Susan Anderson: You want them going, Whoa, he gave that away for free? I'm not even a customer yet. And he told me that that's amazing. The other thing is you may not even have to really write much in that email. You might already have an existing video, a blog post, a podcast episode, something like that, that you could summarize and link to. And now not only did they get that great golden nugget of valuable information, but they also are digging even deeper into your sphere of influence. So they're listening to your podcast or they're watching your videos or reading your blog.

Clarence Fisher: Welcome back to Local Market Monopoly. It's Clarence Fisher, your host. And today we're going to talk about your welcome email series. It's something that every business needs, but we're finding not very many businesses have. It's something that we do. But I thought for this episode, what I would do is bring on my long-time friend and colleague Sue Anderson, who has been working with us for over a decade. So at the very beginning, taking my thoughts and putting them in the books and putting them in the blog posts, the podcast descriptions that you see here, and emails. And so I thought, you know, I reached out to her and I, Sue, why don't we show our audience how to write their welcome email series, what they should do off them from email one through email X, I'm going to tell you how many emails you need to say, and I'm not going to tell you right now what we're going to show you how many emails you need to send, what to sand in every email and how to stay in front of your audience and get them to buy more from you more often coming up.

Intro: You're listening to Local Market Monopoly with Clarence Fisher, uncovering the tools tactics and strategies, the most successful small businesses used to their local market and own the block.

Speaker 2: Welcome back to local market monopoly. And I've got such a treat for you today. It's, you know, it was so crazy Sue, as I was thinking and getting ready for today that I opened up Facebook and you know how Facebook kind of reminds you of things. And it was our birthday. It was like Tulsa, internet marketing's birthday.

Susan Anderson: We should totally sing. You know that.

Clarence Fisher: We should not. We should not. And then, and then here is that we have you scheduled to be on the podcast, and for those who don't know, you have been there. We have been working together in some capacity here since the very beginning.

Susan Anderson: Yeah. 11 years,

Clarence Fisher: 11 Years. That is crazy. Most businesses don't most, you know, most people get a job by then.

Susan Anderson: Of course, most people are like, they like their sanity.

Clarence Fisher: You know what I'm saying. So immediately I thought this road has not been as glamorous as I thought that when you sit back and you're like, ah, pop champagne, limos, you don't think about payroll and stuff like that.

Susan Anderson: Exactly. It's a whole different thing, but it wouldn't trade it for the world

Clarence Fisher: At all, because we get to do things like what we're doing today. And, um, you know, I'm in love with marketing and you let me tell everybody, okay, Sue is our writer extraordinary, extraordinary, and leads the whole writing team. And one of the things that we've started doing here lately is offering done for you email marketing because it's one of those things that we know everybody's should be doing. But no one does it, you know, it's hard for us to do it sometimes.

Susan Anderson: Absolutely. I mean, you got to have time to write it. You've got to have time to put it in your system. You have to know what you're doing. You've got to have a plan. It's not as easy as it sounds.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah. So, I mean, that's, so let's talk about that. When we, how should our listener's gauge if email marketing is going to be good for them?

Susan Anderson: One simple question. Do they want to make some sales? So email marketing, this is a beautiful thing. Let's take it offline and like go with real relationships. What builds those relationships? You've got contact on a regular basis. You're talking, you're listening. You've got that both going both ways. You're sharing things together. You're, you know, like if you have some wisdom to impart, you know, to somebody who might have the questions that you can answer if you can pass that along, you make their life better. So you get that relationship going, you're making their life better. And then you're offering them things, whatever it would be, either physical products or services or whatever you've got, you're offering them stuff that will make their life even better than better. And that's what email marketing is about. A lot of people get it confused. They feel like it's going to be like, buy my stuff, buy my stuff, buy my stuff. And if you look at your spam file, that's probably what it is. They're trying to trick you. It's just, you just feel kind of gross. But when you have a friend who, you've kind of built this connection with, when you, when you got a guy, when you've got a, a business resource that you like and trust, you want to hear what they've got and you enjoy and look forward to those emails.

Clarence Fisher: This is so true. And why I'm a loving, loving, loving what you're writing and what we're putting together here. Kind of piggybacking on what you're saying. This relationship actually begins in the very beginning from what, like what we're talking about today, which is your welcome email series. And I find that a lot of businesses kind of skip this.

