Ep 169: The Easy Way To Build A List & Do Email Marketing with Kate Emiley

Jaryd Krause (0:00)

“Simply setting up your email marketing for more traffic, and more sales”

Hi, this is Jaryd Krause host of the Buying Online Businesses podcast. And today I'm talking with Kate Emiley, who was in various marketing teams for property firms around Australia until she grew bored of that, and fell in love with building her own business around content marketing, email marketing. Now today, she helps us with content creation, to get more traffic, and then also email marketing to get more leads and to make more sales.

In this podcast episode, Kate and I specifically talk about why and how she moved from her regular job to working for herself in online business and into the online income world. And then we talk about how to set up your email list, we talk about how to capture leads, and how you can do it very, very easily, how you don't need to overcomplicate it, and how you can do this with in a day really, and without too much tech troubles. Even I can do it myself, and I hate tech. And I explained that in the podcast as well.

We also talk about what is the most important email you need to send to your email list. Then we talk about what emails you should be sending them after the first ever email they get when they join your list. And we talk about things like when to send them sales emails, and how you can make money through low sales emails.

We also talked about how regularly should you email your contacts, which is your contacts, which is the really big question a lot of people have and then we talked about different lead magnets, then that can get people on your email list and why you would offer different lead magnets and what a lead magnet actually looks like and what a really good lead magnet actually looks like in terms of value. And there's so much around email marketing within this podcast episode, you're absolutely going to love it. Let's dive in.

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Okay, welcome. Thank you so much for coming on.

Kate Emiley (2:39)

Thanks for having me, Jaryd. Appreciate it.

Jaryd Krause (2:42)

I'm excited to talk about content marketing, where you came from and moving into email marketing. I don't think enough people do email marketing for their online businesses. It's a massive opportunity. And I think it's very undervalued by so many. But I wanted to start out with asking. You started the marketing with some property firms and stuff like that.

And then why did you move into the making money online space? And what was your reason for that? Was it, did you want to get rid of the day job or that sort of thing? I'm, I'm just curious, because everybody here listening has their own reason why they want to get on live. But yeah, I'd love to hear about your journey there.

Kate Emiley (3:21)

Yeah, cool. So, I have been in marketing for over 10 years, I started off. Once I finished university, I have no idea what I want to do. And going into the workforce as a marketing person, there's so much competition. So, I just landed a random job as a marketing assistant at Westfield Shopping Centre as a marketing assistant, which was I didn't even know shopping centers had marketing teams obviously, they do now think about it from a business perspective.

But just as a consumer, you'd never think that that's actually someone's job to go around and create these promotions and, school holiday activities and posters and work with retailers and all that sort of stuff. But I worked in that space with shopping centres. And then I moved into property working for home builders, so in their marketing team, starting off with a really big builder and then moving into more of a smaller boutique builder and I was the marketing manager and that was sort of my goal from leaving any is to become a marketing manager, you're making those decisions, and you're working with the leadership team of the company.

And once I kind of did a year that I was pretty bored, to be honest. And what I want to do like this isn't really aligned to where I want to be. We've got these budgets and nobody really cares, where we're spending the money. They just want us to be in print and have a social media presence, but the return on investment just wasn't really there. And I felt like we've kind of lost that entrepreneur mindset. And I actually started a content site called ‘chief active’ which is health and wellness-based brand and I was wanting it to be like the broadsheets of health and wellness.

So, talking about all the best yoga studios and fitness gyms and interviews with owners of these businesses, I was living in Melbourne at the time and the health and wellness space is huge there. And I was trying to figure out how I could create your site, I loved creating the content, but couldn't quite work out how to make money from it. So, I wasn't getting quite enough traffic to get money from ads. And I was running events and selling products and doing sponsorship things. And there's just lots going on, and I just couldn't quite get my head around it.

And it was after speaking to a lot of these small businesses that I was working out that they hadn't no marketing plan. And they'd spent hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of dollars on these beautiful fit outs of these gyms and yoga studios that didn't know who their ideal client was. They didn't know how to get them into the studio other than Instagram. And it was a real awakening for me that I could actually help these businesses and on a one on one basis. And that's sort of where I started. That's where my marketing consulting business started.

