Pushing Send

How two husbands use email to help other gay men create a happier, healthier, and wealthier life. Here's  David & John Auten-Schneider's story about Pushing Send.

Key points from this episode:

• On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most important, email is a 9.
• Profitability has a direct correlation to how much attention we've paid to our email list.
• Other platforms, like Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn, give you no control - unlike email!
• Social media platforms are constantly changing things - so what worked even just a week ago or a month ago, doesn't work today.
• An email list is there to help you create customers, to create value for people who will be your customers, or to create continuous value for people who are already your customers.
• Be more authentic and consistent in your emails.

Tweetables:

"Our profitability, or our revenue, has had a direct correlation to how much attention we've paid to our email lists, the people on our email list, as well as how we're growing our email list." - David Auten-Schneider from @DebtFreeGuys on the Pushing Send podcast

"Email is something that we own, right? We own the ability to when we send or how we send an email, who it goes to, who is going to see it. So we have that choice. Whereas other platforms we don't own." - David Auten-Schneider from @DebtFreeGuys on the Pushing Send podcast

"It's been pretty consistent. It's one of the least volatile components of our business. And to that point, we would much rather spend more time on our email list than social media." - John Auten-Schneider from @DebtFreeGuys on the Pushing Send podcast

"An email list is there to help you create customers to create value for people who will be your customers or to create continuous value for people who are already your customers." - David Auten-Schneider from @DebtFreeGuys on the Pushing Send podcast


Links mentioned in this episode:

• rasa.io
• DebtFreeGuys.com
• Queer Money Podcast
• ConvertKit
• Rosemarie Groner / The Busy Budgeter
• Marie Forleo

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An investor and former journalist that publishes guides, playbooks, and who built multiple successful email newsletters reaching over 100,000 subscribers.

Here's Cody Sanchez's story about Pushing Send.

Key points from this episode:

•  Avoid the middleman: You don't want somebody else to be able to remove your ability to communicate directly with your user and control that relationship.
• If you're going to be in someone's inbox, be there for something great or be funny or be a real value-add - but don't just to be there.
• There's a huge difference between trying to be right and trying to make people think. If you can think critically, the world sort of opens to you like a blossom.
• It's important that you charge something for some part of your newsletter. 
• People don't value things that are free as the same as they do things that they pay for. 
• Media businesses are tough and you need to have multiple revenue streams off of them.
• Within a business, internal email is the kiss of death - use Slack.

Tweetables:

"Why can't I learn about that in a way that's interesting? And that has a little bit of a story to it. And I try...giving it to you in a way where you're kind of looking forward to just reading the verbiage of it and you learn through osmosis. I think that's beautiful." - @Codie_Sanchez

"The great thing about emails, you can have a relationship with the user directly." - @Codie_Sanchez

"...I love writing. I think probably one of the most powerful things you can do is to learn how to communicate with the written word." - @Codie_Sanchez

"I don't think you really have to know what you're doing in the space. You've just got to get out there and create it and see what lands" - @Codie_Sanchez

"It's much easier to get a group of a thousand people engaged than it is a hundred thousand people." - @Codie_Sanchez

"The lowest common denominator is humanity and humanity for the most part decreases or defaults to what they already know. So like...you don't have to be at the top level to make things happen. You can start a newsletter, have it be profitable." - @Codie_Sanchez


Links mentioned in this episode:

• Codie Sanchez: LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter
• Bryan Kelly: LinkedIn
• Contrarian Thinking
• Grow Getters
• Substack
• Jonah Goldberg - The Dispatch
• Slack

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The founder and CEO of EyeMail, a company whose technology allows brands to embed 60 seconds of video into their email marketing messages. This isn't just a link - it's actually in the email and you can play it right there. Lisa tells her personal story and what led to her building a business focused on email. This is Lisa Jones' story about Pushing Send.

Keypoints from this episode:

• Lisa majored in logistics and procurement because she loved processes and things of that magnitude. When the opportunity became available to be a logistics specialist director at NASA, she jumped at the chance. 
• It's been said that we receive 120 emails a day on average, and we send out 40 of that. 73% remains unread.
• It's been said that 95% of us retain what we see in video versus 10% of what we read.
• The EyeMail team is very proud of their diversity. The youngest team member is 23 and the most senior team member is 75.
• Email is here to stay. Some people will say that email is dead, but we just have a love, hate relationship with email. We send emails, but then we don't like receiving all of these emails that we're inundated with. However, email is here to stay.
• Is EyeMail an email service provider? No, they're not. They bring email to life and they're focused on that.

