Amanda McVicker (0:00)
Hello and welcome to today's episode of The OBM Educator. Before I get into today's topic, which is going to be a skills breakdown on email marketing, I do want to say that doors are closing for the live round of the Six Week OBM, which is my signature course. We're going live this time.
It's going to be a group coaching program with weekly group coaching calls and a Slack channel to ask all your questions as you go through the course. That live round, the doors are closing tomorrow, which would be Friday, June 6th. So if you have any interest in learning more about the Six Week OBM or joining this live round, I do have the link in the show notes.
You can also send me a DM on Instagram. You can actually just send me the DM Six Week and I'll just send you the link automatically through a mini chat automation. Or you can ask me whatever questions you have about the program, about the group coaching, and whether this would be a good fit for you.
So I do want to share that. If you're listening to this after June 6th, know that Six Week OBM is always available as a self-study program. So you can still go through my course.
This is the course that I put together that I wish I had when I was first starting as an OBM. And in fact, when I was joining things as an OBM, when I was first starting, this is what I wish those things were, what I wanted them to be and that they really weren't. And so I put together this course to what I knew that I needed and what I know so many other people need when they're making that transition from VA to OBM.
And so that's my signature course. If you're wanting to join this live round, doors close Friday, June 6th. Otherwise, it is available as a self-study course.
Today, we are going to be talking about email marketing. It's going to be a skills breakdown. I've done a few of these on the podcast where we're going to be diving into what is it, what do you do with it as an OBM, like what a client would kind of be expecting you to be doing and just some things for you to know as you explore email marketing.
I do want to kind of note before we get into this, knowing email marketing and supporting your client through email marketing does not necessarily mean that you are writing the emails. So don't be afraid when I say email marketing, that you're like, well, I'm not a copywriter, right? You don't have to write the emails. In fact, that should probably be a very firm boundary that you have with your clients that you're not a copywriter.
But in the email marketing side of the tech side of things, there are a lot of things as an OBM that your client is looking for you to do. And so that's what we're going to be going over today. Let's get started.
Welcome to The OBM Educator. I'm your host, Amanda McVicker, a veteran OBM who serves six and seven figure entrepreneurs, as well as educates new OBMs with the skills and confidence they need to start and grow their own successful online business management business. Follow along as I share valuable insights behind the scenes, sneak peeks and proven strategies to help you build a better OBM business.
So when we talk about email marketing, we are talking about mass email marketing. So this isn't just sending out random emails. This is through an email marketing platform that you or your client send email blasts, targeted emails, automation sequences, things like that to the people who have signed up to be on their list.
So before we get into kind of the breakdown of it, I just want to kind of make you aware of legality issues because I have always had clients and this is not anything against them. Usually it's them not knowing they'll get an email address from, you know, they just see it out there and they're like, oh, can you put them on my email list? And legally you're not able to do that unless they have given express or implied permission. So express permission is going to be like they sign up for your email list and say, yes, I would like to be on your email list.
Or they tell you specifically, hey, I would like to be on your email list. Can you add me? That is expressed permission. Implied permission is going to be in the case of like someone purchases something from you.
Usually in your terms and conditions, you are going to include something like by purchasing this product, you agree to be on our mailing list. You can unsubscribe at any time, but that is implied permission that there was a transaction between you and now you are on their email list. You didn't necessarily say, yes, I would love to be on your email list, but because you had that transaction, it is implied.
Both of those are legal and perfect reasons to have someone on your email list. But we want to make sure that we're not doing, you know, any sketchy email marketing. So, you know, this can go for you in your OBM business as well, or whatever business, you can't just find random people's email addresses and just add them onto your list.
You need to have their permission, whether it is expressed or implied. And most email marketing platforms will make you agree that you did get those emails the right way. And if you're found to have got them, you know, through different means, then you do risk the account being suspended and not being able to use it anymore.
So I do want to just kind of like put that out there legally speaking, all of that stuff. There should always be like disclaimers. I think it's GDPR, which is like the international guidelines or maybe not international, but like European countries.
But you should have them even if you're in the US because we all are global businesses. So look up that those guidelines if you're curious about them and making sure that you are compliant. Okay.
So let's start with what are some of the popular platforms. There are so many and so many that I'm not going to be listing because there are so many. There are different ones based on different industries.
