Email Marketing Strategies You Need to Know to Sell Online

In the latest episode of the Blogger Genius Podcast, I sit down with Greg Zakowicz, an expert marketer from Omnisend, to delve into all the cool things a blogger can do with email marketing to make money and sell. We explore its renewed significance in the digital landscape, especially for online entrepreneurs looking to build and nurture their audiences.

The Importance of Email Marketing

Email marketing has seen a resurgence as other channels like social media and SEO become increasingly saturated. Unlike these platforms, email allows bloggers to communicate directly with subscribers who have opted in, making it a powerful tool for building relationships and driving sales.

What Cool Things Can You Do with Email Marketing? | MiloTreeCart

Show Notes:

Key Benefits of Email Marketing:

Direct Communication: Reach subscribers who are already interested in your content.
Personalization: Tailor messages to specific segments of your audience.
High Engagement: Subscribers are in a receptive mindset, leading to better engagement rates.

Building a Quality Email List

Greg emphasizes the importance of focusing on the quality of your email list rather than just the quantity. A high-quality list consists of engaged subscribers who are genuinely interested in your content.

Strategies for Building a Quality Email List:

Offer Valuable Incentives: Instead of generic giveaways, offer something that aligns with your audience’s interests, such as early access to products or exclusive content.
Create a Sense of Exclusivity: Make your subscribers feel special by offering them unique opportunities or experiences.
Use Simple Opt-In Forms: Make it easy for visitors to subscribe by using straightforward and user-friendly forms.

Treating Early Customers as VIPs

I share my approach of treating our early MiloTree customers as VIPs, which helps in building a loyal community around our brand.

Tips for Treating Customers as VIPs:

Personal Connections: Respond promptly to emails and acknowledge customers by name.
Exclusive Offers: Provide early access to new products or special discounts.
Community Building: Foster a sense of belonging by engaging with your audience and encouraging them to share their experiences.

Crafting a Welcome Series

A well-crafted welcome series can set the tone for your relationship with new subscribers. Greg advises that the number of messages in your welcome series should depend on what you need to communicate.

Elements of an Effective Welcome Series:

Engaging First Email: The first email typically has the highest open rates, so make it count. Introduce yourself and your brand in a relatable manner.
Storytelling Approach: Share your journey and what subscribers can expect from your emails.
Relevant Content: Include links to popular blog posts or helpful resources that resonate with your audience.

Utilizing Segmentation

Segmentation is crucial for sending relevant messages to the right audience. Greg introduces the concept of segmentation within welcome emails, allowing bloggers to tailor follow-up messages based on subscriber interests.

Segmentation Strategies:

Tags During Sign-Up: Use tags to categorize subscribers based on their interests during the sign-up process.
Preference Campaigns: Conduct campaigns to gather information about subscribers’ preferences.
Self-Segmentation: Allow subscribers to self-segment by clicking on options in emails, simplifying the process and empowering them to express their preferences.

Simplicity is Key

Both Jillian and Greg stress the importance of simplicity in email marketing. Overcomplicating processes can lead to inaction, so it’s essential to keep things straightforward.

Tips for Keeping It Simple:

Concise Emails: Keep your emails short and to the point, with clear and engaging sections.
Visual Elements: Use buttons or icons to guide readers and make your emails visually appealing.
Actionable Steps: Focus on small, manageable steps that encourage subscribers to take action.

Crafting Effective Subject Lines

Subject lines play a crucial role in determining whether your emails get opened. Greg shares his approach to writing effective subject lines.

Best Practices for Subject Lines:

Character Limit: Aim for 21 to 40 characters to ensure visibility on mobile devices.
Relevance and Action-Oriented Language: Create subject lines that pique curiosity and provide a clear reason to open the email.
Testing and Feedback: Write multiple subject lines, including unconventional ones, to think outside the box and find what works best.

Building Relationships with Subscribers

Building genuine relationships with your subscribers is essential for long-term success. Understanding your audience’s perspective can lead to more effective communication.

Strategies for Building Relationships:

Personalization: Tailor your messages to address the specific needs and interests of your subscribers.
Engagement Tactics: Host exclusive online events or focus groups for email subscribers to foster a sense of community.
Emotional Connection: Make subscribers feel seen and part of a larger community, addressing the loneliness many people feel today.

Final Thoughts on Email Marketing

Effective email marketing doesn’t have to be complicated. By focusing on providing value, being human, and simplifying processes, businesses can achieve success in their email marketing efforts.

Key Takeaways:

Quality Over Quantity: Focus on building a high-quality email list with engaged subscribers.
Personal Touch: Treat early customers as VIPs and foster a sense of community.
Simplicity: Keep your emails concise and straightforward, with clear calls to action.
Segmentation: Use segmentation to send relevant messages to the right audience.
Engagement: Build genuine relationships with your subscribers by understanding their needs and interests.

Other Related Blogger Genius Podcast episodes You’ll Enjoy:

MiloTreeCart, the Best Tool for Non-Techies to Sell Digital Products

I also want to introduce you to the MiloTreeCart, a tool designed for non-techies to sell digital products easily. It comes with features like fill-in-the-blank sales pages, check-out pages, a sales dashboard, upsells, and customer support. MiloTreeCart is currently available for a lifetime deal of $349 or three easy installments of $116.33.

Transcript #342: Fresh Email Marketing Strategies You Need to Know to Sell Online

Jillian Leslie 00:00:06 Hello and welcome back to the Blogger Genius podcast. I am your host, Jillian Leslie. I’m so happy you are here. I have an interview today all about email marketing and in fact we talk a lot about freebies. Well, with MiloTree you can now offer unlimited freebies that we deliver to your new subscribers. If you are trying to grow your email list and that sounds like something interesting, get on a call with me and I can show you how it works. How you can sell on the other side with a tripwire, how you can use military art to sell unlimited digital products. Just go to Milotree.com/meet because I would love to meet you. For today’s episode, I have Greg Zakowicz on the podcast. He is an expert marketer at Omni Sand, which is an email service provider. We talk about the importance of email and how to rise above the noise. What are those strategies to get your message out there? To get people opening your emails and clicking on your links? There is so much good information in this episode.

Jillian Leslie 00:01:25 I think you’re going to really like it. So without further delay, here is my interview with Greg Zakowicz. Greg, welcome to the Blogger Genius podcast.

