You ever been out with your pals having a good time, laughing so hard that the surrounding tables end up giving you the stink-eye?
Or maybe you host a knitting club at your house. You’re a band of obsessed knitting fanatics who can’t get enough of yarn, patterns and the latest celebrity knitting gossip.
One day a guy shows up in your living room mumbling about how the Lakers were totally robbed in the recent playoff series with the Dallas Mavericks.
This person is called the unwelcome guest.
In email marketing — if you aren’t known, liked, and trusted — you’re the unwelcome guest, and there is only instant and merciless deletion waiting for you.
The email inbox is sacred ground. We don’t want anyone coming in there uninvited, or off-tune to the soundtrack of our lives.
Ben Settle is an email marketing pro who lives or dies by his ability to connect, engage and sell through email.
He’s got a lot to say about this stuff, and he lays a lot of it down in this show …
In this episode Ben and I discuss:
- The secret to Ben’s success as an email marketing specialist
- How talk radio can completely change your game, and your bottom-line
- The three indispensable elements of every email campaign you write
- How to get your emails opened, even by those who disagree with you
- Two email list building principles that’ll put you on the right path to engagement
- How Ben became profitable by emailing his list — every day
Hit the flash player below to listen now:
Other listening options:
- Click here to download the mp3 | 33.8 MB | 28:09
- Click here to subscribe via iTunes
- Click here for the RSS feed (non iTunes)
- Click here for the show archive
Want to discover the most effective ways to approach email marketing, social media, content marketing, and SEO? Get yourself into Authority Rules. It’s a 30-day conference that delivers the techniques and strategies you need to know as an online marketer — but registration will close on Tuesday, May 17.
Links from the Show:
- Market Like it’s 1999
- Email Marketing 101
- Internet Marketing for Smart People *this is the course mentioned in the show, the “black box” in the Copyblogger sidebar delivers daily posts from the blog
About the Author: Robert Bruce is Copyblogger Media’s Chief Copywriter and Resident Recluse.
Reader Comments (18)
Nice post and some good points discussed in the episode. Really loved to listen it!
Hey guys,
I’m definitely for watching your processes, to make sure it isn’t the same everyone else’s process, or the popular process.
I like hearing different perspectives on this.
Definitely, you make good points in saying that you’re effectively letting your list know that YOU’RE THE GUY.. and you’re serious about what you’re talking about. I’ve never thought about it like that before.
A short daily conversation. It makes sense to me.
Ben and Robert,
Great stuff. I love your views on email marketing. I have been email marketing for years, with only a weak social media push. I still make enough for a comfortable living off of email marketing.
“The money is in the list” is an old and trite saying. But it is true.
The one thing I found really curious was your statement about emailing daily. I have long done the 2-3 days with decent results. Because of the conventional wisdom says daily will burn out your list. I may have to try out the daily updates. You make a convincing argument.
Great podcast interview – thanks to both of you for reminding us that email is still a great conversion tool. Loved the comment about “….great copy won’t sell a t*d…” – so true! Retweeting now…
Robert, thanks for posting the podcast interview. Super helpful its just still so hard when your in the early stages (small list ) and trying to build a website that is valuable and turn a profit. Would you still email daily with a small list (30 members)?
Hi Robert!
I’ve really learned a lot from Ben Settle about email marketing practices as well as copywriting techniques. He’s really a pro.
Thanks for the reminder that email marketing is still not dead. 🙂
“most people should not be in business.” – Ben Settle
And that’s why most businesses fail. They shouldn’t have started the business to begin with. Heh.
Nice interview, guys!
One thing I can defintely say, Mr. Settle, you’re NEVER boring. The connection you make with YOUR audience is genuine and deep-rooted. Your success is no surprise, and just about anyone could learn a lesson or two from you.
The crabgrass analogy is brilliant!
Thank you for this sound file…
Very informative, helpful, and inspirational 🙂
Ben and Rob
You really hit the nail right on the head, because im a firm believe that the money is in the list. Spaming you list is not the right way to go, and cultivating your list is the key to email marketing.
I believe that the more value you provide to your list, then the more responsive they will be when you have something to promote.
great great interview guys
Kind Regards
Todd Dowell
Audio & Video will make your feedback go to the next level!… I’ve started to move into this field and I don’t worry about traffic anymore. Class stuff guys!…
All the best,
David Edwards
BEN SETTLE IS A BEAST!!!
I am happy to have gotten a hold of his course he was just selling with Michael Senoff on writing kick ass emails.
His un-launch launches through email/his blog are a sight to see and his list is definitely one to be on if you want to witness wonderful story telling woven into powerful marketing lessons — consistently. You’ll especially want to pay attention to Ben if you’re like him and you’re a lone ranger doing all of your writing and don’t have guest bloggers taking the load off of your shoulders. He’ll definitely show you how to not get overwhelmed in this position.
Robert,
Great interview. It is a concept that everybody who owns an email address can relate to.
Calling what many of us refer to as “spam” as “uninvited guests” is a perfect metaphor.
It is my belief that it is more of an admiration to have a customer subscribe to an email listing than to have them follow you on a social media. People follow blogs and companies on social media by the dozens but a person’s email account is like a night club that only very important people (in their eyes) can make it on the list.
Since you began your daily post, do you find a struggle with making sure you are not only putting out content daily, but also putting out fresh and useful content daily? I can imagine the pressure of keeping things fresh and original could be an issue in such a constant stream of information sharing.
@ Steve@Affiliate Marketing Emails – you won’t burn out your list simply because most people are not reading them anyway. They can’t — real life gets in the way, plus your emails are probably not all being delivered each day. Or they may be sitting in their inbox for days (even weeks) and eventually you say something that flips them on and they read it and get re-addicted to you again. This is true even with sales – I’ve done sales where I emailed a sublist 5-6 times in a single day and on the last email someone will say, “I totally missed this! is this sale still on???”
@ David – Yes, I would (and have). Even if I had zero subscribers I’d be writing daily. Until I got a subscriber I’d post them on a blog, to article directories, maybe even turn them into iTunes podcasts and YouTube videos. Or, if you are using an auto-responder (and I’m doing this in another niche now) just keep writing and adding them in there, the more you have in there before your list grows, the merrier. I have one list of buyers with 33 people on it, I mail it almost daily and will continue to mail it that often.
@ David Polykoff – surprisingly, it gets easier and easier. The more you write, the more ideas you get. These days it’s not how many ideas I get for emails, it’s how to capture them all, which I’ve developed a method for doing. (Just create a folder on your computer desk top and whenever an idea pops in your head — and they will the more you write — write it in a text file and save it in that folder. Eventually you’ll have dozens (I have over 300 now) of ideas in that file. When it’s time to write an email just open one up that seems interesting and let the hounds out…
That’s great advice.
I find myself having “a-ha!” moments from time to time in the most diverse situations where I discover a great new topic for a blog. I usually throw it into the notes application on my iphone but your technique seems to be more organized.
It seems, the process of analyzing reader responses, will always keep your content relevant to reader’s interest. This is a strategy I believe every great business should implement.
Thank you for the effort in putting up the sound clips and hear a different perspective about email marketing.
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