← The Copywriter Club Podcast
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- [00:00]
A
Most podcasts about email don't get into the nuts and bolts of how it really works. Until now. This is the Copywriter Club podcast. When you hear a podcast host like me say that we're going to be talking about email on the podcast today, do your eyes glaze over? Do you think, here we go again. More advice about how you need to build your list or how you need to have a lead magnet or need to email regular. Or maybe you think of tired advice and adages like the money is in the list and the more you hit send, the more you earn. This is not that. This episode is different. My guest on the podcast today is Jacob Sukau. This is Jacob's second appearance on the podcast. The first time was about four years ago and the change in his expertise and his business is substantial. Four years ago he was just figuring things out in that interview and today he runs a six figure email business helping his clients grow their sales with high level strategy using regular emails and email sequences stacked on top of those daily or weekly sends. How do you go from writing emails and pitching single projects email projects to landing multi year retainers and taking on not just the writing duties but also the strategy and the responsibility for increasing response rates and sales? Well, we talked about exactly how to do that if you in this episode we also talked about exactly how much you could be earning doing email for clients. Jacob shares all three of his pricing tiers to give you an idea of what you could be earning and using his pricing structure you could create a six figure business with just three or four client retainers. And this isn't the whole $150 an email or projects of 10 plus emails. This is again something different. We also talked about what it looks like to lever your experience with email strategy into a fractional CMO role and how that works too. And finally, we talked about newsletters and how this is probably the biggest opportunity for copywriters out there today. The opportunity to grow and own an audience, then partner with offer owners or create your own offers for the audience that you own is huge and it's one that perhaps every copywriter should be chasing down. And I'm not talking about writing weekly emails to other copywriters. This is again something really different. These are niche opportunities that can be very profitable for the copywriters willing to put in a little bit of work. There's a lot of good stuff in this episode, so stick around. Before we get to my discussion with Jacob though, this episode is brought to you by Research Mastery. Research Mastery is the one stop program or course that will change your writing for the better. Instead of just organizing words, you're going to have the tools and strategies you need to truly understand your customer so what you write they can actually relate to. They'll relate to your offer and they'll buy more often. Research Mastery digs into the four critical areas of research and if you miss even just one of them, your research isn't going to be complete. You're going to miss something that you need to be writing for the clients that you're writing for. And Research Mastery also includes all the AI tools you need to do research faster, more effectively, and more profitably. You can learn more about this unique program@thecopywriterclub.com researchmastery and now my interview with Jacob Suchow.
- [03:25]
B
Foreign.
- [03:33]
A
Jacob, welcome back to the podcast. It's been a long time since you were here. I was just Looking back episode 262 and I think this episode, if all goes well is 200 or sorry 469 so 205 episodes ago. It's about four years, been a while. What's, what's going on? Catch me up.
- [03:54]
B
Yeah, that's wild man. We were talking about it before we jumped on here and it's been a lot so past five years since I I wanted to and I didn't have the time to this morning to go back through and listen to that podcast to see where it was at because the funny part was like completely and utterly different direction. I think at that point in time I could be wrong and probably starting on the path but it's been wild. So like last I can remember in terms of where I was at there, primarily freelancing, having a lot of fun doing it, just starting to really find my footing in the email marketing world and getting connected with folks that are over there. And then since then started up an agency, we've gotten to work with some really cool clients, have shifted into taking on a couple more CMO roles that are a lot more partnership based and then working on some of my own products in the email marketing world and the info side of things. But the then also we've got a couple newsletters now that we're spinning up that are on traffic sources that'll be more, you know, ads revenue focused and heavy affiliate revenue focused and just so many different projects but so all centered and circled around one more thing and in a much more secure spot I guess than I would probably say I was at like five years ago. But I think the number one part about like, all of that, and I've always felt this way, is that I couldn't predict. I could not come within a shred of a hundred yards of where everything is at today. Then, like, not a damn clue.
- [05:22]
A
Okay, that's a lot. You kind of gave us a table of contents we can even follow, though, because like you said, you were just kind of getting started on email. You were writing sequences, you were looking for clients. When we, when we chatted, I think you had done. You had been doing some of it, but hadn't, like, you were still in the struggle, right? You were still, like, really looking for clients. And now you said you started an agency. Can we talk about that, like, shift from struggling freelancer to. In that process that you went through to build an agency, which isn't easy at first, but has turned into a little bit of a flywheel for you.
- [05:58]
B
Yeah, a hundred percent. So, like, I think the biggest shift for me in recognizing what it is that that looked like was just taking slowly at first, but more and more ownership of everything that I had my hands in. And so, like, the challenge that I set was, well, if I'm going to write a piece of copy for whatever vehicle this is, whether it's lots of email sequences. And I personally started shifting into email because it was a much easier retainer, you know, structure for anybody that sat inside of there. I was also writing emails to my own list daily of just like a couple hundred people at the time, but slowly taking on more ownership. And so, like, that started with, hey, if I was writing a sales page, like, I'm also going to go publish it and I'm going to give them to this as a script, going to record this as a vsl and I'm going to edit it and we're going to put it up there. And then I'm also going to write all of the emails that are going to launch and push to this thing if it's a launch model or whatever else it may be. And then if I'm going to do that, I'm also going to run that all inside of autoresponder. And then, like, while I'm in there, I'm also going to say, hey, yo, we're going to have a lot of people that come through and buy, and then we're going to have a lot of clickers that didn't go through and buy. Afterwards, we're going to run a CART extension for that and we're going to write that and we're going to install that, um, and that slowly Started to build into just naturally me taking on a load where like we had four or five clients where we're writing, I'm writing daily emails and then we're handling anything and everything that's that in between as ideas came up and then slowly like that needs a person here, that needs a person there, like full transparency. I'll never be a 20, 20 person team kind of ordeal. You know, we operate real lean with like two to five folks at any given point in time. Mostly a couple of VAs and one or two writers that are me. I've been taking on more writing because I just love it and that's where more of the fun has been. And I get more out of it that way. But yeah, it all kind of started happening by accident. But like I do think that the big intentional portion was recognizing, oh, I've got to own as much of this as possible in order to be one sticky selfishly, but then like two just valuable.