Greg Zakowicz 00:01:39 Well, thank you for having me. It’s super excited to be here. So this is this will be fun today, Jillian.

Jillian Leslie 00:01:43 Oh, great. You are an email marketing expert who works at an email service provider called Omni Send. But can you? I know nothing about your background. Could you share how you got started with Omni, send in email marketing and kind of where you are today?

Greg Zakowicz 00:02:01 Sure. So I just told you off camera that I love the talk and I will go on tangents and tell the longest stories in the world. So I try to give you the 10,000 foot view here. I have been in email for 18 years now, approaching 19, which is crazy to think about how I got into it. Half luck, mostly happenstance. So I was, switching from a career in radio broadcasting into marketing, which was my my second major in college, and I went to work for a radio promotions company, and we were traveling around the country being hired by different stations and doing in-person events.

Greg Zakowicz 00:02:36 And part of that collection process was capturing email addresses of people that came to the event. So the next time we come through or we want to sell something online after the event, we could market to them. So early stages of it at the e-commerce site. Most sales were done, in person. So that was the launch phase. And then I switched to a company where the only type of email or only type of marketing we did from a product standpoint was email marketing. And that’s where it really where I cut my teeth in it. So it was back then, it was segmentation on MySQL queries that you requested from the IT department, but it was effective. And once we got blacklisted for certain things, because back then it was a bit of the Wild West and you would get blacklisted a lot. you would see the sales just tank. Right. And that was your kind of a similar to now, right? If you start to see open rates of 1%, you kind of know you’re in the spam folder.

Greg Zakowicz 00:03:27 So through that, through that experience, I just tried to learn everything I could about email, tried to get in there, saw what worked, what didn’t, and then just transition from there to where I am now. So, omniscience is very quickly where an email, SMS, web marketing provider, integrated with a lot of e-commerce platforms here, our general goal is to make it accessible to everyone. We have a free plan, which no trial required, no credit card required, but make email easier so that you can sell more or accomplish more with whatever your goals are in a quick amount of time and for less effort as possible. So, it’s a really good platform. I’ve been here over four years now and the rides continue and it’s fun.

Jillian Leslie 00:04:09 That’s great. It’s funny. I feel like my audience got very excited about two things. One, SEO, which I shared with you before we pressed record to drive traffic to their blogs to monetize via ads and affiliates. And two, social media, because you get that immediate gratification when you get all those likes and things.

Jillian Leslie 00:04:33 And I feel like email was always this thing that people would say, you should grow your list. People didn’t quite know why and it wasn’t sexy. And now that the world I think has shifted and Google is doing whatever Google is doing, I think people are really wising up to email marketing. I feel like email got a bad rap. It felt old almost. Could you explain why email is so valuable?

Greg Zakowicz 00:05:03 So you’re right that it it wasn’t sexy before. I would still say it’s not sexy for people. It should be 100%. But there’s always something new like TikTok. There’s always something new that is more interesting than visuals and texts via email. I just love it, but that’s the way it is. I think the one thing we’re kind of boomerang ING with this was way back in the day. It was like, hey, here’s this new thing. Should we really be marketing to people on there? And then you start doing it, and as long as you did it well, people would buy from it.

Greg Zakowicz 00:05:35 E-commerce acceleration obviously helped that a lot. And then it kind of went to the Myspace and the Facebook and that’s how old I am. I’ve talked about Myspace here, but it went to these other cool, sexy channels and then SEO became a huge thing. Like you said, people were pouring money and time and investment into that thing, and it’s still a valuable thing, but now it seems like it’s boomerang. Back to email a little bit. I think the one thing that people are finally realizing after all this time is that one it works, but two it is a channel. It is an opt in channel. People are signing up saying, yes, send me marketing content here, communicate with me. And you don’t get that on social media, right? I might go to Instagram. I know I’m going to see ads. It’s fine. I accept that as part of the experience. When you go to your inbox, you either sign up for an email program or you don’t write. And if you do and you see it, you are already in a mindset.

Greg Zakowicz 00:06:35 If you are, if it’s a store selling you something, you’re in the mindset of the shop. If it’s someone, communicating with you about the new blog or, you know, an improvement to a part of their software program, whatever it might be, you’re invested in that because you said, yeah, I’ve already identified you. I want your messages. You’ve got something I want to see. I’m interested. I’m going to click. An email is just become ubiquitous. It’s a form of communication. If one has it’s like mobile phone mobile numbers now, right. People get into SMS marketing, growing channel, but it’s ubiquitous. And once that happens and it takes hold and becomes part of everyone’s lifestyle and day to day lives, it becomes a channel that if you do it well, people will respect that and they’ll love you for it. But it’s an easy way to really build communication and build relationships with people, where putting an ad on Facebook or putting a search ad you don’t. That’s a touchpoint, but you don’t build relationships that way.

Greg Zakowicz 00:07:30 Email has an effect where you can do that, and I hope that answers the question, but it does.

Jillian Leslie 00:07:35 But you said if you do it well, you can add this for what you say, almost 20 years. What does doing it well today mean?

Greg Zakowicz 00:07:47 That’s a really great question because it would mean a lot of different things for a lot of different companies or, you know, whatever services you’re offering or whatever product you might be advertising there. I think what it boils down to it in the day is are you sending relevant messages to the right people and that, you know, we talk about segmentation. I always tell people segmentation could be as hard as you want it to be, and it could be complex, or it could be as simple as you want it to be. And, you know, if you are publishing, say, two blog posts a week and you’re sending six emails a week, you’re not saying you’re not doing it well, but you’re probably overdoing it at that point. Right? You might want to send a couple there.

Greg Zakowicz 00:08:25 You want to refine that audience. And I think, are you sending emails to sending emails, or are you sending emails to communicate something? And if you’re if you’re doing the latter, you’re probably doing it well or you’re on the right foot or right path to doing it well. So it’s a somewhat ambiguous answer for you, and I apologize for that. But I think most people, if you look at if you look at your own inbox and you look at emails and you’re like, why are they send me this, I don’t want this thing right here. I think you already know what not doing it well is. And if you get something and you start opening and you keep clicking and opening those messages, you have an idea about what they’re doing well. And it’s either an automated message that’s extremely timely. It’s content you want to see. you know, there’s I think about, well, a client of mine, but MD cancer, MD Anderson Cancer Institute. Right. So I don’t know, I don’t I don’t go there.

