From Frustration to Success: How Writers Can Simplify and Streamline Email Marketing

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Help.

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I'm a writer and I'm frustrated with email.

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How can I simplify it and make it work for me?

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We can help with that.

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Hey, welcome to the Writing Momentum Podcast.

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I'm Christopher Maselli.

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I'm here with my wife, Gena.

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How you doing, Gena?

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I'm doing really well.

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I feel like this is the time of year when everything starts settling down

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after the busyness of the beginning of the school year and the beginning of

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just different things that go on and we're starting to just take a breath.

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Things are cooling down.

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Things were getting back into the groove.

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It's feeling good.

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And we get to join you all again on the podcast, which is something we really

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enjoy because it's just a fun to get to sit here and talk and get a little

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conversation going back and forth.

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And that's actually what happened this past week.

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This last week we did that a great talk with Liz Wilcox about

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her site where she helps you.

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We shall send you a template and you can use that template to send emails and make

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sure you're consistent with it every week.

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And if you haven't listened to that, it's a great podcast.

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Liz is such a wonderful guest to have on.

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And she talked about how she could help us as authors.

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But, we received some feedback from that podcast pretty quickly, didn't we?

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We sure did.

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We got a feedback from a listener named Bridget and she had said

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that she had some questions and some frustrations about email.

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And as we read through her, frustrations, her feedback, her questions.

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We thought we can help her with that.

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We've got some shortcuts.

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We've got some ways to make it a little bit easier for her.

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Yeah, so what Bridget said is she said, hey, Chris and Gena, every site

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tells me that I need an email list.

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And we told her that too, right?

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And she says, however, Amazon does not share who buys your book online.

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She's right.

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They don't share the emails.

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And she said, that limits my ability to do an email list.

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And then she said, I also have problems with MailChimp being user friendly for

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me, and it has a huge learning curve.

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And, how am I supposed to understand that lingo?

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Plus, money can be tight, and all these things cost a lot of money.

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She says, I'm not making excuses, but I'm frustrated with the system.

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Bridget.

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Bridget, we hear you.

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We know exactly what you're talking about, but I think we have some

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really good creative solutions for you today that you're going to like.

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Absolutely.

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Bridget, first of all, girl, I hear you.

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We have been there, we have been figuring out the process, and

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that's really what this podcast and what Writing Momentum is about.

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It's about shortening the learning curve for other people

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and helping writers like you.

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And so we know also that if we hear from somebody who has a question like

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that means there's a whole lot of other people out there who are thinking that

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question, but maybe they didn't respond.

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And so we know that this is a question that a lot of people have.

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And so let's just get started.

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What do you do?

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Cause I think this is true.

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It's a valid point that you sell your book through Amazon and Amazon

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doesn't share that email with you.

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But I will say that would be the same if you were selling traditionally.

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If you were selling through a bookstore that was being distributed to by your

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publisher, you also would not have that.

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So this is a hurdle that we all have to get over whether we are

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traditionally or independently published.

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So let's talk.

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What do you do?

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Some people say don't sell on Amazon, right?

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Sell it through your own website where you can collect that email you

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could do that except for then you're keeping yourself out of the largest

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bookstore in the world right and you really don't want to do that.

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Gena just said If you sold locally or traditionally, you'd

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have the same issue where you're not collecting email addresses.

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So the best solution that we've found is to include a lead

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magnet in the front of your book.

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So what's a lead magnet?

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A lead magnet is simply asking for people's email address.

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And in exchange for that, you'll give them something.

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So what a lot of authors do is right in the front of their book, they'll have

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a page on page two or three that says, hey, would you like to have this free

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checklist, that I've created, or this free PDF I've created, or a free bonus

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chapter to this book that I've created.

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If so, go to this web address, and it's a web address on your website,

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and give me your name and email, and I'll send it to you for free.

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And these are actually quite effective, right?

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They work really well.

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And, now here's a little secret, you can include that early on in the book

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so even if someone on Amazon clicks, look inside, they can go ahead and

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get that free chapter or that free download without even buying your book.