- [07:56]
A
Right? What's that, what's that conversation look like though? Because I mean I get that. I get going from I'm writing like I've got a client who hires me to write an email sequence, but going from there to the point where you're saying, okay, I'm going to write the sequence, but I'm also going to write the landing page. I'm also going to write the vsl. I'm also going to start managing this for you, whether it's in their ESP or in my esp. Like that's a, that's a big like shift in not just approach but even like the conversation for your with your client. And so does that happen at the front end or are you landing that initial project and like, hey, I got a few suggestions for you. Or did they come in for that project and it's like, okay, we'll do the project, but this is actually what I want to do.
- [08:43]
B
90% of the folks that I would talk to in outreach or anything else like that that were interested in having sequences written for them. Most of them. Like if anybody was going in and scheduling and running everything, it wasn't a dedicated email marketer. It wasn't somebody in this like real high pay position or like viewed at least at that point in time as a linchpin in the business and how it stood, it was mostly like assistant or NEA or the person themselves was going in and scheduling it. Right. And so like for me the pitch just switched to, yeah, we'll write these to like, well, we'll write it and we'll run them and then if there's any optimizations that I can see opportunity for inside of the funnel, like, do you mind if I share them? And then if they seem like they make sense, we can go and implement them. The yes, there was really easy, right? Because it was just, well, yeah, sick. For the same cost, can we just like do this? Yeah, that works. And then for me, like where I viewed that as an opportunity was that's what a good long term retainer relationship looked like in the long run. And so like I had two clients that I'd written three or four sequences for. I was just like, hey, it probably makes sense for us to make sure that we're doing dailies if we're sending daily. Like, do you have somebody who can manage that? They don't. Or they didn't. I go, okay, cool, sick. I could take that over. Like, and the tech behind it isn't personal opinion. Or at least when I say it wasn't super complicated, like most page builders are all drag and drop and all ESPs are almost all the same unless you're using archaic stuff that's not and super complicated. But those were ways selfishly for me to actually see and own the results, right? Because like the number one thing that I had a hard time with was I'd have great relationships, especially with like, you know, mid sized companies that have 20 to 50 people, they're doing healthy eight figures a year and they say, yeah, sick, we need somebody on retainer to come in and write this stuff. But I would, it would just go off into the ether. Like I used to do a lot of work back four or five years ago. One of my longest standing retainers was for a pretty big software client and worked with them for like nine and a half months. And it's great, but at the end of the day there's very little to show for it in terms of results. And also just always, constantly and understandably very expendable, you know, And I mean, we could see what a lot of that looks like now with like introduction of AI and folks going in that direction. And then also in the same token too, like folks wanting to own more of that process and bring it all in house and what it looks like. And so for me, I think, yes, that's a lot more to take on. But it's not that much to take on if what I wanted was credit for the results that I was driving. Right? And that was a real big shift, you know, because at the end of the day, do I recognize that the copy is going to carry 60 to 70% of the weight inside of what happens here. Hell yeah. Does everybody know? And they shouldn't. They're not entitled for them to have that kind of an expectation. And so, yeah, selfishly is probably an ego play. I want more credit. But then I wanted those results and I realized that those results were key. To be able to have a conversation with somebody confidently and say, yeah, we did this over here in this parallel and this happened. I think it's probably going to happen again. And the past four years have really just been that. So after we took on those first two clients, or I took on those first two clients in a retainer relationship, started reaching out and pitching folks just on that, right? It's like, hey, I see you've got this audience over here. Like I've been on the list for a couple of days and like I've gotten some stuff. But man, what you're putting out in comparison to what's happening over there is like this is just night and day, you know, would you be open to somebody coming in to try and take what you've got going on here content wise to do it? And I wrote up coattails of a lot of the bigger boom during COVID of a lot of folks selling high ticket coaching through DMs and through Instagram growth and the shout out market over there and all that good fun on Jazz. So my first two real big trophy clients all came from over there and we went out and we generated millions and millions for those folks. Like there's a ton of fun but coming in and owning that process end to end for like everything email and having say, an input on top of funnel on what's happening bottom and with the sales team earned what those results looked like in being able to attach them, like not even from a credit perspective, but just like to me as a whole. And yeah, I think that's what carried everything forward momentum wise into it makes sense.
- [13:16]
A
It seems to me. You described it as a big shift for you, but this feels to me like something that a lot more email copywriters need to be thinking about simply because as AI does more and more writing, the ability to strategize and to string this stuff together and put it together as an actual system with, you know, a sequence for maybe introduction, indoctrination, you know, abandoned carts like those seem to make a lot of sense. But even figuring out messaging around daily emails and do we pop them from a daily email into a, you know, a 5 email sequence that's going to upsell them into another product. All of those kinds of things are things that you can't get by typing into ChatGPT. Write me an email about my protein bar.
