📧 Email Marketing Made Easier, Better & More Fun — with Holly Wielkoszewski

Amelia Hruby [00:00:01]

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Welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients.

Melissa Kaitlyn Carter [00:00:08]

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Let's go, off the grid. Okay! Let's go, off the grid. Okay! I know that you really want to put your phone away. Yeah! Let's go, off the grid.

Amelia [00:00:24]

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Have you ever wish that you could have a successful business without social media? Well, you're in luck. I'm Amelia Hruby, writer, speaker, and founder of Softer Sounds Podcast Studio.

Amelia [00:00:34]

On this show, I share stories, strategies and experiments for growing your business with radical generosity and energetic sovereignty. Download the free Leaving Social Media Toolkit at softersounds.studio/byeig. That's b-y-e-i-g and join us in doing it all Off the Grid.

Melissa Kaitlyn Carter [00:00:56]

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Let's go, off the grid. Okay! Let's go, off the grid. Okay! I know that you really want to put your phone away. Yeah! Let's go, off the grid [music fades out].

Amelia Hruby [00:01:16]:

Hello, hello, and welcome to Off The Grid, a podcast about leaving social media without losing all your clients. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. I am the founder of Softer Sounds, a feminist podcast studio for creative entrepreneurs, and I'm also your fellow explorer in this journey of running a successful, sustainable business with no or minimal social media presence. You are currently listening to season two of Off the Grid, and we're in the middle of an interview series about the tools every online business owner needs. And today is going to be all about email, my friends.

Amelia Hruby [00:01:53]:

Before I introduce our guest, I want to remind you or tell you for the first time, if you're new around here, that this podcast is paired with an amazing free resource. The Leaving Social Media Toolkit includes the three tools I used to leave social media and start my business without it. That's where you'll find my five step plan for leaving any social platform, my list of 100 ways to share your work without social, and a fantastic Notion database for planning creative marketing experiments. You can get the toolkit at softersounds.studio/byeig, and the link is in the show notes.

Amelia Hruby [00:02:31]:

I am loving all these interviews that we're doing this season. Late summer, early fall, I was like, I just want to be in conversation with the coolest, smartest people that I know on the Internet and that I hear from when they listen to the podcast. And I'm like, so excited and honored to have them in my inbox. So today's guest is one of those folks, and let me tell you all about her.

Holly Wielkoszewski is a writer, a yoga teacher, and a serial entrepreneur who knows what it's like to build a passion based business from the ground up. Before launching her own company, she worked in web design, sales and marketing, project management, and high impact communications for over 15 years.

Amelia Hruby [00:03:13]:

Now she's the founder of Daypack Digital, where she focuses on web design and digital communication strategies for solopreneurs, small businesses and nonprofits. Holly also loves to travel and she is actually in Indonesia as we're recording this, 13 hours time difference and all. So in today's episode, we're going to talk through setting up your email list, how to write a stellar welcome email, feeling confident about what to write, some of our thoughts on stats and if they matter, as well as creating a sustainable rhythm that works for you and honors your business goals. I can't wait to get into all of this. So welcome, Holly. Thanks for being here on Off the Grid.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:03:53]:

Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to be here.

Amelia Hruby [00:03:56]:

Well, I wanted to start with why we love email, so maybe I'll pass it to you. Could you tell me a little bit about why you love email and email marketing?

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:04:07]:

Absolutely. So there are so many reasons why I love email, but one or two that stick out to me are I feel like email is based in a communication rhythm and a consent pattern that is really what we need right now when it comes to business communications and advertising and connection and sales. You look at so many different platforms of how things are marketed or shared or promoted and it feels very, very in your face. And what email is to me is it's like it gives you the ability to engage with that at a time that you feel good about it, at a time that you're interested. It allows you to come back to something. It allows you to save an email or snooze an email or engage with it at your own time and pace if you're the reader. And it allows you to share something with your audience if you're the writer, at a pace and in a method that just feels really authentic and inviting to me.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:05:08]:

So those are some of the emotional reasons why I like email so much. But I also feel like email is just like the old reliable, right? And I mean, maybe some of this is my generational experience talking. I'm 41. I'm right on that cusp of Gen X and millennial. And I realize that my experience might not be the same as the 20 year olds and people coming up in the world starting their careers now, but I feel like email is just always there. It's trusted. And I love it for those reasons and others too. But that'll kick us off. How about you?

Amelia Hruby [00:05:45]:

Yeah, I love how you framed that so much. I think one of the reasons I love email is simply that I love writing letters. And I always have, I've always been really enamored with sending postcards, with sending mail. And so to me, there's just something so intimate about the form of address in an email. And I think that that's certainly shifted as we've seen email marketing take off and our inboxes get overrun perhaps by brands and discounts and shopping and all these other things.

Amelia Hruby [00:06:21]:

But as you were talking, what was really coming up for me is I was like, oh yeah, with email, I'm never in my inbox either doom scrolling or dopamine seeking. I'm just kind of there to see what's there, read some stuff, and then I leave. And I think that that is different than literally any app I've ever been on to engage other people. And I was thinking about this just last night because I was like up late scrolling the Substack app and reading a bunch of stuff and it was like pleasurable and nice, but at a certain point I was like, oh my gosh, Amelia, it's 02:00 a.m.. You have an interview at nine. How did you get so hooked here? And I was like, shit, there's something about like, my inbox doesn't do that to me even if I use Substack as the example because those are technically emails, but they're living in this app and so I've engaged with them differently and now I'm in that same dopamine seeking scrolling pattern that we find in social media.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:07:19]:

Yeah.