Susan Anderson: Oh yeah, sure. So a lot of businesses have, there are two kinds of email marketing messages. There are two buckets. We're going to put them in one would be autoresponders. So that would be, they're automatically queued up so that when somebody hands over their email address, they're going to automatically go through a series of emails that they come out at a set interval, you know, no matter what time that person actually gave you their email address and going forward, they're getting this whole series. The second type is broadcast emails. So it's like, Hey, we've got a sale going or, Hey, wow. I just took this trip and I had this great thought and I wanted to share it with you, whatever it is like that those are spur-of-the-moment going out to everybody at the same time. So the welcome series is part of the email, the autoresponder. And it's really important. A lot of people just kind of jump in and start sending broadcast emails. And you really, it's kind of like coming into a movie about 30 minutes in, you're probably catch up, but it might just be kind of annoying. You don't really understand what's going on.

Clarence Fisher: One of the things that I know that we've been able to do is kind of introduce who we are and what we do. I think we take for granted that just because someone gave us an email or met us somewhere that they know. I mean, there's kind of, this on-ramp is what we have here. You know? So if we jump back and we look at the emails, let me ask you this. I mean, how many emails do you think need to be in that welcome?

Susan Anderson: Really, ideally five. I've seen people get by with three, but each of the emails has its own task it's got to do. So if you cut it down from five, something in there is got, do like double duty and it can get a little bit longer. No, you don't have to write books and volumes of words to your people, and you want to keep it short, think about what you like to read. And it's either got to really engage you and be kind of short. Those are the things. So we really aim for five emails and they don't go out like all on the same day. They don't even go out for consecutive days. It's going to be, you know, maybe the first day you send the first one, of course, day two, you can send one day three, send one day four. You might take a break. Or that break might be on day three, either way, and day four day, five day six. You know, you're going through to have these five emails go out over about five or six days.

Clarence Fisher: That's good. And that's a question that we get a lot is people are scared. I don't want to say scared, worried, concerned, anxious about sending too many emails. And then, well, let me ask you that. What says, what say you about the email, the send frequency for small businesses.

Susan Anderson: All right. So a mentor of mine who taught me how to do this said only send emails on days you want to make money, which was like, why wait, no, I'm not going to burn out my list. The only way you burn your list is if they hate your emails like they're like this guy again. Oh, he was always pushing me, always pushing me. Whereas, one thing I love about you, Clarence is you come from a place of service and you coach your clients to come from that place of service. So every email that you send out should actually provide value to them. And if you can make them chuckle also, man, now they've got benefit from it and they had a smile. They're going to look forward to those emails. You're not sending them just garbage and constantly extracting from them. You're coming from a place where, Hey, I want to make your life better.

Clarence Fisher: And which is, which is another, I'm sorry if you're going to hear me talk about what we do during this podcast episode, but what Sue and the team her team has put together is just amazing for what we're able to do now. And, you know, I was talking with one of our, our clients that we do email marketing for. And he said, what you said, as far as the emails that we send out because we send out emails every single week. And, uh, his comment was we send out useful, valuable, actionable content. So they are looking for that every Sunday. I mean, we just send ours out every Sunday, but what I was getting to him, he's a new email for an email client and he moved from one email a month to getting responses. And now he's moving to two emails a month to getting responses and you know, where we're trying to take him. Right. But we're able to do that now with anybody is to, is to, you know, like what are the steps of getting the information from them so that they can deliver value and not just be selling, selling, selling, selling, selling.

Susan Anderson: Yeah. And that's important because you want to sound like a real person. You have to have some information in order to do that. So we've created a pretty cool series of questions that the brand owner will look and answer and it's, you know, it comes down to like, what are you doing better? Or, you know, why are your customers or clients or patients coming to you instead of somebody else? You know, what's your background? Why did you get into this? Do you have anything special that you give away, like a book or, you know, a free consult or like you know, how are you serving your new clients? And then also things that they're very specific throughout the year, you know? So when we get into setting up a whole year, theoretically, we could set up a whole year's worth of email marketing messages, and client would never even have to think about it again, which is cool.

Susan Anderson: But, you know, we tie that in. And especially in the welcome series, it's like, all right, well, they need to know things like, tell us a little bit about your business and what's going on here. Like you, you want to make sure that they feel cared for from the start. So you've got questions that you ask about that. You've got questions, that once we have the answers, we can write on behalf of a company and it's remarkable. Most of the clients are like, wow, I feel like I wrote it, but I didn't write it.

Clarence Fisher: It is incredible. It is incredible. I can't, I felt a little guilty when I was sitting at a restaurant with a friend and colleague, and I know just slipped out that I don't write my emails. And he looked at me. So like, they're like, there's no Santa Claus. You know what I mean? He said, you don't, you don't write your stuff, and no, no. And if we even go, I mean, we can take it to, and I look, I'm just going to be, we can take it to my book Sue wrote the blog stuff, Sue writes. I mean, it's, it's why of, I don't know if I can take down an idea and, and how it, so I jot the ideas down and then bullet points or whatever. And then you are able to just take those and then put those together and make me sound coherent. And like, I have a clue is just an amazing thing.

