Email Marketer Liz Wilcox Explains the Significance of Building the Perfect Audience

Jeremy Deighan
Hey, what's up, everyone. Thanks for checking out the show today. We have Liz Wilcox, from lizwilcox.com, who is a specialist in emails and email marketing, which is super helpful if you're trying to sell a digital product or an online course online.

The email sequence is something that really hangs up a lot of people. And I think this is going to be a great interview to provide some insight into that.

So I appreciate you being on the show today. How are you doing today, Liz?

Liz Wilcox
I'm doing great. I'm so excited. Thanks for having me on.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, definitely. Glad you reached out. Before we hopped on the call, I was taking a look at your website, and you win the award for best website I think I've ever seen.

Liz Wilcox
Thank you so much. I spent a lot of money on that bad boy.

Jeremy Deighan
It's great. It's got some great design elements. It's smooth. It flows. Obviously, some great copywriting. I mean, it really just draws you in.

Like, I think I read everything on the web page. I usually don't do that I usually just skim through. I was like, "Oh, man, this is really interesting."

Liz Wilcox
That is so awesome to hear. Yeah, I just, you know, I'm on a mission to help, you know, course creators and everyone know that email marketing is for them. And I just wanted to convey that.

And so that feels really good that you were on it reading every single word. That's awesome.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, yeah, good writing. Really fun website. So I'm sure you know, many people will go check it out after this. And I'm sure they'll enjoy this as much as I have.

But I always like to, you know, hear about people's stories and where they come from and what got them into this world.

So if you could just take a couple minutes and just let us know, what were you doing before you got into email marketing? Or maybe online business? And how did you transition into doing this type of service?

Liz Wilcox
Like you just said, obviously, when you go to my website, you can tell I'm a copywriter. I know how to write good, right?

Most copywriters they start out, you know, as service-based providers, you know, their writing emails, sales pages, home pages, you know, for other people, like you who have online courses, but I kind of started backwards, and I had an RV travel blog.

So it was my dream in life to live in an RV and travel North America. And unfortunately, at the time, I had no way to support myself doing that. My ex-husband was in the military at the time, and they kind of tell you where to go not the other way around. Right?

And so I got online, you know, I saw all these webinars, you know, blog posts, "How I made a million dollars in 18 months," and all these things, right? And I said, "Well if they can do it, I can do it. I really, I really, really want this."

So I started my RV travel blog. And you know, again, went to those webinars, things like that. And what everyone was saying was, "If I could go back in time and change one thing about how I grew my business, it was that I was going to take my- I wish I would have taken my email list more seriously. I wish I would have taken email marketing more seriously."

And you know, Mama didn't raise no fool. So I said to myself, "Okay, well, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to start this blog, and I'm going to, you know, build the email list." That's the whole point of blogging to have this email list. So you can build this online course, right? We've all been to that webinar. We all know what I'm talking about. And that's exactly what I did.

I started promoting the blog anywhere I can think of on my Facebook, you know, I started an Instagram, Pinterest, I did all the blogging things. But it was all you know to funnel into this email list. And I didn't have anything to sell at the time. But I knew that was the goal.

And so I started this email list with a bunch of people that knew I was a business. I said it right from the very start, like, "This is how I'm going to make my travel dreams come true. I don't know what I'm going to sell yet, but I'm going to sell something to you."

And after about six or seven months, I wrote my first book, it actually was, and I'm gonna mention this because I think it's inspiring. If this was my idea, and I made money, like whatever you're thinking right now as you're driving, listening to this, or you know, in the margins, like whatever, you're right. It's way better than mine.

So I decided to write a book about all the crappy things that happened to you when you're RVing. And it was this tale. It was called "Tales from the Black Tank." And the black tank, if you're unfamiliar, is where the sewage goes in your RV. And so it was literally like a book about poop. And I took that email list, and I promoted the crap out of it, no pun intended.

And I ended up making over $7,000 in the first 90 days, and then I just kept going, going, going. I created an online course on RV maintenance. And I had 141 people on the waitlist. This was about three years into my journey. And by the time I had cart close about 100 days after saying, "Hey, you know, are you interested in an RV maintenance course?"

About 100 days later, I launched it, you know, five-day traditional cart, open cart clothes kind of online course thing. I had 141 sales. And so then I went in, I went to a conference, I was telling my story.

