Podcast 14 email marketing by Autopilotyourbiz

Podcast – Email Marketing Software and Set Up Tips Autopilot Your Business Podcast Transcription

Andrew McCauley: Hello everybody! Welcome to Podcast #14. This is Andrew McCauley and this podcast is going to be talking about email platforms, email deliverability, everything about email and of course the podcast would not be complete without Heather Porter. Hello!

Heather Porter: Here I am. Hello, hello, everybody! exciting you make emails sound!

Hello, Andrew!

Email, how

Andrew McCauley: I know. Well, email is like everywhere, right? I mean, some people check it the very first thing they do before they even go to the toilet when they wake up in the morning. Now that you can check email on phones, iPads, on all sorts of devices, it just means that it‟s everywhere and I know that you and I get slammed with email all the time and it becomes like a drowning fountain after a while. I don‟t think email is going to go anywhere. I think it is going to be here for a while yet and we thought we would talk about emails today.

Heather Porter: Very exciting and some people check is at 3 a.m. in the morning from their phone in bed.

Andrew McCauley: Some people do. Sometimes when you are waiting for a specific email, that could be the case. When your phone goes beep, you are going to look at it. Anyway, email is ruling the world and it is certainly becoming a very, very good source of traffic for your business. As long as you use it correctly and you do not use it incorrectly or wrongly, it can be very, very powerful. So, we are going to talk a little bit about emails and what sort of platforms people are using to deliver those emails today. What do you want to start with Heather?

Heather Porter: Before we jump in, actually, question is, is email really dead because we keep hearing that. Is it dead? Is it even worth it?

Listen to the audio version of this document HERE Get your FREE Online Survival guide at www.autopilotyourbusiness.com © 2013 AutoPilot Your Business. All Rights Reserved. Note: We of course can't promise that all links mentioned in this document will be live, and if you stumble upon any that aren't, we apologize!

Podcast – Email Marketing Software and Set Up Tips Autopilot Your Business Podcast Transcription

Andrew McCauley: Well, I don‟t think it is. I don‟t think it is dead. I think it is worth it, yes; I don‟t think it is dead and I don‟t think it will die anytime soon because email is the one thing that goes to a constant address. If we are talking about communication with people between platforms say Facebook or Twitter, you have to log in to each of those platforms to talk to each other whereas email just like a cell phone is a constant place; it‟s is the one spot where you know everything will come to in one hit. So, you don‟t have to keep logging into other platforms. Does that make sense?

Heather Porter: Yeah, absolutely. It‟s a great point actually. So, I guess a couple of things about email too that people don‟t necessarily know is that it is so strongly regulated and that‟s okay, that‟s great but there is lot of tools now that can help you kind of cut through the noise and the regulations and specifically there is an act, the Can‟t Spam Act that has come out several years back that. It‟s basically saying that you can‟t send emails to people that don‟t want to hear from you and you always have to have an unsubscribe area at the bottom of all your emails so somebody can get off of your list if they want to. So, things have tightened up a lot and that‟s okay because there are some tools that we are going to share with you today that are really easy and make is easy to actually work within the confines of the new rules.

Andrew McCauley: Yes, I think that came out around 2003 and it came after a whole bunch of people complaining that they were getting just these messages from random people and it took their time to open them and read them. Now, these days email programs like Gmail and Outlook and Macmail have some pretty serious spam filters that they can really narrow it down and get rid of a lot of the crap because there is a lot of crap that‟s out there and you want to make sure that you are standing out above and beyond the rest. So, we are going to talk a little bit about that today as well.

Heather Porter: Yeah. So, so let‟s jump straight in with what is the difference between something like Outlook or Entourage or Macmail or any of those programs that we use, even Gmail versus an email program that you actually send emails through. So, I will start with at least I guess what I see the differences as and please jump in and let me know your thoughts as well but Outlook and those sorts of programs are where you communicate with your friends and family and individuals, yes, colleagues and coworkers and clients but in a individualized fashion. So, they are Listen to the audio version of this document HERE Get your FREE Online Survival guide at www.autopilotyourbusiness.com © 2013 AutoPilot Your Business. All Rights Reserved. Note: We of course can't promise that all links mentioned in this document will be live, and if you stumble upon any that aren't, we apologize!