- [14:08]
B
Yeah, 100%. The strategic value is twofold. It's like strategy. And how do you produce copy that's gonna generate this outcome, this transformation, this result, this motion from this individual subscriber. But then it's also, and like, this is what the big unlock was for me personally. And really, like, where anytime we come in, we become sticky is like managing a list as a whole also has its own strategic approach based on the brand and where it is that they kind of fall into. Right? And so like, I mean, we could go down. This would be a fun one because, like, I wish somebody would have told me this six years ago. We can go down that route of like, what does email copywriting versus owning the execution and fun stuff look like? Like that. And so like that entire process was understanding, hey, if I'm writing something here, there's a second and third order consequence or action or follow up that needs to happen. Or at least that I know should or could happen. And so just owning that was really big. So like you mentioned, hey, we just wrote this launch, but like, there's gonna be these folks that sat in the hot list. They're like, I've heard about this person over here doing a card extension. It's like, well, I could write one of those. Most of the folks, like, the limitation is never like, can you write the copy? It's mostly willingness and strategy and execution and the confidence that comes with that to go, hey, I'm gonna run and own this. Because it's, it is scary for them to go belly up because like, that does happen. But I think that if you have the capacity to come in and write sequences and longer form launches or anything that happens from an email perspective, you are fully capable of working your way into managing a list full scale. Like, there's very little that's different. And then when it comes to like writing daily emails to managing someone's list, you are literally managing the entire energy of that list as a whole, whether you're dictating the strategy or not. Like, the difference between taking over what that strategic direction looks like, the amount of marketing education that you have to have in order to be able to write, converting copy, sales copy, no matter where it is that it sits, you know, 99.9 times out of a hundred better than who it is that you're working with or under in a Lot of cases, especially if you're working with folks who are in there like first 500 to their first 5 million a year, the gap in what that knowledge looks like from a marketing perspective is just absolutely massive. And so like the upside for you is very, very high if you're willing to take that on as a responsibility. And the downside for them is very, very, very, very low. And so like, I found that I got a license to essentially experiment and learn everything that I'm stuck on and the strategies that we roll into here, here and here and every other client. I had a conversation this morning with a wholesaler and they literally wholesale stuff to folks who buy and sell pallets, both sides. And so like they go and buy resell and then they also sell resell to other folks who are going to resell, resell. I had a conversation before that with somebody who's an absolute Internet marketing OG that anybody in the past 30 years would recognize about potentially looking at taking on like more of a CMO role inside of there. I've also had three or four folks that have a million plus followers and they're running their way up to eight figures a year. Where we've worked on webinars, we published low ticket offers, we've pushed anything and everything you can think of under the sun solely because we had control over what the daily email sending strategy and copy looked like. And it was a very natural fit to be able to help engineer the other assets that are in there. I believe, at least personally, folks don't want or need like a team of three to five copywriters at any given point in time. The shift towards hey, can you do this? And the expectation that I can do this because I can do this thing over here instead. And I'm talking and pointing with my hands for an audit. Audio podcast. But that expectation is now we have a copy team of like 1 to 2. As long as you're not, you know, outside of an Agora and an older style industry where these folks believe that as many copywriters, top tier, we pay as much for them as we can get and we get them all. Most businesses doing under 10 to 15 a year really don't have room for more than like one to two people writing copy. And so like, if that's the case, well, shit, the easiest way to be able to hold a larger point of leverage, at least from my perspective, and I could be wrong, but it's like owning as much of that process as possible, you know, and glorifying what we do if you write the sales page. If you have written a sales page, all of your email copy is there. It's a matter of restructuring and reformatting and understanding what does the structure of a good campaign in this environment look like. Also all the ads are there, right? Okay, cool. Let's move up into the lead and up into the hook. And how do we expand that out to a cold audience and remove the connection and transition so that now all that we have is the fascination that sits at the top. Beautiful. Like if you can put together one cohesive piece of copy around anything from an offer, whether it's a VSL or a sales page or whatever, you have all of the knowledge required to be able to translate that into what it looks like and promotion to email list and everything in it daily. I don't know. I would encourage like if anybody is working on email based retainers and you have any interest in working with folks for longer than six months, I think it's actually really kind of funny. We just had a. My longest standing client was just over four years and it would have been maybe four or five months after our last podcast and they grew to a point to where it made sense for them to take everything in house and like as awesome. Tough part about the agency game is you either getting fired for good things or bad things eventually. It's always how it goes. But like there's a four year relationship, you know, and what that I could not have ever predicted six months before that that I would have a client that was going to pay me over $250,000 of the lifetime of our relationship together. Like that just was not in my capacity because I had this project mentality and that doesn't work. And so like looking at it from an email marketing perspective, that's a need that doesn't go away. And if I could find a way to push myself into more and more needs that don't go away, then I'm just much more durable because it's going to hurt that much more if you're going to let me go. And that was my mindset going into it initially.
- [20:31]
A
So I want to draw the lines around what this economic opportunity is because I think you had just mentioned like having that project mentality. I think a lot of copywriters are thinking, okay, I'll write an onboarding sequence that's seven emails, you know, depending on how you price it. At the low end, maybe it's 50 bucks in an email. At the high end, maybe it's 2,5300 or, or maybe a bit more, just depending on how in demand you are. But that's, that's basically a $2,000 project. And then when you talk about, you know, working with a client for, you know, a quarter of a million dollars over four years, we're talking about 60 grand a year or about 5,000amonth, you know, when we're doing that. So like, is that how most of your projects are, are structured at this point? Is it like in that price point, about 5,000amonth or is it. Yeah, like what is the range there? Yeah, and the reason I'm asking is I'd love to just like make it really clear what the opportunity here is.
- [21:28]
B
Oh yeah, 100.
- [21:29]
A
If we can switch from the, you know, $1200 project to this monthly, that then has the opportunity to go on for however long.
