If you’re going to do email right in your business, you may need to start over from scratch and reset your foundation about how to use email as a tool to grow your audience the right way.
That’s what we get into in this episode, including discussion about:
- Which email providers to use.
- How to get started.
- How email compares to social media (in audience, sales, growth, etc).
- BONUS: Our best tips for managing your inbox.
It’s better to listen on the go! Subscribe on iTunes
“If you want a thriving, engaged email list, you’ve got to learn how to do email right.”
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Show Notes
Get Off Your Ass & Get Noticed with Gary Vaynerchuk | Chase Jarvis LIVE | ChaseJarvis – YouTube — Great insights from Gary in this one. Invest in each channel. Learn the rules, the norms, the expectations. Then use them.
How I use email for marketing | Nathan Barry — “What’s the most valuable asset in your business? A while ago when Brennan Dunn and I were talking about business assets and determined our most valuable assets are the same: our readers.”
How to add a MailChimp signup form to your WordPress blog | MailChimp.com — “We make adding a signup form link to your WordPress.com site easy. You’ll just need to grab the Signup form url from MailChimp, then use that url to create an HTML link on your WordPress site.”
43 Folders Series: Inbox Zero | 43 Folders — “These are posts from a special 43 Folders series looking at the skills, tools, and attitude needed to empty your email inbox — and then keep it that way.”
Original Inbox Zero Video (2007) | Inbox Zero — “An early version of the presentation delivered on July 23, 2007 at a Google Tech Talk.”
Inbox Zero: Delete, delete, delete (or, “Fail faster”) | 43 Folders — “Do you have a sloppy relationship with the messages in your life? Be honest. Do you tend to see every new email as a virtual hug that must be reciprocated?”
TextExpander Snippet for Gmail Compose Page (without inbox) – plus some thoughts on email — “It’s finally happened: my inbox has become a problem. More on this below. But first, here’s a lil’ textexpander snippet to take you to a compose message for your gmail account WITHOUT pulling up the inbox.”
Automate the Web – Zapier — “Connect and Automate Over 250 Web Apps.”
Unroll.me — “…see a list of all your subscription emails. Unsubscribe instantly from whatever you don’t want.”
John Lee Dumas’ Amazing Shark Killer Pic — Dude’s slayin’ ancient dragons of the sea… on a catamaran.
Learn how to set goals that actually stick!
The Top 10 Mistakes in Online Business
Every week we talk with entrepreneurs. We talk about what’s working and what isn’t. We talk about successes and failures. We spend time with complete newbies, seasoned veterans, and everything in between.
One topic that comes up over and over again with both groups is mistakes made in starting businesses. Newbies love to learn about mistakes so they can avoid them. Veterans love to talk about what they wish they had known when starting out.
These conversations have been fascinating, so we compiled a list of the 10 mistakes we hear most often into a nifty lil' guide. Get the 10 Most Common Mistakes in Starting an Online Business here »
Are you guys not currently using Libsyn?
And yes. It is the most beautiful email template ever. I freaking love it.
we are. But we’ll be moving soon, methinks. At least that’s the plan. You’ll hear more when it’s done.
Thanks, man!
Building a list is what helped make my dream of having my thing support me, possible.
Man thanks for the email tips at the end especially. I listened to your podcast on ride home from work, less then two hours later have obtained an empty Inbox..
I have unsubscribed from over 60 lists on three different email accounts, archived my 2,500+ gmail inbox and now have whitespace on my Gmail dashboard. It’s beautiful! Thanks for the motivation, the Gmail shortcut tips as well as the awesome Unroll.me link!
Oh by the way, I LOVE my free mail chimp account. I seriously considered Aweber as almost every blogger recommend it when I started my list last year. Everybody I may add that are getting affiliate commissions.
LOL you guys are hilarious!!
But seriously, your stuff rocks, and yes email is the BEST way to connect with your audience!
Thanks for your guys good information, and seriously shaking some branches of the social media and email marketing tree!
Stunning list build resource here. Appreciate the share guys.
I really enjoyed this episode. I love mailchimp! It’s so validating to hear why you guys love it too. I need to to more stuff with segments because I’m doing multiple lists/duplicates right now and it’s going to bite me in the ass once my list grows!
Great episode lads!
I think you’re imagining that :) Though if you’re on the list you obviously get the awesome email template every tuesday and friday.
I DO get the awesome email templates. So small and compact, yet sophisticated! It must’ve been wishful thinking on my part!
Thanks for the reminder that email is still worthwhile. I almost didn’t listen because at the beginning you were saying it would cover basics, and I’ve been doing this email thing for a while. I’m glad I stuck around.
You know, if you guys were Homestar Runner characters, Corbett would be Homestar: the front man, star of the show, and utterly adorable, even with no arms. Caleb would be The Cheat: smart as a whip and totally to the limit. Chase, well, he would be Homsar: looks great in a bowler (but is more than a little awkward) and often says things that only make sense to him.
Ha! Thanks, man :)
:-) I totally hear you on the internet! that is my life, I live in a cabin in the mountains and internet is satellite only. Big change from high speed in the city.
haha you guys are soo funny!
Great tips, I am glad to see that I am moving in the right direction.
Hi guys, just listened to this episode. Very helpful. I’m a little concerned because I’ve been with aWeber for a while. Should I consider switching to MailChimp? I understand your complaints with aWeber: it’s a dated-looking interface, and it’s REALLY DUMB to require you to create a separate list every time you need to (as opposed to just segmenting the list).
However, I know how to use aWeber very well and it works for me … but I have been very disappointed in the look of the emails I send. Mailchimp’s emails look so much better.
But a lot of the “big dogs” use aWeber, so I’m torn …
I’d say don’t change. Focus on more important stuff.
Hi, Kent! Any update on this? Is Aweber still the same?
Thanks Daniel. aWeber seems to be pretty much the same, except they released a mobile app about a month ago. I haven’t used it yet so couldn’t say how helpful it is. I decided to just stick with aWeber because I know how to use it, and it would take some time to switch to MailChimp or something else — time I could be using to write or do other more productive things. When I get to the point where I could hire a VA, I would probably have them do some research into it.
Chase, you mentioned the sparkline template and using rss-to-email. I’m wondering of the specifics of your rss setup.
Do you have your feeds set to display excerpts at a certain length, or full posts up to the more tag, or what?
I’m trying to do a similar thing with mailchimp, but I think my feed settings are getting in the way.
Yes, we customize the feed output of wordpress to show just the first 2 sentences of the post. Then in Mailchimp we use the RSS merge tags to pull in headline, author, content, etc.
Took a bunch of fiddling to get it all right, but works well now.
That shark wouldn’t quit! and Chase…my email said “CATCH you on the Fizzle” MUCH cooler I must say ;-)
Ha! Winner winner chicken dinner!
Good episode, guys. It’s funny, as my email list has grown – thanks to Fizzle – I’ve devoted more and more of my limited time to managing that and nurturing that, taking more time away from writing for my blog or guest posting. I guess that is a good thing – I would love to spend more time on creating an awesome subscriber experience, but up until more recently it would have been kind of a waste of effort, because my email list was small.
I could see how the “big guys” — with very large lists — would get to the point where they move towards spending 70, 80, 90% of their time on email rather than on their blog. Or maybe at least closer to 50/50.