00:00:00 You are listening to the Scaling to Freedom podcast and if you are an online coach or course creator, you are in the right place. I’m your host, Christina Bernhard. I’m an Ads agency owner that gets an inside look every day on what’s working and what doesn’t in the online coaching space. I’m here to share with you what we see works in our agency as well as what we see happening and changing in the industry. Stay tuned to up level your coaching business to have the freedom you want. Let’s get started.

00:00:30 Welcome to episode 181. In this episode, we are going to be talking all about email sequences and funnels. And I’m so excited about this episode. I say that all the time. I know, and everyone does whenever they open up new content. But really though, this episode is going to be so good. I have Abbi on the show and she is a copywriter and she specializes in hyper personalizing email sequences. And I know that this is a really hot topic, especially whenever you’re running ads, because if you want to get a return on your ads, a big part of that is going to be your sales process. And often that sales process is going to require follow up through email. So all of my clients have email follow up.

00:01:16 We all create email sequences and it’s not something that we do in the agency, but it’s a big part of the ad. So we have to work together with the team, with my clients teams, to make sure that it’s all going really seamlessly and we’re actually getting that return. The conversion staying really strong and high and there is definitely an art and a science to this. And it’s one of those things that everyone wants to nail this. Like this is the goal, right? So on the show we are talking about how to hyper personalize those email sequences. Also, we’re going into a lot of where to start, how many emails, that’s a really common question. And so I basically just pick her brain and I want to find out more about what’s wrong with most people’s email sequences, what kind of things does she usually see. And we also talk about optimizing and making changes and things like that to our email sequences as well. So I think you are going to love this episode.

00:02:16 If you are a coach or an online course creator and you have funnels online, then this is definitely for you. If you have funnels that aren’t working really well, or if you have funnels that are working really well, we also talk about optimizing and how to stay on top of that as well. So let’s go ahead and dive straight into the interview. Okay, perfect. So today on the podcast, I have Abbi and I already gave a little bit of an intro, but I’m super excited to have you on because this is a topic that me and my clients talk about all the time.

00:02:48 So with our monthly calls, we’re of course talking about ads, but a lot of the times we’re talking about the funnel and the email sequence and the sales process and what happens after that. And the conversion rates make such a huge difference, especially whenever you are running ads, like whenever you’re pumping volume through that conversion really makes a difference. And if you’re listening, if you don’t believe me, I’m going to put a little plug for my free ROAS calculator. You can download it on my website and you can actually put in the numbers of the conversion and your price point of your offer, and you can see how much of a difference this actually makes in your returns. Huge difference.

00:03:27 So I’m so excited to have you on and really excited to just geek out on this. So before we get started, can you go ahead and give us some background on you and what you do and how you got where you are? Sure. Well, I’m super excited because nobody loves geeking out on this with me in my everyday life. So to get to do this is so much fun, right? So yes. Hi, I’m Abbi. I have worked as a freelance writer for over a quarter of a century. So I think we’re coming up on like 26, 27 years at this point that I’ve been writing for clients. I started, really because I had my first baby a long time ago, and I did not want to go back to work in an office, but really because I didn’t want to wear pants with buttons when I was in that postpartum phase. And that has continued for these many years since. So very anti pants with buttons. That is how I got where I am. But seriously, I’ve always been a writer my entire life. I’ve been the kind of person who processes through writing. I’ve always kept a journal. I’ve just always identified as a writer. And so my very first and only job in an office was working as a junior copywriter in a little boutique Markham agency. And they would basically give me things and say, write about it. And I would ask really insightful questions like, what do you want me to say?

00:04:57 And they would tell me, and then I would write about it. And that’s pretty much what being a writer is. It’s a lot of asking questions and listening. So then I had my baby. I started freelancing. I didn’t really understand what a freelance writer was. I figured out pretty quickly that it meant that I would have to go out and get my own clients. I got pretty good at that over the years. And then everything came to this screeching halt in 2013. I had five kids by then. My middle son has some special needs, is intellectually disabled. And then he got sick, he had cancer. And I stopped working completely and just like everything shut down. When I came back to work three years later, I was in this Facebook group for moms of kids with cancer and these women there were asking, how can I make money? Because having a child with special needs in general, with cancer specifically, is not conducive to working in a nine to five and an office job keeping regular hours. It’s basically impossible. And so I started very informally showing these women how they could get started in freelancing. And it was just me sending out email from my personal email every couple of days saying, okay, do these things and then they’d do them and they’d come back and they’d be like, oh my God, that worked. And I was like, oh, this is cool, I like this. And so I started looking into how can I make that into something real?

