Attracting New Clients And Nurturing Customers Through Email Marketing with Joe Kerns

Jeremy Deighan
Hey, everyone. Thanks for coming on the show today and having a listen. We have a special guest with us, Joe Kerns, from MakeEmailEasy.com, who is going to dive deep into everything email marketing, which I'm super excited about. Email marketing is very important to your business.

As you've heard me mentioned many times, it's very important to have, because you have more ownership of the customer information and the customer data, you can reach out to them, it doesn't matter what social media platform shuts down or goes bankrupt or goes away, you always have access to talking to your customers through email.

So I think it's a very important aspect to have in your business. And so I'm super excited about this topic today. How are you doing, Joe?

Joe Kerns
Hey, I'm doing fantastic. How you doing today, Jeremy?

Jeremy Deighan
I'm doing great. Yeah, this is gonna be really great. I think, you know, many people can benefit from learning email strategies. And I know that you teach this at a very high level and can give us some good insight. So excited to have you on the podcast today.

Before we dive into that, if you'd like to just take a couple moments and let the audience out there know a little bit about you. What were you doing before you got into online business? And then how did you transition into this world?

Joe Kerns
Yeah, well, thanks. I'm Joe Kerns. And I think probably like a lot of people that got into online business, it was kind of an accident, to be honest. So, I'll give you the the quick rundown. My master's degree is actually in performance psychology, and I had no intention of getting into business.

But after grad school, I had studied more of the area of fitness member retention and activation. So essentially, how do we get people more active in clubs, adopting healthy habits, and really kind of building healthier lifestyles.

And when I came out of that, I had worked in the fitness industry for years and found it really frustrating how little of the knowledge from academia and science actually made it into health clubs and gyms. And so what I sought out to do originally was kind of build almost like a, like an AI coach, you know, that could train people on habit development, and all these sorts of things that I had studied in school.

And what I stumbled onto was email marketing, automation technology, because what it allowed me to do was really take all of this information that I could learn about somebody and start personalizing the content that I sent them.

And through that, I kind of accidentally got really good at email marketing and member onboarding retention, it was just getting great results with that. And that really kind of opened up the whole world of possibility to me realizing, "I can really kind of build a lot more than just member onboarding retention programs here, like what's this marketing thing about?"

You know, the course of years and serendipity, just learned so much more about how you can use that for helping other businesses grow.

And not just using it for member onboarding and retention, but attracting new clients and really building a lot more interesting types of systems and programs using the technology that's available. And that's really kind of what sparked my interest and got me to nerd out in this whole area of marketing and email automation.

Jeremy Deighan
Awesome. Yeah, that's really cool. It's kind of funny how sometimes our degrees aren't what we end up doing, but they lead you down that path. You know?

I kind of have a similar story we won't get into today. But you know, it's just kind of interesting to hear people's beginnings and how they how they go down those paths.

So how does habits and since that was kind of where you got started was, you know, teaching others and habit development. How does that translate to email just in general?

I mean, are habits something that is important for email marketing is a good way to build habits with your customers so that they're constantly seeing you through email? Like, do you see a correlation there between habit development in email marketing?

Joe Kerns
Yeah. And you know, it's kind of a double edged sword to be honest, because, of course, you do want to get your subscribers in the habit of opening and reading your emails and expecting value from you and building that level of familiarity. But the downside to habits can be sometimes we have so much familiarity with something that we're kind of not expecting anything to change, right?

So you do want to do things occasionally that shake it up a little bit and keep it exciting and interesting to people where it's not so habituated, that eventually becomes a little bit mundane or boring.

You know, you will see that all the time for example, in marketing funnels, right? You know when you opt in For a free lead magnet, like on the next page, you're probably going to get an upsell into something. And then it's a workshop, you know, at the end of the webinar, you're going to be sold on.

Like, a lot of that is very predictable. And, you know, part of the reason it's predictable is because it's, it's pretty reliable, and it can work really well. But sometimes you want to shake people out of their habits and really get them to realize that there's something different going on here. They need to pay more attention. You know, I mean, we habituate tuning out ads, right?

