← The Email Sound Booth with Liz Wilcox
The Email Sound Booth with Liz Wilcox
*SALES EMAIL SUMMIT* Dara Sklar – flying by the seat of your pants to sell
00:12:51
Buckle up, inbox rockstars! In this episode, we chat with the queen of Google time-saving hacks herself, Dara Sklar. Dara dishes the behind-the-scenes scoop on her wildest, most lucrative sales email journey, a saga that started with a random story...
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Transcript9 lines
- [00:01]
A
What up Liz Wilcox here, the host of Sales Email Summit. Before we get into this interview, I just want to let you know that this summit is sponsored by list gadget. ListGadget.com is how you can turn every email into a growth machine. We've got embeddable polls, leaderboards, referral programs and more. And I know this sounds crazy but you can do it in about 30 second startup time. Now right now we are offer $10 off the starter plan to make it just $9 a month. So if you're into adding email polls, reactions, subscriber leaderboards and more to your email newsletter, head on over to list gadget.com all right, let's get into this episode.
- [00:53]
B
Dara, so excited to hear what is.
- [00:58]
A
The most lucrative or most interesting sales email you have sent out in the last six to 12 months.
- [01:07]
C
Hey Liz, thanks so much for inviting me to speak in this summit. This is Dara Sklar and I know that a lot of people know me as the Google Drive, Gmail, Google Workspace person who sends out practical tips and time saving tactics by email. I have always gotten great feedback on my emails because I'm always making sure that they are full of value and not just salesy but you know, I'm in business as we all are. And so I started off with this series of emails and I didn't know that it was going to be a series when I first sent, when I sent the first one. The first email that I sent out was promoting a 12 workshop called the Second Brain and it's all about using chat GPT to I guess be your like thinking companion to remember things for you. And I sent out one email and immediately had like a, I want to call it a flood of sales of that person's product like with me as an affiliate. And it led me to realize that my audience was interested in this topic. And so I wrote a series of emails. Really not like I didn't like sit down to write a series of emails. I just kept having ideas and ways in which I was using ChatGPT and the, the email, the sales email that had the biggest open rate and I'm going to tell you at the end how, how much these sales emails converted over time. There were seven of them in total. But the third one that I sent out the subject was ChatGPT just became my mechanic and what had happened was I had hit 333,333km on my 2011 Honda Civic and I had taken a picture of it and I this, this had happened like unrelated to these email series. But I had this epiphany of like how I could use ChatGPT and I had uploaded all of my invoices from the mechanic for the last five or more years. Like everyone that I had digitally, I uploaded to Chat GPT so that it could remember for me when was the last time I did my friend breaks on my back breaks or some other services because I hated flipping through these pages of gibberish. And ChatGPT was able to log this for me. So I was like this is a really great idea, I'm going to. And you know, it's nothing. It's not like sharing personal information or anything with chatbots. So I feel like this is very relatable and doable for lots of people. So I switched, I wrote this story email and this was the third of the seven sales emails. And this particular email got almost a 50% open rate. And over the course of the seven emails. Am I spoiling this by saying this so early? Over the course of the seven email series, I made more than 3% of my email list, made purchases of this $12 workshop. So the workshop, the second brain workshop, was $12. And yeah, so of the over almost 8,000 people on my email list, more than 3% of them purchased this over the course of those seven emails. So I feel like it's kind of funny and ironic because I wasn't selling something of my own, I was promoting something of someone else's. But that was like very eye opening. Not only that I could convert that much of my audience to purchase something, but also the power of the anecdotes that I share. I suppose the momentum of people trusting that what I write is valuable and wanting to open my emails because I share valuable tips. So yeah, that was my most, most surprising email, most surprising sales email that I've sent out in a very long time.
- [04:35]
A
Dara, that is so super cool. I love the subject line. It creates such intrigue that I'm like, what the heck is she talking about? I have to open it, right? So genius course. Now quick question. This was a $12 workshop you sent. You, you said that you sent seven emails. Is that typical for you when you are selling such a low cost product? And if it is or isn't, you know, like what is the difference for you and in your business between like, oh, I'm selling this higher ticket thing versus a lower ticket. Do you send less emails for one or the other? Do you sen or is it pretty equal?