Amelia Hruby [00:07:19]:

So for folks listening in, I want to kind of let them know that one of my goals for this episode is to really talk about email for baby beginners and for people who've been sending emails for a long time and have a legacy list. So we're really going to span that range. And if there's a part where you're like, this is not for me, just fast forward. There will be pieces for you wherever you're at in your email journey here. But let's kick it off with the beginners. So Holly, I know that one of your passions is helping people get started from scratch. So I'd love to hear from you how to set up an email list. What are some things to think about if you're like, I want to start an email list. What do I do next? What do you advise folks to do?

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:08:07]:

That is a great question and one I get a lot of the time. So the first things that I will do is ask some questions back because I can't advise someone on what to do next until they know kind of what their goal is, right? It's just like anything else, any other platform you would use for your business. So a lot of the things that I work with clients to think about at this juncture are what is your newsletter going to do for you? What is your business type? What are you actually trying to achieve? Right? Are you a writer and you're trying to connect with people that are interested in the things that you want to write about? Are you a brick and mortar store and you want to have an audience that will come in and shop with you and you have a great sale or a promotion or a new product? Are you a coach or a wellness educator or a yoga teacher and you want to integrate with your booking platform?

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:08:58]:

So some entrepreneurs start entirely from scratch and don't have any of these other platforms set up, whereas others are maybe coming in with a really robust ecommerce website or online storefront or retail store. Regardless of which of those categories you fall into as a business owner, you need to make sure that your newsletter is serving your ultimate business goals and your ultimate communication goals, not just having a newsletter to have a newsletter. So that's one of the first things that I really like to sit with people and kind of dig into a little bit further.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:09:32]:

A next thing that is really important to think about is what's your level of technical comfort and also your level of technical interest and energy, right? Just because you might be really good at figuring out how to use apps and platforms and customizing things that might not be where you want to put your energy in your business space. So on the flip side, maybe that's something that you really geek out about and it gives you a stress relief that's different from the other parts of your job and you want a platform that maybe has some more levers you can pull and knobs that you can turn at that sort of level of execution. So those are some of the things that's important to think about before we get to the point of choosing a platform. And then of course, budget is always something we have to think about, right? There are a lot of really affordable options in the realm of email marketing, but some of them can get expensive quite quickly. I think you've talked about why you've chosen your preferred platform and some of the decisions that led you in that direction.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:10:33]:

But that's something to think about up front because I've often seen entrepreneurs or business owners or anyone that's starting in this space. They'll maybe get started with a platform because someone recommended it or they've heard about it, or they see it in their own inbox a lot from people that they know and businesses they subscribe to and then they end up running into subscriber limitations or costs to send things. And then it just deters them even more. And what we're really looking for is how can we make this feel easy and fun and joyful and like something you look forward to in your business even if you're not all as excited to sit down and actually write the email, because, you know, real life.

Amelia Hruby [00:11:12]:

Yeah, these are such good questions. I love how you're really grounding it in your goals because that is something I'm always coming back to here on the podcast. So often in our business we do things because someone has told us we, quote unquote, should do them or some marketing, quote unquote expert has told us we should do them, myself included. I try not to position myself as an expert, but I know that taking up this space on this show kind of can platform me there for some folks. Grounded in this sort of like everyone needs to discern for themselves space, I would love to hear what are some of your favorite platforms, what are ones that you do find yourself recommending to clients again and again? And if you want to be specific about this type of client, it's great for this. I'd love to hear some recommended tools.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:11:58]:

Yeah, absolutely. So one thing that I offer is I do have a course that is all about a welcome email. I think we'll come back to that later. But one of the resources that I include as part of that course is sort of a printable guide that gives you a high-level look at six or seven different email platforms and who they might be right for, pros and cons of those. But to speak to some of that right now, I think what I see people using most often, we've got MailChimp, we've got ConvertKit, we've got constant contact and we've got Flodesk. I think those are four of the most common ones that I see utilized. I also see quite a number of people that are using Squarespace and their newsletter tool. That's not a really robust email marketing tool. It doesn't have all of the bells and whistles and options that many of these other platforms do have.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:12:52]:

But if you are a early stage business on Squarespace and you don't have a lot of complexity, it is definitely the simplest to add on and to get things going. And I know you've gone through an email platform migration, I've also gone through that. It's not a really fun process, but it's definitely something you always can do in the future. So if I know that someone is getting started up on Squarespace and they're feeling reluctant because there's too many things and too many complications, then I'll direct them to the Squarespace platform and say start here, we'll revisit it in a year and we can go from there. So that's talking about squarespace, specifically.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:13:31]:

I think MailChimp. You know, that was the original right back. I remember listening to the serial podcast back when I was living in the DC area and commuting to work in my car and you'd hear this plug at the episode for MailChimp. It's like, what is this even talking about? Such a weird name. But I think that's the most commonly used platform that I still see clients on. And one reason for that is they do have a really good free starter plan and a lot of integrations. They are among the best in terms of integrating with different websites, platforms, other tools, just because they've been in the game for so long. And again, that's a really easy entry point for a lot of people.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:14:15]:

