EP 111: Email Marketing 103, Email Analytics

Alison: [00:00:00] Guys, welcome back. Today we are discussing Email Marketing 103. If you have not already listened to the previous two episodes, I would definitely go back and talk to them ’cause today’s gonna get a little techy. So the first episode, Email Marketing 101, was CRMs versus an email service provider.

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm

Alison: Was all about lead magnets, how to take that beautifully high-performing, click value laden, beautiful website and gather actual emails, right? So

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: We’re gonna get into some more nitty-gritty stuff about the analytics and authority behind your email marketing. There’s some ticks and tips and tricks on how to kind of get engagement and get that authority up on the email side. And then there’s numbers and things that you should also be looking at, which usually makes my eyes glaze over, but Melissa, thankfully, is very fantastic at. So let’s get into it.

Melissa Arlena: [00:01:00] Yeah. So I think the first thing we probably wanna cover real quickly is your email authority kind of thing, like Alison was saying, because everybody complains about their emails not going into the inbox, they’re going to the spam folder, stuff like that. So you wanna make sure that you have all the correct records, for your email address to authenticate it, which it does get techy, y’all. I’m not gonna lie on this one. Even I struggled with it at one point, like it was not working properly. we love Flodesk, and Flodesk actually has a tool. I’m ass- I’m assuming at this point most of the other, email service providers have a tool also that makes it easy, because there are certain records that need to go into your website’s DNS, which is not…When I say that, I don’t mean your actual website, I mean the DNS records of your domain name is what it technically is.

Alison: Your

Melissa Arlena: I

Alison: Where your domain is coming from. Yeah

Melissa Arlena: Yes. So there are records that need to go in there that basically when your email gets checked, it’s like, “Oh, this is legitimate. It belongs to this domain, and it’s not spam.” Like, that’s the biggest thing

Alison: Think of it as a [00:02:00] little blue check mark

Melissa Arlena: Yes

Alison: In the interwebs, deep, deep in the interwebs that validate your email. That’s, that’s really what it is.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah

Alison: And so but the, it, needs to go to anywhere you send email from, so not just Flodesk or Kit or MailChimp or what-

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: However your ESP is, but also your CRM, use, session provider or any scheduler you might be using on your behalf. Like for me, Picktime is

Melissa Arlena: Yeah

Alison: So just little word. If you haven’t done it for one, you probably haven’t done it for any of them, so just do them all at the same time,

Melissa Arlena: Yeah. So that’s the… And I think we’ve got another episode where we talk about, I feel like email deliverability maybe.

Alison: Think

Melissa Arlena: I feel like there’s… Yeah, I think there’s something back in the archives.

Alison: It up

Melissa Arlena: But, so that’s the first thing is, like, making sure that that is set because that’s also… ‘Cause if you’re, obviously, if you’re going to spam or if Google’s flagging your email, you’re not gonna have really good open rates.

Alison: Right. Which, dun, dun

Melissa Arlena: Yeah. So the [00:03:00] big thing for what you’re gonna want to do when it comes to your analytics, I think the things that are important are, is your email list growing? Like, that’s the bottom line. Are you getting more people on your list than are unsubscribing? And I want you guys to all take a deep breath with me. Unsubscribes mean nothing to my life. I will not be defined by my unsubscribes. We’re all gonna say that again. I will not be defined by my unsubscribes.

Alison: Repel people who you don’t, aren’t gonna buy from you. Okay? Repel.

Melissa Arlena: Here’s the thing. If they unsubscribe, they were never gonna buy from you anyway, and that’s fine. You don’t wanna be talking… You don’t wanna be wasting your breath on them anymore. People get so bent out of shape on unsubscribes. I’ve done it, too, because you can click and see the list of people who have unsubscribed, and I have seen where past clients have unsubscribed, and it’s like a dagger to my heart.
But then I also know I have unsubscribed from people I love at times because I’ve just been overwhelmed with emails. I have just hit a limit where I’m looking at my inbox and I’m like, “This [00:04:00] is out of control. I can’t take all of this,” and I go on an unsubscribe spree. So I look at it that way. As long as they haven’t emailed me and told me they hated me, if they unsubscribe, that’s fine.
Like, so even though you are gonna have unsubscribes, you wanna look at that overall list and just make sure that it’s continuing to grow. And because we’re small businesses, local service providers, you guys are never gonna have a list that’s 40,000 people, okay? It’s just not gonna happen. It’s, it’s fine.

