This episode’s question comes from Jacquie Tewes, at Nurturing Your NDIS, who asks, “How can I create my master marketing email list when I have contacts on a variety of social media platforms?
Tim Hyde, Chief Fixer and Founder, at Win More Clients, joins us to help answer Jacquie’s question. Tim focuses on helping experts win more clients, with less effort, and implementing a framework for calm, predictable, and organised growth.
This episode is the third in an eight-part series answering listener questions. For each episode and question, an amazing marketer from my network will join us and provide some different points of view and advice.
You can find out more about Tim’s work at winmoreclients.com.au and connect with him on LinkedIn
Enjoy.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
As part of the service, I have had this episode transcribed. Transcribing, proofing, and editing a podcast episode is A LOT of work. That’s why I use a service called REV who provide professional freelance transcriptionists who are vetted for quality. While they offer a 99% accuracy guarantee, I do not proof-read their work extensively. Instead, I simply copy and paste below and, as such, please note that this is not a verbatim transcript of the episode and I have trimmed things like the intro, close, and mid-show ad.
Daniel:
Well, Tim, welcome to the show. I know personally about all the great work that you do, helping businesses because I’ve known you for a long time, you help businesses with their marketing. But why don’t you put it into your own words? Why don’t you tell us about what you do all day at work to help people with their marketing?
Tim:
To be honest, I spend large parts of my day thinking about what to have for dinner. But in between times, one of the things that I do with clients, both in Australia and overseas, is work with them on finding and fixing the holes in their customer lifecycle, where the money falls out. Now, I know this is a conversation you have with your clients on a regular basis, but we do a lot of work, a lot of hard work, creating attention. That might be from our social media posts, it might be from our podcasts, it might be from TV and print ads or whatever we put out there. And the thing that I continually see with clients, it doesn’t matter whether they’re small or large, is that we leave so much opportunity on the table because we fail to manage the attention and manage the leads that we create from all that outward facing marketing activity.
Tim:
And that’s where a lot of the time your CRM and marketing automation come into play, to continue nurturing those relationships until such time as they’re ready to buy. Now, one of the things we know is that most people won’t have 10 kids on their first date, and in many cases, the people we touch with our marketing are in the same mindset, just because they might have the problem that you can solve, doesn’t mean that the problem they solve is their priority today. And just having 10 kids on your first date, maybe not straight away, but down the track, yeah, if I get to know, like and trust you enough, perhaps.
Daniel:
Well Tim, the question I have for you on the show to help answer, comes from Jacquie Tewes, who has a business called Nurturing Your NDIS, the National Disability Insurance Scheme. And Jacquie asked, “How do I create my master marketing email list, when I have contacts on a variety of social media platforms? If people haven’t expressly given permission/signed up for a newsletter, can I still include them on the list for a newsletter? For example, as a LinkedIn connection, could I include them? I’m thinking, I can’t, so what’s the easiest way to get permission? I thought of creating a landing page through MailChimp and having a free resource attached.” Now Tim, even though Jacquie submitted this question a while before the whole Facebook news link saga thing happened, it really does get to the heart of what I’ve been banging on about for years and I know you do as well.
Daniel:
And that is that it is all about converting your audience on different platforms onto your own database, because that’s where the real power is. And that’s because of the exact problem Jacquie has now, how does she contact all those people easily? How does she take ownership of a group of people? Because that ultimately gives her permission and the ability to contact those people directly. She will own the audience, so to speak, on her own database and that’s the same for all businesses. You don’t own your audience in the same sense, when your audience lives on Instagram or Facebook. So for me Tim, it’s a great question, but I know that’s a little bit long-winded, but let’s break it up a little bit to help you out. First off, if people haven’t expressly given permission/signed up for Jacquie’s newsletter, can she still include them on the list for her newsletter?
Tim:
Look, there’s a couple of things that we need to be aware of and the first one of that is the spam act. This is an agreement that most governments have signed up to, and pretty much all email service providers, to reduce the amount of unwanted email that’s coming into your inbox. We went lots of it. And most email clients like your Outlook and like your Gmail account and a bunch of others, have got inbuilt filters that takes stuff that you don’t want to receive, off your desktop, so it’s not full of Viagra and free sex sites and that sort of thing. Now, whilst that is the case, technically you can add people who have not expressly given consent, to your list, if they publish the details in a public location. So for example, someone handing you their business card is under the spam act, a permission to contact them via email. The same way that if you put your email address in your LinkedIn profile or on your Facebook page, or Instagram, you are giving people permission to contact you.
Tim:
Now here’s the caveat, having said that, if you start emailing people daily when they’re not expecting it, it doesn’t matter how much they said, “Yes, please I’d like that.” They’ll probably put you into spam anyway. Now the spam thresholds is about one in every thousand emails, and if you start tripping those levels, what you’ll find is that your ISP or where you send your emails from, will start to get blacklisted on the recipient’s email server. So if you’re sending to Gmail and Gmail go, “Your sender reputation and is very good.” They will blacklist you and you won’t be able to get any emails to anybody on Gmail, just because you’ve broken a few rules.
Daniel:
So a great foundation there, bit clearer for people, hopefully about what we can and can’t do with email addresses and permission and implied permission by people publishing or giving you their email address in the normal course of business. So what is the easiest way to get proper express permission in this situation, where Jacquie, she already has an audience across various channels?