Tweetables:

"I used to always and still, do, ask the why question. why does this work? How does this work and how can it be better?" - Lisa Jones of #EyeMail on Pushing Send the podcast by @rasa_io

"What if email could be brought to life? What if email could generate emotion and have video directly in the email inbox? I wonder if that would create a spark in a global community and with that EyeMail was born." - Lisa Jones of #EyeMail on Pushing Send the podcast by @rasa_io

"I always knew that there was something unique about my life in terms of my direction. I didn't want to stay on one path. I wanted to have an adventurous career." - Lisa Jones of #EyeMail on Pushing Send the podcast by @rasa_io

"I've always had an affinity for email. Email, because it's a channel that we all use." - Lisa Jones of #EyeMail on Pushing Send the podcast by @rasa_io

"We're all inundated with messaging in our inbox. We're flooded. It's been said that we received 120 emails a day on average, and we send out 40 of that. 73% remains unread. So that's the core problem is how can you allow your marketing messages, your communications to stand out from the clutter?" - Lisa Jones of #EyeMail on Pushing Send the podcast by @rasa_io

"But you know what? At the core of it all, we're all looking for human connection, human connection, as close as possible. And we know that video is primary for wanting to view content." - Lisa Jones of #EyeMail on Pushing Send the podcast by @rasa_io

Links mentioned in this episode:

• NASA
• EyeMail
• Time Warner
• Make a wish foundation
• Mailchimp

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Note: this popular episode was originally released on June 16, 2020.

Ever wonder how you can use your email newsletter to move audience members from passive listening to deeper engagement? Today’s guest, a prolific business podcaster, John Lee Dumas, shares his earliest experience sending an email newsletter and how he used it to grow his online platform. John is the founder and host of the award-winning Entrepreneurs On Fire Podcast where he interviews inspiring entrepreneurs to help them on their entrepreneurial journeys. He has interviewed over 2,000 incredible entrepreneurs, including Tony Robbins, Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Barbara Corcoran, Tim Ferriss, and many more. In today’s episode, we talk all about John’s initial email Newsletter experience and how it has evolved through the years. We also discuss how John has used different avenues to grow his email list, the importance of capturing emails, and how John applied what he observed from other podcasters to his own email communication stream to help grow his business. Stay tuned for an insightful conversation with John Lee Dumas on turning your listeners into subscribers. 

Key Points From This Episode:

• How long John has been publishing their Entrepreneurs On Fire email Newsletter.
• The specific content and what the newsletter looked like and sound like back then.
• What email responses looked like and why it was different than it is today.
• How John handled the long email responses and deep engagement from listeners.
• What John believes is the difference between emails and the podcast.
• The importance of capturing emails from your podcast audience for growth.
• How John applied what he had learned from other podcasters to his email communication.
• John shares his initial lead magnet to grow his email list.
• How John incorporated his courses to grow his email list. 
• John’s approach to keeping his brand authentic to his own personality and voice.
• What his business and day-to-day look like today.

Tweetables:

“Email has been like my lifeblood into my audience because I get over a million listens of the podcast a month and podcasting is a very passive form of consuming content. There’s no easy way to respond. You’ve got to be really intentional. Email gave me a direct link to their lives by pressing the send button and getting the content straight to their inbox.” — @johnleedumas [0:00:01]

“Sometimes with podcasting — you are absolutely speaking to a black hole and sometimes you wonder, ‘Do these people exist?’ Because you don’t often hear from them, they’re not engaging — and that’s one of podcaster’s biggest struggles.” — @johnleedumas [0:07:05]

“You own your email list. Build your email list!” — @johnleedumas [0:11:30]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

John Lee Dumas on Twitter

John Lee Dumas on LinkedIn

John Lee Dumas on Facebook

John Lee Dumas on Instagram 

Entre

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Note: this popular episode was originally release on June 9, 2020.