Alison: That?

Melissa Arlena: Yeah. I know some photographers who are, like, top of their game that everybody look up to who have 200 people on their email list, 200 clients, okay? So, and they still are able to book and book their sessions and stuff like that. So do not worry so much about having these huge lists and all of that. in fact, most people I talk to say that, like, the smaller the list, the better they do with selling, because it’s people who want to be on their list and everything. So when you’re-

Alison: To that authority because they’re engaged, they’re

Melissa Arlena: Yes

Alison: They’re clicking, [00:05:00] they’re opening and reading. There’s a lot of those little authority hacks and deliverability hacks that are increased with a smaller list

Melissa Arlena: Yes. So that leads next to kind of a thing which is unengaged subscribers. So we’re saying right now we want people coming in, and actually before I get to that, what I will do for my analytics is I’ll go in, maybe not once a week, but maybe once a month, and I can quickly pull a report of people who have unsubscribed from my list, and then I just delete them.
‘Cause I’m just like, “Look, I don’t need you.” And especially if you are with an email provider that charges you by the amount of email, people who are on your list, you may have to keep it under a certain amount. Get rid of those unsubscribes. Like,

Alison: Yeah

Melissa Arlena: Didn’t wanna be there. There’s no point in keeping it on there. Also, my biggest pet peeve, these are the ones that make me mad, are the ones that mark you as spam. Delete them immediately. Like, no, they do not get to pass go. They do not get to… They do not deserve any more emails from you if they mark one of them as spam. I don’t care who they are.

Alison: It’s so mean.

Melissa Arlena: It is

Alison: Yeah, and Flodesk just [00:06:00] recently, made it easier to not send to unengaged subscribers as

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, I’m gonna talk about that next. Yeah. Yeah. So

Alison: Ahead of

Melissa Arlena: Get rid of the ones who mark you as spam, and then also look at ones that maybe their email has bounced. And sometimes when you look at the bounced emails, they put.con instead of.com, or they put, you know, instead of Gma- you know, they just misspelled it.
Like, you can look at it and be like, “Oh, that’s an e…

Alison: You can

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, that’s an obvious misspelling.” So you might be able to fix that, or you might be able to email them and say, “Hey, you’re gonna have to re-sign up because your email’s wrong,” or whatever. but get rid of those. So, like, that’s kind of the first thing, and then that leads into the next thing, which is…
So those are the ones that they’ve marked you as spam. They’re dead to you now. They’ve unsubscribed, so you’re like, “Okay, goodbye.” They’ve bounced. “Okay, maybe I can fix this.” Well, the next level is your unengaged subscribers, and those are people who stopped opening your emails and who stopped clicking.
And they’re basically dead weight at this point. They are too lazy to unsubscribe themselves.

Alison: [00:07:00] How long does that go on for? these people are me in a lot of cases, because

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: Is I’ll select all of my promotion spam or updates folder and delete everything at once every few

Melissa Arlena: Yeah. Yes

Alison: I’m not opening it, I am not engaging with you in any way,

Melissa Arlena: Right

Alison: Reason, I still want your email. I don’t

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: Maybe there’s a I know there’s gonna be a sale Black Friday, and then I’ll, then I’ll care. that kind of thing.

Melissa Arlena: So with unengaged subscribers, one of the things I like to do is you send them an email that basically, you gotta have a juicy subject line, I will say this, that’s something like, “I’m breaking up with you,” or something that like,

Alison: Oh!

Melissa Arlena: You know, or, “Did you dump me?” Or you know, just something, I can’t remember, Jenna Kutcher had a good one, and I totally stole her subject line, and I I basically sent it to that unsub- unengaged subscriber.
So unengaged subscribers is gonna be kind of different for people because obviously Alison and I talk to you guys all the time about emailing your list once a month at least kind of [00:08:00] thing. For some of you, if you haven’t emailed your list in a year, you’re gonna wanna warm that up. I feel like we’ve talked about that also.
But if you, let’s say maybe you’ve got some people that really only respond to Santa sessions, and if you’re deleting every six months, you could lose a bunch of people who actually are interested in your Santa.