I tend to not recommend Constant Contact just because I think the value to price ratio there is not as competitive as some of the other tools and platforms. And on the flip side, I think Flodesk is a really interesting one because it has that flat price point. It has some really intuitive, visually beautiful interfaces and it works really well, particularly for folks that don't necessarily have their own designated website and want to just have simple landing pages and email management. So that's an attractive new one in the game. I will say with Flodesk, I have seen some cases where it's sort of that, I want to say peer pressure, which is not quite the right word, but maybe like social influence of people saying, oh, I heard about Flodesk. Flodesk is great, we should use Flodesk and all of those things are true, but it might not always be the best fit for someone that's just getting started because it is one of the higher price points for an early entry into the space.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:15:09]:

So those are some high level thoughts on a few of those. There's a bunch more I could talk to. I'll just say one more clip, which is I personally use a program called Brevo. It used to be called Sendinblue and I really like it. I think of it as a little bit more technical because it does have a little bit more of those levers and bells and whistles and things. So I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to someone who's not interested in playing in that space. But it's worked really well for me and I moved there from MailChimp maybe two years ago and I've been really satisfied.

Amelia Hruby [00:15:40]:

Cool, I've never heard of that one. Everything you said made so much sense to me and honestly, I'm just going to throw a few other ones I use or see in the ring. I have really been enjoying MailerLite lately, which I think has a pretty generous free plan, and I've recommended it for that reason for folks getting started. I do also share with you some of the, as much as I promote and share Flodesk on this podcast and I do love it. It's fantastic for me. I think that now that they're out of beta and the price point is high for what a lot of folks need, and I also will see their layouts are very image focused and sometimes even the text is put in as an image, which makes the emails really inaccessible. So you do have to kind of check in and pay attention and be thoughtful when you're using those Flodesk templates and what you're trying to share.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:16:32]:

That's a really great point. Amelia, too, because it's very much an accessibility issue, but it's also a technical deliverability issue, because if you exceed a certain ratio of text to image, or you have too many large images in your email, it means your email inboxes, like Gmail and Outlook and all those are much more likely to flag it as either a promotions or a spam message. And so it might actually be resulting in your emails not getting to their intended audience as much. So that's definitely something to be aware of as well.

Amelia Hruby [00:17:02]:

So many things to think about and consider. I definitely recommend that folks get your welcome email course and get that guide and start to think about these decisions for themselves. To kind of take us out of the beginner realm, right? So selecting your email platform and getting that set up and stepping more into some of the advanced things that we can do with email, the first one that comes to mind with your work is that stellar automated welcome email. So I'm curious, can you kind of take us there? I guess, first of all, what is a welcome email, why is it important, and how can we write a really fantastic one?

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:17:43]:

Absolutely. So a welcome email basically is going to be the first email that is sent to your person once they have subscribed to be a part of your audience. And it's really your opportunity to set the tone, to begin to create that relationship and to tell that person what to expect from you and what is going to be coming from you in this newsletter. So there are times when people will couple a welcome email message with delivery of a lead magnet. So we both know what that is. But in case anyone's listening that doesn't know what a lead magnet is, that's basically a free gift that you give someone in exchange for their email address. And we see it most often, I think, in our business spaces on the internet as some sort of a guide, a downloadable resource, maybe it's a meditation to work through, maybe it's a coupon code, but it's something that you get in exchange. A coupon code really wouldn't be a lead magnet, but it's a viable reason that someone might sign up in some business models. So coming back from the definition, I suggest looking at a welcome email as a standalone message that is sent to your customer or your enroller immediately or very soon after they sign up for your email list. And like I said, this is where we set the tone and we start to build that relationship. You've had some really great conversations on this show before and I'm sure we'll touch on it again a little later in our conversation about how email nurtures relationships and how crucial that is.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:19:15]:

But in addition to sort of the emotional trust and connection that you're building, the welcome email is also just statistically your most powerful email that you will likely ever send. Generally speaking statistically across industries, you're going to see up to a 93% open rate on emails that are welcome emails. We'll come back to open rates in a second because that's an increasingly challenging statistic, but it's still a valuable thing to think about and they tend to have, on average five times more clicks than a standard email campaign that you might be sending to someone in your audience. So it's really your first and biggest opportunity to capture the attention of someone who has just voluntarily said, “Hey, I really want to hear from you. Will you send me this thing?” And you say, “Sure, I'd love to send it to you. And by the way, this is a little bit more about me and who I am.” So in a nutshell, that's really why the welcome email is so crucial and what it is at a very high level.

Amelia Hruby [00:20:12]:

Yeah, I just kind of actually want to share from my own personal experience and actual numbers and things around email, since you did mention stats. Since we are talking about the importance of a welcome email, I really do agree with you that it's such an important opportunity to invite people to get to know you and to set the tone of what's coming and what else they will receive from you. And so if I look at my ecosystem, I have many different things going on, but if someone has found me through my personal website, ameliahruby.com, and they get on my email list from there, they will receive a welcome email that I've set up through Flodesk. And it's one welcome email and it's really about sharing with them a little bit more about who I am and then kind of the range of my work, because on that email list I write about a lot of different stuff and I'm regularly in there with leaving social media stuff. I'm in there with my Tiny Tarot Practice podcast. I'm in there to talk about my anniversary of breaking up with diet culture. So there's a bunch of things and the purpose of that welcome email is to kind of let people know they might be getting one of different sorts of things from me. And then again, just for transparency, you mentioned that welcome emails tend to have high open rates. So when I just pulled up my Flodesk to be like, huh, I wonder what mine is, and my welcome email has an 81% open rate currently, which is definitely higher. My list generally averages like a 60% to 65% open rate and it has a 34% click rate, which is great.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:21:50]:

That's fantastic.