Greg Zakowicz 00:09:17 I still get the emails. But even yesterday I got 1 or 2 days ago I got one. And it was something about skin cancer. My dad’s timely and relevant. The sun’s coming out. We’re in a heat bubble down here in North Carolina right now. You know, I’m at the pool with my kids in the evenings. It’s relevant content. I might not be opening all of them, but they’re doing it well. They’re providing me content that is going to be helpful for me. And it’s a it’s a again, a long answer for you, but hopefully, some of it’s gut feel, but some you kind of know when you’re not doing it.

Jillian Leslie 00:09:47 Well interesting. So a lot of people in my audience are solo printers. And something I keep saying is I it’s not coming, it’s here. And your job as a solopreneur is to utilize AI so that you can be more efficient. I use it constantly as a thought partner, but at the end of the day, the way you compete against AI is by being human and that there’s such a great opportunity with email to show up in a human way to harder, I think, to do it like even on social media, where it’s a little more performative.

Jillian Leslie 00:10:30 So what is. So if I were a solopreneur and I am wanting to connect via email and you’re talking about, say, the the skin cancer email, right? Well, what is the balance between me sharing say about me, me sharing personal things or things that like where it’s me versus you, I want to provide you value because I know that you might be in the sun right now and that’s relevant to you. It’s like there are these two sides and I wonder how you think about that.

Greg Zakowicz 00:11:09 But I think it comes down to knowing your audience if you know your audience or not. Everyone, the MD Anderson is probably a bad example there because it’s summertime, so someone’s going on vacation somewhere. Even if you’re in Australia and you’re getting the wintertime, you might be coming over a state for summertime. That’s your escape. So I think it’s understanding your audience. And if you know that they have XYZ challenges or, you know, I think everyone here, if you’re a solopreneur and you have whatever business you are in or whatever service or whatever you’re providing.

Greg Zakowicz 00:11:42 Your audience has a general interest in that. So I think it comes down to knowing your audience and then sending them relevant content. That doesn’t have to be necessarily relevant for that day, but it has to be relevant in their lives. Right. So are you just sending an email like, hey, we had chicken cacciatore for dinner last night as a way to connect with people. I mean, not going to be helpful for you. That’s probably more of a social media post at that point. So if you know your audience well, you know what resonates to them. Is the timing right for the content and the message? Then I think you’re you’re you’re fine on it. And if you know, you start to see people open and no one clicks on it or no one’s taking whatever action you want, it’s a pretty good indication that it’s not the right time or the right content, and you get to play around with it a little bit. But, it doesn’t say it doesn’t need to be rocket science.

Greg Zakowicz 00:12:31 Right? So this is the one thing where it’s like segmented. I always say you can things can always be as hard as you want it to be. It can always be as simple as you want it to be. And I think these are things where, you know, solopreneurs, even if you have 2 or 3 people in your company, you know, doing whatever you do, your time is going to be stretched and you need to maximize that and be it as efficient as possible. I think this is where you mentioned AI before, but like using tools that make that a little bit more efficient. you know, generating ideas for, you know, if you’re a mommy blogger or something, right. Generating some ideas for things to do with the kids. And I can spit out 20 ideas and you can kind of look through and say, this one’s not relevant for my audience, this one probably three weeks ago, you know, and it helps you create content. Then you apply that stuff to your own audience.

Greg Zakowicz 00:13:17 And I think most people, if you’re running whatever in your solopreneur, you’ve got an idea of what your audience is and what they like. And that’s that’s how I would kind of, you know, kind of base it from there.

Jillian Leslie 00:13:29 So you’re mentioning segmentation and analytics, and you say segmentation can be easy. It can be hard. You know, you can have all of these different funnels, that kind of thing. But if again, I’m a solopreneur, where like, how should I think about segmentation? Is it based on interest in my audience? Is it sending people down different paths? Like what is like the 8020 rule on where it would be smart to segment? And also when we’re thinking about the analytics, like, what are the top three things I should be checking after I send an email? And they kind of fit together?

Greg Zakowicz 00:14:12 Yeah. So segmentation. If you’re a solopreneur, you are. The problem with segmentation on a grand scale is that generally you need more people or more time to do it really well.

Greg Zakowicz 00:14:26 What I mean by that is say I have three different segments. So I’m going to simplify it and go, okay, we have three segments. We have x, y and z. And these are my core audiences. These are there like you said, these are my main interests where there’s a distinct difference between them. If you’re doing even one email a week, right, you’re sending out to someone and you’ve got three audiences now you need three emails a week. And that comes with content that comes with maybe images that comes with scheduling. That time can add up. It doesn’t have to, but at that time can add up. And this is why it’s hard. You see a lot of people go, oh, I’m going to segment all the time. And then eventually they fall out of it and they just start setting batch and blast. So here’s what I would say. If you have distinct paths for your audience segment on those, try to limit them. Maybe 2 or 3 at most. Doesn’t just because you segment them doesn’t mean every single message needs to be segmented.

Greg Zakowicz 00:15:20 So if you have something that’s very clearly segmented, three messages or two messages that are for this audience, just send it to them, right? Don’t worry about the other ones. I think the simple way for a solopreneur to do segmentation is to build your key segments, but use a more suppression segments. So as opposed to saying, hey, we’re going to send this message to all three segments today, it’s only relevant for two to the small nuances between the two different versions. You’re going to create really matter at the end of day. And the answer might be no. In that case, just send the same message to your two segments and withhold that third side so you’re not sending that one group a less than relevant message, and you’re not creating more work, you’re just saving them a little bit of time. So that’s how I will look at it. Look at very high level categories, interests, whatever it might be. Here’s your segments there. But you might just want to play around with suppressing segments a little bit.

Greg Zakowicz 00:16:17 So that’s part one. But it looks like you wanted to say something.

Jillian Leslie 00:16:19 So well what I wanted to ask is let’s say am I segmenting audiences say based on different ways they sign up with my email list, am I giving them quizzes like how do you recommend when somebody joins, I know who they are, or let’s say they join and maybe they joined two years ago and now I’m thinking about my business differently, but I don’t like how do I go back and go, well, who are you? Like, do you want these? Like, do you want dessert recipes from me? Or do you want like family friendly dinners? Like how do I like what are the best strategies for continuing to segment my list?