There are ones based on different size of company. The ones that I am going to list, I have seen more common in the online space. So used by business coaches, life coaches, service providers, they're the most more common ones for them.
But know that this is definitely not an exhaustive list. And you can always search for what is specific to your needs or your clients needs through Google or whatever, or crowdsourcing that information. But this is just kind of like the, the more popular ones that you probably have heard of in this space.
So, you know, it's going to be platforms like ActiveCampaign, Kit, which is, it used to be ConvertKit and now it's just Kit, MailerLite, Flowdesk. Those are really popular ones for the small entrepreneur who is not going to have a huge list size, but needs, you know, good analytics and good sequence and automation options. ActiveCampaign is going to be really good if you want robust automations.
It has a steeper learning curve, but for that reason, I actually recommend learning that one because it makes learning all the other ones a bit easier because it's harder to learn. I personally use Kit. I recently switched to it earlier this year.
I have been enjoying it. I'm having a little bit of deliverability issues right now that I'm trying to kind of like figure out, like a lot of emails, not a lot, but emails are bouncing when I know that they're perfectly fine. Always be doing your research based on like what, what are the pros and cons.
But overall, I really like Kit. I find it pretty user-friendly. Having used ActiveCampaign previously, this is a lot easier than ActiveCampaign.
Flowdesk is going to be, you know, really pretty. Like that's kind of their thing is very aesthetically pleasing emails. They're getting better at their analytics.
They used to not be good at all, but now I have a client that uses Flowdesk and I don't have any problems figuring out kind of like the basic analytics. But know that if you're like looking for like more robust automations or analytics, Flowdesk doesn't really have that capability yet. MailerLite is kind of like a easier ActiveCampaign.
I've found I use it with another client. It works well and it does what you need it to do. But again, not as robust in the automations or the analytics.
MailChimp is usually one that everyone starts with. I know that was like my first email marketing one because it's free or at least very cheap depending on your email size. I have heard that they have a lot of deliverability issues.
That's why I'm kind of always skeptical on using MailChimp or having a client use it. But if someone is looking for free and they're not getting complex, you know, go with MailChimp. Constant Contact, that's going to be really good for larger email lists where you're really just doing kind of like email blasts.
I haven't really dug into their automations or sequences and what their capabilities are there, but I know blast-wise, it's really just kind of like sending out those weekly, daily email blasts. Other options are like all-in-one platforms. So that's going to be like your Kajabi or your Kartra.
I personally, when I moved to Kit earlier this year, I was moving from Kajabi. Their email is fine, but what you'll find in all-in-one platforms is they do everything pretty good, but it's not their expertise, right? An email marketing platform, the sole email marketing platform, is going to perform better and have better functionalities than an all-in-one that's just kind of trying to put everything in there. But if you have a client who is trying to consolidate all of their tools, trying to save money or just have everything in one place, something like Kajabi or Kartra could work well.
And then there are also like CRMs, which is kind of similar in like the all-in-one, but that will be something like HubSpot or Go High Level where you're kind of like tracking client lead activity and guiding them through the pipeline, which you can do in like those other platforms as well, but these CRMs are really built for that. So they, you know, have email marketing functions in there as well. You do not have to learn all of these.
Don't learn all of these, right? If you do not have to, if you are not personally using it or you don't have a client using it, do not feel like you have to learn it. My recommendation is to pick one. If it's something your client is already using, just use that.
If you are wanting to start an email marketing list, you know, pick your platform and learn that platform. And then the skills and knowledge that you get from that one platform are all transferable. So, you know, like I was saying, like you learn ActiveCampaign, you're gonna understand the gist of being able to jump into MailerLite or Kit or Flowdesk, even though they all have their different capabilities and functions.
At the core, they're all kind of the same. You can figure it out. It might take you an afternoon of like jumping around and being like, oh, they do this, this way, or, oh, that's, it's, they don't call it a list.
They call it a group. Oh, they don't have tags, but you can segment it this, you know, whatever. You take a little bit of time and you figure it out and that's good.
But don't feel like you have to learn all five different email platforms in the off chance that you have a client, potential client, who's like, well, I use this, you know, random obscure email marketing platform. Do you know it? Like, no, it's fine. You, in that case, you say, you know, I have not been able to explore that one yet, but I do have experience in this one.
And most email marketing platforms are the same. So I know that those skills are transferable. So now that you know what the email marketing platforms are, we're going to talk about what do you do as an OBM when you're talking about email marketing.