On today’s show, listeners will hear how a renowned copywriter teaches others to sell and promote with email. For Joanna, email is the direct path to revenue for every business, especially because it is a much cheaper and less time-consuming way of reaching your audience than many other mediums such as podcasting and blogging. Joanna educates listeners on the difference between direct mail and email, what direct response entails, and she gets into the factors that make or break an email campaign, including the relevance of the content and the timing. She gives pointers for writing sales-based emails that are interesting and that keeps the reader curious without resorting to cheap tactics like clickbait. But she warns marketers not to let the fear of being sleazy stop them from writing groundbreaking emails and suggests they should test different approaches with their audience. Joanna also shares how you can use storytelling skills to write effective emails and explains why getting everything out on the page is better than editing in your head as you go. 

Key Points From This Episode:

• Hear why email provides an instant payoff that is seldom seen in other mediums. 
• Keeping in mind that, while other mediums could work, they will likely cost you more. 
• The difference between direct mail and email and the role of our impulse to keep clicking. 
• An explanation of what direct response involves in the context of marketing. 
• Relevance and other factors that determine whether a sales-based email succeeds or fails. 
• Find out about the crucial part that email has played in Joanna’s copywriting business. 
• Advice for writing sales emails that aren’t sleazy and testing your audience’s response. 
• Writing interesting emails by paying attention to what is interesting and current in the world. 
• Using storytelling skills to keep your email audience interested and wanting to know more. 
• Why you have to write down everything that comes to mind and do the editing later. 

Tweetables:

“There is a direct path between sending an email and making a sale. It is harder to make sales without sending emails.” — @copyhackers [0:01:52]

“The most ideal, if you are trying to get an email to convert, is increased relevance. Relevance is everything—but it’s hard.”  — @copyhackers [0:05:50]

“The fear of being sleazy keeps so many marketers from doing breakthrough work.” — @copyhackers [0:11:36]

“Great, readable copy doesn’t happen on the first take. The first take is supposed to be ugly.” —@copyhackers [0:20:15] 

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Joanna Wiebe on LinkedIn

Joanna Wiebe on Twitter

Copyhackers

John Lee Dumas

Entrepreneurs on Fire 

Pushing Se

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Jen Capstraw, one of the co-founders behind Women of Email, is a professional network aimed at promoting leadership among women within the field of email marketing. Jen shares her experiences as an email marketing strategist, as well as the story that led to the creation of women of email.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Women of Email was created in 2016 following a conference where the imbalance of thought leaders represented by women in the email industry was not in women's favor.
• Women of Email became the official speakers bureau of female thought leaders in the email industry. They will give event organizers an easy pathway to achieve gender parody on stage.
• In the US the email industry is split 50/50 of men and women.
• As Women of Email grew and awareness of the organization was spreading. Recruiters started reaching out to ask for talent. And they had transparency policy. Having the numbers is helping them their members negotiate for better compensation.
• Women of Email is a productive community that has helped some of its members double and triple their income.
• There are no organization dues, so Jen solicits free passes to events so they access to education and networking.
• According to Jen, email marketers are kind of a bunch of underdogs and there's a like-mindedness in the community. It is a divers, but warm and welcoming environment. 
• Jen also shares her story of email and what she thinks about email best practices. 

 

Tweetables:

I have to say 2020 is the year that email brought sexy back. Email volumes with, through the roof. Everybody leaned into the email channel in 2020, and that means we're going to stick. We're finally getting the respect that we have deserved all along. @JenCapstraw (00:01)

I believe everyone has a story. Everyone can be a thought leader. There is something you can educate about that nobody else can, can explain or do in exactly the same way that you do. @JenCapstraw (07:56)

it could take just one event to change your career, where you learn some new ideas, you make some new connections and you feel more connected to the industry and the community. You feel more excited about the type of work you do, and that can take you so far.  @JenCapstraw (16:11)

When you see those numbers come rolling in that you're making money and ROI and making great things happen. That's a dopamine hit. And like, you're going to get addicted to that.  @JenCapstraw (17:43)

I get such amazing feedback from people that they didn't know, that email was exciting. I get them excited. And I love hearing that. It's just, it's difficult. And that is exciting to me.  @JenCapstraw (19:34)

I don't look at best practices as though they are gospel. They are just suggestions. In many cases, you've got to be legal and you've got to be relevant. And the rest of it's up to you. @JenCapstraw (25:05)

Links Mentioned in this Episode:

Jen Capstraw on Twitter

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Racheal Cook is  a business coach for female entrepreneurs that uses email to grow her community and revenue. Today she is sharing how she does that and she also explains one of the unique and personal ways she connects with her most engaged subscribers and customers.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Rachael has found that she can drop off social media and creating content for a while with no impact to her business, but stopping email would completely slow down her business. 
• She views email as an ecosystem with some things that are automated and some things that are happening real-time. 
• Challenges have been one of the best ways to grow her business. 
• Racheal feels like it is important to know your sales cycle and how long it takes someone from the point they enter your ecosystem until the time they become a paid client and email shortens that. 
• Creating incentives for people to go from her podcast to her email list has also been really beneficial. 
• She uses a hybrid of evergreen systems and live launches to convert leads when they are warm. She also sends a personal email when she is live launching and send them a BombBomb video.
• Getting personal with your subscribers and delivering a high-touch experience can blow them away. Her business is automated enough to make it scalable, but also warm and human. 
• Racheal is a lifelong learner and she has learned from some of the best people in the industry. She consistently subscribes to email campaigns of others in and out of her industry to see how they are sending emails.
• Really listening to her audience and putting those things in to practicehas been a game-changer for her.

Tweetables:
 
Email has really been the number one way that I not only connect with my community and potential clients but also nurture them into becoming paid clients. @RachealCook (00:00)

I love challenges. I think they've been one of the best ways for me to grow my audience and grow my business. It really accelerates that relationship building like nothing I've ever seen before.  @RachealCook (03:45)

I think it's important to know your sales cycle, how long it takes somebody from the point where they enter your ecosystem until they become a paid client and email has allowed me to really shorten that timeframe.  @RachealCook (05:09)

We have different emails that they'll get specific for people who actively said, Hey, I actually want to hear about this thing. So they'll get an email, inviting them to jump on a sales call or they'll get the opportunity to get some extra content that we've planted just for those who are the most engaged with the launch. @RachealCook (09:29)

There comes a point where they anticipate that it's going to be completely automated and we've made it a point to be automated enough to make it scalable for the business, but not so automated that it's cold and not human.  @RachealCook (13:43)

Links Mentioned in this Episode:

Racheal Cook on Twitter

Racheal Cook on LinkedIn

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Tara McMullin is a popular small business strategist with over a decade of experience guiding small businesses to think bigger. She is the founder of What Works. She’s also the host of the What Works podcast. She has mastered email marketing as a key part of her own business growth.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Tara's approach to email marketing today is similar to it was in 2009 with a lot more information behind it.
• The one mistake she made early on was using email as a delivery system instead of using a relational approach. She now uses the relational approach with no tricks or gimmicks. 
• A huge part of her marketing strategy is getting back to thinking about the human on the other side of the email and the experience that they're having. 
• At one point, Tara got really burnt out and she refocused on building something she was more proud of that had a positive impact on people.  
• During this dry period of really focusing on optimizing her email list, Tara McMullin fell in love all over again with what she originally loved about using email to build a relationship with her audience.
• She uses a system of over-correcting and then pulling back and finding her equilibrium again, which was very helpful.
• The format of her newsletter is a personal letter at the top, an article/blog post and then at the bottom of the newsletter is the latest podcast. 
• Tara's future thinking perspective often places her at the beginning of changing times and not just reacting to what is happening. 
• She focuses on figuring out ways to connect with people and ask them to subscribe in ways that make me know that they want to hear from her.

Tweetables: 

 I'm looking at email as a way to communicate directly with the people who are most invested and as a way to start a conversation to create that ongoing engagement and nurturing. @TaraGentile (03:47)

You're trying to build a sense of investment in what you're doing and also helping your subscribers create a sense of investment in themselves and their own goals, That's the lens that you have to look at everything through. @TaraGentile (05:40)

It took me really from 2017 through most of 2019 to really get a handle on how I wanted to approach email and approach my content in a way that really prioritized the relationship and also was something that I thought could serve the business too. @TaraGentile (10:13)

Instead of reacting to what's happening right now, I'm always thinking about all right, what's going to be happening six months from now or a year from now. So I tend to be on the beginning of a change @TaraGentile (17:30)


Links Mentioned in this Episode:

Tara McMullin on Twitter

Tara McMullin on LinkedIn

What Works Network

What Works Podcast

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Jackie Bledsoe is an author and speaker who went from only publishing content on his blog to building a thriving email list of subscribers that are highly engaged. He shares his story and how life is different because of email. Plus, he explains some of the challenges he's faced along the way and how he builds a relationship with his subscribers.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Jackie wishes he began collecting emails sooner to build his list and can see a connection between his flow of business and how that relies upon on his commitment to email. 
• He has found that his off-the-cuff emails do the best, even only publishing weekly. 
• Everyone who joins Jackie's list goes through a welcome or indoctrination series. 
• Watching others, listening to them and trying to emulate successful marketers is how Jackie learned how to grow his business using email. 
• He was blown away by the power of email after doing his first campaign based on a series of emails. 
• Jackie writes his emails like he is speaking to one person and he has seen powerful connection with the people he is serving. 
• He believes email marketing has been a main engine to open the doors for writing books, speaking on stage and launching products that change lives. 
• Being consistent and authentic is what Jackie says has really created a solid connection with his audience no matter where he is writing.

Tweetables:

 I can say that our business has ebbed and flowed based on my level of commitment to communicating via email to our audience.  @jbledsoejr (2:00)

How can I most effectively do this? What is it? How do I do it? What can I test? And it kind of started from there. It was no big aha moment. I just started watching others, listen to them, and trying to emulate what they were doing.  @jbledsoejr (06:33)

Getting somebody to sign up, sitting in writing an email that actually got engagement, and then getting write in an email that ended up with money in my bank account.  @jbledsoejr (09:03)

It was just amazing to me how people, once they allowed me into their inbox, now allow me into their world by being transparent, sharing their troubles, their successes.@jbledsoejr (11:17)

The power of building a business with email marketing as one of its main engines, you know, it's opened the door for us, to write books and speak on stages and launch products and impact lives.  @jbledsoejr (11:46)

Being consistent with them every week, me being authentic, makes them turn around and write those emails that are very transparent and open that they probably, they wouldn't put on a Facebook post comment stream. @jbledsoejr (16:21)

Links Mentioned in this Episode:

Jackie Bledsoe on Twitter

Jackie Bledsoe on LinkedIn

JackieBledsoe.com

Michael Hyatt

Lamar

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How two of the most successful women at the helm of email newsletter media companies think about email. Jen Bolden sold IdealBite to Disney in 2009 and Amanda Steinberg sold DailyWorth in 2018.  They co-founded HigherU, where they set emerging impact entrepreneurs for success in order to create a more just, humane, and sustainable world.

Jen and Amanda are incredible examples of how we can utilize email in genuine and authentic ways to cultivate an audience and rally them around our mission and our purpose.

Key Points From This Episode:

• When Jen started IdealBite, she created emails as a way to share ideas about how people can make the world more sustainable. The strategy was based after Daily Candy. 
• Amanda started DailyWorth with email as the strategy from day one because it was highly scalable with really low overhead. 
• Jen helped mentor Amanda in the early days of DailyWorth with tips on paid growth, barters,  and understanding the importance of how you are perceived in the world. 
• Both Jen and Amanda discuss what they would have done differently with their newsletters before they were sold. 
• When Jen and Amanda created HigherU.com, they knew how to grow and scale a business where you need to have people who are very passionate and buy in. 
• They love email for movement marketing and they have a formula for transforming people on your email list to clients, sales donors, etc. Doing the work is a key part of their formula and really staying true to one's unique self and mission. 
• Pursuing 5,000 mission-aligned emails is important because you have to have a big enough audience to generate enough income from a very small percentage of it. 

Tweetables:

It was a hundred percent like just get it into their inbox, let them have an amazing experience. Let them walk away feeling satisfied because they just learned something. @JenBoulden (02:40)


What we know how to do is go from small to big.  It's very much about what we've done, but it's about teaching others how to do it. @AmandaSteinberg (14:49)


Email allows for just a much more natural flow of a real genuine quote-unquote relationship. @JenBoulden (17:07)

In order to build a movement, you have to have a big enough audience where you can generate enough income from a very small percentage of it. @AmandaSteinberg (23:04)

Links Mentioned in this Episode:

HigherU

Jen Boulden on Twitter

Jen Boulden on LinkedIn

Amanda Steinberg on Twitter

Amanda Steinberg on LinkedIn

Mailchimp

Daily Candy

Danny Levy

Marianne Williamson
 

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