Greg Zakowicz 00:17:00 Yeah. So this kind of comes in two fold. We’ll start at the forward and we’ll kind of work our way back here. So the easy way to do this up front is one tag. If you have a pop up coming up and you’re promising something right in is very clear at that point, you can just have some sort of tag on that pop up form that says, you know, it’s a cookbook.

Greg Zakowicz 00:17:21 So, you know, you have a cookbook tag, and then you can use that tag as a segment filter later and say, give me a one who signed up, has a cookbook interest. you can also do it based on just asking them, right. If you have 3 or 4 simple things, you can either have a on a pop up, a field that either has checkboxes, or if there’s a one and only option, have them, you know, the dropdown the check it there. The third way is really you can do a like a managed preference campaign. So you have a preference form, have people update those preferences. You can send that out to your audience, say, hey, we’re trying to make sure you get the most relevant information possible. Can you take 30s and fill out your interest there? I would always say the one caveat with that is most people will not fill those out. So you get some answers you’re not going to get most. You just have to, which is okay.

Greg Zakowicz 00:18:09 You have more than you did before. Just know it going in and you’re not going to get 100% of your audience. If you do write me a message, I want to learn from you, but you’re not going to get them. You’re not going to get them all to fill that out. So it’s going to be a slow build here. Do your thing retroactively. What you can do. It’s going to be a little bit of patience. But you can look at hey, you know did If you’re recording I say transaction that’s transaction could be anything. It could be downloading something, could be clicking whatever that individual person deems to be a transaction. Look to see what those are for some of your past recipients too. So give me anyone who, you know, converted on cookbooks or converted on, you know, childhood skin like infant skin care or whatever. Right. And then you could just build a segments that way. A lot of time actions will speak louder than, than interest, if that makes sense.

Greg Zakowicz 00:19:05 but I would simplify it as much as possible. Right. The it’s,

Jillian Leslie 00:19:10 Yeah. It’s funny, we like, honestly like the best strategy that I have used is I will ask my audience one question like, you know, are you interested in? And I will literally in text write a this, be this. And I say just reply with A or B. Now at the end, do I have to go back and like, you know, tag them or whatever? Yes. But I have found that the more the easier the like, the less high tech it is, the better response I get.

Greg Zakowicz 00:19:48 So I by the way, I love that example. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna I’m gonna build on that. So I love the example that it wasn’t even thinking about it. So I do get emails. I get fewer of them now than I used to, but I used to have a client years ago that I’m like, hey, you know, you might want to try this. It’s exactly that.

Greg Zakowicz 00:20:04 So they’ll have say it’s a very simplified email. Maybe there’s a graphic or something and they’ll have a button or some sort of text underneath it. Was this email relevant. And there’s a yes no. And you can set up an automation that says, you know, if they click no, remove them from or remove this tag. If they clicked yes, add this tag right. And you let them self segment themselves. Your point of you could just frame that a different way. You put questions in the email and you do the exact same automated setup that just says, hey, if they clicked on a tag, them this, if they clicked on B tag. And this. Right. So I love the example because you threw something in my mind that I wasn’t thinking of right away, but it’s 100% a good way to do it.

Jillian Leslie 00:20:44 Well, what I think you are saying is keep looking for the easy ways. I am the biggest. Like it’s kind of my what directs me is this idea.

Jillian Leslie 00:20:56 This is our whole philosophy for building out MiloTreeCart. Our pop up MiloTree leads is software you use is always better than software you don’t use, even if the software you don’t use is more robust. So we live with that. In fact, I was on a call yesterday with a woman who has all of this, all these cart software, whatever, and she bought my literary cart to kind of test it out because we offer like 30 days. And, and I think that when she first bought it, she was a little like, oh, I’m a little more advanced than this. And then we got on a call so I could talk to her about her experience, and I could see the wheels turning where she said I could use it for this, and I could use it for this, and I could use it for this. And even though she’s like, can I move around the modules on the sales page? And I go, no. And she said, okay, can I ask me other questions? And I go, no, because I want it to be so simple.

Jillian Leslie 00:22:01 And I don’t think those those kinds of things move the needle. What does move the needle is doing it putting your product out there. So I, I want it. It’s funny because our thing is like we zig when other people zag. Other people add tons of features and try to sell those features. And I sell the message, go sell, go do it. So it’s just that is my M.O. so when I hear anybody else say that, that always, like, lights me up because I know too many people who are held back because they want to do it right. And it’s complicated, and they don’t want to watch the YouTube videos, so they end up doing nothing.

Greg Zakowicz 00:22:43 But if you think about it, so you’re perfect. A perfect example of following consumer behavior, right? Consumers, you identify something and you go, you know what. We could probably use this here. What do consumers want from that? And you build it. And to your point, you don’t overly complicate those things.

Greg Zakowicz 00:23:01 Right. And people you said you could see all the wheels. You could see the wheels turning like I said moment there. I think good software and shameless plug that on my side. But we do this. But if you think about the grand scheme of things, we try to make the platform as simple to use. Of course, like everything else, it could be complicated based on what you want to do, but that’s a sophistication level. You think about Wysiwyg. You don’t drag and drop builders, whether it’s a form or an email or a workflow automation template. The more you can simplify something for someone, but given the options to be creative if they want to. The more you simplify it, the more they like it. Right. And I think it doesn’t have to be with email that can be with, you know, the way your website looks. It could be the way you message to people. It’s could be how complex and long your emails are versus sometimes short and sweet works best, you know.

Greg Zakowicz 00:23:53 So, you know, I think people want things to be done simply. They want to be communicated with simply. And it can go from software to a text message. Right. And I think that’s the crux of it there. So you hit on something really well.

Jillian Leslie 00:24:06 So here’s the thing. Let’s go through some basics about email. If I say to you and I get it, I get it like it is all about my audience and what they want from me. But your instinct off the top of your head. Short emails, long emails.

Greg Zakowicz 00:24:20 I like short ones. How short? This changes, you ask me. Six months from now, I might change my mind. So, I am generally a proponent of main clear, visible, short section. Up top could be a hero graphic. If it’s text, fine. Keep the text short and sweet. give me a section underneath that with a clear heading. And that could be it could be anything from recommend the products to, recommend the blogs to what’s new something.