So we already said for the most part, you're not writing the emails, but you are scheduling emails. You are creating automations. You're creating sequences, tracking analytics, you're tagging and segmenting, and you're also determining the health of the list and making recommendations.
So let's kind of dive into all of those. Scheduling emails, pretty self-explanatory. You know, most people have at least like if you, they have an email list and a newsletter, it's usually weekly.
So having the newsletter that your client puts together, putting it in there, scheduling it out. So next is, you know, creating automation. So when you think about automations, these are going to be the things that happen without anyone having to do anything.
They're automatic. So this is going to be like, say someone signs up for your email list, they will fill out a form. Then they will get a confirmation email and they might get put into a nurture sequence that maybe will pitch them something.
In all of that, no one has to do anything. It is an automation that happens altogether. You determine the frequency of the automation.
You determine, you know, when things happen, you determine when someone would be taken out of the automation. You determine when the automation ends. You determine any tagging or segmenting through the automation, which we'll get to in a sec.
But the automation is really just a sequence of events that happens without anyone having to do anything. And so automations can be emails. They can be tagging.
They can be wait periods. They can be depending on the different platform and the capabilities. So like with ActiveCampaign, there are so many different options.
You can do webhooks. You can do transferring to other automations. You can do if then all of that stuff.
And so when you're putting together an automation, it's very important to have a clear understanding of what it is that you want to happen in that sequence. And that's like when you use something like a Lucidchart or even, you know, Canva whiteboard or something, you're just mapping out what happens, what's triggering this, what happens after this, where the delay is, all of that stuff. That's a very technical piece of email marketing that your clients really are going to be looking to you to perform.
So within creating automations and then also outside of it, depending, as an OBM, you're going to be the one tagging and segmenting. And so this is going to, you know, depend on the different platform that you're in because they all use different terminology for it. Some have lists, some have groups, some have tags, some have segments.
And so depending on the platform that you're in will determine what it is that you're doing. But essentially it is the way of marking or splitting up who is on your email list. So it's not helpful to just have everyone on one list with no understanding of how they got there, what they're interested in, what have they purchased, what have they clicked, what have they looked at, what are they not interested in.
Like if you have none of that and you're just sending, you have a list of a thousand people that you're just sending all the same things to, you might hit a few people, but it's kind of that thing of if you're talking to everyone, you're talking to no one. So when you segment a list, you are breaking it up into different groups that are interested in different things. For an example of my email list, so you can kind of see how it works in a real life situation.
I have people on my email list who are VAs who are looking to make the transition to OBM. But I also have people on my email list who are full-fledged OBMs who have clients, have booked out businesses, but they still listen to the podcast, still read my lead magnets or have been with me throughout the five years and have successfully transitioned. So there are people who are on wildly different journeys on my email list.
There are people who are on my email list from when I was an OBM, and I still am an OBM, but when I was marketing as an OBM who are not interested at all in becoming OBMs. They're interested in hiring OBMs. And so when I am doing something like launching Six Week OBM, I want to send specific emails based on where they are in their customer journey.
And so I will have specific emails that I've sent for Six Week OBM that are just to the people that I do know are VAs making the transition to OBM. I'm not going to send every email to the more established OBMs because I don't need to be all up in their email inbox, right? I don't need to be sending it to the people who hired me when I was doing VA work, right? My email list goes back that far. And so by segmenting it, I'm able to send out the emails to the people that I know need them.
And you can do the tagging segmenting, you know, different ways. If someone comes onto your email list by a lead magnet, you can tag them based off of what that lead magnet was. What is their interest? Was it a more advanced lead magnet? Was it a more beginner lead magnet? Like where do they fall in that? Something I like to do, and you know, this is always a great thing to recommend to a client, especially if they're feeling like they really do need to segment their list, is having an email go out where they just, they just ask, you know, the reader, like, hey, I'm wanting to make sure that you're getting the information that you want.
Can you vote on which of the following best describes you? And you can have, you know, like beginner, intermediate, advanced, or, you know, lay it out depending on how it is that your client speaks. And then based on what they click, like it could go to a resource for them, or it could go to a page that says, thank you, your preferences have been updated. But now you have them tagged and you can set it up when you're sending out the email that those who click this link get tagged as beginner, intermediate, advanced, or interest in blank, blank, blank.
