great fodder for
Cory Miller 18:36
your email newsletters and then three or four awesome to now depending on eCommerce product or service you’re selling new products or great announcement new everybody lot loves a launch the last podcast episode of commerce journey we Brian talked about how to use launch events, you can in the way to share those launch events, email. So new products and services are Great launches that you can share with your customers. Through my previous software company, I’ve talked about several times, new products and new features, we’re always exciting, hey, we just did something new for you to existing customers. And hey, here’s a brand new thing you didn’t anticipate from us. But now we’re trying to serve you even better through a new product, or new service. I wouldn’t even mention along these wires, they kind of blend some of the two and three perhapses maybe there’s a new bundle you’re offering. Now maybe there’s you sell clothes, and there’s a new bundle you put back to school bundle or for us, and we had multiple product lines. So we would bundle those in the thing we call the plugins suite, for instance. Those are great ways to earn extra revenue on your existing products, by the way, and new features. So you know, you decide like you’ve been, you know, selling lawn furniture and I’ve become very aware of this term called Sunbrella. It’s a great fat right. So let’s say you’ve been doing cloth, you know, maybe this is old school, but cloth pillows and things like that they get soaked in the rain and mildew and all that stuff. And you now a new feature is Sunbrella. That’s a great thing to think through from a product angle of how you can continue to enhance your products and services. But it’s a great announcement to your email list. So those are, those are four types of content by the way, they don’t have to be exclusive, makes a product headline that here’s the Getting Started Guide to whatever your eCommerce title is. And secondarily, maybe with a PS, which is the second little blurb is and I use this a lot I combine these four is here’s a 50% off so or, you know a new feature just came out and I combine it with a content piece. So I get my email newsletter audience, multiple reasons that they could find value within my newsletter. And I love combining promotions discounts for instance, with really good content that helps the user there’s two options that are for them to continue to engage with you and stay top of mind. Okay, so that’s the five ideas but I have a bonus for The bonus idea is and this isn’t maybe doesn’t apply to all eCommerce but it’s something I’ve found is a very, very effective strategy to build your email list that started with webinars.
Cory Miller 21:16
Start with live video, particularly if you’re in a space b2b business to business, but even business to consumer can benefit from this to his spin up if you’re thinking through this topical area of expertise, spin up, offer a live webinar. And why I love webinars are you can get people live and engage with your audience like we’re doing today. serve people, answer their questions, get more ideas for your content in the future, or maybe tweaks you can make your products and services. you’re engaging people at the same time. But also when you leave, you get you have an email, a little bit of a segment of an email list that you can with permission add on to your audience. And so that’s a great way that we’ve been doing several projects to build our email list is offer awesome content on a webinar, live. And then they get engaged through our email list with autoresponders. Say, here’s the replay. Here’s the slides. Again, we’re just trying to load in value. And here’s the slides but also 50% offer or 10% off for your first order or whatever those type things, but I love webinars now if you do this tactic always just make sure it’s not a sales pitch. It’s an hour sales pitch. Make sure it has pride to dislike with all of your blog content, your ebooks, everything you do, make sure it’s helpful to your prospective customer and your customers. Because you don’t want them to sit through this the fastest way to get to burn loyalty up and trust up. So make sure in the first 10 minutes 15 minutes you’re offering a quick win for someone to be able to go wow, this right here was worth my entire thing. And that means sharing some of your expertise share some of your gold at the very first and they go wow, this is worth the entire investment of my time. Okay, so that’s the five ideas I have for you today. Plus a bonus with start with a live webinar, live video and push them at the end again to your offers or, you know, once you’ve laid in, let’s say you’ve done 30-45 minutes of really good practical content, then you’ve earned their trust and loyalty and commitment of their time to maybe share an offer at the end, too. But always, always, always point them back to your email list and your website to buy your goods and services. Alright, so that is our five ideas to build your email list. This is a good starting point for you. And what I’d highly advise is start somewhere. Just pick an idea off these five lists and start somewhere today to start to build your email list because I promise you you’re gonna be better off for having done this
Cory Miller 24:01
Have you got on? All right,
Brian Krogsgard 24:04
Yeah, finally promoted me about halfway through the webinar. But I have a question for you based on something you were talking about earlier. And you had mentioned how y’all built your email list with iThemes. And I wanted to know because you’re talking about the sending quality content, being in front of them and you know, catching that blend of, you know, you don’t want to be too in their face so that they start ignoring your emails or unsubscribe, but you do want to be present. How did y’all how did y’all track like metrics? Or maybe just like gut feel like how did you determine like, what’s enough from a point of view of sending email?
