Hey, Hey gorgeous business owners, Welcome back to build with Brooke the podcast and place to be if you want to actually make a living, doing what you love, you are listening to Episode 114.

We're gonna talk all about something I talked about a lot for a long time, felt like I was repeating myself. Obviously, I didn't say it enough. So we are going to talk all about email marketing today because y'all, it's 2024 if you are not embracing the power of email marketing, why the heck not? We need to get you embracing email marketing, starting your email list, so that you have backups so that you have a way to reach out to people. Really, there are so many reasons. And we're going to talk about six of those reasons today. Quite frankly, I probably should have made it like eight or 10. I kind of snuck some in there. But that's okay, we're gonna keep it at six. If you are like Brooke, I don't even know where to start, head on over to boldwithbrooke.com/email101 that will get you access to my free guide that you can download. It's 100% Free, there's no like, no your credit card might be free. But after two weeks, you get to cancel and then and now. It's completely free. Enter your information, download the guide, and get you started. But if you're still unsure, or if you want more details, more ideas on batching How the hell do I do this?

Let's listen to today's episode all about 2024 - y'all six reasons to embrace email marketing and stop putting it off.

Hello there gorgeous business owners. Welcome to Bold with Brooke the podcast for creative business owners to learn the marketing and business skills they need to get more clients and design their lives on their terms. So we can actually make a living doing what we love, am I right? I am your host Brooke Summer, and I'm an entrepreneur, educator and champion of women reminding them to embrace and step into their power. I'm bringing almost 20 years of business and marketing experience straight to you to help you get more clients and run a sustainable and successful business without burnout or overwhelmed. Let's jump into today's topic.

Hello, amazing business owners welcome back to another episode of Bold with Brooke the podcast and place to be if you want to actually make a living doing what you love. I'm so excited to have you here today, I wanted to give you a little bit of an update.

I have shared that I struggle with overwhelm paralysis in the past, that is still true. And what's funny is that I talked to so many of my students who also struggle with the same thing. We have so many things that we need to work on so many tasks that we need to complete. So many ideas that we want to take action on that then we just freeze, because it all seems very, very scary and we shut down. So we're going to talk more about this, I'm starting to learn more and more that that might be a neuro spicy thing, which for anyone who is new here I myself am ADHD, fairly certain that several of my family members are as well as several of my students. So we're going to talk more about that. But I wanted to let you know this first to let you know why I haven't been posting episodes as frequently as I used to sometimes I just get overwhelmed all the things I want to tell you, I have a list of hundreds of options of things that I want to tell you things that I want to teach you. And then I get overwhelmed. And second, because I don't want today's episode, to be that overwhelming thing in your life. We are going to talk all about email marketing today. And it's so funny, I feel like I talk about this all the time, I felt for a couple of years that I was just saying the same thing over and over again. And it feels kind of like you're just repeating yourself and saying the same thing. And so I kind of gave up on saying it. But when Facebook went down on March 5, everyone was freaking out. And I saw online and with my own students that this is a conversation that we need to continue having, because so many people have still not taken advantage of setting up this digital asset in their business. This is a backup. This is something that you need to have in your business. If you are relying entirely on social media alone for your marketing efforts. That is a dangerous proposition, my friends, we need to have some backups in place for you. And this one is one of the most successful ways that I have used to market my business for the past 15 years, actually 18 years. Holy moly, don't tell anyone. I'm old, but I want to admit it.

What I want you to know first and foremost is that marketing is a huge umbrella of different strategies and they all work together. We've all seen this Superbowl commercials, the billboards, the songs, the radio commercials, there are so many different options. And if you try to do them all, you will probably overwhelm yourself and burn yourself out. So please know that when I talk about these things, I'm not encouraging you to do everything. But what I want you to know is that all of these different strategies that you might choose to work with all work together, do not rely on just one option to make sure that you are able to reach your ideal clients and the people who want to work with you. All of these strategies should be working together kind of like a web of awesomeness. I know I don't like spiders, I was trying to think of a different option. I could only think of spider webs and spaghetti because right spaghetti, all the noodles interact, they're all kind of tangled up together, they all work together. But that doesn't really fit either. So we're gonna go with a web right now, all of these marketing strategies should be working together and feeding each other, like one big web that is cohesive within your brand.

