Podcast Summary: Everyday VOpreneur® with Marc Scott

Episode Title: RIP Generic Marketing
Release Date: June 20, 2024
Host: Marc Scott
Episode Length: ~16 minutes
Main Theme: Why generic marketing for voice actors is finally dead—and how AI-powered changes to email inboxes (including major announcements from Apple) demand a more intentional, personalized, value-driven marketing approach.

Episode Overview

In this concise yet impactful solo episode, Marc Scott addresses a crucial shift in the business of voiceover marketing: the imminent obsolescence of generic (one-size-fits-all, mass-blasted) marketing. Using the recent WWDC announcements about “Apple Intelligence” as a focal point, Marc explains how AI integration in email clients will fundamentally change how marketing messages are sorted, prioritized, and delivered—effectively burying generic outreach. Marc offers actionable insights on how voice actors must adapt their email and general marketing strategies by personalizing their outreach and focusing on genuine value for clients.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Death of Generic Marketing (00:00–05:00)

Opening Statement:
- Marc opens with a tongue-in-cheek “moment of silence for generic marketing”, underlining that the old method of sending mass, templated emails is no longer viable.
  
  "Let's all take a moment of silence for generic marketing. May it rest in peace." (00:00)
Why Generic Marketing Existed:
- Some coaches and courses have promoted sending vast numbers of templated emails—“throwing spaghetti at the wall.”
  
  “The premise behind them is that in order to do email at scale, you just need to be able to send a whole ton of emails every single day...in a generic way.” (04:03)
Did It Ever Work?
- Law of averages: send enough, get a few responses/jobs, but not a sustainable long-term business approach.
- Marc shares, from personal experience, that he started out this way but quickly realized it didn’t build a steady business or quality client base.

2. AI is Here—And Your Marketing Must Change (05:00–11:30)

WWDC and Apple Intelligence Announcements:
- Marc, as both a fan and marketing coach, highlights the significance of Apple’s integration of on-device AI into the Mail app (and expects similar adaptation from Gmail, Outlook, etc.).
Key AI-Driven Changes to Email:
1. AI-Prioritized Inboxes
  - Every email will be scanned and prioritized by AI.
    
    “AI is going to scan that generic message, figure out very quickly that it's a generic message, and it is going to give it the lowest possible priority.” (09:45)
  - If your messaging is generic, expect it to be deprioritized or lost at the bottom of the inbox.
2. AI-Sorted Categories/Tabs
  - Emails will be categorized even more aggressively (primary, promotions, updates, etc.).
  - “Selly” (overtly salesy) emails are likely to be dropped into the Promotions or similar tabs, which most people rarely check.
    
    "If it's just a generic selly email, you're going into one of those categories that nobody ever looks at and you're going to the bottom of the inbox." (11:05)
3. Personalization and Value Are Critical
  - The only way through is meaningful personalization and demonstrating value—not generic “I provide voiceovers” pitches.
    
    “You're not trying to sell them voiceover, you're trying to show the recipient...how what you do adds value to what they do.” (11:48)

3. Actionable Strategies for the New Marketing Era (11:30–15:30)

Tailor To Each Audience Segment:
- Send separate, tailored messages for different types of clients (commercial, promo, animation, elearning, etc.), even if the core message is similar.
  
  “Rather than doing one generic mass email newsletter... you might want to think about how do I tailor a message to my commercial clients, how do I tailor a message to my promo clients, how do I tailor a message to my animation clients, how do I tailor a message to my elearning clients?” (13:04)
Real Personalization:
- Go beyond using the recipient’s name—ensure content and demos are relevant to their specific segment.
  
  “Personalization...doesn't just mean finding out what their first name is, it means making sure that the content is personal to them.” (13:48)
  “When you send your commercial demo to your elearning leads, that is completely impersonal. But if you send your elearning demo only to your elearning leads, that is a form of personalization.” (14:14)
Ongoing Adaptation:
- Watch for declining response rates and adapt quickly. Test, tweak, and keep evolving your messages based on results and recipient interactions.
- Recognize that AI will start to reward emails people interact with—so focus on resonance and engagement over volume.
Marc’s “Bottom Line”:

“If you walk away from nothing else...the bottom line is AI is going to put the final nail in the coffin of generic marketing messages.” (15:12)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the Shift:

“These tools and these changes are coming. Whether we like it or not… these tools and these changes are coming.” (03:28)
On Coaches Preaching Outdated Methods:

“If somebody is teaching you a strategy for writing a generic template and blasting it out to as many people as possible, that is somebody who's not paying attention to what is going on. That is somebody who is misleading you.” (15:44)
On Value-Driven Marketing:

“How am I going to come across in a way that shows and adds value versus coming across in a way that's just trying to sell voiceover? These are the questions that you need to ask yourself, and these are the strategies that you need to start thinking about.” (15:55)

Timestamps for Key Segments

00:00-01:06 – Marc’s “moment of silence” and framing the episode.
01:07-05:00 – The background on generic marketing, why people did it, and Marc’s early experiences.
05:01-11:29 – How AI (specifically Apple Intelligence) will change email marketing: inbox prioritization, categories, the end of mass/generic tactics.
11:30-14:45 – Actionable strategies: hyper-personalization, value focus, adapting to real-time feedback, segment-specific outreach.
14:46-16:14 – Marc’s closing encouragement and key takeaway: adapt or risk being left behind.

Tone and Delivery

Marc’s tone is direct, practical, and a little cheeky—typical of the “coach who cares” vibe his audience expects. He combines empathy (acknowledging anxiety and frustration about AI) with tough love, making clear that evolution in marketing isn’t optional.

Summary Takeaway

AI-driven changes to email are making generic, mass-blasted marketing utterly ineffective. Successful voice actors must pivot to highly personalized, value-centered communication, matched to client segments and needs. Adaptation is not optional—the time to change your marketing approach is now.

For more marketing strategies and resources from Marc Scott, visit vopreneur.com.

Transcript

A (0:00)

Lets all take a moment of silence for generic marketing. May it rest in peace.

B (0:08)

You're a voice actor. You're an entrepreneur. You're a Veopreneur. Welcome to the Everyday veopreneur podcast, your guide through the business of voiceover.

A (0:18)

If generic marketing doesn't work, what kind of marketing does? Well, your marketing is going to have to be a lot more intentional, a lot more targeted, and a lot more promotional. If you need help with that, that's where Voiceover Marketing Playbook comes into the mix. It's a step by step, easy to follow marketing course. It's going to teach you how to find your own leads, build your own client base, and become the consistently working voice actor that you want to be by teaching you how to be a better marketer. Playbook is back in July. Join the wait list now@voiceover marketingplaybook.com the Veopreneur Podcast. Hey, it doesn't suck.

B (0:54)

Not as funny as Conan, not as cute as Seth Meyers, not as smart as Colbert. But he's one of us and that counts for something. Here's Mark Scott, the original Everyday Veopreneur.

A (1:06)