Cory Miller 24:45
That’s a great question for our business and it’s different for others you need to make sure you you know, have a thoughtful approach to this. What do people really want to realistically hear from me if I’m an oil change place or something they want to hear from me every every week or every month. For us it was we want to touch on lists sent to our list quality content every 14-15 days. So all of our lists, we have them segmented out, we want to reverse engineer that and say what can we send to that list every 14-15 days? I’m thinking now more in a cadence of weekly. You know, with Commerce Journey, we have a weekly email send. So we’re trying to load up the value with that a touch point enough to know people are on this commerce journey. They have questions, we want to provide enough content each week to get to help them move and make progress to their journey,
Brian Krogsgard 25:40
That makes a lot of sense. And you mentioned the oil change. So like, depending on you know who your target market is, will you get your oil changed maybe every few months or every however many thousands of miles so you could base it on how often they’re due for their oil changes. Maybe hit them in the mid point and then hit them when you think that you know their normal cycle would Be around the corner. So they’re hearing from you at that cadence. Um, it’s funny that you brought that up, though, because I had to unsubscribe from a I had a great experience in this in the in the shopping component, but for subscribing to my, like eyeglasses, eye doctor contact stuff, they were contacting me like two or three times a week. And I’m like, Hey, man, I order from you, like once a year. I want to know that, you know, like, once a month is plenty of touch point and that scenario. So I love what you said about it being kind of dependent on who you’re addressing and what kind of what kind of purchase schedule they have.
Cory Miller 26:39
Yeah, you gave two great examples. So all change, generally speaking, I’ve heard like three months every three months or X amount of miles, but generally it’s like three months, right? So that’s a great anniversary date. You know, every three months do a ping and I on the way, by the way on the oil change thing. I’ve wished someone would do that. Like, hey, we’ll send you an email, or a text reminder, or both? Yeah, to opt in, like right there if I’m in the bay, otherwise, I’m gonna send you an email with a 10% coupon attached, I’m almost guaranteed to be a loyal customer over and over again with that.
Brian Krogsgard 27:13
Exactly. And then I think about your eyeglass stuff. I just started wearing glasses a couple years ago, but there’s an anniversary date of when you go in and get your eyes checked. And all of this, I think, to the tee, always delay that anniversary date, you know. So, again, back to your framework you just mentioned is on the anniversary date, at a minimum, there’s one email that I doctor can send every year is maybe 30 days before he needs to book, your appointment or reminder about an appointment or something like that. And then maybe inbetween is how to care for your glasses. You know, do you have I always purchase insurance now. Those are bits and pieces of content, particularly like a new eyeglass owner for myself, that I’ve known, or Hey, maybe there’s three months Before your your appointment, here’s a couple new of the new frames that are coming out. You know, like maybe you just put a selection like every month in your mind you know you’ve got staggering schedules that you say here’s the top new popular frames coming out and that’s just what people have taught and I love your incentive offer like us 10% off when you come in, here’s your on time reward come to your next appointment or buy your you know subscription box on time and get a bonus for staying staying consistent. For repeat orders. I love that kind of thing.
Cory Miller 28:36
I liked it when the word I was thinking of as you’re giving this example was cadence like what is the cadence that people should regularly buy you know, Amazon now has their Subscribe and Save thing which is brilliant. Anyway, you can get recurring money and automated emails that go out that help you bring in the dollars that’s so good. So, you know with Vida bars, the organic shampoo bars and conditioners we talk about a lot on commercial mixes. Great case study for I asked to enter my partner there, I said, How many uses Do you think a bar would? would, you know, before you have to refill, so we can determine, let’s say it’s two months, we can back that up by three weeks and send an email after their purchase and go, you’re ready for your next beta bar capacity for existing customers. That’s automatic money within your sleep that you can be making sales on. So I think the premise with eCommerce is just use this invaluable tool. And if you look at, I subscribe to a lot of newsletters for products and services I don’t even care about sometimes because I want to see how they do. And you know, Gap, Old Navy, all those kind of, you know, clothing stores are religious about emails, I can do a search right now probably type in Gap and get a hundred thousand emails. Every once in a while I click on the email, I just kind of look, you know, but they’re staying top of mind. And that’s the key as you build what you’re doing that email allows you to do.
Brian Krogsgard 29:59
Yeah, and that I guess there is some merit to that kind of spray and pray strategy, right? Like, you know, you’re emailing them a lot and you just are anticipating when the thought strikes their mind even if it’s once or twice a year, you’ll hit them up because they’re not, you know, at a certain point they dole to your emails and they don’t unsubscribe, but they’re not going to pay attention. And then they’re like, Oh, yeah, I need something from BestBuy and I get their emails all the time I’m going to go see what’s on sale or what’s the promotion of the week or whatever.