That's why buy banner ads, like stop working, because we have the habit of not paying attention to them. So I do always say it's kind of a double edged sword, you know, build the good habits of getting them to engage and expect value. But don't be afraid to shake it up a little bit and try some new things as well.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, cool. Yeah. And I'm going to come back around, maybe, you know, near the middle, or end of this interview, and I want to talk about the habits of the entreprenuer, getting into creating emails, so that we can make sure that we are staying on top of this and top of mind of the customer.

But before we do that, let's start at the beginning. So your company is making email easy. And I think that that's kind of a fear of a lot of people is that email is hard, it's gonna take a lot of time. You don't know what emails to write.

So if someone were to come to you, and they haven't done email marketing before, and they needed your, you know, guidance or expertise, what would be the first stages that you would take them through to start learning how to do email marketing properly?

Joe Kerns
Oh, I love this. I love this question. First off, because it has nothing to do with email in the first stage. What I always find is, myself being a very visual person, I think most people also appreciate being able to visualize problems like this.

So I always like starting with do you have kind of a top down visual map of your business and of the customer journey. Now sometimes people call that a funnel map or a customer journey map, really I don't care what you call it, as long as you have some way of seeing every entry point into your business.

Meaning they opt in for a newsletter, they see you on social media, they hear you on a podcast, whatever that is, you just go through sequentially and say, "And then what?" If they see me on on a podcast, where can they go next? Or if they land on my website? What buttons can they click, where can they end up?

And the reason I like starting with that, instead of going straight into email, is email is a component of your business that helps aid in that customer journey. And if you know where they are, and where they've been, then knowing what emails to write makes a lot more sense, because they help build a relationship, they help move them to a different stage of the journey they're in.

You know, not everybody, the second they come into your business is ready to buy from you. Of course, they need to be nurtured, they need to know, like, and trust you. So the first thing I like to do is map that all out.

And it can be very simple, if your business model is very simple, or it can be wildly detailed and intricate. We've been all over the map. Some clients, you know, we can write it out in a half hour. And for others, it takes weeks to get it mapped out.

But one of the things that I like to do with that is looking at big gaps in that customer journey where maybe you're asking them to take too big of a leap. So if you go from, "Hey, I've got this free guide," jumping straight to, "And I've got this $10,000 course."

And it jumps straight between those, well, you're gonna notice pretty quickly, "I got some gaps to fill here, I need to make this a smoother transition." And email fills a part of that.

Because of course, the thing that I like about email is you can come up with ideas for content, and you can draft up an email and get that sent out in less than a half hour and test out to see if your audience is interested. And that might give you some ideas for more content to create more blog posts or social media content, or videos or new workshops or products.

All of that is just a really interesting way to have a more interactive approach to how you build that customer journey.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, totally. And this is a really cool idea. Because I know speaking with other people out there that we don't probably take enough time to think about that customer journey. You know, we hear a new strategy, and we want to go implement it right away without ever having any forethought of how that integrates into our business.

And so I'm going to create a lead magnet, and I'm going to go post on social media and I'm going to go run an ad. And you never really think about like, where are the customers coming from? How are they hearing about you? And what path are you leading them down into your business to get them to the result that they're looking for?

So, I think this is really cool thinking about like, all these different points of where they can access your business. And then once they come into your, your funnel, how can you get them to move into the different parts of your business that you want them to?

So, I think this is really cool. So we take a look at this customer journey map. We see some gaps that we could fill, you know, trying to nurture them and build those relationships as you talked about. So what would be the next process or the next step?

Joe Kerns
This is an area where you can kind of take one single framework and use it at a high level or in a really nitty gritty level. You might have heard before, sometimes it's tossed around in copywriting circles, but it's called Before-After-Bridge.

And really what this gets us to think about is anytime when someone comes into your business, they have a before state, essentially where they're stuck, or that could be the problem they're trying to solve.

The after state, which is where they're trying to go, or the result that they want. And then where you come in is, you're the bridge, you're the one that helps get them there. That's your solution. That's the content, the services, the products that you provide.

So if you look at that, at a high level, when we're thinking about building out that customer journey map, well, whenever they enter into your business, they're in that before state, that's why they're coming there. And the after state is probably going to be at the very end of your funnel, or towards the end of your funnel, where you've gotten them the result.

So everything that happens between that entry point, and then actually purchasing your core product or getting a result from you, it's your responsibility to be able to to provide them with what they need to get from the before to the after.