And so now you have a more segmented list that they self-segmented themselves into. And so you know that you have, you know, pretty accurate information. So the next thing that you will do as an OBM is track analytics.
And so this is really going to be dependent on the analytics that the platform provides, which is why it's important to make sure, you know, like what it is your client wants to know from analytics before, you know, you put a bunch of effort into setting up say Flowdesk when your client really wanted some robust analytics. So tracking analytics, I usually do this on a weekly basis of tracking who has come into different workflows. What are the open close rates? What are some of the popular subject lines? You could do it by email that gets sent out.
If it's, you know, a weekly or biweekly email, you can track the open close rate, what the subject line was, who clicked, things like that. But getting analytics that will show your client what is and is not working will really help them to focus on their strategy going forward. And then kind of with that, you can determine the health of the list, right? So when you think of health of the list, you're thinking bounces, spam complaints, unsubscribes.
I will say unsubscribes are not inherently a bad thing. When someone unsubscribes, they're saying, you know, they don't have interest in what you're selling and that's fine. But when you get a lot of unsubscribes, it is helpful to kind of look to see what might have caused it.
It's very normal to get more unsubscribes when you're in a season of selling, say like you're in a launch because you are hitting them more. But if, you know, a random email got 10 unsubscribes when usually you get like one, maybe it's beneficial to look into that email to see, okay, what might have triggered that? It's not, again, it's not always a bad thing. Maybe there was a controversial thing in the email that needed to be said and, you know, that your client stands behind.
And that's fine because again, you are getting more aligned clients or customers or leads through that. But it is helpful to kind of like look and maybe make some recommendations based off of it. So we had talked a little bit about automations and what are within those.
Sequences are things that those will be like the email portion of the automation. So what are the emails that are going to be going out within that automation? And some common sequences are like a welcome nurture sequence. So that'll be when someone like first comes on your email list, maybe you have a form of like sign up for my email list.
And so when they sign up, they'll get an email welcoming them and explaining who your client is and what they can expect when they get your emails or whatever. A nurture sequence is going to be multiple emails. And so that's going to be like a way for them to get to know you or your client, you know, whoever, and then potentially pitch something at the end.
And so that usually is going to follow most lead magnets, but also it could be following digital product purchases if it's a low ticket purchase. And then you're also going to have like sequences after products, whether it's related to the product. For example, I have my your first 30 days as an OBM calendar.
There's a 30-day sequence after that where each day you get an email based off of what that day's task was. So that's a sequence, an email sequence that follows the product. It's not nurturing, it's the product sequence.
And then after the product sequence, it could go into an upsell or a downsell depending on what it is that you or your client wants to come after. And that kind of leads into funnels, which is a whole other thing that, you know, the strategy behind which we can leave for another podcast episode. But a lot of what is done in a funnel is going to be done through email marketing.
And so that's going to be like the tagging and the nurturing, the upselling, downselling, all of that will happen through email in the email marketing platform. And so all of that with the funnels and the sequences that works in the automation. And that is what like a big part of what you would be doing as an OBM working in email marketing.
So I hope that was helpful. I know that that was a lot of information. And this is actually a lot longer than my usual podcast.
But email marketing is such a huge part of being an OBM. And it's, you know, one of the easier-ish things to learn because you can join, you know, Active Campaign or whatever for a lower cost, right? If you don't have many subscribers, it could be $15 a month that, you know, you can get in and learn something. And it's going to have a greater payoff to your clients because email is going to be a very consistent way that they sell.
You know, trends in email marketing don't change as quickly as they do in social media. If your client is consistent, if they are, you know, putting out nurturing and promotional emails, they're likely to get sales from it. And so it is something that they do want to put their focus in.
And so as an OBM, it's important to learn it. And I hope that this episode has given you at least kind of like the basics in figuring things out. As a reminder, if you're wanting to join this live round of the Six Week OBM, doors close Friday, June 6th.
The link to check it out is in the show notes. I hope you guys have a great day and I will talk to you all next week. Bye.
Thanks for joining me for this episode of The OBM Educator. I hope what you heard today is helpful for you on your OBM journey. If you loved today's episode, I would so appreciate you sharing it and leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform.
Want to be a guest on The OBM Educator? Fill out the form in the show notes and I'll be in touch. Join us next time on The OBM Educator.