Cory Miller 30:29
Yeah, and if you use these four as ideas now don’t use to every single time number two, but if you’re thinking about that, and you go, okay, minimum, we want to send one email a month, then now you can contemplate it for the next year. You know, content, okay, in this email, I’m gonna have this promotion we ever do that to weed seed lows, low tide, you know, and sales volume that all eCommerce people can look at historical data that if you’ve been selling for any length of time, and see where you did and now everyone weekend might be on the weekends, for instance. But like over months of time, in a year or years, you can see the ebbs and flows of the eCommerce, business and start to put some of these things in place. We knew over the summer was our low tide, you know, with revenue. So we scheduled content promotions during those times to try to lift the cells just a little bit during our lean times. But you can use this framework right here to send us and then current news that you do really well. Brian is like curating what’s happening that might affect our customers. Those are things you can do in between and just say like, Did you just hear this news? It affects you. And here’s the three things we suggest for you kind of thing. Could be a really good tactic for your email sends.
Brian Krogsgard 31:46
Awesome. Thanks so much, Cory.
Cory Miller 31:51
But all right, if you have any questions, we’re going to be on here for just a little bit longer. And we’re here for you to take your questions. Brian, while they’re queuing up, they’re eating I have a question for you actually. Hit me. You’re one of the foremost best in the world in my mind to curating content, particularly with emails over the years, five and a half years now I have, you know, love the emails you sent. And there’s they’re all curated with your expert analysis and insights things but from a content that’s another, you know, subset of number one here on my list, is content creation, be taking a piece of news that’s relevant to your customer base, and providing some insight and maybe a little pay too long didn’t read little thing. This is where you can think about that. Do you have some thoughts about how others can use content curation too let’s say they go, I struggle to create new content, but I’ve got thoughts and opinions about news items or things like that and reference that no one’s specifically using for you is poststatus.com. Yeah. Can you give some thoughts about curating content in email? Specifically some tips you might have for that.
Brian Krogsgard 33:02
Yeah, you know, I call it journalism but like the public content industry, you know, news and things like that they learned within the last decade that it’s a lot easier to curate and republish than it is to create original stuff. And all the heavy hitting original stuff is created by a few large pocketed players. But the other folks basically curate it, put it back out and you know what, they get even more attention than the original. And it’s kind of a phenomenon for better or worse, I guess in terms of who is able to capture the attention. And I think if you take something meaty, and you turn it into something practical, the efficient email reader is going to really appreciate that. So if Cory the CEO of a digital products company is paying attention to their ecosystem, but you know, they don’t want to dig into every blog post. And every little thing going on? Well, I could be the person to serve them and say, all right, well, I’m going to put the most important stuff that you need to know, put it in this newsletter, and then you don’t have to read the source material, you just get the TLDR. And we’ve seen that over and over again, be done really well in a variety of industries. In the business space courts was actually really early to that. And they were started by Atlantic, but it was like, made for CEOs. And what they knew is they knew who their target audience was, and they knew what their target audiences attention span was. And they said, we’re gonna take this big idea and we’re gonna put it in bullet points for you so that you can use it in your work day. And then you can reference the source material that we link later. But you know, what, you create a degree of appreciation for the curator. And you know, like they’re crediting the original source, they’re giving extra bandwidth to our extra attention to it, but that person doesn’t have to be the one doing the curation and the value of the curation ends up being excellent for a busy professional that doesn’t have time to do all that themselves. And that’s kind of what I tried to narrow in on it.
Cory Miller 35:10
That’s so good. I mean, if you’re listening today kind of formula to do I mean, it still takes time, I’ll tell you, it takes a lot of time to curate content. You know, Brian, one thing is, you know, principle of just web and reading on the web and consuming the web is you want to make it scannable and simple. And what you do when you curate content is, I mean, everybody, particularly your route on they knew that attention span was the words I captured from that of their audience. CEOs that are very busy. So a bullet point, you know, and think about it. I always say that the love language of most corporate America is spreadsheets and slides. But think about that, from an audience perspective. If that’s the way they’re used to seeing material, it would behoove you to put that in the same format they used to read it, don’t make it hieroglyphics and hard to read but yeah, I think in this day and age, a lot of us are overwhelmed by content.