Alison: That, those seasonal kind of things should be a segment that they are protected and saved in a certain spot, but not bothered or otherwise tempted to unsubscribe or not be engaged in other ways

Melissa Arlena: So you wanna make sure with that like if they’re on, you know, if they’re on your unengaged subscribers, but you’re only emailing them at a certain time, then I would leave them, you know, leave them on there kind of thing. So you may look at it of like, okay, I’m emailing consistently once a month.
I’ve been emailing for the last year. I’ve gotten through my Santa sessions, my stuff like that, and yet I still have people on my list who haven’t opened an email in two years or something, you know, or more than a year. Most businesses would tell you like after 120 days, those leads are cold,

Melissa Arlena: those are bigger businesses and stuff [00:09:00] like that. So I would say, though, that if somebody hasn’t opened an email from you in 18 months, it’s time to get them off your list.

Alison: That was gonna, that was gonna be my question is what does Flodesk, and maybe this is something we just look up, but what does Flodesk consider unengaged? Like, what’s that time period before

Melissa Arlena: I can’t, I can’t remember if it’s three months or six months.

Alison: OK。

Melissa Arlena: months. I thought they had something recently, ’cause I actually, before they created the subscriber segment for us, I had created one, and I think I even did, like, one that was over 30 days, over 90 days, over whatever.
But keep in mind, for me, I’m actively on my email list, so if somebody stopped opening emails after, you know, three months, six months, then yeah, I need to get them off my list. But I don’t wanna hold you guys to the same thing, because I know you’re not emailing your list as often as I do. so unengaged subscribers, though, like, let’s say you’ve got that crowd that only email…

Melissa Arlena: You know, only is interested in Santa sessions or something. you can always exclude them when you’re emailing. So you could always have, like, you [00:10:00] know, it’s gonna go to my whole list, but let me put the segment in here of unengaged subscribers, let me take them out for these emails, and I’m only gonna email them when it’s this particular thing that they normally respond to.
It is hard, though, because the fewer emails you send, the more unengaged subscribers you’re gonna have, and then when you do email them, because you haven’t been around in a long time, it does affect you negatively. It, that’s how you end up in the spam folder and the junk folder, is you’re emailing twice a year and you’re only emailing promotion stuff.
Like, that’s the stuff that Google hates, or I guess spam folders hate

Alison: I just found Flodesk Flodesk’s definition of the automated unengaged subscriber list,

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: Underlined what you were just saying. Their status is active. They haven’t opened or clicked any of your emails in the last 180 days.

Melissa Arlena: All right, so that’s six months

Alison: So six months. They’ve received at least six emails from you in the last six months,

Melissa Arlena: Okay. Mm-hmm

Alison: They joined your list at, [00:11:00] at least more than 180 days ago.

Melissa Arlena: Okay. Yeah

Alison: All four of those things, if those things happen. So if you’re not sending within six months, then you automatically have an unengaged… Well, you’ve gotta send at least, six emails in six months, so that’s once a month, and they still haven’t had the opportunity to engage with you, then…

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, it’s time to cut them off, you know? Or at least don’t send emails to them, ’cause I know some people really don’t like getting rid of their, the emails and stuff. if that’s the case, then you gotta stop sending to them is the point, because they’ve already, as I described it to someone once, I was like, “They’ve basically broke- They’re like ghosting you at this point.”
They are the boyfriend that, you know, you had a great date, and then well, maybe he’s not a boyfriend, but, you know, and he never, you can’t get him to answer the phone. He’s not texting you back. Like, you know, it’s the he’s just not that into you list is what it is.

Alison: Weight because it’s affecting your, all your analytic numbers, right?

Melissa Arlena: Because imagine if he’s… What if all of these, you know, dates you’ve had that it never went anywhere are following you around on your new dates, and the [00:12:00] guy’s like, “Well, none of them are calling you back.
Why should I go out with you?” I feel like this analogy is getting a little out of control, but I hope people are laughing because I feel like it’s very accurate though. So think about it that way.

Alison: Weight. Literal dead weight because they’re not opening, they’re not clicking, so your click rate’s low, your open rate’s

Melissa Arlena: Yes. They are sending signals to Google that your emails suck ’cause they’re not interacting. And see, right back to the he’s just not that into you. Yes.