And just so happen there were all these copywriters there and all these email marketers and digital marketers, and they said, "Holy crap, like, that's unheard of, like, are you sure?" And I'm like, "Yeah, you know, numbers don't lie. That's what happened to me."

And, you know, they convinced me or I was already kind of on the way out, I knew I didn't want to talk about RVing forever. So I went home from that conference, I sold that blog, and I went full-time teaching people how to have email results like mine.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, that's awesome. To have, you know, pretty much 100% sales rate off of your list. I mean, that is pretty unheard of. And you said you had been building this list for about three years, did you say?

Liz Wilcox
That's correct.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay. And so, when you were building that list, how were you getting people onto that list at this time? Was this just people that you knew that you were reaching out to? Or were you doing any kind of marketing?

Liz Wilcox
It was all organic marketing. I've never run ads. I've built three businesses online. I've never run ads. But yeah, it was all just reach out. It was, you know, having that awesome freebie, putting it out there on the blog, you know, as a content marketing strategy, right.

So I had blog posts, you know, I had the sidebar with my freebie. I ended up I told you about that book about poop. I stopped selling it and started giving it away as a freebie. And I would just reach out to individuals that were doing something very similar to me, right, another RV blogger, so to speak.

And I would say, "Hey, you know, can you give away this book for free? It's really funny." People loved it. And they were always super happy to promote it to their audiences. And so, I really got a lot of my audience from collaboration over competition. I also had a free Facebook group, where I got a lot of leads from as well.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, awesome. So, you grew the email list. You wrote the book, then you decided to make a course. You launched that with a wait sequence and so forth.

What do you think, I mean, obviously, I would assume that you're going to say that the copywriting was amazing, but what do you think, with that particular say, sales funnel, do you think made it so successful?

Liz Wilcox
The pre-launch. That's so funny you bring that up about the copy was amazing. I actually went and looked at the sequence that sold those 141 courses, right?

And I looked at it, and it's been about two years, two and a half years since I launched that course, for the first time. And I was like, "Wow, this sequence is absolute garbage." You know, straight off the template, you know, it's just garbage. But here's the thing, and I think I preface this.

So as I started building my business, any person that came onto my email list knew I was a business. I find a lot of content creators don't do this. So in the welcome sequence itself, when, and this is true for any of my businesses, you will get a sentence that reads, I offer paid and free resources, paid and free services, paid and free content, whatever word you want to use.

Like, if you're not taking notes, like if you, the here's your ding ding ding moment, like if you learn nothing else from Liz Wilcox ever in your whole life, like put that sentence somewhere in your welcome sequence of email, because it just kind of flips.

You can't see my hand, but I'm like flipping a switch in the back of my head that says like, "Oh, Liz is a business," right? "She's gonna offer me something that costs money."

And I find with a lot of content creators, you know, we give away so much free stuff, right? And you know, they're getting something free for getting on the email list. So you've got to quickly tell them like, "Hey, you know, I'm happy to provide value for you, but I'm also business like I have a stomach. Maybe I've got kids that have stomachs," right? Like, I've got to feed myself, I have to sell you something.

So that in itself, as I'm building this list up, really set the foundation for being able to sell. And then I mentioned it was about 100 days in between, saying like, "Hey, do you want this to the cart close date?"

So as far as that goes, it's just as simple. I'm sure you've heard of Jeff Walker and his launch method, highly recommend that book. But it's just very similar. And you know, you ask your audience, you asked your email list.

"Hey, I'm thinking of creating this course on X. Are you interested?" I did that exact sentence. I had 141 clicks that said, "Yes." Okay, those people on my waitlist now. And then, throughout the next few months, anything that had to do with the course, I was sharing.

You know, I find so many course creators, they clench everything to their chest, it's so near and dear, you know, it's this process. Most of us don't have, you know, a master's degree in educational instruction and curriculum, right.

So this is a hard process to create a course. And, you know, we don't want anyone to see it until it's perfect, but that is not good. We need everyone to see every bit of this so that they can feel part of the process.

When you as a consumer can feel part of the process part of a product, by the time it launches, you want to have it, you want a little piece of it, so you're going to buy it. And so in your email marketing, what I did for the maintenance course, was like, "Hey, are you interested?" Okay, the next week, I'm sending out an email. Holy crap! Over 100 people said they were interested, I'm going to go ahead with it.