Jaryd Krause (6:13)

Cool. I think it's crazy how many offline businesses tried to go online and have zero idea throw money at it doesn't work and go this, let's go back to basics, and they just stay flat. it's scary to see where they have that hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of dollars in a fit out for a nice cafe.

And they don't know how to spend very, like about 1000 bucks to $3,000 a month on ads to get people in the door. Like it's that's bananas to think about. So, I guess you'll so you didn't really want to move out of your role because you disliked it and you wanted to work for yourself? Or was it just that you it was a natural progression that you just went that way?

Kate Emiley (7:00)

I think it was mainly around, wanting to make the decisions and actually be able to control the marketing and be able to see how marketing actually works. I've found working in corporate, you do this budget and plan at the middle of the year, and you present it to the directors and you get sign off, but then you kind of work through it. But you never have this real. I guess once you become an entrepreneur, you're really wanting to make sure the money that you're spending is getting a return on investment.

And you start doing things that are a little bit more strategic and trying to hustle a little bit more, whereas corporate businesses don't tend to do that they kind of know what works, and they just kind of want to go with what's been happening in the past. And, I was myself getting an interest in this health and wellness space. And that's where that particular business started. And I managed to go part time at my existing role, and then do that on the side. And then it got to a point where I needed to focus on its full time for it to kind of go anywhere.

Jaryd Krause (8:02)

Okay, cool. And what were the things that you discovered that was broad general philosophies and principles that you could implement into these businesses? Within marketing? And is it storytelling, it was just creating content on their social accounts, setting up a website, what because I'm very curious about the offline business world service-based business world, how they migrate to the online world? Because that's going to be beneficial to everybody listening? How could they possibly do it the opposite way as well go from online to offline. So, what were some of the things that built the bridge from getting online traffic into the doors of these service-based businesses?

Kate Emiley (8:44)

Yeah, I feel so many businesses create what they've created for a reason, but they can't quite articulate what that reason is, and who they have designed this business for. Just being able to understand who your ideal client is, and understand what makes them tick, and what are their biggest pain points and what they're coming to you for even a cafe, for example, there's a reason people are coming.

And why do they choose yours over someone else's? Especially being in Melbourne at the time? There are 1,000,001 different cafes, you can choose why? And that was the real catalyst, the starting point where I was having these conversations, and they had no idea and really, really getting to the crux of who that person is. And what you can create for them is key, basically. And how that kind of converts on to the online space is via social media, you are going to be sharing what's going to connect with that ideal client as well.

So not only in the copies or the captions that you write, but also the visuals that you create and that even if you are a cafe, for example, dictate what menu items you create because they have to be visually appealing. Even if it's a yoga studio, you need it to have these beautiful open spaces where you can take gorgeous photography, because that's what people expect from those sorts of places and makes them go. I want to go visit that and see what that's all about. Another big one for especially for the health and wellness space was collaborations.

So, they there was a real thriving entrepreneurial community in in that area. And they were all you know, you've got smoothie businesses, protein brands, influences, lots of different people that are wanting to work together to get their message out to more people. And I think being able to build relationships with other businesses is such an amazing tactic for content. And it's a great way to leverage someone else's audience that they've already worked so hard to create, and so hard to build. You're able to leverage that off each other and create some awesome experiences for new people that are coming into your space, but also for existing people as well.

Jaryd Krause (11:11)

As you we start to unfold some of the things that you've learned some of the things you've done and help people with, it's all fits into what business owners owning an online business should know. And should be doing as well. The two biggest one is knowing who your ideal client is.

And the second one being How do you do a JV basically, that is a huge win-win for both let's dive into the ideal client who is your avatar, literally, the goal is to put yourself in the shoes of that person, say that is hungry on a Saturday or Sunday morning and wants to get what from a cafe, what are the some of the things that you did to find the data to find out who these ideal clients are. And I think it's going to be lent well to online businesses, for people that are creating content, creating stories, and building their brand to speak to that ideal client, what's some of the data that you can use, or you had found that helped you?

