What a year 2022 has been! We have loved delivering the Email Marketing Show week after week, and for the last (Email Marketing) Wednesday of the year, we thought we'd share some of our favourite moments from this past year.

There were too many to choose from, but we're sure you'll enjoy the little snippets we've chosen for you. In fact, we absolutely dare you to listen to this without laughing along and experiencing FOMO (if you're not a League member just yet).

Enjoy! 

(And if you have any favourite bits, come and tell us in our Facebook group or on Instagram!)

SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: 

(0:09) Want to make your sales from your email marketing? Grab our Click Tricks.
(1:23) 12 Things That We Use On Stage That Help Our Email Marketing.
(2:32) Grab people's attention and generate engagement to keep people's attention.
(4:59) Tell stories and paint pictures in people's brains.
(6:54) How To Get Back On The Email Wagon When You Fall Off (Back To School Edition)
(12:54) Why you need to get back to your email marketing (if you've fallen off the wagon).
(15:01) Comedian’s Secrets to Storytelling - With Kevin Rogers.
(17:50) The joke formula in comedy (and marketing).
(21:19) Tell Me You're A Member Of The League Without Telling Me You're A Member Of The League.
(22:52) They have fresh ideas, templates, and an automated email engine. 
(23:52) They get excited about Email Marketing Wednesday. 
(26:07) People are in a love square with Rob and Kennedy and get told off for saying they have a small list.

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12 Things That We Use On Stage That Help Our Email Marketing

We opened up with some snippets from episode 12 Things That We Use On Stage That Help Our Email Marketing. This is a particular favourite of ours as we talk about some of the strategies that we use in our other careers as a Stage Hypnotist (Rob) and a Mind Reader (Kennedy) that also impact our email marketing. We teach (and do) psychology-driven email marketing, and there are things that we do on stage that we directly apply to our email marketing. 

Here are some snippets from the episode.

Grab people's attention

With your email marketing, you want to ensure you have the attention of your audience, just like we do on stage. If you don't have people's attention at the beginning of the show or at the start of your relationship with your subscribers, they’re going to talk all the way through (at a show) or not pay attention. And you don't want that – you want their attention.

So how do you do it? First of all, you show up with something that’s attention-grabbing. In the world of email marketing, this is done by giving people a promise when they first opt-in and making sure you deliver on that promise. And the first thing you have to always deliver on is your name – it needs to be the same whose list people subscribed to. We see that mistake a lot with business owners using a different name in their emails compared to what they have on their website.

Generate engagement and keep people's attention

Another tip we have for you is to grab and keep attention through subject lines. They set an expectation, they grab someone's attention right from the start, and they help you keep it. When it comes to our shows, for example, we keep people’s attention by making sure our events are fast-paced and interesting. If we used a boring, corporate voice with no personality, people’s attention would immediately drop.

So keep it pacey, get to the point, stop waffling, and don’t give people too many things to think about at once. That’s why we suggest  you don’t put too many points or offers in one email – one email is one offer, just like on stage you give one instruction at the time. Otherwise, it gets confusing and people can’t keep up or remember, so they don’t do anything. It's about being clear in your instructions to keep people engaged.

Tell stories and paint pictures in people's brains

We talk about this a lot. On stage, Rob, for example, will paint a picture and create a story to give people suggestions about what he's asking them to do. He talks them through the narrative of a story so they can paint that picture in their brain. And he does it that way because stories allow people to make connections that are emotional, real, and interesting.

So you could build stories around how your product or service was created, how it can be used, or how it should never be used (that would be interesting!). Or maybe you could create a story around why your business is more credible than others.

As entertainers, we use stories to get people to emotionally buy into what we’re about to demonstrate on stage. So if you want to do the same, show them something or let them see something in your business.

How To Get Back On The Email Wagon When You Fall Off (Back To School Edition)

Another favourite episode is one we aired in September 2022 called How To Get Back On The Email Wagon When You Fall Off (Back To School Edition). It's one full of laughter and failed analogies (we mention diets, pencil cases, “the Dreaded Dentist”, tax returns – you name it).

But if you want to find out why Rob is not a psychopath (who still ends up pear-shaped) and why Kennedy is crying and his glasses are falling off his face, it's one to fully enjoy.

And yes, there was some actual value in that episode too. Here it goes…

Why you need to get back to your email marketing

Have you fallen off the email marketing wagon lately? We all start with the best intentions – and not just with email marketing. But often life gets in the way, and it's easy to drop the ball. Now it's time to get back to it though – just like children are heading back to school!