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And that's okay.

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The reason that's okay is because what you really want is that email address.

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Because then you can start building a relationship with people.

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And yeah, give them that stuff for free, who cares?

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What you want is the email address in the first place, even

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if they don't buy your book.

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So here's the thing.

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What Chris was saying there works for nonfiction and fiction.

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Yes.

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So I have seen this used in fiction.

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I've seen it used where maybe the person gives away, if they're doing a

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series they give away maybe a novella.

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Yes.

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So you do a short novella to go along with your series.

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Bonus, if it's something holiday related or something that's evergreen

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like that would be really fun.

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Another one might be, if you've got a series, you could give

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away maybe some Easter eggs.

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And these are little, those little little treasures that you put in your

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book where you say maybe why this character is named the way they're named.

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You've had some, what are some Easter eggs that you've done?

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Like I wrote a book about a kid who becomes a superhero, and so the Easter

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eggs in there are a lot of the names in the book were tied to comic book writers,

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comic book designers, that sort of thing.

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Yeah, I know you also used an address one time that was similar

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to the address you had when you were a kid, that kind of thing.

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So there, that's a way that you can do it for that lead magnet for

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fiction, but for nonfiction where Chris is talking about a checklist.

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It might be a checklist, if you're talking about a specific topic, it might be a

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checklist to help people understand, do I fall into this category or not?

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Or it might be, here are some additional resources.

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If it's a self help type issue, maybe here are some additional

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resources that you can have for that.

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There's a lot of different ways you can go about it a lot of

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different things you can do.

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I've even seen authors and just the simplest way is letting readers know,

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hey, find out about my latest books, by signing up here and you can keep

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in contact with people that way.

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Yeah.

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And of course, if you're writing children's material, shout out

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to our friend, Rod Butler, who puts out some great books called

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Captain Flashlight right there.

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That's the main character is they're Darknetized, it's the first book.

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And in those books, what he does is he gives away coloring pages as

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well as he has links to his YouTube videos when you go to his website.

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So by going to his website, you can go ahead and download those

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things and in exchange for an email.

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Definitely.

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All right.

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So let's talk about the next question that Bridget had, which is the difficulty,

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the learning curve with MailChimp.

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So what would you say to that?

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I totally get it.

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I don't think MailChimp is very user friendly either.

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It's not my favorite email service.

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The good news is there are other options out there.

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Two of our favorite email services are MailerLite and ConvertKit.

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They have a lot of happy customers because they're very easy to use.

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So I recommend you look at services like that.

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We'll put links in our in our show notes, but even beyond that, don't forget that

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just because an email service has a lot of functions, and most of these do

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because they can be pretty robust, that doesn't mean you need to use all of them.

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It doesn't even mean you need to understand all of

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the features that they have.

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And they have good training videos and that sort of thing and you

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can learn more when you're ready.

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But to start off, most of these email services allow you to do

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something as simple as sending a broadcast to your list.

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Just by putting in a subject line and putting in the body of an email.

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It's the same thing you do if you send a gmail message to someone right

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except for you're using their email service instead, and so keep it simple.

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It doesn't you don't have to do really fancy stuff.

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You don't have to do the automations that we talk about on this podcast sometimes.

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You don't have to do tagging if you don't want to start off.

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Just to start off, just go ahead put subject line, put in a body of an email.

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Don't even use the templates, right?

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They have all these fancy templates with big colors and designs.

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I'll tell you if you get emails from us you'll notice that we just use text.

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We just put text in emails because it feels a lot more natural and honestly,

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that's all we need to get the point across We don't spend a lot of time

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on our emails, as far as like design goes, because we just want to make

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sure that we get the message across.

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Yeah, Chris and I when we were talking about this.

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I was sharing with him about a company that I use educationally,

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it's an educational company.

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And they have a great Slogan that they come back to where you're

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dealing with helping children learn and it's easy plus one.