And I think when you think about yourself or your company as the bridge, it also kind of frames you in the right philosophical mindset to think about how you serve your audience. It kind of relieves a little bit of that, that ego around your product and your solution being so important and more around, "How do I just actually get them where they're trying to go?"

Because it makes you more flexible. And then when you take that and you get down to the the next level down, say, "Okay, so that's what I'm trying to do with my business is build a bridge from the before to the after, then that's exactly how I write an email sequence."

So say, when somebody downloads one of your lead magnets, when they download that lead magnet, it's because they're in a before state, they have a problem that they want that lead magnet to solve.

And that result that the lead magnet promises, you need to get them there through the bridge that you built, providing actionable strategies, things that actually get them results, so they know that they can come back to you. And if the lead magnet doesn't get them result, they're probably not going to buy your core product.

And then take that even a step further and say, "Okay, well, within each individual email, there's a specific before state after state and a bridge." And so it really kind of applies, you know, at the highest level all the way down to the individual emails that you write.

And it's such a simple way to think about sitting down to write an email or an email sequence, at the beginning of this email sequence, where are they stuck? And by the end of it, where do I need to help them get to? How many emails does that take?

If it's a very simple problem to solve, then it might just be one email, and you provide a quick tip, and that helps them solve that problem. If it's more complex than maybe it's five emails, or seven emails, maybe it's a email mini course, you actually need to take them through multiple lessons to get them to the after state.

But if you always keep that general framework in mind, I find that it's a lot simpler to kind of look at every area of your business and think about where you're serving.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, yeah. This is really cool. This is a great way to visualize how to write these emails, I know that me and a lot of others get stuck in that process of you don't know what to write, you don't even know where to begin.

Or maybe you're writing an email just to write an email, and it doesn't really have any action behind it, therefore, it's not really helping the customer at all. And so if someone's out there creating an online course, that is obviously the after state, you know.

The before state is someone is trying to learn how to do something, and the online course is fulfilling on that, then the email can be the bridge of showing them where they're at, and how that online course is going to help them. Is that correct?

Joe Kerns
Correct, yes. There's a lot of frameworks within the the way that you can approach creating a Before-After-Bridge. When I think about writing individual emails, there's really three types of key frameworks that I like to lean on.

We'll go through each of those and actually know, in a recent podcast where you had Rob and Kennedy, they talked about one of these, which is really important, which is the story approach to writing emails.

And I do always find that to be an incredibly engaging way to get people hooked in because we're all driven by stories. You know, I mean, there's there's so many business books on storytelling now, because it's such a compelling way to get your ideas across and to teach that.

I think that one thing people get wrong with stories, though, and this is this is understandable, because we're used to storytelling, you know, from from Hollywood, and so many, like big, big productions around stories, but the most compelling stories are the ones that are very relatable and simple and related to everyday kind of experiences.

So whenever you're going through your day and and you have a relatable or interesting experience that kind of triggers a thought related to something that you teach or an interesting key concept or point. I do like to just kind of jot those down and get some ideas for it.

But one additional tip they'll provide for a storytelling framework for emails is look for the emotional core. This is where I kind of come back to my performance psychology background a little bit.

But if you think about the primary emotion that you want someone to feel or that that problem state that we talked about in the before state where they're struggling, what is that emotion that you want to show them you can relate to?

Is it confusion? Is it frustration? Is it fear? Is it anxiety? And then you can look for stories in your life that relate to that core emotion and then how you resolved it. So you can kind of still show that path from the emotional before states and maybe that emotional after state.

And that's where you can get a lot of congruency between a story that might not seem relevant, you might be talking about something that happened to you at a grocery store, and you're gonna link that back to, you know, your online course. But that's a really simple way to do it.

Jeremy Deighan
When we do this story approach, we're trying to think about the emotional connection that you can build with the person who is reading that email. So I think you're right, you know, I thought in the past of writing stories, that I thought might be helpful in some way, but maybe they didn't really trigger an emotional response.

And I was just telling a story to tell a story. So what you're saying is, think about the story, the way that it affects you. So if I have a story, and I have a bad customer experience, and it frustrates me, then use the frustration to go back and write an email to show the customer how in their business, if they have bad customer service, it can be frustrating, or kind of draw up that same same kind of feelings, correct?