Alison: Not

Melissa Arlena: I love that we brought that full circle. Okay, so we talked about unsubscribes, the bounces, the spams, the unengaged subscribers. so those are some of the things that you kind of want to look for when it comes to your analytics.
You can look at your opt-in forms. So we’ve talked about having different types of opt-in forms. So you can have embedded opt-in forms, you can have inline, you can have pop-ups. You can ha- you can now see, like, which one’s performing the best. Maybe you have three of them on a page, and you think, “Oh, well, my exit intent performs the best.”
But when you go into your analytics, you find out it’s actually your inline embedded one or something [00:13:00] like that. So that helps you figure that stuff out.

Alison: Look at, and that, with Flodesk, you just go

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: Forms, and it shows you all your forms. I’ve got dozens of them at this point because

Melissa Arlena: Yeah

Alison: Multiple forms and multiple form types that lead to the same freebie or access to something, right? and it will tell you right then when you’re looking at all of them how many have opted in,

Melissa Arlena: Yeah

Alison: then if you’re, if you’re clever about it and you name them and put them in certain places based on where they’re located, like, I don’t know, the full page one on Instagram,

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: Tell you how

Melissa Arlena: Or Pinterest

Alison: Or Pinterest, it’ll show you exactly how many people came from those platforms if you’ve labeled it and organized it accordingly, if that

Melissa Arlena: Yeah. And then you can also look at, on those forms, things like opt-in rate conversions and stuff. So let’s say you put a form out, with a lead magnet, and I’m just trying to think. I want to say opt-in conversion rates, like, I think anything above 30% is good, if I remember correctly. so as long as, like, people are landing on that page and 30% or more are opting [00:14:00] in, then you’re good.

Melissa Arlena: And I feel like for especially photographers, small business owners, because this isn’t our normal world, when we see those smaller numbers, I think we get really scared. We’re like, “Oh, this sucks. Only 25% of people opted into this form or something. It’s terrible.” No, actually, it’s not bad. You just maybe need to make a few tweaks. In our minds, I think we’re thinking it needs to be 90% of people landed here and opted in, and that’s not it at all. It’s the same thing with open rates. I think, isn’t the thing for open rates, like, 10 to 20% is pretty average?

Alison: Low. Yeah. Yeah.

Melissa Arlena: It’s low for us, but it’s, like, average for a lot of lists and stuff. So keep that in mind, too.

Alison: Open rate is between 30 and 45%. So

Melissa Arlena: I,

Alison: You

Melissa Arlena: yeah

Alison: Like it out of the park.

Melissa Arlena: Right. I think mine is usually, like, between 40 to 50%, depending on what I’m selling, but I also am very strategic about, you know, taking people off my list if they’re not engaging because I don’t want it dragging me down. so keep that in mind, too, of, [00:15:00] like, when you’re checking those things. You know, Alison was mentioning, you know, the stuff with, like, fa- fake open rates that because, you know, Apple’s put things in place and some other email providers have put things in place where it’s not an actual accurate, you know, somebody opened this. There… It affects all email platforms, y’all.

Melissa Arlena: There’s nobody that does it better than somebody else, as far as I’ve learned. it just is kind of a thing, so, and nobody can resolve it. So don’t, like, hang your hat on that and be like, “Oh, my gosh. Well, this open rate is, you know, not even entirely correct.” You’ve just gotta go with it

Alison: Like, you know, some email providers count certain things as an open where

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: Don’t, and so there’s a lot of inconsistencies within the email service providers and even like Gmail versus Microsoft, right?

Melissa Arlena: Yeah

Alison: Melissa makes a good point that we’re all comparing the same numbers and have the same issues no matter who is skewing them.

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: Changes it. Apple rolled out, rolled out that big privacy update. That changes the way things are counted as open or

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.[00:16:00]

Alison: But just keep in mind, regardless of what platform you are using and or your are using,

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: Comparing and using the same,

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: If that makes

Melissa Arlena: Yes. Yeah. And the other thing with that too is, so then the idea is like, okay, well, if open rates are a little fuzzy,

Alison: Mhm.

Melissa Arlena: And so we think like, okay, click rates are live or die, but I don’t know if you know this, certain businesses have software that will click every link in an email to check and make sure nothing is spam, and it will skew your click rates

Alison: Wow. I don’t think any of my, email people have that because my click rates aren’t high enough for, aren’t… They’re way too

Melissa Arlena: Well, but that’s the thing. It’s, it’s interesting because what it actually affects photographers more because it’s like Dad, who works at some cybersecurity office, and he’s on your email list, and you send out your you know, I’m gonna go with Santa minis. You send out your Santa minis. He gets the email.