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And I think that is such a great model and slogan for all of us in pretty much

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all areas that start with what is easy for you and just let that become habitual.

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Let that become consistent.

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And then you can add the extra things.

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You can add the extra colors.

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You can add the segmentation.

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You can add the automation.

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You can add some of these other things, but for now,

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don't worry about all of that.

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That is overwhelming.

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Just do what Chris said.

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Just send the email to your list.

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Start with your list.

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And it doesn't matter If you've got just five people on your

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list, if you've got two people on your list, it doesn't matter.

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Just start emailing those people regularly.

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Hey guys, keep it conversational.

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We've done podcasts on this before where we've talked about the tone that you keep.

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Make it very natural.

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Just talk to them.

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Talk to them like you're sitting down across from them having a cup

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of coffee and just, sharing what's going on, what's going on with your

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writing, your subject, whatever it is.

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And so keep it simple, keep it easy for yourself and you

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can always grow from there.

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And just to shout out to Liz again, who we had on the last podcast, she's

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created, what she does is she creates templates that you can fill in.

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So it helps you get over that learning curve of what do I

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talk about this week, right?

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Because sometimes that can be a challenge.

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If you go to WMDeal.

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com slash Liz, you can see how you can hire her for just $9 a month.

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It's very low cost, and she'll go ahead and send you those templates.

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It makes writing your emails very easy.

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But the important thing to do is to start, right?

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If you, it can become overwhelming to feel like, Oh, I have to

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do this stuff every week.

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But if you just keep it simple.

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Just say, I'm going to send an email to my list every week.

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That is the best thing you can do.

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Definitely.

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And we were talking about the cost of all this.

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What do we do?

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How do we keep this cost down for our email when we're just getting started?

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I'll tell you, these services have made it very easy to keep costs down, and what

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both MailerLite and ConvertKit does is something that MailChimp used to do, and

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that is let you have your first thousand email addresses collected for free.

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Now, once you get above a thousand emails, they usually charge around $25 a month.

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Or if you want to do some of the fancier things they do like automations

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and such, then it costs $25 a month.

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But to start off, it's completely free just to email

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your list from these services.

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So yeah, go ahead and get an account at MailerLite or ConvertKit.

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Keep your list as long as it's under a thousand people.

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You can go ahead and just start emailing them from these services.

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It's a great way to learn about it.

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And it's very cost effective.

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Now you say, what if your list is above a thousand people?

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What if over time you've collected more than a thousand people?

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Then it seems expensive, right?

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$25 a month to do this.

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So what we found when we started off doing this is that we had more

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than a thousand people on our list.

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We'd collected names over time.

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And so we thought, wow, what do we do?

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It's going to be very expensive.

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And then we realized how many of those emails were just like not active emails.

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They weren't people who really wanted to hear from us.

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So we immediately started sending out emails and just saw how many

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didn't even open the emails.

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And we cut them off the list.

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We got rid of those names.

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Do you remember how hard that was?

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That was so hard to do.

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It was so painful.

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Because it's so hard to build an email list.

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To get those names to go up and to automatically cut.

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We cut ours.

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In half.

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In more?

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Yeah.

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A little more than half I think.

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And that was painful to do.

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That was actually something that Liz told us to do, and we were like, Liz, we

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don't want to do that, because that will, we'll have half as many people as we did.

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We did, and let me tell you, it's probably the best decision that we ever made.

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Because now, when we email our list, we know that we're emailing people

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who actually want to hear from us.

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And on a regular basis, we take people out of our list.

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If they're not opening our emails, You're going to stop hearing from us

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because we don't want to be sending emails to people who don't want to

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hear from us and I would rather have a small amount of people who really want

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to hear from us, who are active people who want to buy our courses and buy our

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books and hear from us than to have a huge list that just never opens, right?

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Who wants that?

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Plus, it lets you And get a lot more juice from places like Google.

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They know that, oh, okay, people actually want to hear from you.

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So they'll take your email message and put it in the inbox in people's

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Gmail instead of the promotions folder.