Susan Anderson: Oh yeah. It's and it's so funny. Like, we don't serve every client in the world of course, but it's like when we can see what somebody is really doing, like really see it and see their heart and the way that they approach business and the value that they're adding. There's this little thing that happens in my heart. And I get like a super fan, like, Oh, there's, this is the best there. You'd be crazy to go elsewhere. And like, you kind of get a glimpse into how the person communicates. And it becomes really fun to sort of channel them through email. It's crazy. But, you know, being able to write on somebody's behalf, I can't do it for everybody, but boy, where we can do it, it's like magic.

Clarence Fisher: And that's one of the things where, like I said, I mean, you've been there with me since the beginning, so it's almost like I don't even really, I don't know, like, I don't even have to go back. I told you this once. It's like, I don't even have to say that much. Like I just put a couple of bullet points and send it to you. I mean, it's at that point where you just kinda know what to, what to do, and I'm finding that we're going to be able to do that for more and more businesses. So as the months go on like you said, I mean, it's like getting to know their voice and being able to write. So one of the things that as we're filling out these forms, and I've done this, I've interviewed some of our clients to get their information is how do they come up with what's the easiest way to come up with things to share?

Susan Anderson: Yeah. So some, there are a few easy things back before COVID for sure there were, Hey, we're showing up at this, we have this event going that event going. And, you know, that may not be as much of a deal right now, but there's always something going on, you know, on the calendar, there's always a holiday. So maybe something's kind of important to your audience, to your business. There's always some sort of tie-in with some sort of holiday. That's kinda neat. You've also got every business has questions that they answer all the time. So we call them frequently asked questions. And some of these it's like, if you can answer it in an email or in your website copy or both, you don't have to answer it quite so many times in your real life. And that's kinda neat too, but then there's also should ask questions or SAQs.

Susan Anderson: And these are the things where like, if you're a business owner, you know, and let's say your old aunt, you know, calls you up and well, I need this and it's in your line of business, but you're not able to help her. You'd be like, okay, look, go ask this person looks pretty good, but be sure to ask them this and this and this and those types of questions can really, you know, help to educate a prospective customer or client patient so that they are, you know, they feel good. They come in already trusting you already knowing that this person really knows their stuff. I'm going to an expert. And I feel really good about that. It just kind of greases the skids for every firm thing from there on like, you can serve them better because they're not fighting you all the way. You've answered their questions in advance. And that really helps them to, you know, to have somebody they can trust, which is extremely valuable. But also to know that you like that you care about what might be on their mind and the problems that you're running into.

Clarence Fisher: Excellent. So if they are, if listening to this right now and I'd like to kind of go with, you know, say if they want to do this themselves, for sure. Then would you, where would you, how, how would you recommend starting? Would you recommend, you know, grabbing all these resources or just kind of outlining this? Like, if I'm just starting, like, what do I do? Number one.

Susan Anderson: Absolutely. So, I mean, it could be as simple as a spreadsheet, you know, obviously, get your email provider, you can't send this stuff out on your Gmail. So that's a whole other conversation to get something like Klaviyo or Keap for MailChimp or something like that. But to actually create your content, we'll call it an editorial calendar. So you might make a spreadsheet or even just on pen and paper, you can do it. I would list out 10 20 questions that you always get questions that you should be getting. If they were, you know, they were an informed consumer, what would they ask you? These types of things, what kind of special things do you have going throughout the year? Just start to compile these as just a list of topics, things that, you know, you really wish, or like controversies in your field, where you have a strong opinion and, you know, man, you know, you don't do it like this.

Susan Anderson: That's gonna mess you up, do it like this various thing like this. Once you start creating that list, if you aim for 20, 25, 50 of them will be great, but there's, you know, they'll start to flow the more you just sit there and write them. And it's just a matter of, you know, sit down and do it, you know, like turn off your distractions and only think about this. Like what questions do you have that you get all the time? And that you may have 50 questions there. Ideally, you're going to come up with, you know, if you want to email them every week, which I'd recommend, you'd love to have 50 questions or 50 topics that you'd really like to communicate a little bit of value on it. Some other things that you can think about is the people's objections to doing business.

Susan Anderson: It all comes down to, there's an acronym. I love timer. T I M E R. These are the only reasons somebody doesn't move ahead and do business. So one would be, they're concerned about how much time something's going to take. So maybe you can talk about that. You have some element of, Oh, you know, we'll, we'll do this for you, or, Oh, wow. Yeah, you can come in and you know, we'll do your teeth in 20 minutes or whatever, whatever your deal is. But for time kind of soothing that objection, the next one would be their identity. So, you know, somebody who's driving a Prius is never going to drive a big Dooley diesel engine, big trucks. So you want to talk about like how their identity, how their identity would be impacted by doing business with you. And you gotta be a little bit creative with that.