Podcast – Email Marketing Software and Set Up Tips Autopilot Your Business Podcast Transcription

more like “Hey! How is it going? Here is the information that you wanted.” It‟s very much based on more of a one-one-one communication or small group communication whereas these email platforms that exist are built to market to a list or a database.

Andrew McCauley: Before you go any further, you are talking about sending emails not receiving them, right?

Heather Porter: That‟s correct, yes. I am specifically talking about sending emails.

Andrew McCauley: Sending emails. So, Outlook, Gmail, Macmail, Thunderbird, Eudora all of those are good for sending out one or two emails to people. I mean, you can send a couple of hundred a day but that‟s throughout the day. You are not going to send it en mass because these programs really will not let you do that too well, right.

Heather Porter: No and they are actually linked directly to your mail sever and now with the tightening with the Can‟t Spam Act, as a web hosting company or hosting company these companies are actually limiting the amount of emails you can send out from these platforms, from your outlook and standard now is around 60 to 100 emails and hour. You are lucky if you are able to send a 100 emails in an hour and that‟s simply because if you are sending emails, a lot of emails, from you Outlook and your Entourage then what happens is it goes through your mail server and if somebody were to say “Hey! I don‟t want your email” and they make a complaint then that mail sever that hosts the whole bunch of other websites and email accounts can get what‟s called black listed and therefore nobody on that server can send emails out. So, that‟s why there has been a huge move towards no longer using your personal email accounts to send out marketing related emails en mass to go into using these tools instead.

Andrew McCauley: Right. So, before getting to the other platforms, just so people are aware, you can still use your email address but send it from these bulk platforms. Is that right?

Podcast – Email Marketing Software and Set Up Tips Autopilot Your Business Podcast Transcription

Heather Porter: Exactly. That‟s the beautiful thing, it‟s that these platforms, the emails look like they are still coming from you but they have the unsubscribe link down below and they are managed and monitored through these specialized email platforms that have a whole other set of rules and servers to handle your emails that your personal account just cannot simply do.

Andrew McCauley: Great. So, if you have a got a list or you are building a list, then let's talk about some of these platforms that you can use to put the names you are collecting into the list and then you can send them information on a regular basis as many as you like, right?

Heather Porter: Yes. So, let's start with some of the names of these platforms that exist, the popular names out there. So, we have Aweber, we have Mailchimp, iContact, GetResponse, Constant Contact, Sendpepper and the list it goes on and on and on.

Andrew McCauley:

There are literally hundreds of them, right?

Heather Porter: There are, there are. Some of them are free, some of them cost and all of them do cost based on how many emails that you have in there. So, eventually if you reach a certain cap of emails that you want to send out, certain amount of emails every month, then the prices go up from there but ultimately when you are just getting started, I mean even with Mailchimp you can have a couple of thousand in there for free initially as you are just getting started and building. So, in these platforms basically you sign up on their websites and you are given a username and password and you can go in and basically set up your preferences which is what you are going to appear in a footer of the email, your business name, your address, all the personal information about your business. So, you have to set that up initially but what these tools allow you to do is a couple of really cool things. You can either import people‟s names that you have. So, for example if you an Outlook contact list or you are just working from an excel document and you have all list of your contacts in there, business cards, and you are putting them into an excel document, you can

Podcast – Email Marketing Software and Set Up Tips Autopilot Your Business Podcast Transcription

actually import that file into your new email account, your email platform and then all of the sudden all those names would just appear in there and be ready to market to. So, you can import people and you can also manually enter people. So, if you get a business card you can log into your account and you can just say “Boom! I have a new contact. I am just going to enter them in here.”

The other thing you can do is you can have automated entries coming in off of the internet and you do that through what‟s called an opt-in form or a web form. You may have gone to lot of other peoples websites and you see “Get my free e-book”, “Get my audio program for free”, “Enter you details below”, newsletter and the list goes on and on and on. So, these opt-in forms are actually a part of these email programs. You can build these little forms in your email program and stick them on your websites so you now have names coming into your email program automatically which is really cool. Yes, I guess that is really you know the two key points of getting names into these programs.