We need to have a serious conversation about how AI is going to affect your voiceover marketing. Now before you start to roll your eyes and think, oh great, here we go, another AI episode from Mark Scott. I'm so sick of talking about AI. I don't want to talk about AI. I think you're going to want to pay attention to what I've got to say. This is going to be a quick episode, but there's some important things that are coming down the pipe with AI and I think you're going to want to pay attention to it. Now, for those of you who are Apple fans, I'm an Apple fan, proud shareholder, been a proud shareholder for many years. I watched WWDC recently. If you haven't had a chance to watch that keynote, if you are an Apple user, I would suggest that you're definitely going to want to go back and watch that keynote. There's some amazing things that are coming to Apple devices that are going to make them just, it's going to totally change the way that we use our phones. This is, it's going to be a big deal. But while I was watching WWDC and obviously I was watching as a fanboy and, and waiting to see what Apple was going to introduce, I was watching as a shareholder and hoping that it was going to increase my share value, which it has, and that's fantastic. But I was also watching as a marketing coach, because I had a feeling that some of the things that Apple was going to announce were potentially going to impact the way that we do marketing. And in the end, I was right. Some of those announcements that came at wwdc, you may not have caught onto it, but I did. And I want to share them with you now so that you know what's going on, so that you're paying attention to what's going on, so that you're not going to get caught and left behind by what is going on now. A lot of voice actors are very much opposed to even talking about AI, and I understand that some want to just ignore it in. In hopes that it will go away. Others are just angry about it and, and worried about what it's going to do to their business. I totally understand that sentiment as well. Some people don't want to talk about the AI tools that are out there because, well, I don't want AI to replace me as a voice actor, so I shouldn't be looking at AI tools that are potentially replacing other people in their jobs. Another valid argument, and I totally understand it. But here's another argument that you need to understand. These tools and these changes are coming. Whether we like it or not. No matter what we say, no matter what we do, these tools and these changes are coming. A lot of voice actors assume that the existential threat to their voiceover business is going to be synthetic voices. And, you know, we'll find out whether or not that ends up being being the case. I think it's going to take longer than some people think, but I know that, you know, it's something that we have to be aware of. It's something that we have to be paying attention to. Yes, synthetic voices could be taking away projects. I think it's probably already started on the lower end of the voiceover spectrum. But that's not what I want to talk about today. What I want to talk about is specifically your marketing efforts and how AI is going to impact your marketing efforts. So if you have followed this podcast or if you have followed me for any length of time, you know that there are certain things that I teach repeatedly when it comes to marketing. Certain things that if you have, you know, watched episodes of the podcast or listen to episodes, downloaded them, if you've followed me on social media for any length of time, you've heard me say some of these things so many times, you're probably sick of hearing me say it. But you will know, or you should know. I'll tell you now. I Am not a fan of generic marketing. I've never been a fan of, of generic marketing. I know that there are other coaches out there who are selling programs. Some of them are expensive programs. And those expensive marketing programs are basically them teaching you how to throw spaghetti at the wall in hopes that some will stick. The premise behind them is that in order to do email at scale, you just need to be able to send a whole ton of emails every single day. And law of averages says that if you send a whole ton of emails every single day, then at least a percentage of those emails are going to get through and produce results. But in order to be able to send email at scale, you've got to do it in a generic way. So you write your little generic templated email and then you just blitz it to as many different people as humanly possible. It is a strategy. Does it work? Sure. I mean, law of averages, it says if you do, if you throw enough spaghetti at the wall, some of it is going to stick. If you send 5,000 generic marketing messages, yeah. You're probably going to get a couple of jobs out of there. Is it the way to grow a sustainable voiceover business over the long haul? I don't think so. And, and, and I say that as someone who in the beginning of my voiceover journey, that was the strategy that I took the generic messages. Cause I didn't know any better. And I did book some voiceover work, but I also realized that I wasn't booking enough work, I wasn't getting enough clients to build a sustainable business. And so I had to find a different approach. And that was when I changed the way that I did marketing and I started making my marketing messages so much more personalized. Could I do my email marketing at the same scale? Absolutely not. But did I need to? Absolutely not. I was sending fewer messages, but they were a higher quality message targeted to a higher quality lead, which meant that I was getting a higher conversion rate. That's the difference maker. I need a good conversion rate. Give me a good conversion rate. And then that's a different kind of scale. So there's the scale of I'm gonna send 5,000 messages, and if I send 5,000 messages, then hopefully I'm gonna get a couple of jobs out of it. That's a form of scale, but it's not the scale that I'm looking for. What I'm looking for is I'm gonna send a thousand messages and from that I'm gonna walk away with a couple hundred really solid prospects and there's going to be at least 30 or 40 clients in there. That's what I'm looking for. So what does this all mean? What does this all have to do with AI? Well, with the announcements that came at wwdc, what it says is if your strategy for email marketing is sending generic messages, you're in trouble because AI is going to change the way that the inbox works completely. It is going to completely revolutionize, overhaul the way that the inbox works. So there's a couple of things that you need to take into consideration. And these were again, announcements from wwdc, very possible, very likely, highly probable that it's going to be across the board, other phone makers, other email service providers, Gmail, Microsoft, you know, outlook, etc. So, so the number one announcement was that your inbox is now going to be prioritized by AI. So every single message that lands in your inbox, AI is going to read that message, it's going to scan that message. And keep in mind, if you're an Apple user, this is happening privately on device. So there is still privacy that's in play here, which I think is really important. But that's not the important part of this episode. The important part of this episode is every single email that lands in the inbox is going to get scanned and prioritized by AI. And so what that means is if you're dropping generic messages into people's inboxes, AI is going to scan that generic message, figure out very quickly that