- [21:38]
B
Yeah, yeah. So we structure all of our email marketing engagements on three tiered pricing model and so they include varying degrees of rev share. And so like I'll just give the numbers for the copywriting folks that are in the room because the number one thing that I hated was that nobody would tell you what the they charge. So we go 3k plus 7%, 5k plus 3% or 7,500 flat per month. And that's the very basis. Granted, that's all going up right now. And I got to restructure things because I'm taking on some more CMO work, which means I've got to hire on more of what the agency work looks like and all that good fun stuff and other people got to get paid. But that simple and easy structure for me based on the caliber of folks that we're trying to work with is typically a really easy sell. And for me we're primarily working with folks that are selling higher ticket services on the back end with other lower ticket info products specifically, mostly in finance, real estate, slightly more sophisticated markets in terms of products that are there to sell. It's just kind of a niche that I fell into and lucky for me there's a lot that, you know, side understanding that's really helpful in those markets. And then we work with some folks that are, you know, Internet marketing based and some coaching consulting stuff on top of that too. But that's been a price point that I've worked myself up to over the past few years. I did it for a while to where I was like, yeah, it's just flat 5k. I wanted a piece of upside. And like we would start to identify clients where, hey, I want to send twice a day here, but I got to find a way for that to make sense for me. And if that's what I want to do. Okay, cool. Like I would love for this to scale down in what base looks like and scale up and what anything else looks like. And so at the end of the day, I mean even if you're talking about a business that's I say only and it's still nothing to scoff at. But like if they've got a seven figure run rate, my 90% of the time, we're running 20 to 30% of the revenue per month on the low end from the list. Right. And just like economics all the way through, whether it's E Com, whether it's services, whether it's coaching and consulting is very damn consistent. That bare minimum, about 20% of revenue all the way up to right around 40 if they're selling on cold traffic is gonna get recovered through the list. Right. Just on like large scale law of large numbers and conversions, it's very consistently the amount that we can expect to recover from a sales perspective through. And so what that translates into also is if that's humming and continuing to grow, you're responsible for 20% of the revenue that's coming into that business. And so at $20,000 a month, even on our higher end packages, like that's a no brainer. We're fine. Because this is also all. And my favorite part about selling anything, email marketing. We just had a conversation with a really large core supplier out of the Australian market and they're doing about 15 million a year right now and they've got no email follow up, no anything. It's absolutely mind blowing to see how involved their sales team is and we poke through and run the numbers and even on the most conservative end, we're going to make them an extra 750 to $800,000 in the next 12 months just by installing the foundational stuff, you know. And so does charging and did charging those prices worry me for a little bit. And like, honestly I've been told multiple times in the past four months that we should be charging more, which is a whole other ordeal. But besides the point, we're only charging a fraction of what we're taking in. And I'm also only taking on folks where I know we can get a 20x return on what it is that we're going to do. And so the goal was really here's what my clients make, or here's what this client's making in a given month. What can I comfortably come in and Take a piece of where it's worthwhile for me to do it, but then also where I'm small enough to where I'm not a line item on the P and L looking at getting crossed off anytime that there's a fluctuation, right? And that's really where I found that sweet spot is in that. And I'll say it again, anyone who wants to go out and pitch it, good luck. Three cables, 7%, five cables, 3% and then 7,500 flat per month.
- [25:37]
A
And what does that buy me as a client? Like obviously when you have the rev share you're. You're paying for what I like to call give a damn that you're actually like thinking about the business. How can we improve this? Because when you improve things, your revenue goes up. But even at the flat fee, like am I expecting a daily email? Am I expecting you're implementing a different sequence for me every month? How do you draw the lines around what you're totally delivering?
- [26:03]
B
And this is probably where it gets really tough is like the second that you take on daily mailing, the lines get really blurry. And the second that you take on rev share specifically. And like so we only do rev share of attributable directly to email. I want to make that caveat. I'm not coming in and asking for 10% of somebody's total revenue per month. Asinine.
- [26:19]
A
Yeah, that'd be ridiculous.
- [26:20]
B
That'd be a little insane. But besides the point, it gets really hard and really blurry. The way that I explain it in two sentences to people when we're on a sales call, is anything and everything attached to the email portion of the funnel? I will promise to share any and all feedback, ideas and strategy that I can. And then when it comes to implementation, anything that's getting handled directly inside of the CRM I am in full control of. So whether you need help with automations or we need a new sequence spun up here, if this needs to be optimized, if this is going over here, if we have deliverability issues, also like relatively simple thing to get a good understanding of. If you can help people lock in the deliverability, like the value of what it is that you go in and sell is absolutely massive. There's no shortage of people out there who'll teach you how to do. Is a very simple thing to be able to do at this point in time. And email deliverability is so much more behavioral than it is technical after you've got the foundations crossed off. Besides the point I'm Going to go on a tangent there if I do that. Yeah, it was genuinely owning anything. Everything middle of funnel became my problem. Whether that was show up sequences for a webinar that we were pushing to, whether it was the follow up sequences that came afterwards, whether it was pre show sequences for sales calls for the sales team, whether it was post sales ordeals. If we have a multiple process, if it was, you know, lead magnet and opt in optimizations. If I could see something, I'm not running ads for 90% of the folks that we work with but like if I can see something, I'm going to say something because that's going to improve everything that happens for me. Also again, when we're writing daily emails, the bank of copy that you build up is so massive. I've got over 4,000 pages of every email that we've sent over the past five years. Granted it's in like type 13 file, not right and so like whatever, but it becomes this massive banking library that you just have access to and have knowledge in and of that nobody else has had hands on. And so it becomes so much more worthwhile and so much less time costly than I would anticipate to be able to share that kind of feedback. So it's daily emails plus anything that we need from an optimization standpoint and oversight of that and that creation in it from an email perspective. And then the rev share is what made that worthwhile. 90% of folks I work with, we go on one of the two rev share basises usually honestly the 7500 is up in there for folks that are doing large enough numbers to where they don't want to pay me 30 grand a month. That makes sense.