Amelia Hruby [00:21:51]:

And I do get a lot of replies to that welcome email as well. And it really kind of invites people in, which I think is an important part of the journey of email and how it works. So maybe I'll pause there and pass it back to you to tell us a little more about what are the sorts of things to put in a welcome email so that you do get those replies and it does kind of have that welcoming effect.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:22:17]:

A few things to share there. First of all, this is a great opportunity for someone at any stage of their business and at any stage of their newsletter development, because if you're brand new to building a newsletter, creating a welcome newsletter is a fantastic first project once you're established on a platform. But if you already have a welcome newsletter, my question always is when is the last time that you updated it? Because a lot of us tend to put these into automations and just let them sit there and then maybe a year or two has gone by and things have changed in our business or we're offering new things or things have evolved. So having some sort of a sequence of reviewing it and refreshing it is just as important for those who maybe already have this. So that's just a great opportunity for our more experienced emailers that might be tuning in today to kind of give that a thought. And that's something I've been guilty of too. I've definitely had a welcome email that lingered without an update for about a year and I said, oh, this is no longer quite what I want to say.

Amelia Hruby [00:23:17]:

Oh yeah.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:23:18]:

One other technical thing that I'll just get really nerdy on for a second is the other reason why it's important that the welcome email is so well received and has such a high rate of engagement. And clickability is because that's going to set a really great foundation for essentially your reliability score of your email and whether this is something that people care about and want to see more of. And those are the types of things that we don't always see in the front end. It's not necessarily reflected in a statistic that we can see on our platform, but it feeds into how your inbox or your recipient's inbox will assess this message and feeds into your deliverability and is really a positive leg up for your email into the future. So that's something I could certainly talk more about, but I won't in this particular podcast because we don't need to spend the whole hour being tech nerdy on back end of email systems.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:24:15]:

So one other thing that I'll say is this is obviously one of the things that I think people struggle with the most and this is the core of what my little mini course will take you through. And one of the modules is sort of a six step process that I use to support people in outlining their welcome email. But some of the things that we want to look at here are and this is all going to be somewhat filtered through your industry and who your audience is and who you're representing. So the reason I say that is that a certified health coach may have a welcome email that looks very, very different from a nonprofit arts center, right? But the same principles are going to apply that we want to have a really welcoming introduction that allows you to say a little bit about who you are either as an individual, as an entity, as a creative space, as a nonprofit, as an organization. So the voice of that will vary depending on who is writing this email and who the sender is. But we want to have an introduction. This is who I am and this is what I'm here to do, right? A lot of times people may have come across your website or your platform or your shop through a referral or through a Google search or through a random link or, who knows, maybe an Instagram ad and they might not know. You give a great example of your email, of the breadth of the things that you do or that you offer.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:24:47:

A great example I can give of this is that I had a client who knew that I was a yoga teacher and didn't know that I was a web designer until she got my welcome email and then she ended up hiring me to do a website project for her. But if I hadn't included that introduction to who I am and what I do, that conversation may have never happened and that might have never led to us working together. So that's something you really want to have as an introduction. Another thing that I really like to see in a welcome email is some type of testimonial or story or social proof. And this is a great opportunity to sort of reinforce that you are a trusted provider of the service that you are offering and here's what someone else had to say about it. That can be a really powerful thing to introduce at this juncture when it's a very fresh and new relationship. And that's something that will help to build some of that initial level of trust that we're trying to start creating between you and your recipient.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:26:50]:

And then a third thing that I really think is crucial is to tell the reader, the recipient what to expect. And this is something that people can sometimes feel a little bit nervous about because they're like, “Oh well, what if I tell them I'm going to send a weekly newsletter and then I can't keep up with that rhythm?” And first of all, that's okay, we're people and things evolve. But I also tell people in this situation, you don't have to get too specific. You can say this is a periodic newsletter in which I'm going to tell you about what's new in my business and what I'm offering. I didn't say how often I'm sending it. I didn't say exactly what I'm going to be addressing. I didn't promise whether this is going to include sales or promotions or not. But I still told the reader, “Okay, this is generally what I'm going to see when I have this email.” Telling what to expect. Again, we're building the foundation of that trust and that consent and that relationship. And then finally, I like to conclude a welcome email with a specific task or action that you're asking this person to take. One thing that I do suggest is to make it something that is clickable or a reply action because those actions by the recipient are going to signal to your email system that, again, this is something people are interested in and they want more of. So those are four of the elements that I always suggest, and then we just adjust those depending on who's writing it and who their audience is.

Amelia Hruby [00:28:17]:

Yeah, that's just such good advice and I hope folks were taking notes. I know that I was. Now that we've kind of walked through setting up an email list, writing a stellar welcome email, I want to take a moment to talk about nurture sequences.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:28:30]:

Yes.