Greg Zakowicz 00:24:52 They’re big buttons, icons, whatever I can click on where I know exactly what I’m clicking into it. If you want to add a tertiary or a third section kind of the same thing, give it a clear heading. Make it so people can either scroll by it from scroll if they’re on their phone, and quickly navigate to it, and then have some sort of recovery call to action down below. And it could be, you get it could be just replicating your navigation bar. It could be just value add. So you know, whatever it is, satisfaction guarantees. Or follow me on Instagram or check me out here. So kind of three sections based on what you’re communicating. Like I’m good with just one image in an email and you tell me what that is if it makes sense for you, I think most of your audience is probably going to be at least two sections, because you’re going to have more to communicate there. maybe you have a recap of different blog articles or something that came out, but, I’m three sections or less and don’t overcrowd those sections.

Greg Zakowicz 00:25:48 Maybe 2 to 4 icons, buttons, images, whatever you want to use there in each section. And you’re done.

Jillian Leslie 00:25:54 Okay. Emojis.

Greg Zakowicz 00:25:57 Love them. Love them. will not cause spam folder issues. Do not worry about it. You can put this is controversial even in-house. But we’ve been we’ve been doing testing on this for ten years. you could put eight smiley faces, exclamation points in a row. You’re good. As long as you have all your other deliverability things set up. You’re sending the right way. You’re not going to mark the spam all the time. Love emojis. What I love about them is you see them. If you’re on your laptop and you’re scrolling through your Gmail or whatever. They add color. Not everyone’s using them, so your eyes automatically go to them. if you’re on your phone, use them. It’s got to be shorter and sweeter with the subject line. But again, it breaks. It puts color where there’s normally a lot of black and white love emojis.

Jillian Leslie 00:26:48 You know how important it is to grow your email subscribers using freebies. However, creating a freebie might not be that intuitive for you. So get my freebie where I’m going to give you the simple ChatGPT prompts to create your own freebie. This is a game changer. To get it. Go to Mylo tree.com/freebie prompts. Freebie prompts. milotree.com slash freebie prompts. Get this now and start growing your list easily. And now back to the show. Subject lines what’s your trick? How many characters? What like does it like? How do you get somebody to click? Because the truth is, you could write the best email ever, provide the most value, and if people aren’t clicking, who cares? That’s like wasted.

Greg Zakowicz 00:27:58 You could also have the best email ever and get tons of opens and no one clicks because your subject line did not match the content, right? So it kind of goes both ways. and a double edged sword there. General rule, you can break this rule, but the general rule now is 21 to 40 characters in length.

Greg Zakowicz 00:28:15 And that’s only because of the truncation on mobile phones. Right. You can go over that. I mean, I get some from checking my laptop and they are 80 to 120. Right? Okay.

Jillian Leslie 00:28:25 So say that again. How many. 21 to 40.

Greg Zakowicz 00:28:27 You said 21 to 40. Kind of your sweet spot. That’s going to be mostly around 6 or 7 words based on what you’re using there. So it’s a general just a general rule. And that’s more for again for mobile phone usage and anything. I think one thing you should be looking at is definitely using that pre header text or the preview text that comes in. There are a lot of times companies will put, you know, read this on your mobile or read this on your desktop right into that first link, but this is the place that’s going to show up if you’re checking your mobile phone. Right. It’s that section underneath there. So use that section to support your subject line. So if you’re thinking, hey, my subject line should be 80 words or 80 characters, Greg’s telling me I got to cut the 40.

Greg Zakowicz 00:29:13 What do I do with these other 40? Well, roll those that back end of that subject line and make that part of that, you know, build that into the pre header. So they see the subject line. Then it’s build upon there. That’ll help with the mobile phone side. but generally you’re 21 to 40 if it helps you. So on our website there is in the resources section there’s a tool section. There is a subject line checker there. It’s free. You don’t have to sign up. You can just go plug a subject line and it’ll kind of grade you based on word count. character length.

Jillian Leslie 00:29:46 Okay. I’ll put a link to that in the in the show notes. Okay. And it will kind of. But will it use one of those pow. Will it say, oh, you used one of those power words or. Well okay. And so for you what what are your like go tos. Is it something where you ask a question. Is it something where you leave something out so that people then are incentivized to click? What do you think gets people excited? Because the one thing about email is we get so much of it, it’s hard to rise above the noise.

Greg Zakowicz 00:30:21 So I’m going to give you the worst answer in the world. You’re never going to have me back on your podcast. It all depends. people will tell you, put in the first name in the subject line will increase your open rates. I’m going to make up a number here. 20%. Does it? I’ve never seen that. Does that work? I’ve it can for some audiences. I’ve never seen it go up 20%. I used to test this with clients all the time. It was always a right. It’s kind of how they are. What I would generally look for is do a subject line. Again, we’re talking about relevance before you know your audience. So what’s going to speak to them? Personally, I like action stuff, so give me a reason to open it. Is it something, something new? Is it, something that’s back in stock or by popular demand? Right. And that could apply to pretty much anything written content, products, software, whatever. I’m in to something to pique my interest versus open this email for something good.

Greg Zakowicz 00:31:17 Right. It’s hey, check out what’s new in in the hood right. So let’s just right here. But I like something action. I like something that’s going to speak to me and something that gives me a reason to open. But that is going that reason is going to be specific based on every single audience, whatever their marketing, their. but I would avoid the things like, you know, putting re you’re not supposed to do this anyways, but putting re colon, you know.

Jillian Leslie 00:31:44 Oh right. As something.

Greg Zakowicz 00:31:45 You should look.

Jillian Leslie 00:31:46 At right.

Greg Zakowicz 00:31:47 Yeah. Yeah I mean technically it’s a violation. It can spam but everyone does it anyways. But like those things annoy me. if my first name is in there I never think, oh, they.

Jillian Leslie 00:31:56 Know me, right? Yeah.

Greg Zakowicz 00:31:58 Right, so I don’t some people might be different than that, but I’ve never seen it scale you one way or the other. So again, 21 to 40 characters. How valuable is the name. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, but how valuable is it in the day? So I like things.

Greg Zakowicz 00:32:12 You know, if you have a product that sells out or something that sells out back in stock, huge, that’s tends to be one of your better ones. It applies, FOMO with it. It implies a sense of urgency. And I’m a big sense of urgency guy. And I apply social proof in it. Right. Because social proof stuff sold out once, right? That’s kind of backed by popular demand as well. or most popular. So those are the three things I would stick to. So I’m going to change my answer a little bit.