Andrew McCauley: build those forms?

Do you have to know how to code websites to be able to

Heather Porter: Not necessarily. I mean, what‟s gotten really cool about some of them is that when you are building a form, you can actually design it yourself. So, you can just say “I want that a bit blue” or “I want this font bigger” and if you know how to use a word document you can design a form in these and what they have is a couple of different options where when you are saving your form you can save it as something called a java script or you can save it as HTML and I know this is a little techie but not really. So, I will explain what they are. So, java script is something that you as somebody that has no idea about code can literally copy and paste into your web pages. It is easy as copying and pasting a YouTube video onto your webpage and because you have made it look nice and pretty in the program itself, making this bit blue and this bit purple or whatever, it automatically pulls through your formatting. So, you have a relatively nice looking form that you can stick on your website. HTML is what you would give to a web developer, somebody that can really make it look amazing. So, if you want something to look very fancy, you have your e-book graphic in there, you have a whole bunch of cool little graphics and things and arrows, “This is where you get my e-book”. If you want something that looks amazing like that, then chances are you probably just go on Elance or oDesk or Fiverr Listen to the audio version of this document HERE Get your FREE Online Survival guide at www.autopilotyourbusiness.com © 2013 AutoPilot Your Business. All Rights Reserved. Note: We of course can't promise that all links mentioned in this document will be live, and if you stumble upon any that aren't, we apologize!

Podcast – Email Marketing Software and Set Up Tips Autopilot Your Business Podcast Transcription

even and just get somebody to help you put that on your website but making it look really amazing in the process. Yeah, not too hard.

Andrew McCauley:

I think it‟s a little technical.

Heather Porter: No, I think this is as far as deep as I am going to go with that. Look, all these programs allow you to build these forms. There are opt-in forms or they are called mail forms are well. They all have different words for them but they all allow you to build them and then stick them on your website. One key thing I guess about it as well as is you don‟t just build a form for the sake of building a form. Each of these platforms allows you to build something called a list; you can name a list. So, for example, Andrew, you mentioned earlier you can sign up for newsletter. So, you may have a form that is just for your newsletter and then in your email platform you have a list that is called newsletter people. So, that form links to that list. Therefore you know when you log in everybody on this list has come into that list either from that form that you created or because you have manually put them in as we just discussed before.

Andrew McCauley: So, you are essentially putting people into groups so that you know exactly where they came from so if you wanted to market to them differently down the track, you could go along and market to them however they arrived in your list.

Heather Porter: Exactly, yes. So, you might say “My newsletter is ready to go. I am just going to send it to the newsletter people because they are the ones that want it” but then you might have a special and then you would send that out to everybody, so you pick your newsletter people, you pick other people that came in from your free e-book form, you might pick your friends and family that you manually entered over here and then you can send that email out to all your different groups if you want if that makes sense at that time.

Andrew McCauley:

Sure, sure, okay. Awesome!

Podcast – Email Marketing Software and Set Up Tips Autopilot Your Business Podcast Transcription

Heather Porter: Yes. So, that‟s basically the form or the way of getting the emails in again manually or you can put these forms or you can even put them on Facebook. How cool is that! You can actually do a little Facebook app or page on you Facebook and stick a form straight on there and people can sign up to your list straight from your Facebook page.

Andrew McCauley:

That awesome!

Heather Porter: That‟s a little bit more advanced but that‟s really cool and something you guys definitely, definitely must do because, again, Facebook is another platform, it‟s something that‟s owned by somebody else and if you can stick your form on there and start to get your own list being built externally in Facebook, that‟s a really cool thing to do.

Andrew McCauley:

Yeah, right. Okay, cool.

Heather Porter: So, that‟s forms; that‟s manual entry. A couple of things, I guess, that‟s really interesting to know about these platforms is that they automatically put a „manage‟ or „unsubscribe‟ button underneath every single email that you send out. So, you do not even have to format that and it does it for you to comply with the Can‟t Spam Act. So, every single email that it sends out it says “If you no longer want to get these emails, click here to unsubscribe.” So, you are very much complying with the laws and looking all professional and polished and taking care of your list which is most important with these things.