Amelia Hruby [00:28:30]:

So to me, that's like how I describe and you mentioned this a little bit earlier, previewed this, right? So a welcome email can be one email that comes when someone joins your list. And then a nurture sequence would actually be a series of emails that someone gets, in my mind, after they have downloaded a lead magnet. So I'm curious, before I dive in with my many opinions about welcome emails versus nurture sequences, I'd love to know how you think about this. When do you think a nurture sequence is appropriate? How do you approach nurture sequences? Are there like, good use cases, bad use cases? Just tell me your thoughts.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:29:09]:

Absolutely. So I think that nurture sequences can be incredibly powerful. I also find that for many of the clients that I work with in the stage of business that they are in, it feels incredibly overwhelming. So it's not something that I will often suggest or implement at that early level. That's not to say that you can't do that, and I have seen people do it successfully at the early level. So that's just more of a trend that I have seen with a lot of the clients that I have worked with. I do think it's really important that there's some type of a welcome email or message that comes after the lead magnet delivery, because otherwise the lead magnet delivery, it can include some personal elements, but it's really a transactional email.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:29:53]:

And what we don't really want to happen is to have the lead magnet go out and then the next email that someone gets from you is your monthly email that you wrote for the month of September about what's happening in your business and it doesn't have any connection. Right? There's no connective tissue between those two messages. And so that can feel really abrupt and can start to erode at some of that initial level of trust. So that's a reason to have a welcome email or a nurture email or a nurture series in that space before someone just gets sort of lumped into your general list, which is what I think a lot of people do sort of by default. Right? As far as the nurture sequence, I think it really works particularly well for lead magnets that are tied in your customer journey to a specific next level offer workshop program service. So, for instance, if someone just signs up on your website through a blank subscription box, it's not tied to any sort of delivery, then there might not be an immediate case for a nurture sequence there because you're not entirely sure why this person is here.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:31:01]:

But for instance, I have a lead magnet on my website that's called The Three Newsletters You Need. And so for someone that would come and sign up for that free download, it would make sense for me to put someone in that space into a nurture sequence leading up to the mini course or to my email accountability group or something else that I offer that might be a journey that they could take as a customer. But again, doing this without hitting them over the head with it and saying, “Oh, here's your free thing, now come buy this.” Right? That's not what we want to do. I look at nurture sequences both in that sort of multiple email path that we can put together, but I also think of just my general, everyday, periodic emails that I send to anyone on my list under that same nurture email umbrella. So it has those same qualities of moving the relationship along, continuing to build connection, continuing to build trust.

Amelia Hruby [00:31:55]:

Now you have me thinking about how I approach nurture sequences. So I do agree with you that I think for folks who just have like a general newsletter sign up, then what you need is, again, a stellar welcome email. And then from there, people can just transition onto your list and whatever emails you're regularly sending. But I think something I always am trying to do in my business is create lead magnets that are always connected to offerings. And then the nurture sequence is actually what does all the selling for me. And so we're actually getting deeper into something that I see because lead magnets have become so popular, something that I see a lot, especially with folks who just joined me in the refresh, but is a lot of lead magnets that get made that don't actually connect to things you're selling. And so then you're in this weird limbo of like, you've made a lead magnet, maybe you even wrote a nurture sequence, but it doesn't sell anything. And to me, the purpose of a nurture sequence is to invite someone deeper into your ecosystem such that they buy something. And I think that's a strong take. Not everyone feels that way. But to me, it's like if I'm going to all the work of writing a nurture sequence, then at the end there is a sell. And hopefully it's a compelling, convincing sell.

Amelia Hruby [00:33:12]:

And so, just to be more specific for folks listening to this podcast, if you've downloaded the Leaving Social Media Toolkit in spring 2023, you got a nurture sequence that sold you Business Success Without Social Media. Right? So it's a free toolkit then I think it's three emails that sell you, I think at that time, a $55 e-course. And that nurture sequence worked really well for me. And it was the only place I sold Business Success Without Social Media. And it just kind of sold itself. People would come in through the podcast, they'd get to know me on the show, they would get the toolkit, they'd get a few more emails from me making the case of why they need to actually do some business fundamentals work, and then they'd buy that course that worked so well. In contrast, I've had a nurture sequence in the past people would download from the Software Sound’s site our free podcast launch checklist, and then I had a nurture sequence that tried to sell them our podcast launch package, which cost over $1,000. And I found that a nurture sequence alone could not take somebody on the customer journey from free to over $1,000 with me.

Amelia Hruby [00:34:11]:

And so I've really had to learn that those more, like, higher touch services, a lead magnet and nurture sequence is not what's going to sell those. And there are episodes of this podcast talking through that, right? Like that's relationship marketing, word of mouth marketing. That's what's selling more high touch services. So I do think that lead magnets and nurture sequences, they're not always the right fit. Would love to hear kind of your thoughts on this, of like, do you have nurture sequences where you're like, yes, it works great in this case, or have you tried things where you're like, oh, yeah, that was not a good use of nurture sequences or email more generally.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:34:58]:

Yeah, so this is a great question because I think it points to how crucial your business model is. And again, kind of coming back to those initial questions that we were talking about at the front side of the conversation, because, let's see, up until last fall, I did not have any online services available to be purchased through my website, right? All of my work was one on one, client work that was done on retainers or contracts or whatnot. So I had clients that maybe had online products or services or things, but none of the things that I offered were the type of thing that someone could start at a lead magnet, go through a sequence, and then purchase something through my website. So that's been a goal in my business, to start adding those types of programs and basically compiling a lot of the things that I do one on one with clients now into pre recorded resources or workshop type resources that are accessible to people that I'm not able to work with one on one. But the one on one relationships are not always delivered in the same way through a nurture sequence. And this is kind of like what you're saying with those high touch programs, but I think it also is very true if many of your clients are in real life, face to face, right.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:36:14]:

So many services and online businesses are designed to be delivered from anywhere, right? I can deliver this from Indonesia, no problem, but if you are, again I bring it back to sort of like a brick and mortar store, right? Or you're trying to get someone to come in and purchase a piece of art off of your wall, you're going to look at nurture sequences a little bit more from that perspective. And so then it becomes like, what exactly are we trying to nurture and how can we go about doing that? So that is going to look really different depending on the model of business, the audience that's being targeted. And because of that, I think it's such a nuanced question. It's a little hard to say this is the right way, but that's also really freeing because if it doesn't fit for your business, okay, that's fine. We can do something else.