- [28:52]
A
Yeah. So as I'm thinking through this process then it feels like as you bring a client on, you might have a couple of pretty heavy workload months, but it, it probably tapers off just a little bit as you get it. Past maybe months two and three, you've really built the systems, now it's really about optimizing. It's less about, hey, I've got to write 30 emails in order to make sure that this sequence is working, this other sequence is working. But at the same time, like there's always going to be opportunities to continue to optimize so that you can pop the rev share.
- [29:25]
B
Yeah, exactly. And so like a lot of the times too, if there's a big enough gap in terms of what we need in place and what's currently existing, like maybe three clients out of 10 do we come in and say hey, this is just ready for dailies. 90% of the time it's what's the list building funnel look like, what's the initial offer that they're seeing and then what's the ascension off of that into the back end. And if any of those three need heavy restructuring and work, it's okay. We're going to build out. I call the foundations package. This is what our first two months are going to look like. Okay, is we're going to do this and I'm going to take no cash out of the business. From a rev share perspective, we're just going to do this flat rate. That's where that 7,500, a number that we anchor to on the recurring becomes really helpful because on the first two months if we need to do a lot of front end work, it's just a 15k up front or split if we end up doing it. And then we can figure out what model we want to go with on the recurring inside of that. From the scope perspective that makes it easy. And then we also do some smaller one off build outs. It's cool because then that's a nice little cash injection service where someone comes in and you know, we've got a half build out that looks for that and it's 7,500 bucks. Awesome. And most of the time that includes just a list building funnel, autoresponders that sit inside of there and then typically 14 to 30 day journey and then you know, anything that needs to happen from low ticket offer, plug and into it. But yeah, that's how we kind of protect against that. But also too like that has forced me to take on folks that I only know that I can win for. Like I joke about it, but the way that I talked about the past two years was like I'm chasing trophies, I'm kind of finally out of that. But it was like, listen, even if I'm working my prices on the way up and I go, damn, I'm at like 50 an hour here and I'm at 100 an hour over here, like understanding that those imbalances would be worth it if I can go and take on the ones that came from it. Because like that four and a half year long client that I mentioned to you, we made between four and a half and $5 million together just from the email list and like direct attribution. So obviously a lot more upside that came in off of that. But we also took that list from 4,000 people to 79 and graduated it from sending three times a week to twice a day with more autoresponders that I can count on both hands that we're firing 50 to 100 people into, you know, every other week and more. I man I wrote webinars and long form sales pages and short form sales pages and pre sales call videos and post webinar replays and text message and SMS campaigns and chat bots and like more than I ever would have expected to have happen that sat inside of there because what I saw was hey, here, there's opportunity here. And even if I'm not getting paid what I know this is technically worth, if I can hold this and use this as a jump off. Phenomenal because like full transparency, that client became a lot of the baseline for what it is that we teach and implement in other clients and consulting agreements or anything else like that. Because we got to see what that looked like at so many different stages.
- [32:40]
A
Yeah, those kinds of clients are invaluable anchor clients for learning and moving on. I want to ask you because as you were kind of kicking off what I called our table of contents, whatever you mentioned, in addition to the agency thing, you're also involved as a CMO slash partner with a lot of clients and like bringing even more to the table in a couple of situations. What does that look like? And do you graduate from an email engagement to that or are people bringing you in as a CMO at the front end and saying figure it all out, like what does that whole portion of your business look like?
- [33:20]
B
Yep, yeah, combo of both. And like caveat I'd like to give is it's not necessarily a lot does take a shit ton of time and mental energy and all kinds of fun things. And so like in the past year I've done that for four folks, probably coming on about five folks in the near future. And I really we can only hold like two at a time. And the biggest thing is just like the amount of strategic energy that comes from simply watching what all of the data looks like from an ads engagement perspective to a landing page slash sales page conversion perspective to an email follow up, an immediate sequence perspective to daily emails and the 3, 4, 5 trigger campaigns that sit parallel to those to what happens on the back end and what that means for sales calls. Like the amount of thought and high level energy that has to go into understanding that big picture is so much that limit that very very exclusively. And like honestly probably not something I will do forever by any means will probably phase it out to like one in the next like six to 12 months there and just give those folks all the time in the world. And like, honestly, I don't know, maybe the, the agency side of things will shutter or slow down if that ends up taking on a bigger role. And I'm totally open to that. But yes, in graduating. So most of the time what'll happen as we come in, we're helping, we're sending daily. Maybe they've got somebody media buying and maybe they've got somebody who's helping on a product fulfillment standpoint, maybe they've got somebody who's running organic socials and what they're really missing is someone to sit in between and tie it all together. And so like a lot of times what'll happen is we'll own the middle of funnel, email, CRM, sms, all that good stuff, strategy that sits in the middle and then kind of step up and graduate to hey, here's probably the best way that we can make this all play together. Because like what happens when you run the middle of the funnel is that you're getting insight into how any and every lead performs all the way through. What people don't tell you is like you're a media buyer and you're a cold traffic person. Even if you've got somebody who's just running like a low ticket funnel for you and they come in and publish it, they've got such limited insight into what happens on the back end. And in a lot of online businesses, at least in each niches that I've been in, all the money's made on the back end like 80% plus. And so that being the case, like, well, you've got eyes on what people are performing the best and getting to drive the most revenue, the most profit and the most predictably. Because by the way, the other thing that not a lot of people will tell you enough of is your email leads in a book, a call funnel or even in a sales funnel or even an E commerce ordeal, like they're going to convert magnitudes higher than anything that's coming in from cold. And so like the advantage that you have in terms of being able to see that you've also got the most, especially if you're sending daily reliable and high frequency feedback loop on what's working messaging wise, angles wise, products wise, that other folks in the business like, they're just not in a position to see, you know. And