← The Email Sound Booth with Liz Wilcox
The Email Sound Booth with Liz Wilcox
*SALES EMAIL SUMMIT* Tarzan Kay– addressing the biggest objection and moving customers past shame
00:18:48
Hey there, email hustlers! In this delightfully honest episode of Sales Email Summit, your host Liz Wilcox sits down with the one and only Tarzan Kay- email marketing wizard, notorious course collector, and master of consent-based selling. They dig...
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Transcript7 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 listgadget.com all right, let's get into this episode. Tarzan, what is the most interesting or most lucrative email you have sent out in the last six to 12 months?
- [01:03]
B
Hey, I'm Tarzan and I do email marketing and newsletters and specifically I teach how to sell with a consent based approach. So a sales email that I sent recently and actually I've used this subject line on multiple promotions or even newsletters. But so the subject line was are you with too many courses person? So I'm addressing like one of the biggest objections people have is like, oh, but I bought all of these courses already and now am I gonna buy another one? And like on a much deeper level, the, you know, a lot of people come into online business with high hopes and they buy a lot of courses and they have like so much shame. And when they're stuck in all of that shame, it's just you can't learn, you can't move forward when you're stuck in shame. So the point of this sales email was to really like help people move past all that they this shame they're feeling about. They might have bought a lot of courses and they might not even have a business yet. And like, I mean realistically, like actually starting out an online business, yes, there's a lot of skill building and there's like a lot of courses to take and things you have to learn how to do. But the startup cost is, is actually low compared to many other business models. So the point of this email, actually I didn't say that in the email, but the point of this email is just like to help them reframe that for themselves. Why they have bought so many courses and why like, yes, they may still need another one. So in this email I do a little bit of like, this is common in my emails is like, here's something nobody else will say or here's something you may not have heard before. And that's obviously key. Like when you read that in an email, that's truly something you haven't heard before. You sit up, lean in, pay attention. So one thing, what it says in this email is, yes, acknowledging, like part of the problem is coercive sales strategies. Like that's real, not trying to paint over that. But the other thing that's not talked about is that in order to be successful with this type of business model, and my customers are trying to be successful selling courses, in order to be successful with Internet marketing, you have to be great at a lot of things. Design, copywriting, ads, tech, finance, all of those things. And that's something that they may not, they may not have thought about it that way before. They're just like, oh, I keep getting sucked into like another marketing scheme. They. But actually no, that's not true. Like you need to learn about ads, you need to learn about messaging, you need to have good design. So anyway, the email goes on to say like, okay, there's two categories of courses. There's like a category that teaches you like a broader business model and that like you know, whether it's memberships, courses, whatever it is. And then there's another category that teaches you specific, a specific skill set that's required like no matter what type of business you have. So yeah, I guess it's just like an educational email. But really the point of it is to help them think differently about why they are where they're at. To help them like move past some of that shame and just understand like, okay, no, this is like part of running a business is I need to skill build and particularly the this is a sales email or selling a course about how to build an email list. So I want to educate them on that, that like no matter what business model they choose, whether it's like memberships, whether they're like service based or you know, coaching model, whatever it is, like this is one of those skills that you apply to really any type of online business model. It is not like some other courses when you are actually like starting over with a brand new business model. It's like, oh, I thought I was going to do, I thought I was going to do like digital course model. But actually now I'm starting over as like I don't know, I'm building a newsletter that's like based on selling sponsorships or whatever it is. You're not starting over, you're not starting at zero. You are building a skill that actually not only will you bring into whatever business model that you have or that you try. You actually can apply this to any future business that you try. So that's what the email says. It also has a nod to a bonus package that ends. I can't remember exactly what it was, but there is a bonus package. And so I make sure if any time that I have a bonus. Well, there's a few key things about this email. Like the bonus is obviously mentioned. It's mentioned in the body of the email. It's also mentioned in the ps. It shows like, what the stack is