00:06:16 So I started this business, a successful freelance mom back in 2016, and started building out this course. And I was in a course on how to build courses and I discovered that I would need to market this course. So I needed email sequences and I needed sales pages for it. And I discovered that I really liked writing those pieces. I had this writing background, I knew what I was doing, I could really be myself in this writing. I could let my personality shine through, which was a lot of fun after having spent many years writing all kinds of corporate things. And everybody else in the course who wasn’t a writer was like, this is really hard. And I was like, no, this is the best part. And so I figured out like, everyone else is struggling with this, maybe I should help them and get money for it. So huge fan of that. And I started really diving into email sequences in particular and I just fell in love with the fact that email is something that allows you to really create intimate relationships with people and to bring your full personality and kind of show up with your whole self. Right? So I just got crazy about it and started learning everything I could and applying it to my own stuff, to stuff I was doing with clients. And I built a name for myself, I built a reputation and I really based that reputation on two primary principles, like don’t lie to people and treat people well. Right?

00:07:49 So that’s worked out really well for me and has differentiated me from, I’m just going to say from a lot of the men who were the big names in this industry. And fortunately women are stepping up and taking a lead role now and that’s pretty exciting. So that’s how we got here. Amazing. Yeah, your story is such an example of how you’ll never know the how. Like you could never guess the path, right? I mean, wow, that’s incredible. And yeah, I definitely relate to differentiating from the bro marketers, which is what I refer to them as and yeah, I really love the more feminine energy coming into the space and bringing that authenticity. Not that men aren’t authentic, but traditionally sales has been a little bit different than it is now. I love that you’re bringing that to the table, for sure. So yeah, that’s amazing. So getting started whenever someone comes to you, if they’re like, my email sequence isn’t working because this is something that I commonly hear and am exposed to, because I think a lot of it is just like you said. A lot of people find it really difficult and they don’t know where to start and what to do. And so they’re just sort of like putting together emails.

00:09:16 What would you say is most of the time, what is wrong with their email sequence? So what do you usually see whenever you’re looking at them? Yeah, so right away when I start, a lot of people, when we sit down to write for our businesses, we feel like we need to put on our business hat and sometimes it’s be a little more formal in our language or be a little bit more proper, however you want to think of it. We suddenly stop using contractions, we stop using slang, we don’t write the way we talk, and then we have these emails that have a real disconnect. If you notice when I’m speaking, I say things like, like I also say things like, dude, a lot because although I am 47 in real life, I am like twelve years old in my head. So those things come out in my writing because that’s who I am. And a lot of people feel like, oh, I’m going to look silly if I do that, or it’s going to sound weird, or I don’t want people to think I talk like that. You do talk like that, and that’s okay. That’s part of your personality, so let that shine. So the first thing I see is sometimes things look really formal. A big one for me is if I see the word utilize in email, I’m like, no, there’s a perfectly good word use. It’s three letters long. Like we don’t need to be saying utilize. That’s just a dumb word. We’ve all got our pet peeves, right? So that’s where my red pen comes out. So that’s a big one, is we sound too formal. We’re not sounding like ourselves enough. Another big mistake is we’re trying to talk to too many people at once. You forget that when you’re writing email, there’s one person opening that on the other end of the computer.

00:11:02 So when I open an email into my inbox, I don’t want it to say like, hey, to you and my 49 billion other subscribers. I want it to say like, hey, Abbi. Right? And I want you to be talking to me. So most people are good with putting the first name in, right? But that’s not personalization. That’s like the bare minimum when you address your audience in the plural, like, you guys, I can’t wait to tell you about this thing right there. You’ve lumped us all in together, and we’re not all the same. I want to feel special and unique and individual and all of those things. So that’s what your readers want to feel. Number two, a lot of people do have more than one avatar in their audience, right? Like, you are speaking to more than one kind of person, but it’s really important to find the things that unite those people into, like, a single person. Finding a single person who represents the different avatars that you’re speaking to each time is critical because otherwise you wind up saying things like, whether you’re just starting out in your business or you’re already making six figures, what’s the rest of that sentence? That doesn’t make me feel one way or the other. Like, you’re not really talking to me.