so what I found was I kind of stumbled into it to where the suggestions that we were making and the ideas that I had and what was happening based on the changes that we made. We're making sizable impacts at every point in the funnel to where it just kind of made sense. And they were like, hey, do you want to just run this? What does that agreement look like? And blah, blah, blah. And we figured it out and you know, those are, those are tough because they're either savior or scalar positions most of the time. And I've gotten caught in a handful of savior positions and I think it's both work. It's important to know what you can and can't do or what you're willing to do. But there's typically very little add on in terms of workload and gap in strategy they're not already thinking about to where it just kind of made sense. I also like the challenge. Personally. I've loved growing as a marketer and understanding what each and every piece and point of data means or suggests. Like if we've got a great, you know, if we've got a 8% conversion rate sitting on the sales page and the only thing that's happening is we've got a lack of traffic as an issue, it's like beautiful. We've got a click through issue over here and if we go to check it out and it's like, well actually no, it's not a click through issue. The CPMs are really high on this one ad category. It's like, okay, cool, well sick. We've got a messaging issue, right? Or we've got a targeting issue and then same deal. As they continue to go down, it's like, well, hey, we're converting at 8%, but the bump's only getting taken at like 10%. It's like phenomenal. We've got a congruency issue in terms of what the next problem is that we're trying to solve. We're looking at the upsell that sits behind that and we go, hey, this thing's only got a 20% take rate. Could be a few things. It's like, oh, well, is our pricing matching in terms of what our elasticity looks like between that front end offer and the top end? Does the front end offer need to come up in value? Does it need to go down? Does the low ticket or the upsell need to go down or come up or does it need a payment plan? And then if we go to look at like booking rates that happen on the back end, if we're in a high ticket sales funnel and that's at like 2%, we go, okay, cool. Well like we've missed value, right? Like we haven't sold our buyers what it is that they want help with from an implementation perspective, or they don't see value in this call, or they're worried about being sold or whatever it is that happens. But then, like all of those are also things that are happening inside of the email funnels at any given point in time. It's just different channels, different metrics and, and, and benchmarks, but it's all the same language.
- [39:06]
A
And when you talk about being cmo, fractional cmo, I think the role here is, it's that role where you are trying to build something that then becomes so important that your client ends up hiring somebody permanent into that role. Now, sometimes a fractional CMO will get hired into that role, and they're good with that. But the opportunity for copywriters to play a bigger role in that is. It's so impactful, but it goes so much beyond just writing copy. You know, where you're, you're bringing in the members of a team that can operate eventually without you. We've had Casey Stanton on the podcast in the past. There's a couple of trainings in the underground where he talks about that, and we've been through that role. But it's yet another interesting option for copywriters who are looking to get away from only writing copy and just forwarding a Google Google Doc to their clients.
- [40:00]
B
Yeah, 100%. I think it's really rewarding if it's something that you want, if you want to put your marketing knowledge to the test, there is nothing like it. And it comes with a high risk because at the end of the day too, like, the more responsibility that you take on, the more responsible you are for what happens. And a business is a business. And if profit isn't generating or the numbers don't make sense, like, yeah, you're in a position to where cuts are likely. Or like you mentioned, and this is what I said earlier, it's like, either get fired because we did too good or it wasn't happening.
- [40:35]
A
Scale or fail.
- [40:37]
B
Yeah, exactly. And there's no in between. Right. The greatest that we can do, eventually we're going to get replaced. Like, they're going to bring it in house. And that's the biggest sign of success that can happen in there is like you graduated this to, hey, you build me this great system, like to keep going, I need like three or four people, you know, and that's what we got to have. Awesome.
- [40:55]
A
Same deal.
- [40:56]
B
Like, if you get to a point to where it just doesn't work out from A success standpoint, it's like anything business, especially online, is a very, you know, small numbers of small numbers and only a certain amount are going to succeed. And most offers have a very short shelf life. And that is kind of the name of the game. But in the same token, if you can find a way to scale those, it's huge. Also, the amount that you learn in such a short period of time is absolutely insane. I mean, I've got folks who, if we sat down toe to toe and just like, from a copy perspective, they'd write me out of water because they've been doing it for 15, 20 years. But when it comes to, like, a generalist and a full funnel perspective and understanding, like, how to carry a message and a transformation and a goal and an outcome and tie those into purchases along the way, I'd kick some serious ass with people who've been around three times as long as I have. And it's fun. It's all very different games, you know, and different ways to be able to understand it. But I am just such an obsessive fan of just, like, businesses and money models and how all of that works. Five years from now, if we had another podcast and sit down, we'd be talking about private equity and I'd be talking about buying local service businesses and growing and scaling them with what it is that I've learned. But stepping into more and more responsible roles in the marketing sector has been a great way to graduate and see all of that from an opportunity perspective, too.
- [42:25]
A
You also mentioned some newsletters that you guys have been. Yeah, yeah, we chatted just a little bit before we started recording on what those are. But let's talk about, like, what it takes to build a newsletter. And I'm not just talking about writing copy for, you know, to put into a newsletter, but, like, you're literally building businesses on the backs of a newsletter. Talk about that and what you've been doing.
- [42:49]
B
Yeah, 100%. So the number one thing that I learned was that we could drive more revenue than just about any other channel that's in the business in a short period of time. Granted, it caps right. We're always going to be capped at that 20 to 30% of whatever's coming in the front and whatever's happening on the back. However, it was the most reliable lever to be able to continuously pull if we wanted more cash, it was either send more emails or get more subscribers. That binary decision right there is huge because that means that that's true across any and every industry that has an email as a basis for purchase or for lead generation, which is almost all of them. Like if you look at, and I'll say this again and again and again, and I probably said it on the first podcast we had, but if you look at the one thing that's continued and held constant for the entirety of the Internet, it has been an email address. It's absolutely crazy to think that we have not graduated from that as a technology in the past 35 years.