The next week, okay, you know, I've got the outline, you know, I've got x, y, and z in it, what am I missing? Please hit reply and tell me what you want to see. And I'm doing that week after week after week. I actually launched a and you don't have to do this. This is excessive, and I love doing video.

But I actually launched a live YouTube show. I had my audience send in videos of them talking about crappy, or scary or terrifying, like stories about when the maintenance went wrong. And of course, I had already built a brand that talked about that, right?

My first product was a tale of crappy stories, right? And so they're sending me videos on launching them out to the world, so to speak. And, you know, we're able to have a laugh about the maintenance issues. But at the same time, I'm agitating that pain point like, yeah, gosh, maintenance, man, that happens to everybody. That really sucks. They're thinking, "Oh, who is this launching this course."

So after that, I'd be like, "Well, don't worry, you know, she just talked about her slide not coming in. We're going to cover that in the course." Right? It's going to come out in March, right. And so I'm seeding it every single week.

And then, you know, just constantly asking for feedback. "Hey, I just created, you know, the first module. Can you watch this 32nd clip of it? Let me know what you think." Right? You know, the course is basically consuming me, right, consuming the brand. And so by the time I actually launched it, everyone was so excited about it. And I had answered all the objections, right?

I had told them how much money was going to cost. And I had spent so much time, you know, 90-100 days, talking about, you know, what all had gone into the course, you know, how much work I had put into it.

That of course, you know, when it costs $100-$200 they're like, "Oh, well, yeah, it's got so much value in it. And look how hard list has been working," right? The biggest objection was, I don't know what an online course is. So my audience was full of our viewers.

Usually, it was like 70% men in their 60s and 70s. They don't know what an online course was. So of course, I'm showing them little clips, little videos, I'm you know, teaching them about how online courses work throughout that pre launch. So when they went to buy, they already knew kind of how it was gonna get set up, right?

So then, by the time the sales funnel gets into place, those you know, five days of email, like I said, they were not very good. They were straight, you know, straight off the template, right? I think I paid $30 for some templates and kind of pieced them together in my own way.

But it was all that pre-launch. I had done all that literally 100 days of agitating the pain point and associating myself with the solution that I was able to get like such crazy conversion.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, that's awesome. It sounds like, I mean, were you, like, planning and strategizing this type of thing, or were you just kind of figuring it out as you went along?

Because it sounds like a great plan, but did you know that this what you're going to be doing and you had this in your mind, or was it just kind of like in where people reacted from?

Liz Wilcox
Yeah, great question. So this was probably the sixth or seventh thing I had launched at that point. If you can think of any sort of digital product, I've done it. I've hosted summits, I've created bundles, I've done ebooks, printables.

I was pretty well versed at this point, but I knew, and I think the last thing that I said about agitating the pin-point, and Liz Wilcox being the bridge to the solution, that was what I knew I wanted, right? Always be firm on your vision and flexible on the details.

So that was my vision, when they think of RV maintenance. They think of Liz right? That's what I wanted, you know, then you can make a plan, "Well, how am I going to do that?" Oh, I'm going to have people, you know, send me their videos of telling about their, you know, stories. Oh, I'm gonna, you know, I'm going to ask them what the heck should be in the course. I'm going to tell them why I think I'm going to price it out. The beta was $100. Right?

I'm going to tell them this, that, and the other. And I'm going to keep talking about it. And that's something I mentioned Jeff Walker's launch book. He talks a little bit about that. And I just went super, super heavy into that.

But I think in general, if you can ask yourself like, "Okay, how am I going to agitate my pain point. And like, literally me be the bridge to the solution," it becomes easy to figure out how you want to get creative with your marketing.

Jeremy Deighan
Nice, I like that. This is, this is a great episode, you're really dropping a lot of good nuggets here for us.

I want to go back to I want to go back to what you said earlier, talking about you know, I offer paid services and products inside of your welcome sequence, I think that's brilliant.

Because you immediately define the type of person that you want to work with your ideal customer. You're finding the people who are ready to invest. And when you said that, I started thinking about other aspects of my business.