Andrew McCauley:

Yeah, right.

Heather Porter: So, that‟s that one.

Podcast – Email Marketing Software and Set Up Tips Autopilot Your Business Podcast Transcription

Andrew McCauley:

Good.

Heather Porter: And how do they work because I just actually was having this conversation with a client who very accidently on our mail server sent out 500 emails and it all went out the wrong way and he started getting complaints from people because he forgot he had to go into his email system instead and send it out there; he was using his Outlook. So, dangerous, dangerous and then it started blocking our server. It started doing a lot of crazy things. Another interesting part and we had a great talk about this and he said “What‟s the difference really? I mean, I know that there is a „unsubscribe‟ button and all that but what else is different about it?” Here is the biggest you as a business owner would want to know. Using these systems, they basically have the highest deliverability rate out of anything you could ever even wish, dream, or desire to do yourself from your own Outlook or your own mail program on your computer. The reason why is that these email programs they exist to go around the world and make good and make friends with all the different big, big, big servers all over the world to always make sure that they are complying with the rules.

Andrew McCauley: Before you go any deliverability? What does that actually mean?

further

what

you

mean

Heather Porter: Sure. A lot of people don‟t know this but when you are sending out an email it never ever, ever, ever makes it to the person it‟s intended to be sent to and that happens for a whole load of different reasons. Some of which it‟s coming from your personal computer; that‟s actually a big reason that they never get anywhere because your computer and your mail server is not secure enough for other mail servers to accept it. So, that‟s a big reason and there is a whole bunch of other reasons – you are using the wrong words and it‟s not formatted properly which we will have some tips for you on that in a second – but that‟s deliverability, that fact that you are sending an email, does it actually make it to the person. Then there is a whole percentage of deliverability. If you are sending an email 80% actually get it, that‟s 80% deliverability. So, that‟s what that means.

So, back to I guess how these systems really work. So, they really are there to constantly make sure that they are up on all the rules and the owners of these

Podcast – Email Marketing Software and Set Up Tips Autopilot Your Business Podcast Transcription

platforms and their development team goes out to all the other mail servers and says “Am I complying? Are you going to send my emails if I have clients who are sending emails to you here in Germany, are you here in Germany that can distribute it to all the people in Germany for me?” So, they are just making good relationships around the world.

They also do what is, I guess, known as more drip feeding of emails. So, in order to also comply with the rules and play nice with all the different mail servers you can‟t just say “Boom! I am going to dump 50,000 emails on you immediately.” They have to drip feed them over time in a certain way. So they are releasing a chunk at a time over a time period so there is no clogging.

Andrew McCauley:

What sort of time frame…?

Heather Porter: Quick, quick, quick. So, know if you have a huge list, it might be an hour to two hours but if you have a list of a couple of thousands, 5 minutes but it is different than having everything go out at once than kind of staggering it over 5 minutes. It‟s the difference of having your email delivered or not delivered. So, that‟s what they do as well. So, they do that. Then they also allow you to do something really cool which is track to see if your email is considered a spam. So, they have a tool, it‟s a spam tool and it scans your email for certain words, like porn words, other words that are not liked are „free‟ or „you are going to get rich‟, any of the wealth words, „rich‟, „wealthy‟. Those are considered spam words because a lot of the spam that has gone out in the past has used these words. So, now emails will no longer get delivered if you use it. So, all these email platforms like Mailchimp and Aweber they will actually say “You know what? You have a spam score of like 6 on this mail which is really bad and that means that basically no one is going to get it. So, you have to correct it and here are some recommendations on how to do that.” So, that‟s another cool thing.

Andrew McCauley: Good. The companies themselves, it‟s in their best interest like the platforms like Aweber and Mailchimp, it‟s in their best interest to make sure that your spam score is good because otherwise they get penalized too, right?