Joe Kerns
Correct, yes. There's a few frameworks, the way that you can think about that as well. Because like I said, it doesn't have to be that direct, necessarily, it can be kind of a, almost a little bit of a roundabout way that you get to it, as long as the core kind of like "aha moment" that they have applies broadly or generally to the next thing you're getting them to think about.

One way that I kind of like to break down stories, aside from just you know, that primary emotion is think about a moment of clarity that you had from a previous experience, because that's kind of one of the most impactful things that we can provide to our audience is a perspective shift.

I kind of like that approach almost more than just information. Usually, when we just provide a tip or information, it only applies to that one specific scenario. If we can get them to change their perspective on something that can completely alter the way that they see everything, or an entire range of situations.

And that's very applicable. So an example if we want to take them from kind of a point of confusion to a point of clarity, one way that we can do that is to illustrate that through story and through that happening to us.

So for example, coming from the fitness background, one thing that I noticed happened a lot of times was, people would get really caught up in thinking they had to do a form of exercise that they hated, right?

And so that was part of the difficulty and habit developments very hard to get somebody to do something that that they don't want to do. But then I would watch sometimes where people would kind of have this moment of clarity, for example, maybe they really didn't like lifting weights, but they really enjoyed, you know, going out for a hike with their dog.

And you know, one way that you could tell a story, for example, was saying, "Well, I had a client that really, you know, didn't enjoy going and being in the gym, but really wanted to lose 20 pounds. And one day, she went out for a hike with her dog. And she was wearing her Fitbit and actually kind of didn't notice that until she got to the end of her hike, or Fitbit buzz that her and told her that she had reached her daily activity.

And she thought, 'Oh my gosh, I never even really thought about the fact that just going out and doing something that I liked, like going for a walk with my dog hits those, you know, hits my calorie count for the day and helps me hit my activity level.' So maybe I just have to choose the right form of activity."

And that point of clarity of recognizing, there are many ways to get to that same goal. And it doesn't have to be a grind to do something that you hate to still make progress every day, you just have to search and find the ways of doing something that are enjoyable and satisfying to you.

And then you won't even notice that you're putting in the work that's getting you to that result or that after state like that, that's kind of a common core story that applies very broadly even outside of weight loss, of course.

I mean, even in the context of what we're talking about with email here. You know, if you approach email marketing as an activity that feels like a chore like something, you have to slog it out every day that you hate. Well, maybe you're just doing the harder version of it.

And there's actually something just around the corner where you would actually look forward to writing those emails. And by virtue of that you get better results with it. So that's another way that I like kind of thinking about storytelling.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, great. So that was one of the frameworks that you had mentioned, you said, there were three. So what would be the second framework that you like when it comes to writing out these emails?

Joe Kerns
So, the second framework that I really like is the FAQ email. Now, we all know that, like, your audience has a million questions for you, and one of the most valuable things that you can do is just provide a straightforward answer.

Because those different points of confusion which you know, most people are stuck in, they don't know how to solve the problem, or else they would have already done it. You can look through any email responses you get, you can look through your social media, your DMS.

I mean, there's a million websites that you can look at to see common questions that people have, but those Frequently Asked Questions, I mean there's a reason why those appear on so many different sales pages and product pages and things like that, because you want to resolve people's uncertainties.

Both around your products, of course, like it does apply to that, but just in general in terms of the topic that you teach and the problems that you solve. So I do like to keep these really short and sweet when you answer them.

Because when you're doing it in email format, and you're answering an FAQ, you can always link them out to a more complete form of content, whether it's a full video that you have, or a blog post, or something on your social media.

But one way that I like to go through and list these is go write down all the common questions that you get, or that you've pulled from, from any of your interactive forms of content, your email, your DMS and things like that. And I like to just put all of those in a spreadsheet, and list all of them down.

And then what you can do is, of course, you can do one email per FAQ, there's simple, straightforward ways that you can do that. But also like to group FAQs and think about do I have one piece of content that answers multiple FAQs all at once. And you can even go in reverse order and take one of your top forms of content.

And then as you read through it, start listing all the FAQ that that content answers. And just having that in the spreadsheet can make it a little easier to visualize and organize. Because at some point, when you go back, and you think about that Before-After-Bridge that we talked about at a high level in planning your email sequences.