Susan Anderson: That sounds really weird. But if you were, you could talk about like, if you know your audience really well and you know, your ideal client really well, and you shared, you know, what they value, so you can tie your services or your product into what they actually value. What's in alignment with their identity. That could be a whole source of emails, M for money. So, you know, they probably have questions that are regarding the money end of doing business with you. So they're asking, do you have a warranty? Do you take payment plans? Do you take whatever financing, you know, is there an ROI on this, whatever types of money questions might come up, add those to your list as well. E is energy and, you know, everybody's all worn out and we want to get home Netflix, whatever you're going to do. But so there may be questions that they're asking, like, how involved do I have to be?

Susan Anderson: You know, if I'm at the chiropractor's, it's going to be exhausting or might just lay in there getting a nice treatment. What what's this going to require of me? Energy-wise? Add those questions to your list as well. And the last one is R for reputation. So how are people gonna think of me if I do business with you? So, um, you know, some clients that we've had in the pastor are pawn shops or pawnbrokers. And so they had great, great deals with people coming in to sell stuff, but they had hard time sometimes getting people to come in and buy. So, you know, there were some questions that you can arrange with that. Like, is it, uh, you know, is this confidential? If you're a bankruptcy attorney, you know, like how can I, you know, there's going to be all kinds of fields that have some element of will this impact my reputation of people were to see me coming in here or even just with my family, you know, like, all right. So, uh, it's a weight loss program. Okay. I've been on 50. What is my family going to say, if I do this, you know, I mean, there's all this type of thing. So just use T I M E R the timer framework. And you will come up with so many questions that you could probably write to your list for two years, once a week, without having to have a break.

Clarence Fisher: Oh, wow. That's great. I remember when you shared that with me, I was, so I was blown away by the simplicity of it and just how huge it could be just from that T I M E R. And it could turn into so much. So we've done that work and thought about that. We've got the spreadsheet. Okay. And you said that, thank you for clarifying that we do need some type of software to send this out with. I think that's becoming known now, but still, it's not top of mind of course for everyone, but yeah, you're right. You can't just send this out on your outlook.

Susan Anderson: I mean, you could try it once,

Clarence Fisher: Then you won't be able to send anything else for sure. Okay. And so we've got the system, I've got my spreadsheet, I'm looking at email number one, what am I, what do I, what, what is that, what am I making?

Susan Anderson: So email one is just kind of showing somebody the ropes a little bit like, Hey, how often you're going to be emailing them. You know, here's a little bit about how to make sure you're going to get the emails, let me move it over. You know, a little bit of that housekeeping stuff. So add you to their address book. So they're white, you know, you're whitelisted. They actually get your emails. This is great. But then the other thing you want to do in email, number one is answer a question. One of those questions, like pick a biggie and do it real kind of briefly, you could tell a story, be funny, whatever you want to do, but try to give your audience, your reader, an insight, valuable insights so that they can see like, okay, yeah. That guy, like, if you can get them, I have one guy who calls it a brain gazumped so it's like, if they go, Oh boy, he's smart. That's the goal. Like, if you're able to do that, answering that question and engaging them so that they're like, all right. Yeah, this is going to be worth hearing about.

Clarence Fisher: Okay, great. So, email number one gets there. And you know, with a lot of our business clients, they are actually, you know, they're meeting people and then they're inputting people into their email system and that email number one goes out and I've, you know, they haven't actually done the quote-unquote opt-in, but even with that happening, the email number one is so personable that people aren't offended that they get it. And I think what's happening also was with the emails that are coming after that they're giving so much value and they stay personable. So people are upset that they just ended up on your list after meeting you.

Susan Anderson: Yeah. Yeah. And hopefully, you've made a good impression meeting them in person. You're the master at that, with the work in the room. And just like, it doesn't even feel like, I mean, working the room sounds like the wrong term. It's just, you're very, you're just so engaging where somebody feels like, Oh, I have a new friend. So the next day they get an email from you or that day they get an email, they're going to be happy about it. So anybody can do that. If they're out there getting emails, you know, just be yourself and really focus on the people

Clarence Fisher: Absolutely. And you know, what's crazy. So it was, uh, uh, you know, how introverted I am. Right.

Susan Anderson: It's a secret, but yeah.