00:12:17 You’re talking to a lot of people, and you’re not specifically for me. So if what you’re trying to say is that when you’re starting out and when you have a thriving business, you feel like you don’t have enough time, right? So think about the one person who unites those two people, your beginner and your experienced business owner, in that she doesn’t have enough time. So what are the things that represent her not having enough time or feeling stressed about her business or whatever it is. So speak to those specific things. And I always say, forget about your avatars because we do this thing where we search on Google and we print out pictures and we know what drink she orders at Starbucks. Irrelevant, not going to help you. Instead, think about real people, students you’ve worked with, clients you’ve worked with, whatever it is, real people who actually embody those characteristics that you’re speaking to. So if I’m trying to speak to somebody who’s feeling stressed and doesn’t have enough time, I’m going to have a very specific student in mind. I’m going to remember how Molly felt when she was trying to get things up and running, and her kid came down with the flu and her other kid broke his leg, and she literally had to carry him down the stairs every morning to start their day.

00:13:36 I want to get really specific with those stories and those emotions because that’s what’s going to allow readers to see themselves. The more specific you get, it’s counterintuitive, but the more specific you get with those stories, the more people can relate those stories to their own experiences. So speaking to too many people at once, that’s a huge, huge piece. And then I would say the third thing that I see in almost every sequence I look at is there’s not a clear cohesive arc, a story arc in the sequence. There might be a story arc in individual emails, not always, but there’s definitely not a cohesive arc from the beginning through the end of the sequence. And that’s because most of us, when we’re starting out and we write these sequences for ourselves because we don’t have the funds to bring somebody in and put money into that right away, or we don’t think about it that way. We’re writing them one at a time. It’s rare the person who sits down and writes out that whole sequence. So if you haven’t planned out, where is this person starting and where do I want them to be at the end of this sequence? You don’t have that overarching storyline kind of running through.

00:14:45 And I’m not saying, like, I don’t want people to misunderstand and think, well, I have to have a story being told in parts. That’s not it. It’s not that we have to continue a story through each email. It’s that we know that people start in one place and they’ve got to finish up in a different place. And you want to know where you want them to end up at the end of that sequence, what is the next action you want them to take? And that way we’re moving them through in a way that makes a lot of sense. So those are my three big things. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Especially whenever you talk about or you talked about how whenever writing those emails, we are just like we’re talking to people and how the point is to bring that connection, to connect with them. And when we turn into this robot, that’s not us.

00:15:33 That’s really difficult and it puts up a huge wedge in between you and your audience and yeah, I think that’s huge. And then the journey piece also, I think that was really great that you said that as well, because I don’t hear that as often where people talk about the entire sequence. I see a lot of focus on individual emails, copywriting formulas, all of those things, instead of focusing on the actual journey, like, what is the journey that you want to take them on throughout the sequence? So I think that’s super helpful. Okay, so we have the most common mistakes that people are seeing or that you’re seeing, and people aren’t driving that connection and all of that.

00:16:16 So where do people get started if they do want to try and map out this journey and not turn into a robot? Not use words like utilize? So how do they get started on figuring this out? How to even start? Yeah, so the very first thing to do is literally sit down and think, what do I want somebody to experience? Where is somebody starting when they begin this sequence? Why have they come here? Ostensibly, a sequence is coming, especially if we’re talking about ads. You’re having them sign up for some sort of lead magnet, right? Like you’re offering them something for free in that ad.

00:16:56 You’re bringing them to this page and you want their email address. So whatever it is that they’ve asked for that they’ve put their hand up and said, yes, I want this. We want to follow on from that point. So let’s take a basic example. Like, let’s say you are a fitness coach and you are helping people to get in fantastic shape and they’ve come to your ad is pointing them to something that’s like the seven I don’t know, foods you want to eat, whatever. So they’ve come, they’ve taken this lead magnet, seven Foods You Want to Eat. So you want to start from that point. You’ve got it. You’ve got these seven foods you want to eat. Now let me show you what you can do with these food.

00:17:36 This is a terrible example because I’m not a food person, but no, I. Love it and I was actually going to ask you to have an example. So I love that you just started with one because I think it’s really helpful. Even if it’s silly, I think it’s really helpful. All right, well, I’m going to say really dumb food because I don’t understand anything, but whatever. My food groups are like chocolate and coffee. Anyway, you’ve got your seven foods, so now let’s make your shopping list. Start with that very, figure out where are they? What do they need to do? Where are they going to buy these foods? What are they going to do with them when they get them home? Do they have to wash them, chop them, put them in their fridge? Literally take what do they need to know? They don’t know nearly as much as you do. So you want to make sure that most of us have this curse of knowledge, right?