Well, then you can think about what are all the FAQs that I can address throughout this email sequence that helped fill in the gaps and resolve any of those sticking points they have to get them to that after state?

Because that's largely what is going to be it's going to be that they have a lot of questions or a lot of areas, they're stuck. And by addressing each of those FAQ is in the right order, which is something we can come back to in a minute, that's kind of how you can transition them through little one baby step at a time to get them to the other side.

And that's usually a little bit more approachable for people to think about as well, they when they sit down to write and emails go, "What's it? What's a question you get all the time? And what are different angles that you can take to answer that FAQ?"

There's not just one way to answer a question, I'm sure there's many different methods and approaches and ways that you can provide those little bits of clarity. But those also make great subject lines, by the way, when you frame the the subject line of the email as a common question.

Well, of course, if they have that question, they're gonna click on it to find the answer. So I do find FAQs, to be just a really simple and actionable way to provide value.

Jeremy Deighan
Nice. I like this. First of all, the subject line ID is amazing. You're absolutely right. If if you are directly putting the question in a subject line, and someone has that thought in their head, why would they not click on it? So that's genius.

I ask a lot of questions in my Facebook group and in my Facebook community. You know, Facebook gives you the opportunity to ask questions when you are invited into a group.

And I have a program that automatically sends those off to a spreadsheet. Then when people get in my group, I'm constantly asking them questions, or I'm saving their questions, and my group and another group.

So one thing I got into the habit of doing a year or two ago, you can go to the little menu button next to the post. And you can save that into a list. And so I had multiple lists for you know, different types of business ideas, and one of them is generally commonly asked questions for online courses.

And that gives me a resource to go back and see what were questions that people were asking? And what were some of the answers that people had? Because it might you know, give you some ideas there too.

So I definitely put those into a spreadsheet, like you say, and I have those, there isn't a question about online courses that I don't have an answer to at this point, right? Because I've been collecting them and putting that together for so long. I know what everyone's going to ask and at what points.

So this is really cool. I like this idea of using these questions inside of your emails just being direct. Again, like you said, if you tease a question or give a basic response, but then you can, you know, send it to a YouTube video or blog post or even a podcast episode that is kind of answering that question and giving them more in depth information and building that relationship more.

I think that's genius. You said, you were talking about making sure that you address the FAQs in the right order. What did you mean by that?

Joe Kerns
Yeah, so that's another really important point that I find people can overlook really often is, when you're planning out that customer journey, obviously the right thing at the wrong time becomes the wrong thing.

Because when somebody is moving through a path, there's certain things they have to know before they're ready for the next step. You can't just mix and match all that up. So if you imagine in a college course, right? You don't take psychology 401 before you take psychology 101 that you have to take things in order.

So there's a base knowledge as you progress them through. And that sequence is really important. This is actually where so much of the power in email automation and drip sequences comes in, because you can control that. You can control what you send them, when you send it, how often how much information is in there.

And that reduces a lot of the randomness through which somebody is presented with that information. Of course, if the only thing that they get is a weekly newsletter from you, and that's just kind of your your latest content, there is value in that.

But you're kind of just blasting everybody with the same information every week, versus when someone comes in at a certain stage. For example, let's say that you have a lead magnet, and it's picking a name for your online course.

Well, if someone doesn't even know what they want to create a course about yet and they have no ideas, then picking a name is probably pretty premature. And just providing tips around that is going to be not terribly helpful for them.

But maybe the first thing is coming up with ideas for your online course. And that's going to be something where you need to walk them through and probably look at the areas of expertise they have and the different interests that they have. So everything in order is going to make a lot more sense.

So that way you're able to provide value that's actually relevant and timely for someone. So you can go through those FAQ is but then don't just write sequences for them randomly. Think about where can I find out where this person is on their journey?

Can I create specific lead magnets that attract people at those stages, and then the email sequence that follows that can give them the FAQs, in order that are relevant to them? What do they need to understand first before they can move to the next step?

So you can think maybe there's certain things they need to do. Maybe there's certain things they need to believe certain skills that they need to develop.

When you have those kind of mapped out again, in that customer journey, then it does make it much easier to think, "Okay, well, I'm not going to bombard them with all of these FAQs that are much more relevant to somebody who's five steps ahead of them I'm going to move them through this first Before-After-Bridge, and only give them the content that is at the right time."