Clarence Fisher: So, so when you say working the room, it really is work. But one of the systems that I put together now, anybody who's ever gotten gets correspondence from me. We'll get it. But we set it up in Infusionsoft that we use, and you can do this with any system really, but I would take the business card and snap the business card. And then it gets transcribed into the autoresponder. And it waits for an hour from the time that I do it. And been able, will send out that, you know, a nice to meet you email and then let them know that they are in, kind of this sequence. And then our welcome email will start. So, I mean, it's, you can get really, most people aren't like crazy like me, but you can get really, really intense is this wrong word, but you know what I mean? Like detailed with it.

Susan Anderson: Oh yeah, yeah. There are systems that can really automate so well, like you would a normal if you had to like, okay, when I get home, I'm going to put this whole handful of pop, you know, business cards in and start emailing people. They'll probably, something's going to happen when you get home with her systems, you can use that streamlined. And then it's like, that's really easy. You build that muscle memory. Like, Oh, if I meet somebody a snapped the card, that's it.

Clarence Fisher: Absolutely. You know, it's really funny is I used to do that with nighttime networking and it got, it got weird. So I had to put kind of a, You know, you go to an event at night and then afterward, they get an email. It's just like,

Susan Anderson: Yeah.

Clarence Fisher: So I was like, okay, let's put await 12 hours in there. It was, you know, Hey, you learn these things,

Susan Anderson: Husband calling you, what are you doing?

Clarence Fisher: Exactly. Exactly. So, uh, so email number two. So even on number one,

Susan Anderson: Okay. Email two is kind of easy. It's getting, you know, like these are going to vary in length. Like I said like maybe some of them might be 300 words. I mean, it's not a long, you're not doing page and page and page of content here. So this one that you're going to tease them a little bit, your, your whole goal is you want them to, to really get that you understand their problems. So you might want to just share your frequently asked most frequently asked question that you ever get here. Probably they're going to have that same question and they're going to want to know the answer, but don't answer it. You got to torture them a little bit. I mean, tease them a little bit, you know, they, you can let them know that you're going to answer it in the next email then this way it's like, they're going to know like, Oh wait, there is an answer to this.

Susan Anderson: That's great. And then also they're going to have that anticipation, you know, they're going to answer that, uh, you know, open up that second email. So that's kind of cool, but also you want to include a CTA or what we call a call to action. So tell them what you want them to do. Is there something you want them to follow you on Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter or wherever you are, or Instagram, I guess a, for a young or a, you know, what do you, where do you want them to connect with you? This would be a great place to do it. And you can just say, Hey, you know, next time I'm going to answer this question. In the meantime, let's connect on social media,

Clarence Fisher: That open loop. Right. All right. So we've got an email two now let's move on to email three, you've opened the loop. What happens now?

Susan Anderson: You're going to give them relief. Hopefully, they haven't been staying up all night thinking about that question, but you're going to answer it now. And that's a, you know, one of the best things that you can remember just throughout all of the emails that you write. If you can tell a story it's so much better, they say a picture tells a thousand words, well, a story gives you a thousand pictures. So if you're able to really get them, like tell the details of, you know, Oh, you know, I was riding my bike. I was 11 scraped my knee. My pigtail got stuck in the, you know, whatever, you know, whatever it is that you can use a story to tell a really common, like break it down into for the common man. This is a great thing to do. My mentor referred to it as kitchen table logic, which I just love.

Susan Anderson: It's just kinda like, Oh, well, you know, here's, what's going on with that. And you just give it this very personable. story-driven, you know, you don't have to make it long again. You can tell a story really quickly, but just kind of connect that. And what this does is it puts, and again, builds that relationship with them. It kind of reinforces to them that, Hey, this is a real problem. It's not your fault. You haven't figured this out already or that you don't know, but we know, and this is how simple it is for us that we can explain it like a little kid, you know? Like it's just very simple. Now, the way that you can describe how the answer is. And then with that too, if you have a story of somebody else that you've helped throw that in, that's the best thing in the world. So, Oh yeah. You know, Mary came to us and she had this question as well. And here's what we did. This is a great thing. They love, people, love to hear about. They love to see before and after, of course. And then also they love to hear about some problem got fixed. This is why dear Abby was so famous for all those generations in the newspaper. People love to read about a problem, especially if it's something they might have and how somebody else got it fixed.

Clarence Fisher: Very good. Very cool. I mean, that would work for your videos and everything, wouldn't it?

Susan Anderson: Yeah. All this stuff, you can do this for your blogs, so you can do it for video, podcast, whatever content you're creating. You don't have to come up with all the different content for every channel. You just have to kind of reformat it

Clarence Fisher: Absolutely. Oh. And by the way, I actually took one of our recent emails and set those aside and I asked Florence, I said, Hey, let's use this copy for the next Facebook ad. I mean, just verbatim, just, just put it. And we're testing that now because it was so good, uh, promoting one of the done for you books services. And I was like, wow, okay, let's use that. So I'll let you know how, how that goes.