it's a generic message, and it is going to give it the lowest possible priority. So if your approach to email marketing has been generic form letters, I'm telling you right now, Once the new iOS comes out in the fall, your emails are going to disappear in the very bottom of the inbox. The second thing that came out was that your emails are going to be sorted into categories. And again, Apple, Apple mail, Gmail's been doing this for a long time. There's tabs in Gmail and you've seen it. There's updates and promotions and different tabs. Apple's going to have these same kind of categorizations going on in Apple Mail. So you're going to have primary transactions, updates, promotions, et cetera. And AI is going to start sorting your messages according to what it think your message content is. And so if you're writing a really strong selly email, for example, it's probably going to disappear into a promotions tab or into a transactions tab. And so you may not get the same kind of views or open rate. Because if it goes, you know, for me, I barely go through my promotional tab in Gmail other than, you know, to delete it every once in a while. I mean, I give it a quick scan, but most of the stuff that ends up in there is stuff that is not a priority to me. So think about that. Don't just think about what are the changes that are coming. Think about how you operate in your own inbox. Because how you operate in your own inbox, that's going to give you clues as to how your email recipients operate as well. So your emails are going to get categorized, which means that the content of your email needs to be different. If it's just a generic selly email, you're going into one of those categories that nobody ever looks at and you're going to the bottom of the inbox. And so I think it's really important that you understand that as well. Personalization is going to be key here. But also I think the other part of this is showing how you're going to add value. You're not trying to sell them voiceover, you're trying to show the recipient, demonstrate for the recipient how what you do adds value to what they do. That's a different proposition. And I think those emails are going to land in a different way. And so these are things that you need to be thinking about. Apple Intelligence is coming. These are the features, by the way, great branding by Apple Intelligence, taking AI and turning it into Apple Intelligence. But these are the features that are coming and they're going to change the way that the inbox operates. So some of the other things that Apple Intelligence is going to be able to do is predict customer behavior. So it's going to anticipate needs and preferences to deliver timely, relevant messages. And so what does that mean? If your emails are emails that people are regularly interacting with, then it's going to get probably a little bit higher priority. But if Apple Intelligence recognizes that every time your email lands in an inbox, nothing gets done with might end up getting pushed to a lower priority. Content that resonates specifically with individual audiences is going to be really important. And I think this is where targeting comes in. If you're doing a mass newsletter to promote your voiceover services, newsletters like that are probably going to be deprioritized. What you might want to think about doing is rather than doing one generic mass email newsletter. And yes, there are certain instances where you can do it and it's relevant, but you might want to think about how do I tailor a message to my commercial clients, how do I tailor a message to my promo clients, how do I tailor a message to my animation clients, how do I tailor a message to my elearning clients? And so rather than sending one email, you might be sending five or six variations. And it might even be similar content across those emails, but each one is going to be worded and tailored a little bit differently depending on who the recipient is, so that it becomes more personalized. Because remember, personalization in this case doesn't just mean finding out what their first name is, it means making sure that the content is personal to them. And one of the ways that you can do that is by proper targeting. When you send your commercial demo to your elearning leads, that is completely impersonal. But if you send your elearning demo only to your elearning leads, that is a form of personalization. And so these are things that you need to be thinking about. And the other thing that's coming with Apple intelligence is real time adaptation. So what this basically means is you're going to have to adjust your marketing strategies based on customer interactions and feedback. So if you see that your, your response rate is dropping, you know, significantly, that's a pretty good clue that you've got to change up your strategy, you've got to try to rewrite your email, you've got to try to tweak your template a little bit. But the bottom line in all of this, if you, if you walk away from nothing else, from this episode, and I told you it's going to be a short episode because it's just one quick thing that I really want to drive home because it's something that's going on right now. But the bottom line is AI is going to put the final nail in the coffin of generic marketing messages. Now for me, I've been waiting for this to happen for years. I can't stand getting generic email marketing messages. And I'm guessing you can't stand it either. Somebody's trying to sell you SEO services, they're trying to sell you a new website, they're trying to sell you a lead list, you know, people that you've never heard of before, reaching out with the most generic message that it probably half the time isn't even relevant to your business. But their approach is, if I send this to enough people, somebody's going to need it. It's not going to work anymore. It's not going to work anymore. This is the end, I think, of the generic email marketing strategy. And so if somebody is teaching you from this point forward, and really they shouldn't be teaching it anyway, but from this point forward, if somebody is teaching you a strategy for writing a generic template and blasting it out to as many people as possible, that is somebody who's not paying attention to what is going on. That is somebody who is misleading you. And that is somebody who is going to cost you a lot of time and effort because it's not going to produce the results. Apple Intelligence is going to come out in iOS 18. Now, it's not going to be available on every single device initially, so that's important to remember. But over time, this is the way that the world is going to go. Gmail is already starting to adapt some of this stuff into their integration, and a lot of people use Gmail, people who are using Office365 for their email. A lot of this type of integration is already happening or it's coming. So this sort of stuff is not going to go away. You need to be prepared and you need to start planning now. And you need to be thinking about how am I going to tailor my marketing messages a little bit better? How am I going to make each interaction a little bit more personal? How am I going to come across in a way that shows and adds value versus coming across in a way that's just trying to sell? Voiceover these are the questions that you need to ask yourself, and these are the strategies that you need to start thinking about. If you do, you're gonna be okay. You're gonna adapt. We're gonna figure this out. But if you keep trying to do what you have always done on the generic message front, I'm telling you right now, you're gonna get left behind.