Melissa Arlena: His software will [00:17:00] click your Instagram links, your, every link that you have in there will… you’ll see a click. And so that’s the easy way to check that, guys. If you go to your clicks on an email, and you see that there’s, like, you know, six different links that were in that email, and some of the… Like, a lot of people I know will put a fake link in there because then that’s the trigger to them.
So it’ll be like if… It’ll be some kind of link that basically is like, “If this link is clicked, then I know it was a spam bot.” And then they can say, “Okay, you know, let me take out X amount of these clicks because, you know, they’re, they’re spam bots and stuff.”

Alison: Honest, I just don’t care that much.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah. Well, I know people ask. They’ll be like, “It’s so weird. Somebody clicked all of the links, including this particular one.” And it’s like, no.

Alison: Yeah,

Melissa Arlena: no person sat there and clicked eight links in your email.

Alison: Even with a Claude connector, I’m not deep diving the numbers to know or care or do

Melissa Arlena: No. Yeah. You wanna just look at kind of the top things. But it is nice, too, with the… Okay, so I really love this. So let’s say you send out an email, about an upcoming event, and you see [00:18:00] that you got clicks. You can go in and see the emails of who clicked on that link, and then you could actually send an email to those people, like kinda segment them off to you know, to… And you can even, you could be real sketchy, you could not sketchy, but you could be really like, “Hey, we know you clicked this. We know you’re interested.” You know, that kind of thing. but to me, that also lets you kinda know now you have a hot list to like, oh, they clicked on this. They’re interested in it.

Melissa Arlena: Maybe they need a few more emails to warm them up to it. And I don’t care how big or small your email list is. Actually, it works better if they’re smaller, because let’s say I go in there and I see I’ve released Santas. I know we’re gonna keep using that. So I’ve released Santa minis, and I see one of my past clients has clicked on it, but she hasn’t booked. Well, maybe I just go over to Gmail and I email her directly. Or not Gmail, you know, but whatever my work email is. I email her directly and I’m like, “Hey, I just wanted to remind you that these are open. There’s a few slots left. I would love to see you guys again this year.” And maybe that’s the [00:19:00] email that pushes it over kind of thing, ’cause that gives you like a super hot list.

Melissa Arlena: So like that’s the little stuff that I don’t think we necessarily think about. And then I’m gonna get into a way that might even be easier, on that later on. so let’s see here. What numbers kind of matter over time, Alison was asking me. like I said, your, how many people are opting in, that’s the biggest one, is I wanna see, I wanna see the email list growing.

Melissa Arlena: I’m not worrying about unsubscribes unless it’s like a massive… Like you’re gonna probably see, I think every email I send, I lose at least one to two people. Like it just is what it is. That I’m not gonna stop emailing. Yeah. That doesn’t mean I’m gonna stop emailing people, you know? the other thing that can be really good for numbers and stuff is the amount of people obviously who are clicking on those emails, but people who are replying. So if you get replies to emails, that’s like gold standard of like, ooh, this is a really good email. And I just sent one out last week like that, getting replies. I did a two truths and a lie, and I had two people who messaged me from [00:20:00] that email, and so I was like, “Yay, those are some extra gold coins for me.”

Alison: Token, and this is something I don’t think I learned about email marketing until the last couple years, is that if you’re not getting replies, you’re doing it wrong. Something’s broken. Either you haven’t trained a community, either your people don’t care, or you’re not sending the kind of emails people want or find valuable,

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: Some degree. So

Melissa Arlena: Or asking questions

Alison: Or asking questions. And so it’s you’re basically using a megaphone instead of, like a,

Melissa Arlena: So it’d be a conversation.

Alison: And

Melissa Arlena: Yeah

Alison: Instead of building that connection and that know, like, trust. So like

Melissa Arlena: Yeah

Alison: Askew there if you’re not getting some replies sometime. Now,

Melissa Arlena: Not all the time.

Alison: All

Melissa Arlena: Yeah.

Alison: And not a ton, even the last couple years since I’ve changed up the way that works, like I don’t get, you know, I might get 8% of replies. But,

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: If you’re not getting anything at all, that should be a red flag to you

Melissa Arlena: Yes. Yeah. and I love it because, like, it lets you know, you… And always reply back to the people [00:21:00] who replied to you. Like, that’s gonna…

Alison: First thing immediately, like

Melissa Arlena: Yeah

Alison: Like be quick. It’s almost like responding to a new lead as

Melissa Arlena: Yeah

Alison: Hu- fast as humanly possible.