Susan Anderson: That's great. I love it. That you're getting in there and experiment like a scientist.

Clarence Fisher: Absolutely repurpose repurpose. So, okay. So we've got one, we've got two fell out. Now. It's like the counts. We did three in our email four.

Susan Anderson: Email for this is kind of cool. So think about like the most valuable tip that you could give them. It could be like how-to, here's a resource, here's a hack. Here's a tip. Here's how we, you know, like this secret way that we've figured out to solve a certain problem. If you give them this, like, okay, wow. They're like, man, they're giving this stuff away for free. You know, like Clarence, if you did this and you sent them, you know, Oh, that would be like an email section, but all right. In your email, right. Here's what you should send out on all your emails, you know? So it's like, wow, you want them going? Whoa. He gave that away for free? I'm not even a customer yet. And he told me that that's amazing. The other thing is you may not even have to really write much in that email. You might already have an existing video, a blog post, a podcast episode, something like that, that you could summarize and link to. And now not only did they get that great golden nugget of valuable information, but they also are digging even deeper into your, your, your sphere of influence. So they're listening to your podcast or they're watching your videos or they're reading your blog.

Clarence Fisher: Absolutely. If you can take them to different other pieces of property or kind of move them around a little bit, that increases trust as well. Right.

Susan Anderson: And you don't want to irritate them. Like everybody gets that email where it's got this great teaser. Like, I totally want to read this and then you have to click to get the content it's like, I don't want to. So just, you know, always think about user experience. Like, what do you like to have in an email? Do you have liked to have to click four times before you can actually find what you wanted? Or do you prefer to have it right there? Just do right by your people. And the other numbers will take care of themselves.

Clarence Fisher: That is a good one. Thank you. So, okay. So, and now before email four, we've probably waited a day or two, right?

Susan Anderson: Yeah. I would definitely wait in between there either between three and four, between four and five. And if you'll notice too, we haven't sold anything. There's been no buy, no add to cart. No, nothing. All we're doing is just talking. We're just talking.

Clarence Fisher: That is awesome. Okay. And so now we are on email five.

Susan Anderson: All right. So you have something to offer them you're in business. So maybe you want them to book an appointment. Maybe you want them to come into your store. Maybe you want them to buy something online. Now finally, email five, you have that opportunity and you want to really focus on the benefits. Nobody cares. Like what is the old adage is, wants to drill. They want the hole, but really they don't even really want the hole. They want the thing fixed. They don't want to have to mess with whatever it is that they had to have a hole.

Clarence Fisher: Really. Right.

Susan Anderson: Really just focus on that. What problem do you solve and your physical product or your digital product or your service, it solves a problem, or else you would not have a business. So share that, share the benefits of it. And then if you have happy customers that you can refer to and tell their story and sanitize it, of course, they, you know, got to protect their privacy. But, Oh my goodness. If you can say, Hey, Joe came to us with this and we solved this problem. And here's how, and we can solve it for you too. And you give them a call to action there. And that call to action will be booking an appointment book, your free consult, you know, check out this online, buy this online, you know, whatever it is that you want them to do, that would be a sales-type activity. This is when it finally comes in email number five.

Clarence Fisher: So there's this build value, build value, build the relationship, build the relationship. This is a week later before you're saying, Hey, you know, I, I can help you, you know, go here.

Susan Anderson: Right. Absolutely. And it's that, that's where, you know, that's how your relationship with them should go. You're giving, you're giving, you're giving. And occasionally, you know, you have the opportunity for them to appreciate and express value back to you by buying something.

Clarence Fisher: And so then moving forward, you're going back to your spreadsheet and picking out topics from there. And then that becomes the topic of that week.

Susan Anderson: Yeah. Once you get to that, once you're past your welcoming series, you can do, you know, you can set up in advance. If you want, you can program a whole year's worth of auto-responders and not really have to mess with it. Other than you want to check back and make sure like, is stuff getting opened. Hey, what's getting the most traction. What's getting the most clicks. What has actually sold the most? You know, you don't like abandoning your little project here if email marketing, but you might not necessarily have to ever write another one. If you had a whole year's worth, that's great. You could do it, you know, set it up as those autoresponders. Or you could just switch to broadcast emails from there where you're targeting everybody, you know, sending out an email to everybody on your list, you could get into segmenting. That's a whole another thing. But basically, a lot of these email providers have a way where you can tag somebody is this is a buyer. This is a prospect, various things like that. So you can send very targeted messages just to that segment if you want. But that's kind of advanced. I mean, most people, you're lucky if you actually like, do a welcome email,

Clarence Fisher: Right. Which by the way, you know, that those are things that, that we are doing, for instance, for one of the chiropractors that we have on this email service, those emails, by the way, are segmented to the people who are inactive or have not scheduled yet. They, they get the same email, but it's amended automatically through the email software to add a new patient special at the bottom of that email. So

Susan Anderson: Fancy, you can get with all the technology.