Because when we say in email automation, and marketing automation, in general, it's the right message to the right person at the right time. And if you get any of those wrong, then that kind of defeats the entire usefulness of what you're sending them.

So that's why I always say think about not just what you're sending, but when you're sending it and in what order.

Jeremy Deighan
Now I'm going to ask you a question. I know the answer. But I know this will be a question that's popping up in people's heads.

If you are doing this for an online course, specifically, and you are walking through someone the the questions that they would have generally for the things that you would have in your course. And you're putting them in a sequential order.

How do you decipher what to put in the emails versus what to put in the actual course? Because someone might be thinking out there like, "Well, if I'm going to put all the information in these emails, and they get all the information right away, why would they take my online course?"

So what would be your response to that?

Joe Kerns
Yeah, so there's, there's two ways that I would think about that. First off, I always lean towards giving more value on the front end, because that's where you get people results.

And if people are able to get results with your free stuff, then they're gonna think, "Wow, if I'm getting this much out of the free stuff, imagine how good the paid stuff must be." And there's so much content out there that I'd say it's very unlikely that you're going to give so much away through your email content, your free content that somebody is not going to be interested in going further with you.

Now, of course, yes, there's still some concerns. You can't literally give everything away. So one way that you can think about it is to say, "I'm going to give away a lot of the what and the why, but then I can keep more of the how in my paid content."

So you can still show them, hey, this is this is what you need to be doing. This is why it matters. And you're still providing a lot of that kind of perspective change content. But then when you get into the nitty gritty of now, here's exactly how I do it, or I'm going to give you the frameworks or the specific templates or things that I've created.

That's where you can reserve a little bit more of that for your course. Because that's where you want people to dive deep. So yeah, I think that, you know, lean towards providing more value and building that trust, because that's really necessary. But if you're a little bit worried about it, then just reserve a little bit more of the how end of your content for behind your paid products.

Jeremy Deighan
Very cool. That makes total sense. And I agree with you, 100%. So great answer. Okay, cool. So we talked about the story approach, we talked about the FAQ email. So what would be the third framework that you like to use for emails?

Joe Kerns
So the third one is really simple. There's a lot of ways that you can come up with ideas for this, but it's just a quick tip. And the reason I like to use this is because as much as possible, you want to keep the value retained within the email, because not everybody's going to go from the email and click through to your blog post.

Of course, it's great if we can get them to do that. But you also want people to get in the habit of just being able to get some value immediately, in 30 seconds or less something they can take and run away with.

And one reason I like to do that, and not always link out to long form content is you want email, as a channel to provide unique value, not something they can get just from your social media, just from your blog, but you want them tuning into emails, because if they're not opening, they're going to miss something.

And this can be something really short and sweet. For example, if we're going through the Before-After-Bridge example, in an email, what I might do is say, when you're trying to think about how to word that before state, start off the sentence with, "you're probably thinking...," and that quick tip allows them to just take that copy and paste it into the next email that they're about to write.

And then that's just going to segue directly into that before state. Like I can write that entire email provide that one tip in one minute. And it doesn't have to be more than 50 or 100 words for me to explain that.

And they can take that and run with it right away. They don't have to go put on their calendar, like, "Oh, remember to go read this video or watch this video or read this post later." They've gotten all the value within that email.

Now, one way that I like to come up with a lot of quick tips is Are you familiar with listicles? You know, that was really big years ago on Buzzfeed everything was, you know, the top 10 ways or the five mistakes and listicles work really well, of course, because we're kind of drawn to that.

But if you have listicle type content, maybe you've got like the top 10 ways, well, you might take those top 10 ways and break each of those into a quick tip. And you can just have that kind of stand alone in its own email. And that's another really good way to batch emails.

By the way, if you're trying to write multiple emails in advance, you can take one of your top performing blogs, or videos, and just go pull quick tips that stand alone from that piece of content that you can write into a short email. And then you can batch you know, 5-10 of those in an hour or so and then just have a backlog of emails ready to go whenever you want to blast out a quick tip or use it in an email sequence.

So I find those to be kind of underestimated in the value they can provide. And kind of strategically how that allows you to use email as its own standalone channel for providing value that keep people interested in using your email not just to be directed to another website or to another channel, but that they can skim through the email and then get enough value from the email itself, that's what builds the habit.