Melissa Arlena: Well, and I mean, you know, it’s a little bit too of like, I know… there was one time, I think it was, Amy Porterfield, and she had a podcast ep- or she had a podcast episode, and then they had sent an email, and there was something in the email about, like, she hates jeans, she loved yoga pants or something, and is like, doesn’t understand people who wanna go to work in jeans. And I replied that I literally quit an IT job, you know, like walked away from IT, ’cause I got tired of wearing dress pants and just wanted to wear jeans to work every day. And like, I sent her an email, and then they emailed me back and stuff, and it was just, it was kind of fun. So, you know, when people email you, they wanna see a response.

Melissa Arlena: They wanna interact. Like, the one I just had recently was, like, two truths and a lie, and I asked people, I said, “Now I want you to send me your two truths and a lie.” And it was super fun to pick out, like, what the lies were in some of the people who emailed me, so I enjoyed that.

Alison: That’s really cool

Melissa Arlena: So the other thing too I would say is this is one of the things that I super-duper love AI for. So like, [00:22:00] Alison and I have been talking about, like, doing some episodes on AI. I know we’ve talked about how we use it in our business in the sense of, like, some of the software and stuff we use, but… And then obviously, I know people use it for, and I did this too, for creating copy, for creating emails, for creating,

Alison: Burning, yeah

Melissa Arlena: Stuff like that. But my favorite way to use AI is for analytics. And here’s the thing, you can look for your email provider and see if they have what’s called an MCP connector. Flodesk has one, so if you’re on Flodesk, you can find that. But whoever you’re… Yeah, you gotta set it up. So whoever your service provider is, Google it, you know, and just like, “Hey, this is my service provider, my email service provider, this…

Melissa Arlena: And I’m using either Chat or I’m using Claude, and I wanna connect the two.” And it should be able to hopefully walk you through it if it’s available. So Flodesk has an MCP, and so it is hooked into… So Claude is now hooked into my Flodesk. So what I can do is I can have him I can ask questions, and this is why I love it. Because I’m telling you guys, [00:23:00] like, “Oh, you can go and check this,” or, “Oh, you can go and check that,” and you’re like… You might be going, “I don’t know where I actually click to check that.” And with Claude, you can just ask him. You can just say, “Hey, that last email I sent, how many clicks did it have?” And then he’s gonna come back and tell you, “Oh…”

Melissa Arlena: And you know, you may have to give him the date or give him a little bit more clarity on stuff like that. But you’re just like, “Hey, I sent an email yesterday. How many clicks did I have in that email?” And then he can tell you how many clicks you had, and then you can at probably… I haven’t dived into this, but you could probably even get those email addresses out of him, the people who did click, versus going and finding yourself. I love to do it for, like, workflows. So, I think… And we’ve not… I don’t know if we’ve talked about, like, onboarding work. We’ve talked a little bit about onboarding workflows in the past, I think. But, so let’s say that freebie. Yeah, so let’s say that freebie delivery, you deliver the freebie that the lead magnet, you know, that somebody signed up for. They get that email, and then typically what you wanna have is some kind of like little welcome sequence that introduces who you are,

Alison: [00:24:00] Your

Melissa Arlena: them of like why, where they got the freebie from, gives them some more information in some other emails.

Alison: Pre-sell

Melissa Arlena: Even if you’re a photographer You can still be doing this, especially if it’s something that’s related, like for Alison, if someone downloads her, you know, what to do when traveling to Oahu type of freebie, she knows they’re coming, so she could start sending them emails and stuff in a workflow of, “Hey, you know, here’s how, here’s some restaurants. Here’s some places to stay. Here’s this.” So she’s building that relationship. Well, now maybe she wants to go back and she wants to figure out, you know, which of those emails is performing the best, which one has great click rates, which one’s not getting a lot of good opens, but she doesn’t wanna she doesn’t wanna click into everything and then do the math and figure it out herself.

Alison: Pause

Melissa Arlena: She just…

Alison: Stop

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, exactly. Pause the… Yes.