You see, we call this “the Dreaded Dentist”. Because we've all been there – you go to the dentist, and you're told you haven't been in too long, you've left things too late, and now there's a lot that needs fixing.

And that's just how it is with most things – the longer you put something off, the more you dread re-starting it and the harder it's going to feel. Getting back to your email marketing feels hard today because you've already left it for too long. But keep leaving it, and it'll be even harder! And while you're not sending emails, your list is eroding. 

So you need to get back into the game. And the good news is that the thought of doing it is probably scarier than the thing itself – this feeling you're sitting in right now is the worst you're going to experience. But you can escape this and feel in control again. Because if you don't, you're keeping yourself stuck. So don't wait until the job on the dentist chair becomes huge – get on top of this now. 

Comedian’s Secrets to Storytelling – With Kevin Rogers

Here's another favourite episode of ours – Comedian’s Secrets to Storytelling – With Kevin Rogers. If you want to find out what happens when you add another showman to the equation – and someone who also uses his skills and experience to write compelling content, this episode is the one. And it's definitely one of those full of laughter AND amazing value. 

Does your origin story matter? 

Should you share your origin story? Do people even care? Kevin Rogers tells us that our audience cares about our origin story more than we think! Just because we've heard it or shared it a million times, and we now think it's irrelevant, it's far from it! As marketers, we need to share our origin stories, go deep into them, and find different angles and places to tell them (or different parts of them). Marketing is storytelling, so this is crucial! 

Is your origin story really about YOU? 

We've all heard that your marketing and copy always have to be about the customer and not about you. So how do you strike this balance between telling your story and making it interesting and relevant to your audience?

When you're writing copy, imagine almost having a two-way conversation with your audience. You hold one side of it and can almost picture your readers nodding along on the other side. Focus on the thoughts they'll have about themselves as they’re reading. If you're sharing things that are relatable, people will inject themselves into the story.

Use a lot of “you” to make your copy about your readers, but there are plenty of ways you can involve your readers while telling your own story and not have people think you're some egocentric jerk who can’t think of anyone else. If the story is done right, no one will think that.  

Take the famous sitcom Friends, for example. People laugh at the jokes because they imagine themselves in the situations the characters are experiencing. We laugh because we live vicariously through the characters. And that's what a good origin story is about – this shared feeling is what makes us want to create and tell our own stories. It's the heartbeat of every communication.

The joke formula in comedy

So here's the joke formula Kevin identified and shared with us:

• Identity.
• Struggle.
• Discovery. 
• And surprise, which is what makes people laugh. 

One of Kevin’s favourite opening jokes on a national TV spot is from a comedian named Karen Ronkowski. She opened with this joke where she said that her kids were so bad in Walmart that she pulled a flyswatter off the shelves and smacked them with it. And as soon as she did that, she realised she doesn’t have kids!

It’s a great joke, and in only a few seconds she tells so much about herself (that's the identity element of the joke). We know she's annoyed by children, and she's willing to beat them (that's the struggle). The discovery is the flyswatter, and at the end, you have the surprise, which is that she isn't beating her own kids!

Plus, when it comes to identity, she talks about going to Walmart, and just from that fact you're getting a lot of information about the type of person she is. In a few seconds, she also manages to identify with and relate to the mums or parents in the audience. Setting the joke in Walmart also adds specificity. We imagine what the store looks like, for example, and this drives the story and makes it three-dimensional. This works in comedy and in marketing copy too!

The 60-second Sales Hook formula in marketing

Obviously in marketing, we’re not trying to get people to laugh – that’s not the goal. The goal is to build trust. So to use the joke formula in our marketing, we change the last part from surprise to result. What is the result that you have helped other people achieve through your discovery?

The formula for marketing is:

• Identity.
• Struggle.
• Discovery.
• Result.

Once you know these four elements of your business, you can write a story on the spot. Kevin’s story, for example, is that he’s a former stand-up comedian who turned copywriter (identity). For years, he struggled with sharing his story in a way that was relevant to people (struggle). Then he discovered how he could take a joke formula and change the last element of it and turn it into a hook formula (discovery). And he has since grown his business by 50% (result). 

All you have to do now is to add a call to action. So for Kevin, it's something along the lines of: “To see this joke formula that I turned into a marketing formula, click the link below, and I’ll give you my free book”. So that’s super quick. And it's pretty cool, right?

Kevin also pointed out that once you know about this formula, you'll start seeing it everywhere – from TV commercials to ad campaigns. It's a proven, go-to formula – try it out! 