Tim:
And this is what we really want to do, you touched on it earlier Daniel, is about this hub and spoke thing, or an outpost theory. Think of it like, as you said, we don’t own those channels. And I picture them a little bit like someone else’s pond, I don’t know who actually owns someone else’s pond and I want to get the fish out of that pond, into my pond so that I can continue fishing without all the other distractions. And one of the best ways to do that, as you alluded to, is to offer some form valuable resource that helps your customer, or your prospect from the point where they are, to the next step in their journey. And if we can create something that’s really interesting, invokes a lot of curiosity, speaks to a problem that they might have, they’re more likely to say, “Oh, that looks interesting. I’ll just jump on to that and I’ll grab that, to take that next step.”
Tim:
And in the process of doing so, what they’re saying is that they’re effectively say, “Yes, I’d like to hear from you.” And you can take that obviously further by saying, “Do you want to hear from us?” And tell people the frequency that you might do so, rather than giving them one resource.
Daniel:
I wanted to ask about best practice generally, maybe for those looking to get ahead of the game, so not maybe catching up, so to speak, like Jacquie is, but those people looking to get ahead of the game as they interact with their target audience day in, day out, week in, week out. What’s the best way for those people to be able to obtain permission on an ongoing basis, so that the database is just continually building up?
Tim:
This is where we want to out it out and think of it like fishing lines. I remember a story a few years ago, I think it was from either Dan Kennedy or Dan Jackson, one of the two. And he was talking about how he was in Hawaii and was down on the beach late in the afternoon. And if you’ve ever been in the beach late in the afternoon, you’ll see fishermen fishing for Flathead or whatever they might happen to be fishing for. And fishing is a fantastic metaphor in many ways, for how we attract clients. We know the fish are there, I need to put the right bait in front of them and then I’ve got play with a bit of line in order to bring them in, because the fish don’t automatically jump into our Esky. Now, as Dan was talking about, Dean Jackson, Dan Kennedy, was talking about, that rather than just having one line in the water, most of the fishermen had multiple lines in the water, with different hooks.
Tim:
And this is what we need to think about with our strategy about how we move people from those social media channels, into our world. And the more of these hooks we have in the water, the more likely we are to find people who are interested in that particular bit of bait and then they’ll come onto our list. So make sure, for example, your email, that you’ve got a link to a resource, on your Facebook page, you’ve got a post pinned to the top that says, “Here’s our resource.” If people come into your LinkedIn group, invite them in and say, “Do you want my resource?” Talk about it in podcasts. So if you wanted to connect with me for example, you could reach out at winmoreclients.com.au/connect. Now on that page, I offer resource and that’s a page that I will mention every time I do a podcast. And of course those podcasts now exist in perpetuity, so every time I do another podcast, it’s now adding in that extra hook in the proverbial water, to attract my ideal customer.
Daniel:
I want to expand on your multiple fishing line analogy because we have the fishing lines set up, we have the hooks, we’re trying to get the same fish, they’re probably going to be only maybe two or three different types of fish, our target audience. What about the bait? Should we have the same bait on every line? So should I just have one piece of what we call gated content? So that’s for the listeners, when we go somewhere, we have to go through a gate and it’s usually a form, we hand over some details, including our email address obviously, if we’re trying to build a database using email. Should the bait be the same on each of those hooks? Should I be promoting the same thing on Facebook and my email and whatever and whatever, or should I have maybe some eBooks and maybe some guides and maybe some video series and remembering that we’re talking about small business, should we just use one bait?
Tim:
I’m not a fan of doing so, I actually think having different bait, unless you know one that specifically outperforms the rest. But always try and use bait that’s congruent with the space you’re putting it in, or the conversation you’re putting in. So again, if you’re using a podcast, you’re talking about a particular topic like this one, we’re talking about email opt-in, my lead magnet, effectively what it is, we’re trying to attract leads, would be my ebook on how to create an awesome lead magnet. If I was using that somewhere else in my Facebook group, it might be, how do you use Facebook to double and triple your business in 90 days? And that’s the sort of thing we want to do, if you’ve got more, it’s almost like different sized hooks and different bait, so to use that analogy, the fish swimming along the beach, looking for something to eat, goes, “That hook is too big or I’m not really hungry for that today,” and goes onto the next one, says no, but the third one, like Goldilocks and the three bears, it’s just right.
Daniel:
Very good. Excellent. I love that. Now we’re mixing analogies, I love it.
Tim:
But it is, if you’ve got one and this is where we want to obviously track our metrics and our conversion and all that sort of thing, if you’ve got one that absolutely converts every single time and you know that that particularly generates better clients from you and you should be tracking your lead attribution, then use that one more often.
Daniel:
Tim Hyde, if Jacquie or anyone else wants to get in contact and continue this chat with you, what can they do, where can they go?
Tim:
If you reach out via winmoreclients.com.au/connect, you’ll be able to get to me there, LinkedIn, Facebook, you want to come and join our community. And as mentioned earlier, there is a resource on there you can go and grab, should you find it suitably interesting.
Daniel:
There we go, he’s throwing out his fishing line listeners. Now Tim Hyde, founder, and chief fixer at Win More Clients. Thanks for joining us and sharing your expertise and advice and help answering Jacquie’s listener question.
Tim:
Thanks mate.