00:18:23 Like, we’ve been doing the thing that we’ve been doing for so long that we forget what it was to not know how to do it. So go back to the beginning. I often tell my clients when they’re talking with me, you’re starting at step seven. I need you to go back to like, when you woke up this morning and you got out of bed and you put your feet on the floor. That’s where we are. We want to go to the very, very beginning and we want to think, where is this person now and where do I want them to be at the end of this sequence? So what is the next action that you want them to take? Often, particularly with paid traffic, you want them to purchase something, right? But you need to think, who is exactly the person who is ready to purchase? And it’s not anyone with a Facebook account, right?

00:19:06 So it’s a very specific person who’s already gone through very specific steps and come to a certain conclusion. And now they’re ready to take that next step of buying your program, your course, your coaching, whatever it is. So what are the steps that they have to go through to get to that point and that’s that journey that we want to take them on through the sequence. So we want to think, like, what things do they need to know? What are the questions that are coming up for them? What things have they already tried? These are the kinds of like, before you sit down and write. When I walk students through how to write email sequences, it starts very basically, like, way before you sit down to write, you sit down and do prep work. So you think about, where are we starting? Where are we getting to?

00:19:54 What are the things that I want to cover? Another thing that I highly recommend is walking around talking to yourself and recording yourself talking. You can use all kinds of apps on your phone. You can just open up a zoom window and record. I love to use Otter.AI on my phone that’ll just kind of take dictation from you and give you a transcript on the fly. Super helpful. Hear how you actually talk about these things because you want that voice to come through in your writing if you are paying attention to to your own audience and the way they talk about things. So I once worked with a health coach, and she came to me with a draft of her sequence, and she said something like, when your body isn’t fulfilling its digestive duties appropriately. And I was like, Louise, I love you dearly. Has anyone ever called you and said, Louise, I’m in crisis.

00:20:46 My body is not fulfilling its digestive duties appropriately? And she was like, no. They say, I feel bloated. I’m like, cool. That’s what we need to say. There we go. When you feel bloated, right? When you feel disgusting, whatever, pay attention to the way you may talk like an expert and that’s okay, but pay attention to the way your people are actually phrasing the questions and talking about things. They don’t know all that terminology that you do, and it’s okay to teach it to them if it’s relevant. I don’t think anybody’s ever going to walk around saying, hey, my body’s not fulfilling its digestive duties. I mean, maybe we can make that a thing, but probably not. So pay attention to that. And the walking around, for me, well, for me, it’s walking around, right? Like, I think best when I’m in motion. But if for you, it’s like, find the place where you do that best thinking.

00:21:37 For some people, it’s in the shower. Then get yourself some of those sticky notes that can go in the shower that you can write on that are waterproof. I don’t know what they are, but I’ve seen that they exist. I know, right? If you are a person who like, meditation really helps you get in that space, then allow time for that. And remember that that’s really important business development time. That’s where you’re going to get clear on that thinking and coming up with those words and phrases that are going to be really important to you. So way before you sit down and write, it’s the planning and the prep work, and then when you sit down to write, it’s not like so overwhelming because you’ve already thought about, where is this person starting? Where do I need to get them? How do I get them from here to there?

00:22:20 And I think that the most important thing you can remember as you’re putting together each individual email within the sequence is one email, one idea, one step. People don’t want, I don’t know about you, but there was this trend for a while of the Ultimate Guide to Doing Whatever, and these things would be like 9,000 words long. Dude, come on. We live in the era of Instagram reels, and if you’re really old, like my husband YouTube shorts, we want short focus, to the point stuff. If somebody sees your name in their email inbox, you don’t want them to think, oh, crap, 9,000 words.

00:23:03 I got to read this whole thing and do stuff. You want them to think, oh, I’m so excited to see this email because I know that what it says is going to be useful. I know that I’m going to be able to take action on it and it’s going to make me feel good about myself. And obviously, they’re not saying all those things, but you want that to be the subconscious association with your name in their inbox, and that’s not going to happen if your email is like, here are the 47 things I need you to do today before you have your coffee. Give me one thing to do that I can do in less than two minutes and I’m going to be happy and I’m going to want to open your next email.

00:23:37 Yeah, I love that quick win. It’s crazy how we can lose sight of how simple the simplicity of just meeting them where they are. That was one thing, too. Even in my own marketing, when I first started my business was I have a habit of just talking over people’s heads, like you said, starting at step seven, because I don’t know what it’s like to not know. I’ve been doing this for so long. And so yeah, it’s so easy to talk over people’s heads whenever you are an expert at something and to think about that very first step, like where they’re at, it’s so simple. But for some reason, we turn into an awkward robot when we’re writing emails and totally disconnect from that and start at step seven. It’s crazy. It’s so fun. I was just talking to a friend of mine who is running a community inside of Circle, which lets you do communities and courses and whatever.