Don't get overwhelmed with this, I know that it can be very, very, very easy to do. I feel you I myself, get very overwhelmed with things. It is super easy to set up. If you need help. And you're like Brooke, where the hell do I go to even start? I don't even know what website to go to. I'm gonna send you to mine because I have a free download. It's a free guide that will literally walk you through email marketing one on one, how do you set it up? What is an email service provider? What do I need to know? What do I need to have in place, I will walk you through everything in that free guide. So go to boldwithbrooke.com/email101 for the free guide. If you want to hear a little bit more about this, I have done so many episodes on email marketing, so many episodes talking about what to say how to say it. How many emails do you need? How many backups what type of backups, all of these things.

So I'm just gonna give you a quick rundown of a few different episodes that you can go to first we have the welcome sequence episode, which gives you five emails that you need when someone opts in for your list. How do you welcome them to the list? That's episode number 47. Number 75 is all about backups. What the heck do you do when something goes down? Do you have that data backed up? And in that we talk about how email marketing is a backup for other marketing strategies. And that is number 75. The next episode is gender Anna Smith, one of my friends, colleagues, co workers so to speak, although we both run our own businesses. She is on the east coast. She uses email marketing very consistently. And that is number 23. We go into how she uses it, and what that looks like in her business. In episode number 53. I talk with Megan Auman, who is a jewelry designer. And she uses email to connect consistently with the people she meets who want to buy her pieces. Number 51 is the what the heck do I write, we're going to talk about different content ideas. I think so many people tend to overcomplicate things. And in that episode, I break it down. And I will always always always point back to this episode, there's a reason that it was episode number one, you need to know who the hell you're talking to. And this is in social media. This is an email marketing. This is an all of your marketing and sales, all of your business decisions should be based on who you're trying to reach. And that is episode number one.

With that being said, we are going to dive into six reasons that you need to stop putting off an email list. Number one with email marketing, you actually own your audience. There are so many social media platforms, take your pick count, whether it's Twitter, which is now x, or meta, which is Facebook and Instagram and Tiktok. All the things even LinkedIn, these platforms can change their algorithms shut down last minute, you can have your account hacked, so many things can happen. But this email list when you're building it, when you're logging in, you're using these email service providers that we discussed. This email list is yours. This is a huge impact to your overall stability for your long term planning and your business. And this allows you to make sure that your messages can reach your audience consistently. Even if something were to happen, such as a social media issue, or algorithm change or your account is hacked or anything like that. Another thing to consider that affects me specifically is when it comes to a type of content that might not be popular, or might be heavily censored on social media. So I run a boudoir studio, which means I work with women who are often wearing lingerie, or scantily clad in some way. And that is not a good fit for most social media networks. They do not like to have that type of content on their platform. So email is an amazing way to share what your clients want to see and to share with the people who want to work with you without having to be censored constantly. Another thing to consider is some of these social media platforms may not always be around. I know that That's kind of hard to hear. If you have listened to previous episodes, you know, Instagram is not my favorite, but I'm working on it. I'm getting there. Tick tock is actually a ton of fun. I really like tick tock. I feel like Instagram is super curated, everyone has to be perfect. They have the perfect outfits, perfect house perfect kids, perfect everything. Whereas TikTok is kind of just I got something to say I'm gonna show up. I don't have to be perfect, but tick tock is under fire right now. A bill just passed the House and is now facing a path through the Senate. And so many creators that have built their business, on tick tock are finding themselves very fearful of what might happen. Because the audience that they've built and put so much time and effort into could be completely gone. Now, in my saying, don't use social media. Absolutely not. For anyone who knows me, I am on Facebook all day long, the little tiny, weird thoughts that come into my head, the questions that come into my head, I post on Facebook, if you are a friend of mine on Facebook, you will see kind of these weird random questions that come up. Because I love that type of interaction. I don't have that when I work by myself. So I love social media. But I am not going to rely heavily on it for marketing, because of the things that could happen. Because of the things that have happened. I have had so many friends who have had their accounts, just shut down completely gone, or their accounts have been hacked. It is absolutely unacceptable to rely on just one thing for your marketing, you are going to find out the hard way, I hope not. But you could find out the hard way that you need to have that backup and you need to actually own your audience. So for number one, ownership is a huge concern. When it comes to marketing and building that audience, that email list is a digital asset for your business.