Speaker 3 00:32:40 FOMO

Greg Zakowicz 00:32:43 Combined with social proof. Five star rating. Top rated most read backed by anything that applies that other people also love this thing, but generally work really well for you. FOMO if it’s something limited run you know could be 23 cookbooks or the, you know, 20 free download for the first 20 people that do this and then, you know, whatever. So there’s a sense of urgency there. Social proof, I love it. so again, just play with things like that, but give me a reason to open.

Jillian Leslie 00:33:16 And you know one thing that I think happens to all of us is that we see our businesses from the inside out rather than the outside in. And what I mean by that is I’ve got this great thing and I want you to know it’s great. So I’m going to write it as if it’s from my perspective rather than thinking about it from your perspective, saying, why, if I’m you, how would I see this from the outside rather than from the inside?

Greg Zakowicz 00:33:49 I 100%. I’ll give you a couple. I’ll give you a couple of things with that as well. So, I’ll give you a tip at the end. You got to remind me because I’m old and I’ll probably forget here in a second what that tip is. But it’s helped me a lot in my career with subject line writing. So to your point, though, one thing you can do is you don’t have to do this every time, but for a couple times, right? Find a teenager. It could be a pre-teen as well, but they’ll generally go to the emojis.

Greg Zakowicz 00:34:15 Show them ten emails from your inbox right all in a row. Screenshot or do whatever and say which one would you open or which two would you open and why? And then give the exact same 10 to 1 of your peers. So how, however old you are upper 20s, 30s and 40s 50s 60s the same thing and see what they what they say. And you might notice something very glaring from generational differences. Or you might see a lot of overlap. They’re like, oh, I like that verbiage. I like that they told me that. And something no one ever does is asking their peers, right? Because it’s that tunnel vision. You might ask your coworker who’s also sending emails or writing subject lines, and you guys are going to have it’s not groupthink, but you’re going to have similar trains of thoughts because you’ve been doing it for so long. Break out of the mold and ask other people and that’ll actually you. I think you’ll be surprised with what appeals to people outside of your own thing.

Jillian Leslie 00:35:06 I like that I really because I it’s funny, I get on calls with people to talk about their digital product strategies, and I get this comment all the time, like, like I’ll go hear some ideas based on what your niche is and what your blog looks like and what products you want to create. And they look at me like, oh my God, how did you know this? Or how did you come up with this? And I go, because I’m not you and I’m just fresh eyes like, I just, I have no I have no dog in this fight. So I don’t, you know, I’m just going to throw some stuff out there. But it is shocking how getting other people’s outside eyes on things is so valuable.

Greg Zakowicz 00:35:47 100% I’ll give you two super quick tips along with this. So we were talking about AI before.

Jillian Leslie 00:35:54 And then I’ll show you about something else that you’re old and might forget.

Greg Zakowicz 00:35:58 Yeah, I’m already on this, so I got it here. So in the in that same tools section we mentioned before where there’s a subject line tester, there is an AI subject line generator as well.

Greg Zakowicz 00:36:07 So you can just go in there and say type a couple words, right? A it’s a 20% off or new cookbook, 12 recipes, whatever it might be, it’ll spit them out for you. You can just copy and paste them. So that’s one way to kind of break out of if you’re in like writer’s block or subject line, writer’s block, one way to come to use it, the thing that helped me and this was way back when, you know, 16 years ago, I had a boss and we were trying to write subject lines at these emails, and he would say, you know, we’d always give ten subject lines for approval to whoever the content editor was. And the advice was, write ten and then write three. You would never, ever send to your audience. But they could have curse words. They could add anything and just don’t copy and paste the wrong one into your into your email provider. Right? Everyone’s done it at some point, including myself, but, what that actually does is you write your ten first the ones you normally send, and then you write your three that you would never send anyone.

Greg Zakowicz 00:37:07 And what it actually does, it unlocks something in your brain, and it makes you think about the subject a little bit differently. And you might go back to that first ten to go, these five stink and you have a different way to phrase those things. And it’s a really good exercise. I think I would encourage everyone to do, if you’re writing subject lines and you feel stuck to just come up with three, you would never send it ever. And you just frame things in a different way. And a lot of times it can work really well.

Jillian Leslie 00:37:33 That’s so interesting. Now you guys work a lot with e-commerce stores. What are the best opt ins? And we were talking about this a little bit and it seems to be coupons. Yeah. Right. So if you are like a store and you want to get people on your email list, it’s like, how often do you see the 10% off that kind of thing? But like what what works about that? Like are people just looking for a coupon? Like meaning the reason I’m asking this question is because I am talking a lot about freebies and opt ins and coupons and getting people on your list.

Jillian Leslie 00:38:15 And again, I don’t know about you, but like when I give up my email address, it’s kind of like a big I don’t just throw it out there like I, you know, it’s like an invitation into my inbox. So I’m pretty stingy about it. How do you get people to join your list?

Greg Zakowicz 00:38:35 You know, it’s so funny you say that because years ago I started a different Gmail account where I would just sign up for programs, right? So I probably get 600 emails a day from different brands and companies or whatever. I started to become selective with that email address now, like there’s no like I can’t feel I’ve got 20,000 unread messages in there. And I’m like, oh, do you, do you or have you earned my email address? Yeah. So so yeah. With person email addresses it’s also a little bit different. So super quick answer to the first part of that. Do people sign up for the discounts. Yeah I think if we all shop online at some point you probably sign up at the discount and unsubscribed.

Greg Zakowicz 00:39:13 That’s fine. Right. You get what you want. Hopefully the experience was good. You come back for freebies, things like this. I’m sure most of your audience are already doing things like free PDF downloads or something like that, right? Those things can work really well. I would say just simplify those. I think the one thing people, whether it’s subject lines, email content, gated content, if you’re B2B world, whatever it might be, have a little more white space. Don’t overcrowd though, whatever you’re having in there, whether it’s a PDF or something, just make it more digestible, maybe shareable. Other things you can do though, to I always talk about email programs. You want to build exclusivity for your email programs. If you’re collecting SMS or mobile numbers, you want to build exclusivity for your mobile numbers, right? It’s an opt in channel. Make them feel special. Why should I get your emails and things you can maybe do theirs? if you have occasional giveaways, maybe you make that open to your email and SMS subscribers a day before everyone else, and that becomes the value.