Where could I put in these little key phrases that would trigger people to understand that, you know, I'm also out here trying to sell a service. And I think that that's a brilliant piece of advice.

Liz Wilcox
Yeah, so I just knew, like I said, I knew I wanted my blog to be a business. And the more I got into Facebook groups, listen to podcasts like this one, the more I kept hearing about this struggle from going from content creator to course creator, right?

It's such a struggle, especially with YouTube, right? I talked so many time with YouTubers, because they're giving away so much free stuff, write free content all the time. And I think I will say, part of my personality to just be very upfront, and to also not be afraid to tell people what I want.

I know some people, you know, they can be a little more shy. So I will say, you know, naturally, or this happened a little more naturally for me. But now everyone can use it as a strategy.

And so when I started the blog, and wrote the welcome sequence, I knew I wanted people they had to know I was a business like this could not fail, right? If you're an entrepreneur, I think you understand this, when people say, "Oh, well, what if you fail?"

It's like, well, I don't understand that I'm just gonna keep going to something work, right? I knew I needed my people to understand that right from the get-go. And so I just put that in the welcome sequence. It's actually an entire. It's an email that I write is called newsletter expectations.

And you can get it in my freebie. We can talk about that later. But it's, you know, telling people exactly what's going to happen, right? I used to be a teacher. And when you write a lesson plan, you know, the very first thing you have to do is write the objective, right?

Like, I'm going to teach fifth-graders multiplication today, or whatever, like through the use of x, y, z. You've got to have your objective, and you have to state that to your students.

So if you look at your subscribers as potential students, tell them what's going to happen, like, hey, you're on my newsletter, you're gonna get you know, you're gonna get a newsletter every Tuesday afternoon, with email tips, you know, you can go to my Instagram for funny 1990s memes.

And, you know, and sometimes I'll talk about email too, you know, and you're gonna get free and paid resources to help you write a newsletter in less than 20 minutes. Like whatever your thing is, right?

Picture those as bullets what I just said, and write those out. And the most important bullet is that free and paid services, resources, products, whatever the heck word you want to use.

That is a game-changer because then every even if you have nothing to sell right now, people know like, "Oh, they're going to sell me something."

Jeremy Deighan
So let's talk about for a moment just someone who is out there who's creating an online course or has an online course or maybe they have some kind of business in the online space.

And they haven't been focusing on their email at all. And so they're hearing this, and they're thinking, "Wow, this is this is some great stuff. And I should probably get on the email that I've been hearing so much about email marketing."

What would be I guess your first piece of advice for them? Do you focus on creating a free offer? Is that something that you would recommend as create some kind of free lead magnet so that you can offer that to people to start building that list?

Liz Wilcox
Yeah, I think that's the simplest way is just create some sort of free offer, and just start putting it in places. For me, my strategy is podcasts like this one, I've done something like 30 interviews this year, and it's only July at the time of this recording.

So that's, you know, and I always try to, you know, talk about things that are in conjunction with or segue into the freebie, right. And so when you create your freebie, you can do that on podcast, you can really try to network with people.

I think that's one of the best ways collaboration over competition. I mentioned earlier, one of the biggest ways I built my list was, you know, turning that paid product into something free. And asking people that did similar things to me to share it to their email list.

And that is key because if they're sharing to their email list, and the people that sign up for your thing are already opening emails in that niche, right. So I have this RV blog, another RV blog, you know, shares it. Jeremy opens it. He's already interested in RVing. And he's interested in RVing so much that he's opening things in his email about it, right.

So, of course, I want that kind of lead. So think about your freebie. It should be something that you might be able to charge. I know the rule of thumb is like $30 for right, but you're just going to give it away for free.

So you want it to be valuable. You don't want to just, you know, create a one-page checklist and call it good. You want it to be valuable. I really like when people create some sort of checklist or template or spreadsheet or something, but if you can create like a video walkthrough.

I love doing video walkthroughs, and, you know, you can just use Loom.com or something like that, and create a video where you know, kind of like I'm doing right now, explain what the heck's in the freebie, how to use it best, etc., etc.

And then you know, go into Facebook groups on Instagram, as you're building those social media followings always be pushing that freebie always be pushing your email list. Well, you know, that's where you can really get customers is email marketing, right?