Amelia Hruby [00:37:15]:

Hi. Off the Grid listeners. Amelia here, interrupting our conversation today because I want to share with you one of my favorite marketing tools. When I left Instagram, I invited all of my followers to subscribe to my mailing list in order to keep in touch with me, and I promised to send them monthly ish notes on a lot of the themes I used to talk about on social media. I've used many email service providers in my day, but my favorite of all of them is Flodesk.

Amelia Hruby [00:37:44]:

Flodesk is a gorgeous, easy to use email service provider. It helps you create beautiful, thoughtful emails. And even better, it's really set up to help you create easy to use landing pages so people can join your list and workflows so you can automate sending messages to folks who sign up through different pages. Flodesk is how I run all of the welcome sequences and lead magnets at Softer Sounds. It's also how I run the leaving social media toolkit that you might have downloaded after listening to this podcast. I'm surely not sending those emails out myself manually. Flodesk is doing all of that automagically. If you'd like to give Flodesk a try, please use my affiliate link below in the show notes. You'll get a discount, I'll get a kickback, and we will all send more beautiful emails together. Again, check out the affiliate link in the show notes. For now, we're going to get back to this episode of Off the Grid.

Amelia Hruby [00:38:46]:

Okay, I have many, many more big questions for you, but I think let's turn them into a little bit more of like a rapid fire section of the show. Great, because I want to talk about growth, I want to talk about stats, and I want to talk about consistency and sustainability. So once people have set up their list, they've got their great welcome email in place. A question I get all the time. I feel like the question that drives most of us who are running a list is how do I get more people on my list? So what do you make of that question and then what are some of your favorite ways to grow an email list?

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:39:23]:

Yes, I think that is one of the big questions of marketing, right? Like this is what we're always trying to do. This is the question on social media followers, on sales. So it's sort of just the perennial question. I will say again that's one of the resources that's included in my email course is there's sort of a thought starter of 30 ways to start finding new people to add to your list. But the main thing I would say here is think about pretty much anytime that you have a conversation with someone or the spaces where you might engage with your customers. Because even if you haven't had an email list before, if you have an established business, you're collecting customers and you're meeting leads and you're meeting prospects and you're telling them about your business. So is there a way that you can turn that into a subscription or an opt in opportunity? Right? Can you print your business card with a QR code on the back so when you give it to someone they can just scan the QR code to subscribe and you don't have to write down the email address or have them type in the website manually or something like that? Do you have a really simple domain that's easy to say, easy to spell, easy for people to remember? That's kind of a question that's maybe something we should have asked a long time before we set up our email address or our email marketing and all that stuff.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:40:38]:

So maybe I'm too far down the path now, but that's something to think about, right? If you're invited to speak at an event, what's the simplest way to get something into people's brains that they'll remember so that then they'll go and find you and get signed up? But I would actually direct people back to a resource that you have, Amelia, which is the hundred ways to promote yourself off of social media. And I think that there's a really strong overlap with a lot of those ideas that can be translated into how people could join your email list, but really it just comes down to exposure and consistency and not being afraid to put yourself out there. And that can be on the internet, that can be in real life, that can be in groups and clubs and associations and marketing chambers of commerce. I would just encourage anytime that you have the opportunity to introduce yourself and share your email or share your website to make sure that that is going to take people directly to a place where they can subscribe to your newsletter and telling people, “Hey, go to my website, sign up for my newsletter.”

Amelia Hruby [00:41:42]:

Yeah, I would second that. I think that so often the more we can take our sort of digital marketing tools and bring them into the real world that our physical world where we talk to other humans in real time and space. I think that is a really powerful practice. I'd also throw in there, I mean, I think very common ways to grow your list are through using something like a lead magnet through cross promotional newsletter swaps. I see a lot of people using the Substack recommendation features to get other folks on their list or to share other newsletters that they admire. So again, those word of mouth ways of sharing your list, whether they are happening IRL or through these more like digital spaces, I think can be really helpful. And then I think the last thing I'll say there is maybe also just interrogating this question of why do you want more people on your list? Because I think that often we will get stuck in this idea of more is better, and that's not always true. So I think thinking for yourself like what you need.

Amelia Hruby [00:42:51]:

And something that I really think a lot about with lead magnets, which I use a lot in my business and I promote a lot, is I actually think that often lead magnets will dilute my list because people show up wanting a free thing and then they aren't really there to stick around for everything else that I'm sharing. And so I really admire a business owner and friend of mine, Amy Kuretsky. We had a lot of conversations where she was like, “I quit using lead magnets for a long time because I only wanted people on the list if they wanted to be on the list itself, not just to get the free thing that I was sharing.” And so why you want to grow is, I think, an important question. And we should carry that question out of the social media sphere and into our email lists the same way we carry that pressure to always have more followers into the pressure to always have more subscribers. So let's ask that question both places.

Amelia Hruby [00:43:47]:

I think all of this talk of follower count, subscriber count, the value of more, definitely takes us right into stats and analytics on your emails. So Holly, what are some email analytics that you think maybe we should care about and what are some that perhaps we do not need to care about at all? Or should we just not care about analytics altogether? What's your take?