Kate Emiley (12:11)

To be honest, I think it's more about what your purpose is, and why you've created this thing and who you want to target more than the data. I think the data is obviously important. Because if you're trying to reach a group of people that don't exist, then it's not going to be beneficial for you. But really understanding what sort of people you want to be attracting and what sort of people you want to be servicing as well. So, what are their pain points? What are them? What do they want to be achieving? And you know, what keeps them up at night? All those sorts of questions that you can answer based on one specific person.

And when you can speak really authentically to that one person, then you're going to be attracting more people that are similar that are going to resonate with content that you're creating and go, Oh, yeah, that's me too.

For example, if we're going to go back to that sort of Cafe example, as a physical business, if even just the language that you use in your captions, you may be really trying to attract a younger demographic, or families or older people. So really understanding who that person is that you're attracting. Spend some time and really pinpoint down who that person is, maybe they've got kids, maybe they're, maybe they've got a dog, and they're coming to your cafe every Sunday morning. It's a ritual for them.

And this is what they order, then you can start to build this story around your brand servicing that person. And while not everybody has kids and a dog and has these particular things that they always order or come every Sunday. They can see themselves in that person as well. Maybe there's one part of it that resonates but just being able to speak powerfully to that person allows you to reach more people, and not just spread the message really thinly across everybody.

Jaryd Krause (14:07)

Okay. And so what else is there that we can do within our content that can help connect with our ideal audience you mentioned, some words like their language, understanding who they are, but how do we convey that in, say, our social media posts or the content that we are creating, rather than just using the words? Are we talking about visuals we're talking about? What are some of the things that can connect with that type of audience in our content?

Kate Emiley (14:35)

Yeah. It really depends on who that audience is. And one way you can really ensure that what you're creating is going to connect with them and start doing a bit of research as well. Looking through things like forums, YouTube, video comments, and Facebook groups just to work out what sort of language they're using and what sort of things they're asking about. So, you say your yoga studio and people are really concerned that maybe they've never done yoga before.

So, they don't want to feel like they're at a place. And maybe that's the client that you're really wanting to target and the words that they start to use, you're able to replicate in the content that you're creating, whether that be blog articles, Instagram posts, YouTube videos, whatever it is. Then that's going to resonate better with them moving forward.

Jaryd Krause (15:29)

Cool. So, once we've got some traffic, sometimes people may come in the door, sometimes people may not how do we I want to move into taking that traffic to being a lead and email marketing? Where do you start with email marketing? Do you have a resource that is going to be valuable to them? Do you have a discount code or get them in the door with a Sunday special? Or whatever it is? What are some of the ways you can get people onto the list? And then we'll talk about how do you how do we market do some email marketing with our lists.

And I think it's going to be fascinating for people that are listening to really identify that what Kate is going to say he can come across into your online business as well. It's not just for the offline business, a lot of the strategies, basically everything you've said, online lends to the online business, like the customer avatar, speaking the language, creating content that connects with them. So yeah, I'm curious, how do we start to get these leads and start our email marketing process working?

Kate Emiley (16:29)

Yeah, like you said, Jaryd, like me, and you both focus on email marketing, because they're service based businesses in the online space. And I work a lot with service-based businesses now in that online space. So, your coaches and consultants and all those sorts of people. And, yeah, email marketing is something a lot of people shy away from, I think it's really confusing and overwhelming. And there's a lot of tech to get your head around and things like that, which is so not the case, you can really strip it back and get started really easily.

You don't have to make confusing, complicated sales funnels and spend the most on, a platform, you can really just get set up. And once you sort of got you’re a few things in the pipeline, and you start feeling a bit more comfortable, then you can kind of take it to that next level as well. So, the first thing to start off with is choosing a platform, which, is a really tricky thing to recommend to people, especially from a generalist perspective, because there's so many platforms out there, like, they've all got their pros and cons. But, MailChimp is one of the big ones that a lot of people go with.

I think a lot of people are turning away from that one at the moment, just because it is quite expensive as you start to grow your email list. And if you are a content platform, you probably are going to start growing your list quite quickly. And that can get quite cost prohibitive. Mailer light is one that a lot of small businesses are starting to play with. I personally haven't tried it, but I've seen a lot of really good things about it. And as almost the MailChimp killer I've heard referred to.