So I know on Instagram, I'll post stories, you know, I mentioned kind of funny 90s means, but then I'll give email tips or talk about what I'm doing that day. And then I'll say, "Oh, you know, are you on my email list yet? Why or why not?" Or whatever. And I just kind of call it out.

And then you know, I'll get a few leads from that. And so just always asking people to be on your email list. Always trying to network with people that are in the same sort of niche. You can do, you know, Facebook lives with people, get on their podcast, if they have one, get them on your podcast, get them on your blog as a guest post.

Any way you can collaborate, try to get on summit's, things like that, and just always be getting people on your email list. And then I want to bring it all the way back to when we were talking about my website.

If you go to LizWilcox.com, you will see there are five asks for you to get on my email list right on the homepage, I asked you five times. That's the only thing I'm asking. Because that's where I know that my you know, my leads when once I get them on the email list, I can usually convert them right.

So right at the top, get your free email swipes, and then it's at the bottom it says, you know, I'm 90 themed, so it says, "Oops, you did it again," like very Britney Spears, right? "You haven't joined my email list yet. You made it to the bottom of the page, like click here, get on my email list."

And so like here's an action item for you go to your website. Look at your homepage. Look at your about page. Where are you asking people to get on your email list, and if you're not, add, I would say, at least three times on your homepage and one time on your about page.

Jeremy Deighan
That's some good advice. I have not implemented anything yet on my homepage, and that sounds like an action item. I should add to that.

So you gave some great examples. So you said, you know, some worksheets or checklist or something like that providing a video element, I guess increases the value.

Have you seen any type of lead magnets work better than others? Have you tried a mini-course a challenge? Is it always some kind of checklist or worksheet for you? Or do you try different ones?

Liz Wilcox
Number one, it depends on your personality. If you want to create a mini-course, if you're really good at writing, or you know a lot about something, and you want to, you know, really hit them with the best points, I think a mini-course is fine.

I think a challenge can be fun. I feel like a lot of online course creators tend to overthink things, though. So it doesn't have to be that wild. It could even be, you know, instead of creating a mini-course.

If that's your thing, create the mini-course, if you've got one, I'm not saying it's bad, but creating just a 20-minute video of all the things in the mini-course, right? And saying, you know, get my training on x.

And so then it's just, you know, a video, or you can turn that video into the mini-course. And you're sending out maybe three or four days of emails where they're getting, you know, X, Y, and Z on your topic, or a challenge where you're asking them to do one, two, and three in three days or something like that. Those are all great ideas. You know, it depends on your personality.

The second thing, it depends on your person. So if you're trying to sell an online course, or you're trying to talk to single moms, they probably don't have time to be checking their email every day, you know, working through a mini-course.

So maybe you think of doing a video training or a quick ebook instead. But if you are like me, and my people are, you know, part-time to full-time entrepreneurs, they have a little more time. Maybe a mini-course makes more sense

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, yeah, definitely. That's awesome. So really getting clear on who is taking this information and thinking about where they're at in their journey and how you can present the information that will be best for them.

If a worksheet is a quick thing that will get someone through the result, then that's great. If it's a video and someone can sit and watch that's great, too.

I know like I follow Amy Porterfield. She's got a great podcast and a group, and I love her, and she talks about creating. I forget the name, but it's like a different lead magnet for different pieces of content or maybe for different audiences.

Is that something that you recommend? Like if say that I wanted to get interviewed on 20 or 30 podcasts, and I had a lead magnet? Is it better to just focus on one great lead magnet that you kind of promote everywhere that backs what you're trying to do?

Or have you found success and creating these multiple lead magnets for different niches, different audiences, different content that you have on your website? What do you feel about that?

Liz Wilcox
I think Amy calls them content upgrades, or I've heard of content upgrades. So, okay. No shade to Amy Porterfield. She's great. She's helped a lot of people. But she has a team of like, what, like 10 or 15?

Jeremy Deighan
Right.

Liz Wilcox
So, its very easy for her to do that to get on 20 podcasts and have 20 different links, and have, you know, 20 different headlines for the same thing, right, just even differentiating it that much.

I would advise if you're already feeling slightly overwhelmed, just at the idea of creating your own freebie, don't do that. Just create one thing. I've had this email marketing business for over 18 months now. I have one freebie. That's it.