Podcast – Email Marketing Software and Set Up Tips Autopilot Your Business Podcast Transcription

Heather Porter: Always and they will shut down your account if you are not doing the right things by them. So, you need to make sure your emails are not spammy. You also need to make sure that everybody on your list has asked to be on your list. So, often times you will find if you are signing up for one of them and you have an excel spread sheet of say 2500 names that you have been collecting over time, if you import that, you are not going to immediately be able to email to these people; you have to first talk to the company and explain to them how you got those names and why they have agreed to get your information – very important – or they might not even open your account in the first place. They do that to protect you to make sure your emails are always getting delivered to the absolute highest way they can.

Andrew McCauley: email platforms?

Okay. So, what else do we need to know about emails and

Heather Porter: I guess really we have talked about the difference between your own personal accounts and platforms that exist out there. Again, we will list these links on our website for you on http://www.AutopilotYourBusiness.com/Podcast. We will list these under our „Resources‟ page and also under the episode. So, you can go out there and research them yourselves. So, we have talked about that. We have talked about, I guess, really how they work, how they run but I know that some people are going to want to know “Well, once I have the form and I am collecting emails on my different websites and maybe even the Facebook, what do I do? Like if I am giving away a free e-book, how does that all work?”

Andrew McCauley:

What‟s the next step?

Heather Porter: Yeah, what‟s the next step.

Andrew McCauley:

Alright, let us know what do we do with that.

Podcast – Email Marketing Software and Set Up Tips Autopilot Your Business Podcast Transcription

Heather Porter: I want to roll. I just want to keep going. Alright, cool. Here is the big thing. So, when you are giving away free e-book what you want to do is have web page on your website where you have that e-book downloadable. So, it‟s a file that somebody can click on and download to their hard drive, to their actual computer. If you are giving away a MP3, same thing; you want to have that file on a webpage that somebody could click on and download. So, how do you actually get that file to the person that has signed up for? It is very easy. They fill in their details in the form. Their details are sucked through into your mail platform and then you are responsible for writing a welcome email, an actual first email to that person which is known as an auto responder because it goes out automatically to that person when they fill that form out. So, you are responsible for writing an auto responder with a link in that email that tells them where to go and collect that free thing that you put on your website. Now, caution, caution, caution – please do not ever actually try and link directly to your file on your server. What I mean by that is don‟t just load a PDF document on your server; get your webmaster to do that for you and get a link to it and then just stick that in your email and the reason why is because now people are checking the emails from all over the place, from their phones, from their iPads and their computers and if they click on that link and it‟s an actual file, chances are of them actually getting that file without any errors is very, very slim. Instead, you want them to go to that webpage that you set up with the file on the webpage and that‟s a really key point for all you guys that you need to do. From now on out in all of your auto responders and your emails, whenever you are giving stuff away for free, always you want to send people to webpage rather than just trying to attach or link to file. By the way, you can‟t do attachments either; that‟s considered spamming as well and people will never get your emails. So, does that all make sense, you link to webpage rather than actually attaching a file?

Andrew McCauley: Yeah. So, your actual email, when you see the size of your email come through on your account, that shouldn‟t be really a big file; it all should be a small 20 or 30 maybe 100K max file so that people know that there is no attachment, there are no graphics and anything you want to show them as far as graphics go would be on the webpage. Is that right?

Heather Porter: Exactly, everything and you always want people going back to your website anyway. It‟s a great excuse to get them back to engage with you. So, you are using link; you are using links rather than attachments and sending people to try and download a file immediately. You want them to go to a webpage first to download Listen to the audio version of this document HERE Get your FREE Online Survival guide at www.autopilotyourbusiness.com © 2013 AutoPilot Your Business. All Rights Reserved. Note: We of course can't promise that all links mentioned in this document will be live, and if you stumble upon any that aren't, we apologize!

Podcast – Email Marketing Software and Set Up Tips Autopilot Your Business Podcast Transcription

a file from a file from the webpage instead. So, that‟s the welcome email that you send out. So, you are giving something away for free. Your first email that you are going to set up in your email platform is the welcome email that goes out that says “Hey! Thanks so much for signing up. Here is where you can go and get your free” whatever it is that you are giving away and you link to that page. So, that email must be written.