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Things like that, yeah?

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It's true.

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And I will also say that the more you get used to paring down your list...

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And the more that's something that maybe you can work on automating as you go

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don't do that at the beginning, just go ahead and get the emails out, but you can

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automate that so that it will naturally do that and what you'll find is that it

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gets easier and easier because you become accustomed to hearing from people or

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seeing that your emails are getting opened so that your email open rate goes from

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maybe 15 percent to all of a sudden 35 or 50 percent and okay, I'm speaking to the

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people who really want to hear from me.

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So it gets easier.

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It's initially, it's a little bit, like pulling off a bandage and it hurts at

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first, but the more you do it, you're like, oh yeah, let's just rip it off.

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Let's go, let's get to the people who really want to hear from us.

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And that's the good thing.

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Bridget, we hope this helps.

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Everyone else is listening.

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We hope it's helped you too.

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Here is your short list of action points, okay?

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First of all, in your books, put a lead magnet at the front.

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A brief something that lets people exchange their email address for

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something that you can give them.

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A PDF or something from your website.

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If you'll do that, you will automatically be collecting email addresses from

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people who purchase on Amazon.

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And let me just add something to that.

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If your book is an ebook that you have uploaded to Amazon, so it's a digital

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book you can change your upload, right?

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Yes it's very easy, you just upload a new one.

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I've already published my book.

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It's not, I don't have a lead magnet in there.

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It's okay.

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If it's an ebook, you can go ahead and add that page to the beginning.

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And I would even add one at the beginning and one at the end.

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Go ahead and put those pages in and re upload it.

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Okay, so that's your first thing.

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Include a lead magnet.

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Second, sign up for MailerLite or ConvertKit.

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And as long as you have under a thousand people, it's not

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going to cost you a penny.

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You can look at their tutorials.

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You can learn about it over time.

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Go ahead and search on our podcast for earlier podcasts where we talk

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about ConvertKit or MailerLite.

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You'll learn, we have some tips and tricks for you in there.

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Then third pare down your list if you need to.

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If your list is too big and you're finding it hard to keep under a

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thousand, Go ahead and pare it down to those who really want to hear from you.

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And that's it.

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I think you'll find that will help you be very successful.

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The links to all these things, ConvertKit, MailerLite, and Liz's super

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special deal is in our show notes.

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So be sure to check those out.

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Definitely check those out.

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And I was just going to add to that is check out Liz's

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email marketing membership.

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It really has helped us.

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And I do want to just reiterate something.

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Just because she sends you a template does not mean that your email is

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going to sound like everybody else's.

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At all.

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It's going to be, you're going to see very quickly how you personalize it for your

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list, for your people, for your business, or your type of writing, or whatever.

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So don't feel like, oh, I don't want a template because it'll

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sound like everybody else's and that feels like it's cheating.

Speaker: 00:17:14

No, by the time you're done, she just gives you this quick way to get through it

Speaker: 00:17:19

and get it written and get it out there.

Speaker: 00:17:21

And they've been so helpful.

Speaker: 00:17:23

Yes.

Speaker: 00:17:23

Hey, if you know someone else who's struggling with the email, will

Speaker: 00:17:26

you send this podcast to them?

Speaker: 00:17:27

Just go ahead and click share right there in your podcast

Speaker: 00:17:30

app and share this with them.

Speaker: 00:17:32

And if you can't think of anyone, but you still want to give back a

Speaker: 00:17:36

little bit, go ahead and leave us a review and rate this podcast.

Speaker: 00:17:39

That always helps get the message out.

Speaker: 00:17:42

Hey, this is something we do because we love helping people.

Speaker: 00:17:44

We hope it's helped you and.

Speaker: 00:17:46

This is not something we're doing alone, this whole writing thing.

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It's something that we do together.

Speaker: 00:17:50

Why, Gena?

Speaker: 00:17:51

Because together we have writing momentum.

Speaker: 00:17:54

Bye bye.