and when it expires. Get this bonus if you sign up by tonight. Actually, that also appears in the. There's a box at the top. So I use top boxes a lot, but I use boxes all the time in my email. But specifically to orient people toward where they are in the promotion. So I do want to remind people, like, I mean, we. We always need to do this in a sales email. Like, why should I buy today instead of tomorrow? And you know, it's. You can't have a bonus expiring every day. So. But just to orient people. Like this one says very clearly at the top, it's the last day to enroll with the bonus package and extended payment plan. Like, you might think that people just know those details because you know them and you have them in a calendar somewhere or you put them on a sales page. Just like you also have to keep in mind though that, like, people are. People are like exposed to any number of promos in their inbox. Like, they're not paying that close attention. So they do need the reminder. So I'll highlight it in several ways. There's a box at the top. It's mentioned in the body of the email. Then it's also in the ps laid out very clearly what the bonus is. And then there's also. This is something like, really interesting that we tried this year is there's a special box at the bottom just for Canadians. Because I'm Canadian, we let Canadians pay in their own currency. We set up a special checkout for them. I think we probably adjusted the price. I'm not sure, maybe charged them HST or something. But there's a box that's like in red. It has a Canadian flag and it definitely stands out for Canadians. We did have to like refund some people and then rebuild them because. Cause they wanted to pay in Canadian dollars. But that actually worked really well that we. We probably scooped up numerous sales that we wouldn't have otherwise. And I sometimes, like, I really hesitate to. To do stuff like this. Because I personally am like, I have really good habits around how I manage currency. I've been running a multi currency business for 10 years. So to me it's like second nature, like where I, you know, how I move money around and get the best. But I know that's like not the case with other people. So this was super appreciated. Little touch. And I mean I know there's software that lets people view prices in their own currency and we might continue, we might consider implementing that in the future. One thing I've noticed about those sorts of software though is like they like for example stripe offers the ability to just like pay in Canadian dollars but they take the existing price and then there's like the markup on it is like market rate plus like 3% which personally like I could do better. So I want to give, you know, I, we just charge USD usually across the board and let people deal with currency in their own way which anyway I realize not everybody is so good at playing the currency game. So we tried that, it was a success. We will probably do that at some point in the future as well. Yeah, that's all I have to say about this email. Are there any questions?
- [09:56]
A
This is so juicy. Okay, real quick. You said that you had sent this email several times over the last few seasons. When was the first time you sent it, if you can remember? And what was it about this email after the first time you sent it that you said, yep, we gotta send this again.
- [10:18]
B
Hmm. Okay. I would say I write all emails from the perspective of emails I'm gonna send again. So here's how, here's my process when I have a promotion. Like I first I plan, okay, cart opens on this day, cart closes on this day. And then I plot out all the emails according to that timeline. And then let's, let's just imagine this is the first time I've ever promoted a product before. So if it's a brand new product, and I do want to say like it's, we have to be like really careful about launching new products. Every time you have a new product you have to write emails, landing pages. There's just like a shitload of copy to create. So this particular email happened to be from a new product that I created last year. So the first time we launched that product, the all of the emails were brand new. It was a brand new product. Like I couldn't reuse anything that I already had. So I'm going to say I've used that email twice. So back to my process. I plot out all the emails on the calendar, and then I sit down and sometimes I just start writing them. But I have done this many times. So I do know there's, like, an arc of the promotion. Like, in the early part of the promotion, I'm talking about, like, I'm actually trying to tell people, like, what it is. Like, these are the things that are included. These are the dates, like, these are the outcomes. This is like the value load, those sorts of things. And you know that in the middle, maybe I might share, like, if I've launched it before, I'll share, like, some case studies. But then at the end, I'm like, really selling decisiveness. I'm like, closing, answering any, like, lingering questions. There's an faq, there's a who is it for? There's like, some logistical shit at the end. So I write all of the emails. We send all of the emails. The first time we run a promo, we don't know how emails are going to do, but we're tracking how many sales from each day. And the other thing, though is, like, even though I write most of