Number two email has unmatched return on investment or ROI and conversion. And it's extremely cost effective email marketing, when you're just starting. If you have a smaller list, for most email service providers, those smaller lists are completely free. You don't have to spend anything on email marketing. Now as you get bigger, you might have to start investing, I know I spend for email marketing, because I have a larger list. But it depends on the size of your list. Email marketing is so crazy effective, it's estimated that there's a 36 to $40 ROI for every dollar spent. That means you spend $1 on email marketing, and you're gonna get back 36 to $40. And that depends on a lot of things, obviously. But that ROI is so much higher than other platforms, there are so many more opportunities that you have. Additionally, the conversion rates are so much higher. When it comes to social media. It depends on who you ask. But most experts say that your social media reach will be about 2% to 6% of your followers, meaning I'm just going to make the math really easy. If you have 100 followers, two to six people will actually see your posts, meaning the other 94 to 98% will never see it. Whereas with email marketing, you can have an open rate between 20 and 50%, sometimes even higher. So the practices that we have in the analytics, and the conversion rates that we see an email are far, far higher than social media. And again, I'm not saying don't use social media, people come after me sandbrook Do you just hate social? No, nothing could be further from the truth. But the reality is that email marketing outperform social media over and over and over again.

Number three, personalized and targeted communication with email marketing, you have the opportunity to segment your list. So for example, as a boudoir photographer, I work with women, I work with couples and I just started working with men within email marketing, I can segment people based on what they're interested in, so that I can send out a message just to people who are interested in couples boudoir, just people who are interested in learning more about marketing, just to people who are interested in standard boudoir, you don't have that opportunity on social media without creating and maintaining multiple accounts, which can be a lot of work. Trust me, I have to I know how much work that is. So within email marketing, you have the opportunity to actually segment your list and break it down based on what people are interested in. This allows you to really personalize those messages, as well as merging tags, which means putting their name into the actual message. Study after study after study has shown that when people see or hear their name, it is pleasing to them. Which sounds so strange to say but it's so true. When someone hears their own name. That's something that they like to hear and you can do that in email marketing as well. You also have the option tunity to automate. And we do have this with some social media as well. But you can literally write out 12 emails at the beginning of the year, and schedule them to be sent one every month, one time a year, all of your content within email marketing is done. So freakin simple. Most social media platforms only allow you to schedule out so far in advance. But with email, you can actually schedule way out, create all at once and batch your content, which we've talked about a lot on this podcast, and get it all done at once, which is so so nice to have it done and off of your plate. And one less thing to think about so that it's not feeding into that overwhelm, that we talked about earlier, though. Number three, again, was personalized and targeted communication. And I kind of threw automation there, maybe it should have been its own, but that's okay.