Now with my RV blog, I had many, you know, I did the content upgrades, right? I've got a blog post about x. So my freebie was about x. I've got a blog post about y, you know, dot dot dot, right?

But you know, if you're a one-man or woman show, you know, some of the advice that bigger people with teams have is a little, I don't know, out of touch. So I would suggest creating a freebie that kind of encompasses all things. And so you can go out and feel confident about pitching that know exactly who you're talking to.

My freebie is several things, just all in one. And so that's another way of, you know, solving that problem. If you're talking to, you know, three different groups of people, maybe you put touches of those three things like all in your freebie.

So for me, you know, normally in my business, I talk a lot about writing newsletters. I talk a lot about, you know, subject lines, and I talk about that welcome sequence, right? That, you know, making sure you set it up nicely, right?

And so, in the freebie, you've got an entire welcome sequence. You have three newsletters, examples, and 52 subject lines, so it's all in there.

So no matter what I'm talking about on a podcast or how someone brings me up on a Facebook group or I bring myself up, the freebie kind of encompasses at all. So there's something for everyone.

Jeremy Deighan
Yeah, that's awesome. I like that. And I've seen something similar where people will offer some kind of bundle or kit together of multiple things, which, as you stated earlier, if you want to give away something that with the value that is really going to help people out.

And if it's a $30 or $50 value, it seems like adding in different components could increase the value and the customer's eyes and make them want to download it even more to.

Liz Wilcox
Yeah, I love that you brought that up. So I have another business that I won't mention, but our freebie is a library of resources.

And it's just all these things we've done, you know, over the last five years, like, "Oh, we know, people needed this back in 2017. And they needed this." We remembered, "Oh, crap, we need something about that."

And so now it's just a no library of resources. So as we're interviewing things like that, like, "Oh, yeah, that's in our library of resources. Go to that website.com and get access to the library, you'll get that plus, you know, seven other things," or whatever.

So that's a great way as you start to build out your freebies, or you realize, like, "Hey, I created this freebie, but now I know my people really need this." Just create a library of resources and list out those things inside of it. And that's a great, great freebie.

Jeremy Deighan
Awesome, that's awesome. Cool. Thank you so much. That's a really good idea.

So I want to get into the email aspect, some of the copywriting aspects, I know we're gonna run up on time here, but you're just providing so much great information. I feel like I could ask you 100 questions here.

So, we figure out what our freebie is. We get it set up through whatever service provider we're going to use, a MailChimp, ConvertKit, Active Campaign, whatever that may be, we get it up on our website. And then someone opts into that freebie. They give us their email, we now have permission to contact them and send out an email.

What do you recommend from that point going forward? Let's say someone doesn't have an online course yet. Maybe they're still in the process of making their online course.

From my experience, you want to keep your email list warm or hot. You want to stay in contact with these people. And I know that this can become a problem for someone who's not naturally writing emails every day.

So what is your advice for that person who they've got their lead magnet up, they've got their email software set up, and you know, they send them the first email with the PDF or whatever the video, whatever it is. What do you recommend going forward from that point?

Liz Wilcox
Yeah, so you definitely want to keep your email list warm. You know, if all you ever do is send out sales emails like you're not, you know, you're not gonna see any results. And so you definitely need to send out a newsletter.

And I think a lot of email marketers will tell you, I'll just send out an email, where you tell stories, stories connect with people I know, you know, I started this podcast interview telling my story, right? That is true.

But the majority of us are not storytellers, especially when it comes to writing, right? When we write, we've got our 10th grade English teacher like Mrs. Miller in the back. And she's like, "You've got to have a beginning, middle, and an end." And, "Oh, my gosh, don't say that. At the end. You didn't mention it in the first sentence."

You know, we've got that person in the back of our heads, right? I want you to just forget about Mrs. Miller. I want you to just sit down and just give a personal update to your people, right? You're just gonna connect with two to three sentences.

So if I was writing my newsletter today, I would say, you know, "Hey, I sat down for a podcast interview. It's called Online Course Igniter. I'm really excited. I made a joke about my 10th grade English teacher."

And then you just segue into whatever the heck you want to talk about, as far as content goes, you know, and by segue, I mean, put the all caps on and write the word "Anyway... What I really want to talk to you about is my new podcast episode, my Facebook posts, my thing I saw online that I think you should see," whatever it is.