00:24:34 And when you run the Zoom directly inside of Circle, it’s not like a regular Zoom window, so you lose the touch up my appearance filter. Oh no! This is very difficult. For me because I need my touch up, my appearance builder. And he said, oh, just run your webcam through OBS. And I was like, I love when you say stuff like that, as if I know what any of those words mean. And he was like, really? And I was like, yeah, I’m not. Nearly as techy as you think I am, clearly. So it was very funny. And then he walked me through that process. But yeah, it was such a note for him. He was like, oh, well, obviously just run your webcam. And I was like, obviously know that. Yeah, I’ve never heard of that either. No, I’m going to Google that later though, because people do invite me to things that I’m like, wait a minute, I got to put another layer of makeup on.

00:25:26 Yeah, okay, yeah, that’s so good. Also, I want to add in another question too, because a question that I get all that, I swear, every time someone asks me about an email sequence, they ask me how many emails? And so the length of a sequence is a really hot topic too. And I know that it varies with the price point and all those things and also where they’re at, what kind of journey they are taking them on. I’m going to let you just answer the question because I know it could go so many directions. So how many emails, how do we decide how many emails to start with? How many emails in a sequence? So it’s kind of like how long is a piece of string, right? Because there are a lot of answers to this question. The thing that I want you to think about is what I always try to do is think from the user’s point of view.

00:26:16 Number one, so how much email would you want to be getting? And number two, it’s really important to remember that a sequence doesn’t always have to look the way we think it does. So when most of us, when we think sequence, we’re thinking every day in a row, an email, right? So I’m working with a client right now on a complete overhaul of the webinar. The sequence like all the pieces, right? And the sequence is probably a total of, I’m going to say around 18 emails. And before you’re like, oh my God, 18 emails. It doesn’t feel like 18 emails because it’s only the first, let’s say seven or eight that are coming at you every day. And then on the last day of the special offer, there’s three emails. But the last email is like, this is the last hour to take advantage of this, right?

00:27:06 So not really an email. And then after that, the next emails that are coming feel like they’re weekly emails. They’re only coming once a week. So yes, they’re part of the sequence because we want people who haven’t purchased to get these specific emails in this specific order. But it’s not. Like your typical in your inbox everyday kind of thing. So just remember that sequence means a lot of things and can take a lot of different forms. So with that said, an email sequence needs to be, you’re going to love this, as long as it needs to be and not any longer. Right? Like you said, it really does vary based on price point.

00:27:50 You’re generally going to need a little bit more in terms of sequence amount, like the number of emails you’re sending to sell a $2,000 program than a $29 program. I don’t want 15 emails about your $29 program. I probably don’t want 15 emails about your $2,000 program either. But you don’t need as much. And not every email, even in a sales sequence, I mean, none of them need to feel salesy and gross. And if things are feeling salesy and gross, then we need to take a closer look at your business and what you’re offering. Because unless you are selling snake oil to unsuspecting old ladies, there is no reason to ever feel bad about offering somebody something that can actually help them. I always say I love my course. I would marry it if I weren’t already happily married for 27 years. I love my course so much.

00:28:43 I know how good it is. So I am never ashamed to talk about it. I am never embarrassed to talk about it. I never feel bad for telling people that they have this amazing opportunity to buy it because it’s freaking awesome. So that’s the kind of love you have to have for the work that you’re doing and what you’re offering and it shouldn’t feel bad. And still, just to put like an answer that people can actually use and walk away with, most sales sequences should be around eight emails. It’s not a hard and fast rule. It’s not like if you have five you won’t ever sell. You can go with ten. There’s definitely wiggle room and eight emails is a really good average number to go with.

00:29:32 A welcome sequence is a little bit different. Like if we’re not asking them to purchase something but we just want them to kind of get to know you, then we’re going more with around five. Again, is it awful if there are seven? No, not at all. As long as each email has an actual purpose, we don’t ever send an email just to say, oh, check the box, I sent an email. Right, but if that email has a purpose, then awesome, go ahead and send it. Yeah, okay. I love that because it is like you said whenever people ask me that, like you said, it’s like, how long is a piece of string? Yeah, just like find a starting point. But I love the eight so people can just walk away.