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:44:09]:

So I think stats can be really helpful and be really valuable in giving us insight, but I also don't think that they are necessarily the most important thing. And I'll talk a little bit about that. Again, it comes back to your goals, right? What are your goals for your email? But if you're trying to use email intentionally to grow and move your audience along a journey to potentially purchasing one of your other products or services, then you want to know that they are interested and engaged in what you are telling them and one of the best ways to see that is through click rates. So click rates are definitely very widely varied but general industry standard across the whole range of industries seems to say anywhere in the like three to 6% click rate is considered quote unquote good. Obviously you're going to see much higher click rates in certain emails or in really engaged audiences.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:45:05]:

But I get a lot of times people come to me and they say, oh man, I only had 3% clicks on this email and I was like, you know, that's actually not horrible, but we can probably make it better. But if you look at the other statistics, a lot of them are just not going to be particularly meaningful. Let's look at open rates. Right? So open rates are a useful kind of rule of thumb, but with more and more email programs rolling out privacy, Apple rolled this out maybe two years ago now, and some of the other email platforms are as well, where they are increasing the privacy settings of those emails. It's not always giving a message back to the email marketing platform that that message was, in fact, open or not. So as a result, open rates are not as reliable as they once were. And so for the most part I just tell people to ignore open rates. It's really not super relevant.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:45:52]:

Another stat that I think people sometimes get concerned about is unsubscribe rates. And as long as your unsubscribe rates aren't like massive, like double digits, unsubscribes can actually be a really good signal because this is people opting out because they are not the right fit for what you are doing and that allows you to direct your energy to someone else who would be the right fit. So there's a bunch of other analytics that we can take a look at depending on how you set up your links and what your platform is engaged with. But those are sort of the big three that people often look at and most platforms include. What do you think about that?

Amelia Hruby [00:46:30]:

Yeah, I really like that take and I really like your emphasis on click rates as more meaningful than open rate or unsubscribe rate. I think to me that sets a really powerful intention for us as we write emails as business owners, which is this constant reminder that our goal is not necessarily just to get the email read, our goal is to get someone to read the email and take whatever action we want them to take next. And so if you're looking at click rate, you've had to put things to click on in the email, meaning you've had to ask people to do something. And I think that for business owners that's what we should be doing in our emails or that's like an important part of sending emails is to be getting people to take action from those emails. Now I know some people, if they're writing in a more writerly or journalistic mode, maybe your goal really is simply to get the person to read the email and click rates, like a click through feels less important to you. But I think for business owners, we want people clicking through to our website. We want people taking action. We're not simply writing an email just for the sake of writing it.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:47:41]:

If you are looking at building a sustainable email conversation with someone over an extended period of time, we don't necessarily need every single email that you send to that individual to be leading to a discrete action. There might be some emails that are more, “Hey, here's an update on the state of my business, or this is a cool story I thought you might want to hear”, or something that brings that humanity into the exchange. But having that again, that goal up front and that intention up front of what is the purpose of this email and how is it going to strengthen the relationship between me and the recipient? That's something that can really help guide the writing process and hopefully make it feel a little bit less intimidating or frazzled or uncertain to someone that's sitting down at the computer.

Amelia Hruby [00:48:32]:

Yeah, exactly. And I think too, when I think about emails, it's like I do want to orient every email around, like, what do I want someone to click on? What's the one CTA or call to action or clickable thing here? But that doesn't mean selling them something in every email, necessarily, right? Sometimes I just want people to click on this book I enjoyed reading, or sometimes I want them to click on a playlist, or sometimes I want them to click through to this really cool new free thing I made that I'm just sending to everybody who's already on my list. But for me as a business owner, my goal is to get a reader out of their inbox and into my ecosystem, whatever that means. And it doesn't mean buying something.

Amelia Hruby [00:49:14]:

A lot of the time, nurture sequences are one of the few places I make direct sales. I very rarely do it in my normal email newsletters, but I am always trying to get people onto my website through the email and out of their inbox. So yeah, you've really kind of opened my mind. I really haven't been focusing on click rates in my analytics. The masochist in me just goes straight to the unsubscribes to feel bad about them. But I think that I should, I need to reorient myself around my stats and look more at those click rates and continue to think about what's the thing, like the one thing in each email I really want people to click and how can I get them to do that?

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:49:54]:

Yes, I think that's the single most helpful question someone can ask when they're sitting down to start an email is like, what is the one thing, what is the one thing that this email needs to do.

Amelia Hruby [00:50:04]:

Yeah. So now we're talking about sitting down to write the emails. What is your advice for creating a sustainable rhythm for sending emails and how do you handle the dreaded C word I hear all the time, which is consistency. And how do you think about consistency in email marketing or email newsletters?