So that's a really nice one if your budget is an issue, but other platforms like Convert-Kit, or Active Campaign flow, desk, and so on. But yeah, choosing one, most of them have free trials. So, you can always test out a few and see which one aligns with you. But I think one of the big things to consider is where you're wanting to take the business or where you're wanting to take your email strategy, not just choosing a platform that's free at the moment because it may not be able to do all the things you want it to do in the future.

But then from there, basically putting a form on your website, start there before you get into any more strategic stuff, put a form on your website, encouraging people to sign up, don't say sign up to my newsletter, try something a little bit more creative than that, depending on your niche, what you're going to be actually sharing with them and give them a little taster of what that looks like what that world looks like. And setting up that welcome email as an automation first off as well is really really important and people forget that one.

Jaryd Krause (19:03)

Yes, let's come to the welcome email and then more sequences from then on and but I wanted to touch on what you're saying is like the hardest thing is people think it is hard to set up an email campaign, form on your site and have it connected to an email list. Like we personally love Active Campaign. It's a bit more expensive than some of the other ones but it's got a lot of good functions and I think there's a really good for offline businesses with what you can do with it. But just as an example, I bought a content site. It's a very small content site. We're going to get it from like $400 up to two grand ($2000) that's we're going to do a case study on it.

We want to get it to two grand ($2000) per month by the end of the year, which we're on track to do and it didn't have an email capture list and I just thought let's do something quick cheap, easy free. did what everybody like what you mentioned is jumped on MailChimp can be Build it up to 2000 contacts for free. And you can easily create a form on your site. And you can start building an email list this way. And it doesn't need to be hard. It took me I hate Tech, I am so bad at it. I'm not a developer, it even worries me trying to find the good developer. That's how much I dislike tech and WordPress and stuff like that.

But for an example, guys is don't let that hold you back, you can do it, it took me very little time. And for those of you who are thinking about that case, study, check it out on YouTube, I'm going to be going through and giving income reports and what we've done each month to get that growing. But let's come back to this welcome email, you can't just put somebody on your list and then just ghost them there, then you send them an email, Hey, buy my stuff, they're going to be like, who is this stupid, scammer person, you really need to build the brand. And I have some ways that I love to do that. I personally get a lot of emails from people saying I love your emails, and I send a lot of emails almost every single day.

Kate Emiley (20:58)

That's awesome. You can't get anything better than someone actually replying to broadcast email and replying to you personally and saying I love today. It's like, that's not part of people's common behavior. It's not like social media where people weren't already known. They need to comment and things like that. So, to be able to get that is awesome. Well done.

Jaryd Krause (21:18)

Thank you so much. Yeah, I've spent a lot of time on it. But I've, I've worked out a really good onboarding process for putting people into my email list. And I'd love to hear what you start to do when you are how you would nurture somebody that has come onto your email list, what goes into a welcome email, and then what comes after that?

Kate Emiley (21:37)

A welcome email is the most important thing to set up. Even if you haven't got the time, or the strategy to create a nurture sequence, that sales funnel or whatever, just get your welcome email set up. And it really doesn't have to be complicated. You just want to talk about who you are, why you're an expert in what you do, how they can connect with you somewhere else, whether you're on social media, or you've got a YouTube channel, or you've got a blog or something like that, and what they should expect from your future emails.

So, what are you going to be talking about? What are you going to be sharing with them, if you're a nutritionist, maybe you're sharing like recipes and tips and stuff. But someone else will be sharing something completely different, like you sharing about your case study, you can tell people, you're going to be sharing a real-life case study with them. So, setting up that expectation from the start is going to make them look out for your emails in the future, because they're going to know what you're going to be actually sharing with them.

And if you can send them that welcome email immediately after they subscribe, then they're going to already have that really nice feeling about who you are, and have built a bit of trust with them, especially if they're completely new to your world, like they've just landed on your website, somehow, maybe they found your blog article on Google, and they're completely new to who you are. Then this is going to be a really great way to give them that little snapshot into what you do, who you serve, and why they should trust you.