00:30:10 Like, if you really have no clue, let’s go with eight and go from there. Yeah, amazing. So let’s dive into the whole concept of because you talked about personalizing and I know that a really good way to do that when you’re talking to that one single person. But you are emailing your entire list or everyone who downloaded this freebie or whatever the case is. But there are ways to get even more personal by segmenting your list. And this is where it gets really fun for everyone who’s so excited laughing right now. So this is the good stuff. So I wanted to talk about how to specifically do this with a quiz and you can also talk about just how to do this in general too, so feel free to just share anything. But also wanted to point out a quiz because a quiz is a really common thing that a lot of my clients use. Awesome.

00:31:06 So quizzes are fantastic for this and I like to talk about this as a hyper personalized email sequence, right? So where we can really get granular with our personalization. Like imagine if and I’ll use myself as an example because I know me and my own audience really well, right? So I teach moms how to get started in freelance writing and they have kids at different ages and they have different levels of experience when they come onto my list and they’ve done different things and they have different interests and whatever. And if I know a lot of the more pieces of information that I know about them, the more targeted I can be in my email to them and the more useful information I can give them which is going to lead them down a much more targeted path to enrolling in the right program for them.

00:31:57 So I have multiple programs that I offer and there are different ways that they can work with me and it’s not going to make a lot of sense for me to pitch somebody who’s brand new to the world of freelance writing and maybe just had her first baby. So she’s like in that very newborn stage where your whole world has been rocked and you have no idea which end is up and she’s brand new to freelance writing. It would make no sense at all for me to be telling her about a program that I have for experienced freelance writers who are looking to scale their businesses, right? Like totally irrelevant. Best case she’s going to be like whatever and worst case she’s going to leave my list and be annoyed with me, right?

00:32:36 So we don’t want to do that. We never want to annoy people, we never want to make them feel like, oh, I’m not moving fast enough. There’s no such thing, right? Like everybody’s got their own journey and there’s no race here, there are no prizes in life. Just a sad thing that I’ve discovered. But whatever, it’s true. So what can we do? The more pieces of information that I have, the more personalized I can make my email. And one of the best ways to get that information is through some sort of quiz. Because based on the way people answer the quiz, you’re collecting information about them, right? So I can find out, I mean, I can literally ask them, how many kids do you have?

00:33:15 How old is your oldest kid? How much experience do you have in freelance writing? What do you do in this situation? And through my questions, I can tell by the way they’re answering where’s your mindset at, what kind of time management skills do you have, all these things and all of that information. If you’re using the right software to ask these questions, you can feed all of that information back into your email service provider as what we call custom fields.

00:33:43 So now, again, I don’t want to fall victim to the curse of knowledge. Like I know what I’m talking about here. And what you need to know right now is you need to know that if you’re using one of the big major email service providers, so if you’re using a ConvertKit to send your email, if you’re using an active campaign, a mailer light, what are some of the other ones? I think even MailChimp at this point will have custom fields available to you. So if you’re using a major email service provider, they can take that information from however you’re asking people this quiz, as long as you’re not using a Google form for your quiz, right?

00:34:18 Like if you’re using actual software, then you can connect the answers that you’re getting back to your email service provider. And then once you have that information, if you have somebody great, like setting this up on the back end for you, if you have a writer who knows the possibilities, or if you understand in your own brain the possibilities, and you can find a freelancer to hook it all up for you, you can target people with that information. So you could say, all right, I want to tell the people who have kids here I have a little summer offer that I’m making and I wanted to just make it a tiny bit more personalized. So I said, what happens when school’s out? So I wanted for people who had kids under five to say something like you’re trying to keep the toddlers from having meltdowns every day, whereas if they had kids who were like over age twelve now you’re driving a lot like you’re taking your teenager to the mall and that kind of thing.

00:35:09 Or like trying to keep on top of their social media. And so I wanted it to be a little more personalized. So by using these age segments that I have, because I know, because they’ve told me this is how old my oldest kid is, I can speak to them just that little bit more personally. And it really makes them feel like, oh, does Abbi read my journal? But not in a creepy way. A little eyes emoji there little things like that. I know, for example, when people talk about how their mindset is, I know if they’ve answered questions that indicate that their mindset is lacking where they haven’t yet built out that strong growth mindset, then I know when I’m talking about the benefits of a program I’m going to play up that this is going to help you build that growth mindset muscle. I know if they tell me I don’t have a lot of time that when I’m talking about a program, I want to hit on the fact that this only takes about 20 minutes a day, right. Whereas if they told me they have no experience, then I’m going to show you like, this program is designed specifically for beginners.