- [43:44]
A
It's even crazier because some people are using AOL addresses or Hotmail addresses and it still works.
- [43:50]
B
Exactly. And so it's not going away. It's what we've decided is your footprint in terms of gate to communication. And you know what? I love SMS just as much as the next person. You know how much spam I get on here. And you know what they still have been able to do is they still can't fucking hide it from, from me than my email inbox can. So yeah, supremacist.
- [44:09]
A
But besides the point you held up your phone.
- [44:13]
B
Oh yeah, forget about that.
- [44:14]
A
When we talked about sms, you're holding up your phones showing you know you can't hide the SMS's, they still all show up and it's so much spam, it's crazy.
- [44:22]
B
Yeah, 1,000%. But yeah, onto that it's like either we send more emails or we get more subscribers or we do both. And that was continuously just a way to reliably scale revenue. If we knew that a subscriber could turn into a dollar amount and we were able to get it to a point where we were repeating immediately able to hit that and we're able to project how much time it took to hit that. Well, okay, if I know what it costs to get a subscriber and what it is that they're worth and how long it takes them to get there. I've got a very linear and simple money model for a business of any kind. Love sending and managing other folks lists. Selfishly, I want some of my own. I love writing those. I love everything that happens inside of those. And we've also gotten to be able to be connected with some insanely strong offer owners that have great affiliate partnerships and great products to be able to sell and push to people. And the hardest part for them is that they don't necessarily know how to do what we do, which is to attract an audience of people and keep them engaged just by having a dedicated line of content on one specific topic. And so it would be stupid and foolish of me to not own newsletters of any kind. And so we've got one that we've been working on that we've grown nice and sizable in the finance space. We've got, you know, some others in real estate, project management, whatever, all that good fun stuff and went over in health. And now what I'm slowly starting to work towards is like how can we go either acquire either via purchase or just do it organically via ads. I see organic and I mean via ads to build up bases around these specific niches that have a high monetization value, that value that folks have a hard time finding and produce essentially the best ones in those categories because like your morning brew and your hustle, those were news based, right? Communication channels. And that is what the first wave of good news because it's in the name newsletters were around. What gets ignored inside of that though is that there's also like a second and third tier in that where we're not necessarily just looking for news, but what I'm looking for is all curation. I like the tone and the spin that these people put on this specific topic and they put good things in front of me that I seem to care about. Awesome, I'm going to read this. And so they are hot takes and opinions. And it's basically if you took a newsletter and it was all op ed, right? Like if you took a newspaper, excuse me, and it was only op eds. Sweet. That's a lot of fun. And so we're getting a lot of those off of the ground right now. And it's been very different and whirlwind to say the least. But the monetization potential off of it's insane because if you can build a high quality audience that's insanely worthwhile even to advertisers, whether it's just like programmatic or like cost per click. And that's one revenue stream. And we've also got our affiliate partners that we can push to, that becomes another revenue stream. And then if there are any other pieces of contact that we want to have, you know, or offers that we want to specifically launch, that's another additional revenue stream. Also like the affiliate revenue that comes in that is an offer based but that's like tech and services and the real estate one's very exciting because the amount of money that people pay for like a cost seg service, let's say that anybody who owns a decent amount of property should be doing on an annual basis or anytime that they do, at least with a significant repair or addition to it. So these things people will pay 10 to $15,000 for and you get a very nice healthy cut off of it. The hardest part is that historically most people have treated affiliate lists and relationships as very burn and churn and tight turnover or deals and not as this owned asset that can continuously be grown. And then the biggest part is sold because if this thing generates ad placement revenue of, let's call it 50 to 60,000amonth with like four to five open slots a week on 3 cents and whatever, I'm going to nerd out if I keep going down that path. And we know it produces this and this and affiliate revenue. Well, as long as it keeps producing content, it's likely going to keep doing this. It's a very straight line ordeal. There's only two levers you can do which is send more emails or get more subscribers. And so then that's a very appealing business model to folks who want to go do that. Met a couple of folks who are in that space now where what they're doing is they're essentially buying, building and flipping newsletters is business assets. Do they sell for a 12x multiple? No. But 5 to 7 is not too shabby when you've got a business that's got 70% margins. Yeah, yeah.
- [48:49]
A
Lots of potential there. So I'm curious. You do a couple of things to build your own list for email empire where you're, you know, just mailing about what you're doing, that kind of thing. What is it that you're, that you're, you do to, to just build your list of writers, marketers, businesses that want to hear from you?