Jeremy Deighan
I really like this. I feel like we don't think of email as a content channel. We think we think of it as a marketing channel. And I'm not good at this at all. And this is something that I want to implement going forward with my emails. You really got my brain thinking here is that most of my emails are directed to other content.

So it's just asking a question, are you struggling with this? Check out this YouTube video or check out this blog post I wrote, where I answer your questions. And you're getting a high bounce rate from people for that.

You're just teaching them to open up the email, click a link and then move on to the next thing. I like this strategy because you're actually kind of helping them get inside directly from the email, they don't have to go to another channel to get that content.

And the email itself becomes the content, it becomes the thing that they look forward to reading and opening from you. And thinking back to emails that I've opened in the past from people who I enjoy reading.

It is these content based emails where it's engaging, it's fun, and you want to read the emails, you look forward to opening them because you know it's going to have good information, good strategies, good tips in them.

And so I really like this approach that you've laid out here with a quick tip email. I think this is really great. So just to recap, we have the the story approach. we have the FAQ email, and then we have the quick tip.

Now the final thing I wanted to ask you about and I appreciate you giving those frameworks on this podcasts, I feel like that's really going to help this audience. In the beginning, we started off talking about, you know, habits.

And I'm glad you mentioned batching emails, because I feel like one of the hard parts of email is getting into the habit of writing those emails and being consistent. As with, you know, anything in life I've learned throughout my older age now that fitness isn't about a diet or fad, it's about building the habit of doing it day in and day out. And that's when you really start seeing growth.

And so I feel like if you want to be successful with anything in business, you have to build those habits, you have to get into a consistent framework that works over and over again.

So what would be some of your recommendations for building a habit around email so that people are consistent and that they can start utilizing email marketing the right way?

Joe Kerns
Well, I might not give the answer that you expect here, because I might actually say that you don't need to build a habit around it. Now, this is what's really going to depend on the person.

Some people do enjoy the habit of sitting down and writing every day. And in that case, what I would do is get used to kind of putting yourself in that coaching hat. Right? There's certain times where you've got just the right amount of caffeine in your system, and you're not hungry yet, where you kind of feel energized and you're inspired.

And maybe you go through and you read your comments on social media, you watch a video that triggers a thought. And in that moment, you might sit down and be ready to start writing.

Now, what I do prefer people start with is batching, because then you don't have to rely just on a habit, you all you have to do is essentially have the discipline when you're feeling really inspired. And you've got a flood of ideas, which I think, you know, most of us entrepreneurial types feel more like that, you know?

You kind of go through these sprints, right? Where you can get like a lot of work done in a short period of time. That's what I like to really focus on writing a lot of emails, as many emails as you can, where you've got the ideas flowing, everything's coming out, you're wording things, the way that you want to, it doesn't feel terribly clunky.

If you can batch emails that way, then you can get weeks ahead and then not rely on having to necessarily have a habit in place. Because things do go wrong, things come up, you get busy. And you don't want to rely on just having to power through an email.

Or really, you know, any form of content when when you're stretched thin or you're stressed. Now, of course, sometimes you will have to do that. And that's totally fine. But what I what I always say is in the mindset that you need to be in to write an email, you have to be in that kind of like helpful coach giving kind of mindset to do it.

So what can be really useful, sometimes it's to go back and maybe read some testimonials or some reviews, or some previous emails that you had from people that were really grateful for the help that you provided or for the content that you gave to them.

That's the mindset you need to be in is in that same state that you were when you created that content that people are coming back and saying, "Oh, thank you so much. That saved me so much time." That's exactly what you're trying to do every single time here.

So some people will keep almost like a like a swipe file, you know, some of their most inspirational testimonials or some comments that they got that really get them motivated. Get back into that that mental state, you know, or listen to Tony Robbins or whatever, whatever gets you going.

But yeah, when you sit down, write those emails, again, always start with a framework, because then you don't have to focus just on motivation, you know, something like this Before-After-Bridge, if you've just got an email template that you pull up, and it's just got those sections already ready to go.

So when you sit down, you're not staring in the blank screen, then you know, that's a good way to be able to sit down and do it. But I really do believe in batching first and foremost, because I think that just relieves so much of the pressure of telling yourself that you need to learn to love this right away to be good at it.