00:36:24 Even if you’ve never worked with a client, this is going to show you exactly how to go from where you are to signing your first client in this amount of time. Whereas if somebody is a more experienced writer and already has had clients, I’m going to hit on different things. And I can do that all within a single email or within a single sequence. And there aren’t massive differences because the program that I’m selling is still the same program. It’s good for people at this level.

00:36:49 It’s good for people at that level. And if I am targeting specific programs to specific people, that’s one thing. But like, a lot of times we have something that is good for people at various stages and with various whatevers that they’re coming at you with. But if you can just play up the right benefits to the right people, it’s going to make a massive difference in how you connect with those people and how much you sell. Yeah, I know with my clients that have quizzes, they work so, so well and I mean, yeah, it’s like a no brainer that you can literally speak directly to them when you know so much more about them.

00:37:23 And then just from a market research perspective too, of the data that you’re gathering from the people that you’re attracting is incredible. Do you have any tips on coming up with a quiz topic by chance, where you’re balancing something that people are just going to find fun with? People are going to want to actually take this quiz, but also balancing like it’s going to bring in the right type of lead. Yeah, so I think that obviously it’s going to be different for every business owner. Right. But I think that you do want to think about what is the result that most of the time your people want and what is a quiz that’s going to tap into that and show them how to get closer to that.

00:38:09 Right now, what I’m using, it’s not quite a quiz, but I’m calling it a quiz because I don’t know, I’m a writer and it felt like a good word. When you’re a writer, it’s hard to find the word. I basically have it set up as a personalized roadmap for your freelance writing business. So it asks you how much experience you have in this and that and whatever. So what they want, the result they want is the roadmap for their business and I can give them that roadmap based on their experience and what they know already and how much time they have and if they’re at home with kids or if they’re in a full time job or whatever.

00:38:44 So I can personalize the results for them right? And I can speak to them very specifically. The result they want is that personalized roadmap. So it’s hard for me to come up with a great idea for a quiz that’s generic enough that we can apply it to everybody. But I’m thinking off the top of my head, what I would do is really think to what is the result that your people want, what is something that will help them identify something about themselves that’s also going to be very useful for you.

00:39:13 So I know a business owner who works with freelancers who are neurodiverse and she did a great quiz on what’s your neurodiverse archetype. And so people were really intrigued by that and they wanted to find out more about themselves and how they could work more effectively. So that was something that was really interesting to them. That result that they’re getting is going to give them how to work more effectively where you’re working with your strengths rather than against them. And it was very useful for her to have because it gave her lots of great information about how she could be talking to her people more effectively.

00:39:49 So that’s an example that comes to me off the top of my head. Another client who I’ve worked with in the past, although I want to specify that I did not work on this quiz because I don’t want to take credit for things that I did not do, is she did like what’s the best kind of lead magnet for your business? So she asked a lot of questions about the kinds of clients you’re working with and the stage of business that they’re at and blah, blah blah and all these things. And then it gave you the best lead magnet in your industry at that time based on all kinds of and again, it gave her great information about where people were in their own journeys, what they were doing, what their income levels were or whatever, so that she knew, okay, I want to be targeting at this level now. And it was really useful and helpful for them.

00:40:36 So you want to be thinking about something that’s going to be really speaking to the desire that people have and is also going to give you great information to use. Okay, yeah, that’s helpful. I like how they can provide clarity for they essentially provide clarity for the person taking the quiz in some way and also you yeah, that’s a great. Way to put it actually. Yeah, like something that’s going to give you both clarity, then you’re golden. Yeah, that’s perfect. Okay, amazing. People can either go the quiz route and get the super specific if that’s overwhelming, then just the traditional have freebie email sequence and simplify it, really focus on that journey and connecting with them. So once people have all of this put together and they’re in the stage of now, they’re maybe running ads, maybe not, but they’re getting leads through it and they’re getting people through it and they’re in the optimizing stage. So how do people know what to change or what edits to make or what does that process look like?

00:41:43 Sure. So this is where data, rather than gut feel is so critical because it’s so easy for us, particularly I think as women entrepreneurs, we are intuitive about a lot of things and we do feel deeply. So it’s easy to feel like, oh, so many people replied to that email and said they didn’t like it. And it was three people out of like 400,000 who got the email, but we remember the three people who said they didn’t like it. So data, it’s always looking at the hard numbers and not making decisions, like managing your emotions and not making decisions that are emotionally charged, rather relying on actual data, hard numbers.