And then you can just sign off your newsletters don't have to be more than 400 words. Just that personal update makes you a real person, right? Like, "Oh, wow, Liz is in Washington today, or Liz had a podcast and review today. That's cool. Oh, now she's sending me a link to you know, check out how to create my first online course."

And it's just very succinct. It's super easy. Telling stories is very hard to do in writing. Leave that to the professionals. You mentioned Amy Porterfield earlier, I know she sends out a lot of stories in her email list. If you're on her email lists, spoiler alert, she does not write those.

She has someone like me, right, those. Someone who is a professional, so don't try to emulate that. Just get it out there. If you're taking more than 20 minutes to write your newsletter, you're really overthinking it.

Okay, yeah, that's awesome. So about 400 words and have a story in it and then move on to the call to action or wherever you're trying to send those people or what you're trying to do in the email.

Jeremy Deighan
How often should someone be sending out these emails or these newsletters?

Liz Wilcox
Yeah, so that's always a great question that I love to answer with: It depends, you know, the worst answer ever, right? Honestly, I used to preach, "Once a week, once a week," but especially with COVID, in the last year and a half, at the time of this recording, we are all burnt out.

We have spent so much time on technology, we've become even more addicted to it, we've signed up for even more email lists. So depending on what kind of niche you're in, you might not need to, you know, send out an email once a week. It might be arbitrary.

Again, remember, if you're talking to single moms who are working a nine to five, and if you're not providing value once a week, you know, maybe try once every other week.

Take a look at your open rates, take a look at your unsubscribes like what do the metrics tell you? But I will say in general. I email once a week. I think most people can email once a week.

I usually say like, you know, if you're in some kind of e-commerce or you're creating a course on you know how to make jewelry or something like that, you might not have to as much. But as you're amping up for that launch, as you're finally creating your course, go back, listen to how I spent that 100 days and definitely be emailing once a week.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, and do you find that there is the opposite that you could be emailing too much? Do you think that people who are emailing two or three times a day or even once a day can be too much for someone?

Liz Wilcox
Yeah. Oh, yeah, I think so. I mean, some people, and it's funny, especially, I'm an email marketer. So some people will say, "Well, why don't you email once a day?" I'm like, "Why don't you open my email once a day? Are you gonna do that? No, probably not. I'm not that important to your life."

I feel like I'm the only person I know that is that obsessed with email marketing, that they want to read about it every day. So really think about your person. I do know some people that email two, three times a week. It works for them.

But honestly, the only people I see that that works for are other email marketers, people who talk about email. Clearly, that is our platform. So we need to be using it very often.

So unless you're another email marketer, I wouldn't recommend doing that. The once-a-week is sufficient. And then, of course, as you ramp up for a launch, you can email more often.

Jeremy Deighan
Okay, very good. Well, Liz, this has been awesome.

This has been a lot of really great information. I feel like there are so many more rabbit holes that we could go down and explore. And I just appreciate your time being on the show.

Thinking about maybe the course creator out there who's getting into email marketing and just getting started, what would be probably your biggest piece of advice other than announcing that you have paid products and services and the welcome email? What would be your other piece of advice that you could give someone like that?

Liz Wilcox
Sure. Just have fun. And keep it simple. People can read your personality, whether or not you think you have a good writing voice.

If you are having fun with it, If you are keeping it simple, your people will understand you more clearly. And they will have fun with your topic too.

Jeremy Deighan
Great. That's some great advice. And I thank you for coming on the show today. If anyone out there is interested in you, your services, the things that you have to offer, where can they find you online?

Liz Wilcox
Sure, you can go right to LizWilcox.com. In the top right-hand corner, there's a hot pink button that says "free email swipes."

I've already mentioned what's inside of it. You're gonna get that welcome sequence already written for you, the newsletters, and 52 subject lines all for free.

I'd love for you to join my email list, obviously, and any emails that I write and send to you, you can totally steal and use for your own.

Jeremy Deighan
Perfect, I love it. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I appreciate you. I appreciate your time and your expertise.

And I think a lot of people are gonna get a lot of good information out of this podcast, and I just wish you the most success in the future.

Liz Wilcox
Yeah, thanks so much, Jeremy. This was great.