the promo in advance, there's definitely a point where I'm tired and I'm like, okay, like, another promo email, it's like, due today. I have to get the shit done. And inevitably, after I finish a promo, let's say I have 12 sales emails, and there's probably like eight of them that are very good and hopefully six that are completely reusable almost verbatim, and some that need some tweaks and some that are like, okay, Darza, and you were having an off day. So when I come into the promotion, the next time we went into promotion, so let's say this product that I was promoting, that was in the fall, and then we were promoting it again, like, in the spring, maybe even in the winter. And so the first thing we do is, like, create a new schedule for all the emails. And then I go over the entire promotion from last time and decide which emails that I can reuse. And, you know, this is like, I've been doing this for almost 10 years, so I have a lot of experience. And I mean, we do track, like, which emails went out and how many sales happened on each day. So I do have kind of an idea, like, oh, yeah, this email did really well. Like, there I, of course I look at the data, but I will say for the most part, I can look at all the emails I wrote and I can say, like, okay, you were like, really phoning it in with this one. So this one's got to be rewritten. Like, I can see where I've made like a really strong case for why you should buy the product. And I can see where other emails were just like, maybe they weren't addressing a clear objection. Maybe they were like, really meandering. Like, what's the point of this email? Like, you know, the best emails are the ones. And I mean, that's why I chose this email for a promotion. I can clearly see, like, okay, this is the objection that I was addressing and this is the way I helped the buyer, this potential buyer, like reframe that objection that they're coming up with so that it is no longer a barrier to buying the program. So when I'm reviewing all the emails, I can see like, you know, even in the way, like when I finish writing an email, I we have like an internal note that says like, you know, promo email number four. And then they'll be like in brackets, like, what it's about. And you know, I might look at that what it's about and be like, okay, that was pretty weak. Like, it's not really clear what that one's about. So I pick out all the strongest ones. Like, are they addressing a clear objection? Are they really making a good case for why someone should buy this product? Or is it just like another email that's just like, I sent the email because I needed to send an email that day. And I will say, like, for people who are learning how to write email campaigns, like, you're gonna write lots of so so emails and it's okay. Like, in fact, it's better to send a so so promo email than no promo email. So you know, I, from years of experience, I know, like, okay, if we have an eight day promo, we're gonna send about 12 emails. So like, not all of them are gonna be great, but I'm definitely gonna send 12. And then next time, like as you, as you promote the same thing over and over, you're going to refine your emails, you're going to reuse lots of them. And some of them you're going to be like, yeah, that one. I definitely scrap and try something better.
- [16:20]
A
Tarzan, Eugenius, you, thank you so much for being so freaking thorough with that. Now, of course, because you have a decade of experience with emails, sales, emails, newsletters, consent based marketing, all that, why don't you tell us where we can sign up for your newsletter so we can learn more from you and your genius?
- [16:43]
B
Oh yes, everyone listening should definitely sign up for my newsletter. I think it's One of the best in marketing. It is full of stories, embarrassing tell alls and not too much advice. Very light on dice so you can get it@tarzank.com Newsletter it's called Emails but better and I think it lives up to its promise.
- [17:08]
A
Okay, I have to tell you that I have been on Tarzan's email list not quite 10 years, but it's been a long, long time. If you don't know anything about Liz, you're new to me. I used to be an RV travel blogger and I loved email back then and I had a friend tell me, oh, you would really get along with Tarzan K. So I got on her email list. I bought one of her programs back in the day a million years ago. Email Stars. If it ever comes up for sale, buy it. It's pretty darn good. Anyway, love her emails. Get on their email list. Okay, Speaking of Tarzan's emails, one of the things I love about Email Stars this is not a promo for that is that she gives you a lot of of templates like sales templates, etc. But of course that's not. I don't even think that's open right now. So your next best bet is to steal this email from her. Inside the Steal these Sales Emails template pack you already know. It's a plug and play collection of every single email from the Summit rewritten into simple templates so you can customize in minutes. I could not believe when Tarzan and a lot of the other speakers honestly said, yes, Liz, you can take my email, you can templatize it, you can put it in a wicked inexpensive bundle. 35 bucks is a total steal. Steal these Sales Emails Template Pack. No decoding, no guesswork, copy, tweak, send, make sales just like Tarzan. Link in the show notes.