Number four, building relationships and loyalty. This allows you to have that consistent communication. Again, you can automate it ahead of time, if you don't want to send every week, you can send every month, it doesn't really matter as long as you're consistent. And you can stay in touch with content and updates and offers. And this helps to keep your brand top of mind and build trust over time. So many people underestimate this type of marketing. Top of Mind marketing is huge. If you see a billboard on the side of the road, with a big swish on it, you don't have to see the word Nike to know that it's Nike, because it's top of mind, these are the things that people do not think about, chances are most people will not need your service every day of their lives, okay, they're probably going to need it every once in a while if it's a wedding, maybe once, maybe twice in their life, but they're not going to need it constantly. When they do need it, you want to be the first person that they're thinking of, when they need what you offer, you want to be the first name that pops into their head, or on the other side of that, if it's not something that they will ever need. Let's take the example of weddings again, if you have photographed their wedding, and they are done and you are moving forward, and you're still emailing them, maybe you have family options to consider family sessions in the fall. Maybe they have a friend that's getting married now. And they can refer you there are so many reasons that you want to stay top of mind so that people know who you are, what you do and who you serve. Email marketing is ideal for this because you can reach out and touch base with someone and provide value to someone without constantly trying to sell them.

Number five, email marketing is an amazing opportunity to increase brand awareness. This lets you nurture relationships and build brand loyalty through that consistent communication. You can provide the content and offers. And you can share things that will educate your ideal client as well. There are how to guides, Industry Insights, case studies, and things that might be on your mind. I can tell you right now, so many of my emails that had the highest open rates, the highest response rates had nothing to do with me trying to sell what I do. So many people find it very, very difficult to wrap their heads around this. But a lot of the things that I share that go viral, that are shared all around the world, have absolutely nothing to do with what I actually do. What I'm doing is providing value. I'm sharing something that's on my mind, sharing something that's on my heart. Maybe I see something in the news that is appropriate based on my brand, my brand values and what I do, and I share that information. Why? Why would I share something that has nothing to do with what I actually offer? Because again, it's that relationship. It's the know, like trust factor. It's getting into someone's head getting into someone's inbox and saying, Hey, this was on my heart. Have you ever thought about this? So many people respond to this. I remember for anyone that is unaware, my son is 19. And I remember when he was going through middle school and high school, we had a few rough days. I think that's pretty common for teenagers. And one day I sat down I know I needed to send an email. And I didn't know what to write. And so I just wrote was what was on my heart. I was like, Y'all, I am just in the weeds right now. I have a teenager He's driving me crazy. I just need to know I'm not alone. So I'm sure that some of you might be feeling the same way. I got so many replies to that email because I work with people who are parents, not all the time but a lot of the time. And so many people responded to that because they related to it. We are all looking to relate with another human. We are all looking to be seen and be heard and be understood. And when we see someone that is feeling this same way that we are going through the same thing that we are, or maybe has been through the same thing that we've been through. That is a chance for us to relate to another human. That is a potential connection. Now, I'm not saying this, obviously to manipulate people, be honest, be authentic, be genuine, because people can smell bullshit from a mile away. I know people don't want to hear that either. But it is so real. This is your chance to increase brand awareness to really reach out to people with a message that is consistent with your brand. My brand, when it comes to my boudoir photography is about self love. It's about accepting your body, where you're at knowing that you're powerful that you're badass, no matter what your exterior looks like. Because you are not your your exterior your outer body. And that is really, really important to me. And for that reason, I will share things like that, as well, not only in social, but via email. These are the things that we need to consider when it comes to brand awareness. And what we want to be sharing when it comes to email, and it gives us the chance to do that and to connect with people in a way that they can't just scroll past. So that leads us directly into number six. excellent segue, Brooke. Good job.

Number six, this is a direct communication channel. Email marketing allows you to reach out to someone directly, you have a direct line with your customers, it's an immediate communication channel. social media posts can get buried in a feed, and people can just scroll right past him. Email doesn't allow for that. For someone to get an email out of their inbox. This is very action oriented. They either have to open it, click it, reply it, archive it or delete it, they have to do something with it. They can't just scroll past it email marketing forces action from your clients, if they don't want to receive your emails anymore. That is 100%. Okay, they can scroll down to the bottom, click unsubscribe, because we are all following the guidelines. Right? Sorry, my dear my dog, we are all following the things that we need to follow to make sure we're in compliance with the laws based on where we live. Right, right, because they're good business owners, but email forces action, this is a direct communication, to reach out to someone who has literally raised their hand maybe not literally but figuratively, saying I want to hear more, I want to hear more from you. This also enables two way communication. This is something I talk to my students a lot about, I think we might have to do a full episode on this. So many people approach email marketing, like they're just handing someone a flyer. And that can work. But it's not really the best way to approach email marketing. This feedback loop this two way communication between businesses and customers, between you and your clients allows you to get feedback directly from the people who want to work with you, the people who have signed up to hear more about what you do, that not only prompts the email service providers to say, hey, this person's email is valuable because they're getting constant feedback. But it also remind your clients that you care about what they think that you care about their opinion, and what they have to say,