Alison: Yes

Melissa Arlena: She just goes into Claude and she says, “I want you to look at this workflow and tell me how the emails are performing.” And I just recently did this for a workflow, and Claude was like, “Hey, your email [00:25:00] number two is not getting opened. You need to change the subject line.” It’s like email number one did great

Alison: In just a practical application here, when somebody fills one of my web forms out on my website, they complete a form, they tell me when they’re coming, where they’re coming, what they’re looking for, and dates, and they send that off to me. In that form, there is an option for them to sign up for my, tips and tricks for photos.

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: List, guys.

Melissa Arlena: Yeah

Alison: Into a very specific segment called New Leads, right? These are new leads who have expressed very warm interest. They get a very specific workflow. I need to take this analytics and go look at that workflow, ’cause it’s been a year since I looked at it. So

Melissa Arlena: Yeah

Alison: Doing even just that much, consider doing a segment and a workflow specific to people who reach out to you

Melissa Arlena: Yeah. ‘Cause with that, so, you know, you can look in it too. I had another one, and it was like, so email two’s not getting open. It said email three is getting open, but it doesn’t have a lot of clicks. And so then I can start working with it of like, okay, how can I [00:26:00] improve email three? And then Alison and I are big StoryBrand fans, so it might be something where I say, “Hey, help me look at email three and rewrite it in, you know, with StoryBrand principles in place.” And now it’s diving into those emails. I’m not having to copy and paste them out. I’m not having to do anything. It’s already able to read all of that and see all of that. And so that’s the kind of stuff that I really love AI for, is because the analytics that it can pull, and you just are typing a normal sentence.

Melissa Arlena: You know, you’re not having to, like, go and look up, “Well, how do I figure out how to get to this? I don’t even know how to explain it.” You just start talking to Claude about what you want to know, or ChatGPT, and it can pull that information for you, as long as you’ve got the connection set up. So that’s the big thing you’ll have to do.

Alison: huge

Melissa Arlena: Yeah, but it is fantastic for that kind of stuff. You can even set it up too with Claude of like, “Hey, every Monday I want a recap of how many people joined my email list last week. What was my top opt-in?” Which if you label them like Alison, then you would know what was your top, like, feeder. [00:27:00] Like, was it something she posted to Pinterest or something to Instagram, or was it on her website? You can ask it all of those questions. You could ask it what was the number one… You know, for me, I send a lot of emails. What was the number one email that I sent last week? Like, what was the open rate? What was the click-through rate? What was… You know, just so much information, and you could have a report delivered, like, every Monday where you don’t have to go find it

Alison: Yeah. Oof. Wow, okay. That’s a big, that’s a great idea. Okay, so on that note, just a little recap. The things that matter are your open rates, your click rates, and your replies. What matters over time is your growth in those replies. We want unsubscribes; we want people who are not interested to get off. We want that dead weight gone. To sum it all up, the things that, some takeaways we’d love for you to do now, like next three things. How did you do this? We want you to log into that ESP that you’ve got and look at how many emails have you actually sent in the last six months, right? If you’re not if you, it’s, if it is six or less, you need to up your game. [00:28:00]

Alison: Right? Just start now. Then, how many people have joined your list in the last six months? Is it zero?

Alison: Is it negative? Have you had more people leave than join? We wanna make sure that that number is growing in the correct direction, right?

Melissa Arlena: Mm-hmm.

Alison: And then I would want you to know where are those people joining you. Are they joining you through a pop-up? Are they joining through inline? Are they, what kind of form is it, and where is that form coming from? Is that something on your blog? Is that a social media? Is that Pinterest? Pinterest is not social media. We have two episodes of that coming up. this was kind of a lot. This was a lot of numbers and details, and you’ll probably, like, listen to it again. Forward it to a

Alison: But three things: How many emails have you sent in the last six months? Is it growing in the last six months? And where are people joining your list? That is really useful information. Then go into Claude and have those, that information sent to you once a week, once a month,

Melissa Arlena: Mhm.

Alison: That’s a great

Melissa Arlena: Ja.

Alison: That’s a great idea. [00:29:00] guys. Okay. We hope we don’t we didn’t overwhelm you. If you haven’t already signed up for Hit Send, I’ve got the email marketing for photographers workshop coming up September 24th. We had to recently do some rearranging of dates with spouse travel. But the 24th, 8:00 AM Hawaii time, if you can’t be there live, the recording will be available. So one hour to get all this started and going for you if you’re not already working on it. So thanks so much, guys.

Melissa Arlena: Bye-bye

Alison: 29