00:42:28 So looking at what actually are open rates and click through rates, and if there are replies, what is the actual number of replies? And can we figure out a percentage of people who have replied in a specific way? So with the caveat that open rates right now are a statistic that’s a little bit difficult to rely on because of the changes that Google and Apple have made and that email service providers in general are making to the way they manage the flow of information. So if you’re not familiar with this, basically they’re marking emails as opened even if the user has not actually physically opened them. And it’s a privacy thing and I guess overall it’s good.

00:43:08 It’s sometimes hard to remember that when you’re the business owner looking for information. However, if you are putting clickable links inside of your emails, then you should see some sort of follow through there. Like you should see some sort of engagement if you’re seeing zero engagement, like if nobody’s clicking anything. If your open rates are extremely low, especially now, that’s a sign right there because they should be a little bit artificially inflated. So if you’re seeing like anything under 20%, we need to talk, like we need to take a close look at what’s going on.

00:43:45 If you’re seeing typical open rates through a sequence and then one email with a drop off, right? So it’s really easy to think, oh, I need to change that email. Actually, no you don’t, because nobody read that email. So the problem is not in that email. Sometimes it’s with the subject line of the email. However, to me, the more important place to look is what happened in the previous email. Did you say something that got a lot of people upset, that made them feel unhappy, that gave them a lot of work and they haven’t caught up like what happened? Right. So that’s where I always start looking. If one email has a significantly lower open rate than the rest in a sequence, I look at what happened the day before, then I look at the subject line, and we like to try to change one thing at a time.

00:44:35 Because if we go in and we change the whole sequence all at once now, we have no idea what worked and what didn’t. Right? So we like to keep our changes focused and specific and pay attention to them. How do we know what changes or edits to make?

00:44:49 We look at the data and then it’s a little bit of an art, right? It’s a little bit of, well, I’m going to try this and remember that throughout that process of trying things, there are no right or wrong answers and there’s no, like, you can’t make a mistake here, you’re trying things and you’re learning from them all the time. All of that data is important. When I work with clients, what I tell them is the first sign that we’re looking for is an increase in engagement. We want to know that this email is connecting with people and that they’re feeling something.

00:45:27 So if you start suddenly getting replies when perhaps in the past you haven’t had as many replies, fantastic sign. If people are clicking on links, wonderful. If they’re doing what you ask them to do, like if you’re asking them an email to come to the Facebook group and share this or post this on social and hashtag and tag me. If they’re doing those things, they’re engaged, the sales are going to come. It’s literally a matter of you have to understand your own sales cycle and what people need from you in order to buy. The sales are going to come. If you have a highly engaged list, I don’t know of a situation where you have that and you can’t get the sales. That’s what we’re looking for. Yeah. We make our changes based on how are we doing with engagement, how are we making people feel because that’s what’s going to drive sales.

00:46:22 Yeah, I love that. And also, I never thought about the email before the email. You just think, this is the email that has the lower engagement and there must be something wrong with this email. I never thought about upsetting people or turning people off the day before. So I love that you said that. Yeah. Amazing. So I feel like there’s so many different directions we could go with this. But I feel like this is really helpful. And I know people are going to find this really helpful because, like I said, this is a common topic. And so we went over so many things with that. And then even the hyper personalization, which I love. So how about you tell us where to find you?

00:47:11 If people want to work with you, what do they do? Where do they find you? Sure. So I am extremely findable because I’m like the only Abbi Perets on the Internet. I am @abbiperets on Instagram and my website is successfulfreelancemom.com. I answer my own email personally in an almost timely manner. I will say that sometimes I get a few days behind, but I do reply to everything, even when it takes me a little bit of time. Multiple kids, I do, I have five of them. A decent amount of time. But when you have a lot of kids, you also build a lot of systems into your life.

00:47:53 So it works out well. Yeah, I’m a highly reachable person and if you want to geek out on email, definitely talk to me because it’s not even a joke. I could literally talk about this all day long and my husband thinks it’s the most boring thing. I’m so glad we got to geek out today for you too. Amazing. We will put links in the show notes, of course, like we always do. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your knowledge and being so open and all of these, even the details and the examples, all super, super helpful. So I really appreciate it.

00:48:31 Yay. Thank you so much for having me. It was a great time. Absolutely. Thank you for listening to the Scaling to Freedom podcast.

00:48:38 If you are a seven figure coach looking for Ads management with an agency that partners with you to get your work out into the world in amplify your impact, see if we are a good fit by applying for a spot in our agency@christinaburnhard.com/apply. Find the link in our show notes.