Greg Zakowicz 00:40:18 Hey, sign up for early access to XYZ, whatever we have. maybe it’s early access to, you know, new blog content, or every month we’ll put our new email subscribers into a raffle. Right. So and one person wins. So you’re not giving away, say, a download or something for every single person. But once a month you’re giving the way to someone who is a new subscriber, right? And that’s kind of the incentive at that point. So I think you could be as creative as you want. you know, you a nice thing to do. It’s not apples to apples because it is retail. But luxury brands do not discount. And that is always the challenge. Right. You talk to I mean, I used to do consulting and you would get a luxury brand and a lot of consultants would just say, well, you should just discount here, give them 10% off or whatever, and luxury brands will go away. We can’t discount we don’t devalue our product. Look at sign up for a couple email programs for luxury brands and look at how they’re marketing because they’re not offering discounts.

Greg Zakowicz 00:41:15 Their subject lines got to get you to open their advertising needs, gets you to click, and then you got to pay full price for something. And it generally is higher income. Right. So I think it’s a really good way to kind of look at that and see what they’re offering. Sometimes they’ll offer, you know, if they have a brick and mortar exclusive tour of a store or something, but it could be an online, you know, 30 minute online gab session or something like that, or, hey, we’ve got we’re going to do a monthly focus group with some of our loyal email subscribers, where we’re going to cover what topics are on your mind. Tell us the topics you want to hear about. It’s a good way to kind of get product info or whatever info you’re looking at. Content info, directly from your audience. But those people are going to be tend to be more engaged with you. So after you get off that call or whatever communication, that is where they’re giving you feedback, they’re going to feel more connected and ask them to share on social and, you know, take pictures of the zoom call or whatever and put that on social.

Greg Zakowicz 00:42:12 So there’s a lot of things you could do just from a free standpoint. That doesn’t have to be a direct download. Think about experiences even though you’re virtual. Think about getting feedback, and think about early access to different things that you can provide early access for. I’d say sweepstakes or giveaways are generally fine, like raffles. Generally, you would tend to get a lower quality list from that standpoint. if you’re giving something away, make sure it’s going to be something of value that ties into your core offerings. So what I mean by that is if you give away an iPad, anyone their mother might be interested in iPad, right? But not but that’s well beyond your core audience. So think about giving away something that is relevant to your core audience. It’s going to get you a better, subscriber file.

Jillian Leslie 00:42:58 What I like that you’re saying. And I guess I do this, but now that you’re saying it, it’s like, oh, I think about our early customers as our VIPs, and I really try to treat them as such.

Jillian Leslie 00:43:11 They email me, I emailed them immediately back. I know who they are. I feel a personal connection. And because I feel like they are taking a risk on me, on us, on our product. So I want to deliver for them. They’re not anonymous to me. And I think there is something about saying like, I see you, Greg, like I know you and that you go, oh, that’s cool, she knows me, or I want to do this nice thing for you. And even if it’s like kind of lame or whatever, it just feels like somebody has acknowledged me. I don’t mean lame, but I mean, like, it’s not actual dollars or it’s not, you know, I’m not going to get you, give you a new car, let’s say. But I don’t know, you know, it’s weird. It’s kind of like when my dentist knows my birthday because I filled out my birthday on some form and they go, happy birthday. And I’m like, oh, that’s nice.

Jillian Leslie 00:44:07 So there is just something to Being that special customer, that special reader that like if you’re in that segment there, it feels good.

Greg Zakowicz 00:44:18 It’s a community, right? You’re building a community. And I think your audience will 100% respect that because they’re doing the exact same thing. Communities look out for each other. Communities become advocates for each other. And really what you want to do. It’s a slow build, right? We all know it. If your audience, especially if they’re starting out. But if you have listeners today that are going, you know, I’ve got 300 people on my email list and my social is now at my Instagram followers are like 400. You’ve got to start from somewhere and you’ve got to build slowly there. But doing exactly what you’re talking about helps do that. And I talked before about subject lines like social proof, right? Are we using social proof? What other people? That’s all part of community. People want to feel connected to things, and that’s really where it is.

Greg Zakowicz 00:45:04 So I think what you’re doing is great because it’s going to build brand advocates, and they’re the ones who are going to be interacting with you on social and start spreading the word to their friends and family or business contacts or whoever. And that’s how you build communities here. And it doesn’t need to be a 20% discount on everything, right? You can build it organically just by being human. We talked about AI versus human before. You’re being.

Jillian Leslie 00:45:27 Human and I have this.

Greg Zakowicz 00:45:28 Be human.

Jillian Leslie 00:45:29 I think that people are really lonely. I mean, you read these studies that people are really lonely today. And if you can make them feel seen and part of something larger, I think that is going to be the secret sauce as we move forward. I really do. It’s somebody noticing, it’s somebody, you know, paying attention. It’s somebody saying, come on into this group. So I really I like that a lot. So just in terms of if I’m sending, say, a welcome series or something like that, like how would you just quickly structure it for a solopreneur.

Greg Zakowicz 00:46:07 Sure. So here’s how I look at welcome series. People say, what’s the right number of messages? There is no right number. The advice I would give is. Sent as many messages as the things you need to communicate. So this will be a little bit different than what I would tell a brand versus your audience, because your audience is going to be doing more storytelling, more community building. So for brands, I would say I don’t want to hear your don’t tell your your company story in that first message. Some still do it, but they’re signing up because they want to discount. They’re setting up the shop. They have a high intent to do something. That intent is the same for anything, whether you’re selling a product or not selling a product. They are signing up because at that point in their life they’re saying, yep, this content is worthwhile. I want to get communications from them. So here’s my email address. Start mailing me. I think your audience has the ability to introduce themselves a little bit more.

Greg Zakowicz 00:47:06 Hi I’m Greg. Hi I’m Jillian. Welcome to XYZ. So glad you’re here. Try to be human though. Tell them you know what you offer there so you could check back. For exclusive. You know, our family favorite recipes or, you know what? We’re up to the summer or whatever it might be that they are communicating there, but relatively short and sweet. But introduce yourself. Communicate your key call to actions on there so that if you want to drive in a certain pages of your site, make those the primary call to actions. Second message. You know I would probably do something content related. So top read, top rated blog posts. Most commented on blog posts could be, top rated or most helpful downloads if you have downloads, whatever. It might be social proof. Make that second one all about social proof. I do not think you need a dedicated email to invite people to your social networks, because one people know how to find you on social media. Two you probably have those links in your messages anyways, right? You can make it more prominent in your earlier messages as well.