Brian Krogsgard 36:08
We want the too long didn’t read three bullet points and point with and you want to be able to give someone the ability to dig in. And I think of this often as the b2b versus b2c concept to like, who what is your customer, your ideal customer who you’re actually selling to? What are they going to want to know sometimes the b2c customer we’ve been using this coffee grinder idea right? And I got my new coffee grinder by the way and I love it so the reviews were spot on. And they may want to like know, okay, here’s the best coffee grinder. Here’s like, you know, three tips on how to best grind coffee, whatever your product is in the b2c scenario, but then like there’s always the person that wants to obsess over and they want to know every detail so you kind of link off to the, the bigger details on your site. That’s going to have that depth product information that’s like, another thing would be, you know, you’re buying something online and you’re worried that you can’t physically touch it or something like that some people still have that worry. Well, for those people is why you put all the specs in the product pages so that they can dig in as deep as they want to go. But in the email, you’re like, hey, look, this product is the best product at doing what that product does, boom, and you’re hitting him with that in the email, and then you’re giving them opportunity to dig deeper. That’s more of the B2C method of the same idea of what I was talking about in a B2B scenario. And I think it just depends on how you play out your email strategy, depending on who you’re actually selling to.
Cory Miller 37:40
Yeah, I love that. And, you know, when you’re talking about like content curation, particularly like I’m, I think about when we talked about previously the making an exclusive is, you know, Brian distilling expertise, I think about you’ve got a couple areas of expertise here. You sometimes want to ask you like, yeah, You give disclaimers online now you’re an expert. If I want to know anything about audio, I asked Brian Krogsgard, I want to know about coffee always ask Brian Krogsgard. And so like that expertise, though, is valuable. Someone wants to know that when you put that in an email list and say for grinders are coming out, here’s the best one according to our experts, you distill that into an email and make it easy for someone. That’s what this is all about making it easy lowering the barrier for someone to purchase your products and services. Yeah. Um, any so you’ve been sending. I mean, you spent you sent hundreds of thousand emails over your time, anything from the five ideas I shared that you want to tack on to or add your own
Brian Krogsgard 38:42
Man I was… I can do audio but I can’t join a Zoom call today. Apparently there’s been a Zoom issue. But I was in the background able to attend and I was just nodding my head the whole way that you’re talking. One thing I would touch at and this is something it’s a delicate balance like you said With the on site prompts, whether it’s a popup or a slide in or an inline form, whatever it is one of the things and one of the reasons we like OptinMonster is that you do have the ability to adjust like when they see it. And I would avoid popup forms that popup as soon as they get to the site as a customer as a shopper. That just annoys me. I don’t want to be on there 1, 2, 3, 4 seconds, and then see a popup. I haven’t had time to relate to your content and dig in. But you know what, if I’ve been on the same page for like a minute, maybe I do want that popup, I am a ripe lead to take advantage of or if I scroll to a certain part of the page, maybe I want the popup. Or maybe you’re a little more subtle and you just slide it in as an option. And I personally appreciate those as a shopper, but you do need to test it like sometimes the thing that’s obnoxious is going to convert well maybe it’s a good conversion. Maybe it’s not you don’t know. It’s worth testing, but I would at least hesitate. to, you know, throw the popup as soon as they get to the site. And for some reason when I’m visiting eCommerce stores, that happens more so than when I visit other types of stores, and I don’t care what you promo me with if you say, Hey, here’s free shipping. Well, I don’t even know if I want to buy anything I like thanks for the free shipping, but you just pushed me off the site because you gave me the popup too quick. But if I’ve been on your product page, if I’ve been dancing around, I’ve been there for 30 seconds or 45 seconds. I’ve looked at the pictures. You know what now hit me with that lead that says here’s some free shipping, we’d love to have you as a customer.
Cory Miller 40:35
It’s such a good point because I mean, again back to you’re talking about courts and given like they knew their audience. So think about the buyer’s journey. And you know, a lot of it just made me think of this nuance too… a lot of people don’t necessarily come just through your front door, meaning your homepage of your website. They may come in if you’re doing good content, SEO with their content through the back door, side door but those two scenarios right there want a different popup strategy different content strategy too so if they come through side door back door let’s say a blog post you may think just like you said like okay they came here for this intent they’re trying to consume this what would it be an appropriate offer to place right now if you say if they’ve already bought let’s say their existing customer they come to the side door you know any popup 10% off your first order well that’s not their journey maybe they want to take this 10% offer this is their fifth purchase or something like that. I just going back to anchor what you’ve said is thinking through the journey and when is it relevant to put something in their face like a popup. I think that’s a really really good point.
Brian Krogsgard 41:44
Yeah, absolutely. That’s all I got. I think you did a fantastic job and I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to be there for most of it live but I’m also thankful because I know you can take care of something like this. This is your bread and butter, man.
Cory Miller 41:58
This is a Yeah, this is fun stuff to talk about everybody. This has been a good webinar. Thank you for being here today. And thank you for listening to the recording later. You can go to commercejourney.com/facebook and join us in our Facebook group. It’s growing. We’re continuing to add more and more resources there. So again, come to our Facebook group and see you there.
Brian Krogsgard 42:33
Have a good one everybody.