Jaryd Krause (23:00)

Yeah, I love that. I also think it's really good to disqualify people on our email lists, where somebody might sign up, and then they get your first welcome email, and like, that's no good. And they go through a few more and they're like, I don't really like this, I'd rather people be off my email list.

So, I'm not paying to host them on my email list, and sending people emails that they don't want from me, which can ruin my brand and ruin my reputation trying to get in front of somebody that wants nothing to do with me. So that's why I send so many emails to get people off my email list if they don't like what I have to share.

Kate Emiley (23:42)

Yeah, like unsubscribes not a bad thing. Obviously, if you see a massive peak, if you send a particular email, then maybe have a look at what that email was about. Maybe it didn't quite resonate with them, or something that you said, just didn't work with what you use, how you set up what you're supposed to be sending.

But yeah, unsubscribes from something like a nurture sequence isn't a bad thing, because like you said, it's going to disqualify them. And it's going to, it means it's not going to affect your deliverability it's going to improve your rank ratings and all that sort of stuff.

Jaryd Krause (24:12)

Cool. there's a such thing as email deliverability. You guys can go and google that we won't get into that Tech part of the email. I want to ask you from there. What are some of your top sort of very general statement tips, though philosophies and principles that you use for your email marketing, moving forwards from join the list? They've been on there for a week or two? What do you do in the timeframe to get them to possibly a sale? What are some of the things?

Kate Emiley (24:40)

Yeah, so I would usually encourage people to set up some sort of nurture sequence or sales funnel straight from the start. So the welcome magnet acts as the first email in that funnel, basically, and you can set up something really simple as just like a five part funnel to get them through to the point whether it is to a sale or whether it's to the point Write that you're saying, Hey, I sell stuff, here's what I do, here's what you can pay me for, if you are interested in going to that next level, and so that yeah, the first email, Yeah, you're welcome email, which will go out immediately.

And then the next day, I would send out an about email, which really talks more to your story, whether that they about why you started or whether there's some sort of pivotal moment in your business, or what's going to resonate most with that, again, coming back to that ideal client, what is going to make them go, wow, this person is like me, or they know about me, they can help me and then working into more of a content approach for the next two emails talking about maybe some sort of myth that you might want to bust around your industry, or some tips or strategies or things that are going to help them take action or to make a change in their life or their business or is going to help them in some way.

And then then in that fifth email, talk about what you sell. I'm not saying list your services, I'm saying more talk to something specific, that is going to help them take what they've learned, or what they've kind of building this understanding about you over the last four emails is going to take them to that next level and what you're wanting them to do next.

Jaryd Krause (26:18)

Awesome, I think it's really good to have that go from welcome, and have a few emails before the sale to really build your brand and build a relationship with that person on your list. And then those who are interested will stay for more, and they're more likely to going to go through and buy and those who don't like what you're saying in terms of your math, and whatever you have to say we can get them off the list. Which is a good thing for us as well.

So, I wanted to ask from there, how often do you run sales? What's the general rule? Like? Do you would you do a sale every month or every second week? Or how often would you do it throughout the year? What's and then how much content in between each sale? Email marketing pieces of content? Would you send?

Kate Emiley (27:06)

Yeah, it really depends on what sort of content you're already creating and what you are sharing with them. So, if you're able to work out whether that person through segmentation, or even if they've downloaded a lead magnet, which is something we can talk about in a minute as a strategy for list building. But if you know what it is that you offer, that's really going to help them make that transformation.

And it's going to make that transformation easier, you might go to integrate more of a sales messaging a lot more frequently. Because they're already at that point that they know what they need. They just need a little bit of coaxing along the way. But if they're completely cold to you, like they're not warmed up to what it is that you do, maybe they need some more content around tips, strategies, case studies, all those sorts of fun things that you can start to just go on a regular newsletter cycle of maybe a two week or fortnightly newsletter, at least, try not to go monthly.

I think that's way too long of a time period to go without talking to somebody. Try and set up fortnightly, if you can weekly, amazing, if not fortnightly, okay, and just build a bit of consistency in what you're doing. And then just start to sort of integrate these emails these sales emails because they're not going to have the same sort of impact. If you just drop them in all the time, you're probably going to have more unsubscribes people who are going to be like, Oh, this is just a salesy website, let's just get off this email list. Unless they'd hyper relevant and they're really going to help them make that change.