Greg Zakowicz 00:48:21 Nothing wrong with that, but I don’t think you need one to say, hey, by the way, we’re on Instagram and it’s really hard to find. There might be some that poor people are squatting on a name and you know, you make it there. But I think 2 to 3 messages is the most. Even ecommerce brands or most people are going to need. If you find yourself in like, oh, you know what? This one’s only half full, what else can I put in there? Either end the message there. Yeah. Or find a way to put that half content somewhere else is smaller portion of your first two, because then you’re just trying to send the message to send the message. So get them what they need to get them out on board them, but they’re there for a reason. Follow that intent on their, I’m going to take I’m going to take your advance. I’m going to take your strategy advanced just a little bit for me. So hear me out, okay? If you really want to get crazy, a little creative with it and say, I don’t know that we talked about segmenting before, right? If they click a link, we can tag them with something.

Greg Zakowicz 00:49:16 Think about how to do that with your welcome message to first welcome message. Exactly the same goes out to everyone. Hi I’m Greg, welcome to my you know, my site. Here’s what we offer. Set up some you can have an automation says hey if they clicked on say we’ve got three main categories right. It could be let’s say you’re selling services. So SEO content writing and you know, marketing. So hey, if they click on the SEO link let’s send them a message to that’s geared to SEO, but we have the other options as secondary call that if they click on the content writing link. So this could be a blog post or whatever. That’s not a blog post oriented one and make the other ones the secondary callouts, but you could also apply tags that way too. So again, super easy to set up. It sounds more complicated than it is. It’s really easy, but there are ways to kind of have them self segment and self tag themselves without ever asking. right? So these things are doable, but that’s just an advanced strategy.

Jillian Leslie 00:50:13 And I think that’s great. And what I, I know you would know this more than me. That first email that they get, they are most excited about you. Yes. Ultimately they’re going to kind of forget like how many emails do you get from Jackie and Becky? And you’re like, who are Jackie and Becky? I don’t know who these people are. so. But that first email from Jackie and Becky, because I signed up for God Knows what, you know, their makeup tutorials like that first email has the most like best open rates and most engagement. So that’s a great idea to be putting those questions right there, getting those people to answer.

Greg Zakowicz 00:50:56 So generally what that first welcome message. You’re 100% right. Generally, it’ll be the most open and read message you will ever send out of your email program. All right. So using makeup tutorials, what a great example here. Am I going to think about all the things we can tag people with makeup. Are you interested in.

Jillian Leslie 00:51:18 Like how old.

Greg Zakowicz 00:51:19 Are you? I obviously don’t wear makeup.

Jillian Leslie 00:51:20 I know, but it’d be like how? Old?

Greg Zakowicz 00:51:22 Skin tone.

Jillian Leslie 00:51:22 Skin care, whatever. Yeah.

Greg Zakowicz 00:51:26 You know. So are you interested in blush or are you interested in. You know, why you wear a makeup, skin tone, skin color, all these different things, right? Those things matter from a relevance standpoint for people. I know they do it. My wife, I not so lucky. And I just show up and roll out of bed and I’m good to go. So, but these are all things you think about your own, your own audience, your own products, your own content. And find a way and say, okay, what matters to what really matters to people here, you know, and you figure it out within 30s.

Jillian Leslie 00:51:55 I love that, Greg. If people want to connect with you, learn more about you, learn more about Omni and have a question where should they go?

Greg Zakowicz 00:52:08 So I’m an open book. you can Google me and misspelled my last name.

Greg Zakowicz 00:52:12 There’s not many of us in the US, so it’ll autocorrect you. So, X and LinkedIn are the two places I’m most active from a business standpoint. LinkedIn. Feel free to connect with me. I would just put a note in that thing. Just let me know. You heard me on the podcast, so I don’t think you’re trying to sell me something later. Amazon. Super easy. Google us. But Omnicom, all the social handles and we’re pretty much everywhere is going to be slash omni send. Okay. And so quickly.

Jillian Leslie 00:52:41 The value of omniscient like your tiny, you know, 32nd elevator pitch. Why omniscient.

Greg Zakowicz 00:52:50 So we will help you do email marketing easier, faster, and have more success with it. And that’s the goal we are. I always like to say we are customer funded. We don’t have outside investors equity, we produce a tool that our customers love. We have over 100,000 of them, and we have 24 over seven support for all tiers, including the free plan.

Greg Zakowicz 00:53:11 So, we got you.

Speaker 3 00:53:14 Know, I love I love that.

Jillian Leslie 00:53:15 So I love that. And we at MiloTree integrate with omnichannel. You’re one of our email service providers that. Yep. So you can totally use that. Well, I just have to say this was great. I feel like I learned a lot and also it was very validating. And I think that my biggest takeaway, my biggest takeaways from this are like ease of use, like do what’s best, provide value, make it simple. Like these are just the basics.

Greg Zakowicz 00:53:43 Yeah, do not overcomplicate it. It sounds complicated. It is not one small step at a time. Everything you do does not have to be perfect from day one. Right? So you can automate the worst looking welcome message in the world. It’ll still perform fairly well for you just when you have time to go update it a little bit, right? So simplify everything. You’ll have tons of tons of success.

Jillian Leslie 00:54:08 Well, wonderful. I just have to say, Greg, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Greg Zakowicz 00:54:14 Thank you for having me. This was fun.

Jillian Leslie 00:54:16 I hope you guys like this episode. My biggest takeaway from Greg is that segmenting your list doesn’t have to be hard or complicated. There are ways to ask questions to your audience where they kind of segment themselves. And this way, you know how better to serve them. But I like how Greg shares, you don’t want to be making things so overly complicated that you end up not doing anything. And this is why I shared our whole philosophy with MiloTree. It’s all for ease of use to get you selling. If you want to learn more about it, go to milotree.com. If you want to get on a free 20 minute call with me where we can talk about your digital product strategy, I promise you it will be worth your time and I’ll show you MiloTreeCart and you can see if it’s a good fit for you. So again, to do this, go to milotree.com slash meet because I’d love to meet you. And if you have a friend who you think would like this episode, please share it.

Jillian Leslie 00:55:28 Please subscribe to the Blogger Genius podcast. And if you’re liking the show, give it five stars on iTunes. I would be so appreciative and I will see you here again next week.