Clarence Fisher: Oh, it's crazy. It's great. And then, you know, for ourselves, for instance, when we send an email out, you know, that you've written and you've talked about, say the done for your book project, and they click that link. Well, then they get sent to a separate series cause they've shown interest in that. So then they get sent to a separate series that just pushes that for a few days.

Susan Anderson: Amazing. And it looks like a really smart human is sending out all these emails, but it's like, if you set up your system, you don't have to do it all the time.

Clarence Fisher: Oh, absolutely. And one of the things that I love that you brought to this is the quarterly, the quarterly survey, because one of the things that we've talked about a lot, and I'll talk about this over the years is that promotional, you know, some people call it content calendar or whatever, but the promotional calendar, where if you look, we try to get people to map out the 12 months so that there's, there's no surprises the next year. Right? So every year we should know what we're going to promote. And when you're writing these emails, and we're submitting this, this, this quarter, we're filling out the survey for the quarter. It seems so timely. It is amazing. So timely when the email hits and it's aligned with a holiday.

Susan Anderson: Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing. So I know, you know, we work with a lot of people who sell on e-com and obviously Q4 is huge for them. If they're on Amazon, they start with Amazon prime day. And then it's just this breakneck speed through the end of the year. But business owners have so much stuff going on that, you know, it's like, you can be working, working, working, you put your head up and it's like, Oh, nuts. It's already Q4, like Black Friday's coming up. I didn't do anything. Like a lot of these things, you have to plan ahead. And all of these holidays and stuff come up every year. So you really don't have to do brand new everything every year. You can revisit, tweak, polish up your last year's promotion and go with it. If it worked, if it didn't work, probably don't do that. But no, this way it's on your radar and it's taken care of.

Clarence Fisher: So what do you think are any of the biggest mistakes or pitfalls that, uh, that people make?

Susan Anderson: I think people stop mailing way too soon. So if it's not, I mean, even with these five emails before you ever have a sale, there we go. What if you quit on three? You know, it's like, you know, it takes a little while it's, if you think about it, just in all of their business relationships with your customers, clients, patients think about it. Like in real-life human relationships, if you were to go to a bar or something and walk up to some lady, Hey, let's get married right now. Like what? You're crazy. It takes time. You have to build that relationship. And then once you do, like, if you go to a bar or whatever with your wife, it's a whole different thing, you know, are you already having this relationship? You have to build it. You can't jump, you can't level jump.

Susan Anderson: You can't go right for, you know, if you jump right on, Hey, buy from me, buy from me, buy from me. It's annoying. Nobody likes that. Like treat people like you want to be treated. It's such a simple concept, but I think people jump right into a sale email first and then they give up too fast. Well, that didn't work. Forget it. Well, wait a second. If you're really, truly here to help people with your business, should you be a little bit more patient and a little bit more persistent? You have the solution that they have been hoping and praying and waiting for. They have probably spent some sleepless nights going, I really need help with this. And you have that. So in a sense, how dare you give up too soon? Like you can serve them. You're there to serve. Don't come in at with, okay, well, they've got to if I'd write this, if I write four emails, I better make X amount of money.

Susan Anderson: Just do it because you're, you care about your people. The money will count. There's you can't stop the money from coming. It's going to come. If you have your systems in place. And you're, especially if you're working with somebody smart, like Clarence, who can make sure you've got a way that people can give you money. This is important, but don't give up, like treat them like a person. And like you're on a ministry, you're on a mission to help them. That's going to make all the difference and you're going to have a blast and you can share crazy stuff. It doesn't all have to be related. You know, Hey, I was out walking and this crazy dog came up and I didn't know what to do. And I mean, you're telling crazy stories or Clarence when you wiped out on the driveway, you're taking your trash, there's a story in there, man, you slipped on the ice and this one flying.

Susan Anderson: I mean, just share yourself, and ideally, not, everybody's going to be your perfect customer. You've got some that are going to be amazing. And you practically just do it for free just because you love working with them. And then every business has those where you're like, Oh my goodness. If I have to serve them again, I'm just, I would rather do anything. Pump gas, greet people at Walmart. Anything, I can't do this anymore, but the more you're yourself and the more that you connect with your audience, the more you're going to attract the ones who are actually the perfect ideal customer for you. And it's a blast to send an email. They'll write back and go. That was funny or, wow. That got me right in the fields or, Oh man, Hey, by the way, I need to schedule it works. Just be a person.