- [05:22]
C
So I have to confess that I Am quite a fly by the seat of my pants promoter. And I very rarely write out like email series or sequences. And what I really enjoy is the positive reinforcement from people purchasing off of an email that leads me to write more emails. And so in this case and the seven emails was not over a short period of time. I think I sent about four emails, maybe five initially. And then I sent two more follow ups a little later on because the price of the workshop was going up. So I was sending kind of a last nudge or reminder and it was just, it's so. I just find it so validating when there are sales that come in as a result of an email. So it was definitely not planned, definitely not typical. And 100% was because the email was working and the people wanted the product. So when I said when I promote anything, whether it's, well, I think it's a little different when it's promoting my own thing. When I'm promoting my own thing, I know that if there's an open cart and closed cart date that people will buy right up to the last minute and the last call emails on the last day are very, very important. And so knowing that I stay like steadfast and make sure that I do send out those last emails because I know that they. It's easy to say, oh, nobody's buying because it's like middle of your cart open period, and you have to stick to your guns and send out those last emails. And that's really important when you're promoting something. But in this particular case, I was just really winging it and going by the vibe of the feedback I was getting. And I was getting people writing to me and saying, oh, I bought this thing and I loved it and you were right. And so I got a lot of like positive feedback that wasn't just them purchasing, but 100% for sure. I was flying by the seat of my pants throughout the entire promotion. And I'm going to continue to promote the, the course or the workshop through an evergreen evergreen sequence. Just because it was so well received and well loved as a workshop. And you know, it just kind of flew off the shelves. And so, yeah, it's just that it, it sold well off the first email, sold well off the second email. My chat GPT is my mechanic email, you know, had such high open rate and sold even more like it just every single time I sent an email, it sold. And so although I wasn't going to, you know, kill my email list with this topic, I did feel like there was value brought to the person reading the email each and every time, even if they'd already bought the product, I was still bringing them ideas and my own, my own take on what I was learning from that workshop. So I hope that's what you were looking for in terms of an answer. I know that, you know, everybody does sales emails differently, and I think, especially for somebody like you who, you know, shares email templates and strategies and stuff, that people see email as something that needs to be planned. And I feel it that when I send out emails, and I don't know if it's just because I feel like I'm always a little bit like under the gun or like behind, I'm always a little bit running a little bit late that I tend to just kind of do it. And, and I want to say wing it and, and I mean that because I'm like reacting to my environment around me to tell stories and come up with ideas. And I find it easier to do that in real time than like in very long preparatory times.
- [09:00]
A
That makes total sense. And I've been like that, you know, even being the email marketer that I am for a long time. I will say now that I am, you know, nine years into this, I'm less fly by the seat of my pants and more automated. But I will say during a launch or during, you know, even if it's, you know, quote unquote, a small launch, like, oh, I've got this $12 workshop that I'm really excited about. I want to put it out right now type of thing. I will leave room in my schedule to add those emails in. I love Darren, that you said, you know, I had four emails. I. I wrote more. That's something that I try to leave in as well because what Dara just said was really important, like getting the instant feedback. Even if that instant feedback is you're just seeing a lot of opens, you're seeing a lot of clicks. Okay, well, maybe I'm seeing a lot of clicks, but I'm not getting a lot of sales. Maybe I need to write an extra email to the people that clicked to ask them, you know, do they have any questions before they buy. Right. So always leaving room in your sales for more sales is so important. I love this so much. Okay, Dara, use smart cookie. You if people want to get some of your goodness. Want to learn more about Google and now AI and all that fun stuff from you. How can we sign up for your email list?
- [10:37]
C
I would love to have you listener on my email list. My mo is that the time that you spend with me pays you back in time savings exponentially. That is, if I teach you something, you're going to use that thing to save time over and over again. And so I start that off with a little PDF I have called the top 40 time saving Google hacks you'll wish you'd been using all along. And it touches on Google products like Gmail and Google Drive and Google Calendar and Google Docs and sheets and all of the Google bells and whistles that we use that we probably don't spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to save time. That's what I'm here for. So I just love the efficiency of using technology and tech tools in the right way, in the right combination. And these very, very versatile tools are often, we often only scratch the surface of them. So this is a 40. You know, it looks like little recipe cards of 40 different time saving hacks and you can just flip through, pick the one that you, that jumps out at you. Implement it. Save money. No, save time. Save time forever forward and then come back to the same PDF and pick another one and learn it and implement it in your Life. So top 40 time saving Google hacks you'll wish you'd been using all along. And it's@withdara.com top 40.
- [12:01]
B
Yes, let's save some time. Let's sign up for those 40 time saving hacks from Dara. And if you want to save even more time with your sales emails you already know. Get the Steal these sales emails template pack. You're going to get Dara's exact email she sent out and you're going to get it templatized. Listen, this template pack is a plug and play collection of every single email from the Summit rewritten into simple templates you can customize in minutes. No decoding, no guesswork, just copy, just tweak, just hit send and make sales just like Dara in this summit. It's a total steal of a deal. Get it for $35. Steal these sales emails Template pack link in the show notes babe.