Andrew McCauley:

Good. That‟s a pretty good explanation of it all.

Heather Porter: Good. I hope so. I know emails can be a little bit crazy. They are not really crazy. It is actually quite easy and I think if those of you that are using these email programs already, this is going to be quite introductory to you but for those of you that are not yet, something you must start with and start now because as you are growing your business, it is going to get stricter and stricter in the future to get emails through. So, you need to get these companies to work for you on behalf of you to do that.

Andrew McCauley: A little question before we go. What sort of prices are we talking about for these platforms? Do you have a price that you can sort of give us off the top of your head for people that are thinking about it?

Heather Porter: Sure. Yeah, they start as low as 14.95 to 15 dollars a month and then they go up to…

Andrew McCauley:

Isn‟t Mailchimp free?

Heather Porter: Mailchimp is free if you just use the forms and you store your list in there. The second you want to do auto responders multiple auto responders, we just talked about a welcome email, it allows you to do that for free up to 2000 people, past 2000 people or if you want to send say multiple emails to a list – a quick example because we will do a whole other episode on this but if you sign up for a free e-book

Podcast – Email Marketing Software and Set Up Tips Autopilot Your Business Podcast Transcription

and you want to send somebody an email the first day saying “Here is your e-book” and then on the third day you want to send them “Hey, how is that e-book going for you?” and the fourth day you want to say “Hey, join me on Facebook”, that‟s an actual auto responder sequence. To do that, they charge. The form is free.

Andrew McCauley: Right. The other one that‟s out there that was free, that‟s still there at the moment but is disappearing I hear is Sendpepper.

Heather Porter: Yes, that‟s correct actually. It‟s going away because it‟s now being integrated into… It‟s run by a company named Office Autopilot. It‟s going through a massive re-brand right now with their big database system and they are going to sort of suck that into the system and make it all one. So, it will no longer exist starting next year, next year being 2013, depending on when you are listening to this.

Andrew McCauley: Alright, Heather, is there anything else that you want to talk about and touch on emails or is that a wrap for this show?

Heather Porter: I think that‟s about a wrap and guys that are listening, we will go into „the how‟ behind the email really how to write emails, how and when to send them, what to put in them to get them opened, subject lines, all that good stuff that is just the beginning of your big marketing platform. We will do that in a future episode but this episode was just really geared to get you thinking or understanding, I suppose understanding the email platform, how it works, why you need one most importantly. So, I think we have done our job with that.

Andrew McCauley: We have. talking. I didn‟t do much at all.

You have done a good job.

You did a lot of

Heather Porter: It was one of those, wasn‟t it? As you guys can tell, there are definitely certain topics where I am kind of crazily passionate or Andrew is crazily passionate and we swing back and forth.

Podcast – Email Marketing Software and Set Up Tips Autopilot Your Business Podcast Transcription

Andrew McCauley: We do, we do. Alright, thank you, Heather. Thank you for your insight and if people want to go and find out the resources for this show where do we go?

Heather Porter: www.AutopilotYourBusiness.com/Podcast. There is a „Resource‟ page on that site and there are also specific show notes and resources in the actual episode if you go there too.

Andrew McCauley: If you are listening to this show on iTunes please give us a review, subscribe and give us a review and let us know of your thought. All reviews will help us. So, please go and leave review.

Thanks Heather again and I look forward for the next show and I have no idea what that‟s going to be either but I am sure we will make it up before we go.

Heather Porter: Absolutely. It‟s an endless, endless amount of information to continue to share with you guys. So, as always thanks for being with us again.

Andrew McCauley:

Talk soon.

Heather Porter: Thanks.

Andrew McCauley:

Bye.

Heather Porter: Bye, bye.

Podcast â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Email Marketing Software and Set Up Tips Autopilot Your Business Podcast Transcription

**End of Audio.

Listen to the audio version of this document HERE Get your FREE Online Survival guide at www.autopilotyourbusiness.com ÂŠ 2013 AutoPilot Your Business. All Rights Reserved. Note: We of course can't promise that all links mentioned in this document will be live, and if you stumble upon any that aren't, we apologize!