These things are just six you guys, I have so many slides on this on so many reasons that you need to have an email list that you should absolutely be embracing email marketing with your whole heart, because there are so many reasons. But since it's 2024, and I wanted to make sure that we're all on the same page and that you're moving forward in building this asset for your business. I wanted to give you six reasons that you should stop putting off this email list building this email marketing and this asset for your business. So I'm gonna break them down again for you. Real quick.

Number one, you get to own your audience, you have ownership. Unlike other platforms number two, email marketing has an unmatched ROI and conversion. Number three, you have personalized and targeted communication. Number four, this is your opportunity to build relationships and client loyalty. Number five, it's time to increase brand awareness so you can stay top of mind. And number six, this is a direct communication channel with feedback and response and connection.

I know that email marketing sounds like just another thing on your to do list. I get it. I know I know. I know that. As I said earlier, this is something that you can batch and schedule ahead of time. This is something that you should be sharing on your social media and why I always tell people in my Facebook group as well as on all my social media channels. My email list is where you're going to get the first dibs on everything. That is where everything goes first, because I want to reward people who take that action to sign up. Do those opportunities go to social media? Yes, but not first. First notice first action first dibs first, all the things will go to my email list. My clients know it and everyone that signs up knows that they are getting the first kind of insider information, that early adopter information. Email marketing is something that you should not be sleeping on. It is something that you cannot ignore. We need to start working on this. And again, if you were like broke, holy shit, this sounds like a lot. Where do I even begin? Go to Boulder with burke.com/email one on one. And that is my free guide, it is 100% free. Yes, it has an opt in for your email address. But if you don't want to be on my email list, just opt out you can always unsubscribe, I promise though, I will only send you things that are valuable, and that you want to know about. I am so excited that you showed up today that you were here and just share this time with me, I know that you have so many options when it comes to content, there are so many things to choose from. So I really, really don't take it lightly, that you chose to listen to me and spend this time with me and your earbuds, whether you're picking up kids walking your dog, whatever you're doing, but I really value that and I want to thank you and if you got value from this, I'm going to ask that you share this and that you leave a review on iTunes. Yes, there are other places you can leave a review, I have several people who have left me reviews elsewhere. And I appreciate those as well. iTunes is kind of the place where people go for those reviews. So so if you want to just take a second pause right here, go to boldwithbrooke.com/itunes. Please leave a review.

If you leave a review, and email me at hello@boldwithbrooke.com. I will send you a free gift. It'll be a template, email templates, something like that. I'm always switching it out. But I am so happy to help you with any questions that you have. When it comes to business marketing, email marketing, we're going to start going a little deeper as well as in like, if you know why you shouldn't be doing something, why aren't you doing it? That is kind of a loaded question right? Check out all of the show notes for this. And all of my episodes at boldwithbrooke.com/podcast. This particular episode is number 114. And there will be a ton of show notes as well as a transcript. So if you'd like to see what I actually said it is generated by AI, we're working on that head over to bolt with brooke.com/podcast. And you can see all of the episodes there get all of the information that you might need. And I'm so happy to have you here. Have an amazing rest of your day. And we'll talk soon. Thank you so much for joining me today and listening in. You can find all of the show notes for this and every episode over at boldwithbrooke.com/podcast where you can also find all the links or resources mentioned I can't wait to work with you have an amazing rest of your day.