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:50:30]:

Yes, that is a great question. So let's talk about consistency. The main conversation I have with my customers when they talk about consistency is, we start the conversation, they say, “Man, I really feel like I need to be sending out a weekly email.” And I'll say, “How do you feel about a monthly email?” Or how do you feel about a quarterly email to start? How do you feel about maybe lowering that bar so that it feels immensely achievable? Because you can always add to it and you can always change that rhythm as long as you can do it intentionally. But it's a lot easier to do that from a feeling of abundance and pleasure than a feeling of overwhelm and that you're missing objectives almost from the get go. So one of the biggest things I suggest to people is to whatever you think you're going to do as your initial timeline, let's maybe double that and give yourself some more space.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:51:25]:

The other thing that I really work with people on is having some sort of way of capturing ideas, right? Because I think that a lot of times people think, “Man, okay, it's newsletter week, I've got to sit down this week and write a newsletter.” Like, okay, well, the creative process often doesn't work within a 27 minute window between a call and a lunch break or a dog walk on a Tuesday. You need to have something there that you can, maybe, you reach into a notepad file that has a link to a podcast that you listen to that you really want to tell people about, and a quote you ran into the past week and a special that you're advertising in your shop, right? And you're like, okay, so these are the three things I want to include in this email, and now I have the time to write it. So having a system that collects thoughts, ideas and what you want to say really is a supportive structure for that consistency in actually writing and sending out the email.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:52:23]:

And then the other thing I really advocate for people is finding some sort of an accountability structure, whether that's a co working group, whether that's another business owner that also wants to write the newsletter and you do it at the same time, or check in with each other about it. That's actually one of the services I offer is I have an email accountability group that I run on a quarterly basis that would literally just, we sit down once a month and we write our newsletters together. So there's a lot of different ways to go about this, but the biggest thing I say up front is give yourself a little bit more space than you think you're needing, especially if you're new to this because you don't want to go in feeling overwhelmed and behind from the very beginning.

Amelia Hruby [00:53:08]:

I think that what's most important for all of us is like getting to know ourselves and our rhythms and our limits and then not crossing those limits or not over promising or over committing beyond our limits simply because that's what we see working for other people. And I think that the power of the weekly newsletter, it is very powerful, but it's not for everyone. And it really does get taught as this sort of standard to uphold that I just find is not possible or is unsustainable for anyone whose newsletter is not their main business, which frankly is most business owners.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:54:00]:

Yeah.

Amelia Hruby [00:54:01]:

Unless your newsletter is your business, sending it weekly probably isn't necessary.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:54:06]:

I think one last thing just to add on that is that there may be a lot of people that send out weekly newsletters that you really admire and respect. And they may have a team, they may have a ghostwriter, they may have a team that's doing some of that work for them, they may have a writer or staff or PR person and you never really know who's behind the scenes. So don't hold yourself to made up standards. Find something that works for you and execute on it. And I think that's the best advice I can give as far as consistency and having a sustainable approach.

Amelia Hruby [00:54:44]:

Yeah. And if you don't know what works for you, experiment. The only way that we learn what's sustainable for us, the only way that we learn where our limits are is through experimenting. And so if you don't know, just try it and then you'll figure out what's too much, what's not enough and go from there. So Holly, thank you so much for diving into the email swirl with me. And so clearly and cogently offering support for listeners. How can they go deeper with you? How can they work with you? What offerings do you have right now?

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:55:21]:

Absolutely, it's been such a treat. Amelia, thank you for putting up with my inconsistent internet issues, but I'm glad we made it through. So my website is Daypack Digital. That is my home for all things business. That's where you can download my free guides. You can also learn more about my Write a Winning Welcome Email mini course and my Send It email accountability workshop groups. I do have a promo code for anyone who is listening today that would like to sign up for the Write a Winning Welcome Email course. It's a 30% off code and we'll have that in the show notes, but it will be off the grid for any of your listeners that would like to use that. And then my Substack, which is completely unrelated to my business, but is looking at some of my travels and lessons from traveling and working on the road. And that is aliminallife.substack.com.

Holly Wielkoszewski [00:56:19]:

I would love to connect with anyone on any of those platforms. And yeah, this has just been such a treat. I've loved listening to your podcast. I listen to podcasts a lot while I run, and I've had to stop listening to your podcast while I run because I kept stopping my run to pull up my phone and write down ideas and things in my notes app. So now your podcast is like, if I'm walking or if I'm sitting or if I'm commuting or something. But it's just been great to have this conversation.

Amelia Hruby [00:56:48]:

Yeah, I received that with joy and gratitude, and I am so grateful that you reached out and came on the show. And this conversation really has my mind spinning about all this, different email things that I can try, and I hope that listeners feel the same. So Off the Grid, babes. Tuning in, head to the show notes, get all of the goodness that Holly has to share and take advantage of that 30% off code. What a gift. Thank you, Holly. Thanks so much to everybody who tuned in. And I will be back next week and in the upcoming weeks with more conversations about my favorite tools for online business owners, ranging from very practical things like email to much bigger questions like community. So stay tuned for that coming up on Off the Grid. And until next time, y'all, we will see you off the grid.

[Melissa Kaitlyn Carter begins to sing over sparkly synthy sounds]

Let's go off the grid. Okay! Let's go off the grid. Okay! I know that you really want to put your phone away. Yeah! Let's go off the grid.

Amelia [Music continues to play softly] Thanks for listening to Off the Grid. Find links and resources in the show notes and don't forget to grab your free Leaving Social Media Toolkit at softersounds.studio/byeig.

This podcast is a Softer Sounds production. Our music is by Melissa Kaitlyn Carter and our logo is by n'atelier Studio.

If you'd like to make a podcast of your own, we'd love to help. Find more about our services at softersounds.studio. Until next time, we'll see you Off the Grid.

[Melissa Kaitlyn Carter sings the theme song again] Let's go off the grid. Okay! Let's go off the grid. Okay! I know that you really wanna put your phone away. Yeah! Let's go off the grid [sparkly synthy sounds fade out].