Like no, there's going to be times where you're probably more inspired to do it than others. And and I'd always lean towards that. So not sure if that was the answer that you expected. But that's usually the way that I find most people are able to stick with it.

Jeremy Deighan
I'm a huge fan of batching. You have to build a system around that I've learned this from the podcast is that you, you find a way that works for you to to batch your content.

And then when that inspiration strikes, you are able to sit down and write those emails. I geek out on creating spreadsheets. And so I'm thinking in my head, all this stuff that you've been talking about, you know, what if you had a spreadsheet that had some of those testimonials, like you're talking about to kind of get you inspired.

And then you have maybe some stories that you would like to you know, as you go throughout your day and you think about these stories, you're writing them down and recording them for later.

You're recording these questions for the FAQ emails, and putting those in a spreadsheet. And then you are you know, thinking about these these quick tips also, and putting those in a spreadsheet.

And then when you have the time and you want to sit down and you want to knock out 10 or 20 or 30 emails. You have this kind of master list of information that you can go off you've already thought a lot of these things and now it's time to just sit down and do the work.

Would that be a strategy that you would recommend?

Joe Kerns
Oh, I have to recommend it. That's literally a part of my program is, is that spreadsheet. I call it the content idea generator. So, that's funny that you came to the same conclusion that I did, which is spreadsheets are always the best answer.

The way that I go through that is, every single one of these little stages that I go through and thinking about content, if I have that mapped out, essentially as a column, then it's kind of like a step by step process. So I don't forget how everything feeds into each other.

So when I go through this thing I call the content idea generator, first off, I list out the problem it solves, like that's the first most important thing, right? Because if I can't identify the problem that this content or this email or this product solves, then it's probably not a very good piece of content or a good product, like it has to solve that problem.

And then when I list a problem it solves and I can list, "Okay, what's the piece of content that I have that helps solve that problem? What's a product that I have that solves that problem? What's a quick tip that I can provide that help solve that problem? A story, I can tell an FAQ that addresses that problem?"

And I just list those all out in the spreadsheets and I have links to the content. When I write an email about it, I can, you know, highlight the column in green. So I know, "Okay, I've covered that. I've written a story about this piece of content that solves that problem. But I haven't provided any FAQs around that.

Okay, I should probably go back and, and make sure I write some FA Q's because everybody learns differently." So yeah, I'm 100% with you. I have spreadsheets built out for all that as well.

Jeremy Deighan
Awesome. Well, like they say, great minds think alike. Very cool, Joe, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. This has been a wealth of information. I don't know who was paying close attention.

But you've dropped even little, tiny golden nuggets along the journey of these big gold nuggets that you've been talking about. I feel like you know, someone might want to go back and listen to this two or three times and, and really digest what you're saying, because there was some really valuable information that you gave today.

And I appreciate that. And I know people are going to have more questions, they're going to want to find out about you and see if they can get access to that idea generator. So, if someone wanted to come learn more about you and your business online where can they do that?

Joe Kerns
Yeah, well, first off, thanks for having me on the show, it was a lot of fun. And I always liked getting to brainstorm with great minds. So I hope this was was helpful and provided some ideas for your audience here.

And if anybody is interested in learning more about email marketing, and how to make it a little less overwhelming, you can go to makeemaileasy.com. I've got great free resources on there.

More systems and strategies and things you can use to really kind of save a lot more time while being able to actually create emails that people want to read, because that's a big thing.

It's not just about filling somebody's inbox, it's actually being able to show up in a way that your audience is excited about. And on makeemaileasy.com, you'll also see my Email Made Easy System.

And that's really where I kind of give all these tools and frameworks and templates and plug and play resources that I've developed. Just over the years of running an email marketing agency for my clients.

I distilled that all down so that if people want to just kind of have a system that they can run with and get their email set up in days, instead of years of learning it the way that I had to, you'll find all of that on there.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, perfect. Well, we'll make sure that we also put that in the show notes. So if anyone's listening or checking this out, you'll have the links to click on that. And head on over there and look at all those great resources that you have.

And, again, Joe, thank you so much for coming on the show. I really do appreciate your time and effort that you put into this. And it was great talking to you today.

Joe Kerns
You as well. This was fun. Thanks so much.