Jaryd Krause (28:36)

What you said about consistency is so juicy. I think too many people go in too hard, too quickly, too hot and heavy, and burn out on the email-train. And I think if you go call, I'm going to send one, or I'm going to send three a week, or I'm going to send two a week. And if that's too much for you, after two months, then your email list who's regularly getting that they're like, Well, what's happened is something wrong with their business is you know, what's happened, you've just called me you ghosted me, what's happened to our relationship here that you started building with me.

And I think that consistency at the start, even if we were to do one per month, like you said, and then if you can do that over a couple of months, you like this is good consistency of minimal amount of emails, and then chunk it up, as you have more time and feel more comfortable with it. So, I'm so glad that you said consistency, because that's absolutely huge.

Kate Emiley (29:32)

It's setting up that expectation for the subscriber as well to know that they're going to expect to hear from you every fortnight or every week, or every month on roughly the same day, ideally, roughly the same time, same day each time and then yeah, and then they notice it to look for you in the inbox because the inbox is a very busy place for a lot of people. So, to really be able to see and go oh, yeah, that's right. They come every fortnight and they can remember who you are?

Jaryd Krause (29:59)

Excellent, now tell us about some lead magnet strategies or different types of lead magnets people could run?

Kate Emiley (30:06)

Yeah, so a lead magnet or a freebie or an opt-in is, by far the best strategy for building an email list, especially if you're a content creator or a service-based business. Because generally, you can't just be offering discounts on what you do, maybe you don't have a product, maybe have a one on one service. So, you don't really want to be discounting that either. So, having some sort of lead magnet, some free value packed piece of content that you can give your new subscriber, that's going to show a transformation.

So, you want them to have a quick win straight away from whatever it is that you're gifting them, you don't want it to be like, what was the point of this thing, I have no idea why I might even sign up for this. I know I've signed up for a million in one lead magnets in the past, and a lot of them have just sat in my downloads folder, because I took a quick look at it, I was like, this is not what I expected at all. You don't want to make it too long.

You don't want to make it too short, you want to make it something that's really going to help them take action. So, it could be a worksheet, for example, which takes them through a few questions that they can interact with. Or it might be a guide, which takes them through a lot of different strategies that they can help to do something, I've got a few different guides, which I promote for my YouTube channel. I found that to be the best form of content for me.

And it's something that sounds really valuable as well, it sounds like oh, this is going to be full of some takeaways and things like that. But you could also do like a mini-training or a masterclass, or those sorts of live experiences are really popular for lead magnets as well if you have a personal brand, but if not, if it's more of just a really value packed piece of content, then yeah, like a guide, or even a quiz as well as another good one.

Jaryd Krause (31:55)

I think the guides are a really good one to start with, and then work on something that's more relevant when you start to know more of who your audience is. I think once you have a lead magnet for those who do opt-in, I think it's super valuable to just blow them away with how much value you put in that lead magnet. But I'm so glad that we got you on Kay to talk about email marketing, because it's fascinating, not enough people value it. It's very undervalued.

And I think more online business owners and offline business owners should utilize this because it can be your main revenue source if you know how to do it. Well. So, thank you so much. Okay, where can we send people who want to find out more about what you're doing with email marketing and content marketing?

Kate Emiley (32:40)

Yeah, I have a YouTube channel. So, youtube.com/kateemiley. I share lots of videos on there, usually fortnightly, a lot about email marketing, but other content strategies as well. And then obviously my Instagram so just Kate Emiley on Instagram.

Jaryd Krause (32:57)

Awesome. Thank you so much talking about lead magnets. Guys. If you want a good example of a lead magnet and how much value I give in my lead magnet, I have a Judeans framework that you can follow and I have a video that explains how to use it. You can check that out on buying online businesses.com That's its guys. I'll speak to you soon. Thanks so much, Kate. Really appreciate it.

Kate Emiley (33:14)

Thank you so much, Jaryd.