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

Get in touch with us via email at [email protected] or follow us on:

Twitter: @rasa_io
LinkedIn: rasa.io
Instagram: @rasa.io
Facebook: rasa.io
YouTube: rasa.io