Tell Me You're A Member Of The League Without Telling Me You're A Member Of The League

And last but not least (but we could have chosen so many more episodes for this medley), is the episode Tell Me You're A Member Of The League Without Telling Me You're A Member Of The League, where we jump on a TikTok trend and tell you what most of our League members have in common.

If you're not a member of The League yet, we bet you'll feel pure FOMO at the back of this episode!

You always have new and fresh ideas to talk about your products

The first thing we noticed that all our members have in common is that they always have fresh ways to talk to their subscribers about their products.

With the right templates, you can try out a new offer for your product super quickly. And members of The League all have access to all those shortcuts – we have templates for more than 30 different ways of presenting the same product to keep things interesting for your audience.

You have an automated email engine

An automated email engine is something that turns new subscribers into paying customers every single day, even when you're taking time off. We are still turning people into paying customers quickly, efficiently, and completely hands-off.

And this is all happening from content that we set up in our email engine weeks, months, or even years ago, in some cases. And one of the reasons why it works so well is that we’ve taken our highest-performing campaigns and automated them inside the engine.

Because let’s face it – every email you send isn’t going to be your best-performing one. Can you imagine the pressure if that was the case? So we’ve taken our best campaigns – the ones that gave us the most customers when we first run them live – and automated them.

You get excited about Email Marketing Wednesday

When Kennedy first presented the idea of Email Marketing Wednesday, Rob thought nobody would ever jump on board. Because surely people don’t want to do their email marketing on a Wednesday, right? What if they already do Webinar Wednesday, for example?

But to Kennedy, none of it mattered. Just because we do our email marketing on Wednesdays, it doesn’t mean everyone else has to. The key is for people to buy into the idea of dedicating one day a week to their email marketing.

And now? People inside The League will post about Email Marketing Wednesday even before Kennedy has opened his eyes at 5 am on a Wednesday morning! And that’s a bit hilarious.

You use our internal terminology outside of The League

We have all sorts of phrases and language we use internally. We have Hotline Calls, Snowball Emails, an Interrogator campaign, and the list goes on and on. That’s because we’ve given names to our frameworks, campaigns, and the strategies we use and teach inside our business. In our businesses, we needed quick ways of doing different things, so we created frameworks, and for quick ease and reference, we gave them names.

But what’s happening now is that members of The League get in touch with the various email marketing platforms asking for technical support and use our internal terminology with them. In other words, they assume that the phrases we use are globally known. But they’re not. And there are probably technical support operators out there scratching their heads around some of the questions they receive – certainly from some of our members. And that’s just funny.

So that's a thing we do – we've created our own language and shared it with our awesome tribe. It's super useful, especially because we named our campaigns by using metaphors for how they work, how they feel, and what they do. And it means we can just quickly identify them with a name without having to describe or explain them all the time.

You’re probably in a love square with Rob and Kennedy

We hear this all the time. Our members are always mentioning us at the dinner table, much to the annoyance of their partners. And the reason why they do is that once people understand the value of email, and how it genuinely impacts your business and your life, they become obsessed with how they can do email better and up their game.

League members want to know how to increase their effectiveness and improve their skills at email marketing, so they start talking about email at home instead of making small talk about what shows they’re watching on Netflix. And can you blame them? They love doing their email marketing, and that’s just a fact!  

You get told off if you say you have a small email list

Initially, we’d be the ones telling people off when anyone said they had a small email list. But now some members of The League will tell people off on our behalf, which is hilarious!

Why do we do that? Because if you have more than one subscriber, then you have an email list, which means you should be doing email marketing. That’s all there is to it, and it’s often a big realisation for people who join The League. 

Because let’s face it – one of the hardest bits of email marketing is growing your list. You have to work at it all the time, and it’s boring and not enjoyable. But it needs to happen. The good thing is that when you get good at email marketing, you get to make the most impact and the most money out of the subscribers you already have.

You don’t need a whopper of a list because we help you maximise the value you get out of your existing list. It doesn’t matter how big your list is because we give you the campaigns, the training, the help, and all the coaching you need to get the maximum juice for the squeeze.

Useful Episode Resources

Related episodes

Who should not join The League of email marketing heroes.

7 Essential Email Campaigns Examples For Your Business.

9 Psychological Things That We Use In All Of Our Campaigns.

FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketing

If you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. 

Join our FREE Facebook group

If you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.

Try ResponseSuite for $1

This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.

Join The League Membership

Not sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.

Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcast

Thanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about our favorite moments from the Email Marketing Show in 2022) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review of the show on your favourite podcast player.

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