- [49:07]
B
Yeah, 100%. So we just run simple ads. I was talking with you about it before we hopped on. I made a commitment that said, okay, cool, this is what I take. In a month I'm going to spend 15% of that to go back into ads, or 10% of that, or 5 or whatever the number is whenever you're starting. And that's just going to sit there and it's going to continuously run. And I'm sadistic and I like to work with my back in a corner and that's fine. And maybe you aren't and I totally respect you and I recommend you go that route and not mine. However, if you identify with what I've been talking about up to this point, I like having a requirement that says, well, my ads are running. We're spending 2, 300 bucks a day no matter what. I gotta find a way to turn that into profit. I need A way to keep me accountable to mailing this list on a regular basis and making offers that I know these people are gonna care about. Because I know that if I can acquire a subscriber for and so many people think this is so much more expensive than it is. The playbook that I was talking about earlier that make sure you guys get a chance to get access to at the end. We run simple static image ads that go directly to an opt in that have a small upsell behind it. I watch the numbers of who's come in. There's people listening to this podcast that have bought it in the past week. We're getting subs for like three to four bucks a pop. There's no way that I don't know that I can't get 3 to $4 in return off of those subscribers inside of a 30 day basis as long as I have good products to sell, good things to offer. Now sometimes this is harder if you're locked into that niche of I'm a copywriter, quote unquote, tough audience to sell to in some cases. Or we tend to lean into biz op or whatever. Like this works in like any niche or hobby, by the way. Like there's 10 to 15 different, you know, build a product using AI courses and then I don't say that to shit on them. Like there's really good stuff that's inside of there which essentially says if you've got an idea or information of any sort that you know that you can curate, that's going to be of value to folks who are interested in it. There's a route to cash in there very quickly. As long as you can grow and push that. Also, especially in challenge to those folks that are in copy or in services or in marketing. You can make so much more off such a small list, right? Like I think on list of 500 for the first year that I wasn't spending and growing on ads, I did like 64,000 from the list inside of that year. And it's like, well, you know, that might not be enough to live off of a loan, but it's a huge signal in terms of like what those folks are at. And then as you scale up, obviously that number goes down. You're not earning $30 per subscriber, obviously, but it becomes really cool opportunities to collaborate with other folks, to be able to see what it is that you have on a platform and then just to actually own anything that sits as an asset. Because there's nothing more exhausting than just going through client Work day to day to day because clients will, client will client. They are humans. None of it's ever guaranteed. A contract is only as good as much as you're willing to sue for, which is usually not much. And so having that asset of something that's building and growing that you can continuously promote to is huge. Like Ian Stanley is a great example of it because the amount of pivots that that guy's made in terms of what he's sold to. The list that was specifically built around Internet marketing has spanned from personal development to physical products to coaching deliverability to.
- [52:36]
A
How to, how to write a sales page on Google sheets.
- [52:39]
B
Like he.
- [52:39]
A
Yeah, yeah, it's a different thing almost Every, every quarter.
- [52:42]
B
100%. Yeah. Right now they're working through a comedy.
- [52:45]
A
Show at one point. Yeah, yeah.
- [52:47]
B
Which is hilarious by the way. We got to hang out with Ian and a couple of folks over in Austin this past couple of weeks ago and ton of fun. But like no matter what, like what that does that it proves is that if you have an audience and it's the same way with a newsletter and it's like you can sell anything parallel that your folks are going to be interested in. It's like what I'm really interested in with the newsletters that we're building up is not just what straight line products can we sell to them that are direct and on top of here, but folks who are interested in like let's say buying very expensive saunas, also buy supplements, they will also buy fitness programs, they will also buy travel and retreats because they like to enjoy the life it is that they have if they spend $10,000 on Asana. I know this is a relatively high income household. This is actually also somebody that I can sell tax services to if I so want to do so. Like there is no shortage of things that it is that we have to buy and we like to buy from people that we like. And so what that carries on to, if you own that data, it's just, it's the most valuable, I don't know, it's the most valuable asset that you could be grabbing right now. And at three to ten dollars a pop, depending on what your interest category and group looks like and how well you can liquidate, it's worth it all day long. Yeah, yeah.
- [53:57]
A
Okay, we're at time. I wish we could keep on talking because it's endlessly fascinating. This hasn't exactly been a beginner how to get started in an email type discussion, but I really appreciate the depth that you've gone into Jacob, as we've been, you know, talking about this and what the potential, the real potential of email, email businesses, email copywriting, email strategy becomes as we start to, you know, build it out beyond that, that project based system. You have a playbook that you share, I think with people joining your list. Let's share where people can, you know, find more out about you, how you, you know, you work basically get on your list and if they're interested in learning more from you.
- [54:42]
B
Yeah, definitely. That guy lives over at go.emailempire.org playbook. By the time this guy's published too. I'll get the raw domain direct redirect over there too for you guys. But that guy's got everything that I've learned in the past four years doing about 25 million, maybe a little bit more in sales directly from email. Everything from, you know, general strategy to list management and way too woo woo and deep to talk about here, but managing energy of a large group of people all the way down to some of the more tactical stuff in terms of what emails it is that we send in a given week and what structure it is that they cover and conquer. A couple of examples of some different templates. There's also some fun stuff in there, you know, if you want to learn about how to use AI to be able to help those kinds of things from a structure and campaign planning standpoint. The whole nine. But yeah, it's go.email empire.org playbook and.
- [55:33]
A
I joined your, your list long before you had the playbook available. So I may have to join it a second time. There we go to all of that stuff. But I really appreciate your time. It was great reconnecting, you know, we'll, we'll, we'll have to keep, keep chatting and you've taught me a lot here. So thank you Jacob.
- [55:49]
B
Awesome. Thank you and thanks everybody for listening.
- [55:58]
A
Thanks Jacob, for presenting what amounts to a masterclass on email marketing and the many ways that copywriters could be or should be using email in their businesses or to help their own clients strategize how to use email to grow their businesses. If you want to make email part of your business, bookmark this episode and listen back again to the various ways that we should be thinking about this game changing technology. You can jump on Jacob's listmailempire.org or to get the playbook that he mentioned, go to go.emailempire.org playbook. It's not the typical 3 page AI written lead magnet that you'll never read, never even open. This playbook is meaty and it's worth checking out, especially if you write email copy for your clients or your own business. Don't forget to check out Research Mastery, the proven research program that will help you write better copy and sell more. If you want to use some of the ideas that we talked about in this episode, Research Mastery is a good place place to start. You can figure out what you need to say and then use email to share it with your clients. It will definitely help you connect your conversion tactics, your email tactics strategy with a deeply felt worldview that your potential clients are experiencing. You can find out more@the copywriterclub.com researchmastery that's the end of this episode of the Copywriter Club Podcast. If you like what you've heard, please share it with someone you know. And if you don't know another writer or freelancer that you can share it with, then visit Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever it is that you listen to podcasts and leave a review. You if you haven't left a review before, this would be a really good time to do it. I promise when you share the Copywriter Club podcast, your friends will thank you and I thank you and I'll see you next week.