Clarence Fisher: Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Sue, I love what you do for the team.

Susan Anderson: You are a blast to know and to work with man. I just, everybody loves Clarence.

Susan Anderson: Oh, I love it. Like to hear you get fired up about serving people and helping people. And I'm thinking, this is why we were all together because it is such, I don't know, when we know that we can help and it's like, I don't know, just to, just to see, you know, small business, small business runs the world, like

Susan Anderson: It does. Absolutely. There's no type of human on the planet. I love better than a business owner. They've gone. They put it all on the line, you know, just to be of service. They're taking ownership of problems. They didn't cause they created a solution that will help people. And they're out there doing it every day.

Clarence Fisher: Love it. Okay. So what do you feel like our listeners need to do kind of wrapping up here as we wrap up in the next 30, 90 days a year to accomplish what they, it doesn't even take a year to do this? Like what do they need to do next?

Susan Anderson: I would say it's just sit down, carve out an hour, 20 minutes, whatever you can do, just carve it out and sit and put your, you know, your focus on what kinds of things could you write to your people about? Your prospects, your actual clients, and customers? What do they need to know? What questions do they have to go through all that? And you'll be amazed. Just start making your list. Don't do anything else. Just make your list. Doing your welcome emails series. You can, you can go back and listen to this again and get the gist of what you need to include in those. The thing where it gets a little dicey is like, Oh man, every week I'm going to email them? So take that off the table. Like create your list of topics. Now, once you have five or 10, they're going to start to flow and you know, go for as many as you can get. Yeah. Get to work on it. Your people are waiting to hear from you.

Susan Anderson: And if you want to hit the easy button, you can give us a call. We'll put a link down here and then so, and I'll get together and she will get the team on it, which you man, I just can't. We have to get some testimonials down there too. Cause it's, it's been nuts. So it's great to hear. What do you have? Uh, what do you have planned for the spring? For the summer here?

Susan Anderson: Man? Just, uh, so I don't know if you know, but I have a mini-farm.

Clarence Fisher: I've been seeing something pop up where, okay. Did you get, did you get chicken?

Susan Anderson: Clarence man? We got so many chickens. It's out of control. We had like 24. We're babysitting a Husky, they ate like four of them. This is mayhem, but no it's exciting. My husband also owns this Volkswagen restoration company. So that's been really fun. I don't turn wrenches, but I just, you know, I do the marketing for them and it's, that's getting a little crazy. So we're really fun. We're booking out more than a year ahead now. So that's exciting to see like, Hey, it's working.

Clarence Fisher: That is crazy. You're not as I'm looking at the piece that he sent me here and I was just telling Brandi the other day, I was like, I have to hang that up.

Susan Anderson: Oh yeah. Or write it. And they'll tell them, tell the nice people what he said. It's a skateboard.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah. It's a skateboard deck, but it's beautiful. I would never, I just, I wouldn't do that. It's, it's beautiful. The painting, the things that they do are incredible. So it's just this piece of art. So I need to, I need to hang it up when I opened it. Really, I did think, does he think I'm going to ride this? Like,

Susan Anderson: Hey, I rode mine once. I learned that at age 50, you don't need to learn how to ride a longboard. Never been on one. It's harder than it looks.

Clarence Fisher: I've never been on one either. So that's what that's immediately. And I'm glad that you, I'm glad that you pingback. And it was like, Hey, you know, don't feel bad if you don't, you don't need to do that. You know,

Susan Anderson: Don't do that, man. Don't do that.

Clarence Fisher: So you have the farm and the plan for the farm. Is that, is it chicken?

Susan Anderson: Yeah, we're slowly. So we've got, um, a bunch of vegetable gardens. We've turned our front yard into a garden as well. Cause I'm like, I don't really need grass. We live out in the country. Nobody cares. So, so we're growing veggies and fruit now, all kinds of stuff like that. I got some nut trees that I'm going to be planting and we're just, we don't have an energy-generating plant go on yet, but pretty much everything else that a homesteader would like we were building, which is fun.

Clarence Fisher: If it goes down,

Susan Anderson: Do you know where to come?

Clarence Fisher: All right. So I so appreciate you stopping by and sharing what we do here.

Susan Anderson: Oh, absolutely happy to do it. And I'm celebrating with you 11 years of magnificence. This is just amazing what you've created.

Closing: We appreciate you listening to Local Market Monopoly. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to the show and visit ClarenceFisher.com for more resources that will help you dominate your local market and own the block.