What happens when you join a comprehensive programme that teaches you ethical and psychology-based email marketing? You start turning your subscribers into customers and making more money in your business. That's exactly what happened to Paul and Emily Hughes from Parent Guide to GSSE, who have been successfully using a combination of email marketing and webinars.

The best part? It's because of using email marketing the right way that they started making a profit in their business. For the first time. 

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Who are Paul and Emily Hughes?

Paul and Emily Hughes help parents whose children are between Year 10 and Year 13 (UK), going through their exams (GSCEs and A-Levels). Through their membership, Paul and Emily give parents the resources to support their teenagers through revision and exam preparation without feeling like they’re always nagging them.

Exams are an intense and stressful time for parents and teenagers alike. And while there's a lot of help for students, it can get frustrating for parents, especially when they don't know how to support their children. This is where Paul and Emily come in with years of combined teaching experience.

Every week, they send bite-sized, drip-fed, simple advice to parents' inboxes designed to be digested without making them feel overwhelmed. They also create resources that parents can share with their children, such as steps to setting up checklists, making revision plans, etc. In a nutshell, Paul and Emily help parents give the right advice to their children to support them through their exams.

When did Paul and Emily start using email marketing?

Paul and Emily started thinking about email marketing in April 2019. To build an email list, they created a lead magnet just before the launch of their business in August 2019. At the time, they had a list of 3,500 people that they built primarily from Facebook ads. They sent out their first email the week before launch with no warm-up. And knowing what they know now about email deliverability, they recognise that probably wasn’t the greatest move!

After launching their business, Paul and Emily started emailing their list weekly. They did this for a year or so, but they only emailed when they had something to sell. And they felt like they were putting people off by doing so. While they were telling stories (something we teach in our programme), they were doing it in a way that felt ‘salesy'. And they hated it.

With a background as teachers, marketing was new to both Paul and Emily. For the first time, they had something to sell, but the way they were doing it didn't sit well with them. While they had done a lot of reading on the topic, it wasn't until Paul and Emily found our teachings that their email marketing started to make a real difference to their business.

What did Paul and Emily’s email marketing look like before learning from us?

Before they came into our world, Paul and Emily had people joining their email list via a lead magnet. From then on, subscribers would receive Emily’s weekly broadcast. This would typically include an entertaining story with a point to it and a little pivot at the end to encourage people to buy their products.

Sending emails felt quite forced and sporadic and like a lot of work. Emily was uncomfortable doing email marketing because she didn’t necessarily understand the psychology or the reasoning behind it. She was just doing it because she figured that sending something to her list would be better than nothing.

In other words, the work of sending emails out felt treacherous because Paul and Emily had no guarantee their email marketing was headed in the right direction. They didn't know if it was working as they had no concrete evidence. And that didn't make for a good experience.

What results did Paul and Emily experience when they adopted our strategies?

Paul and Emily found our business in early February 2021 and looking at the metrics that they're now tracking, they can say that by the end of 2021, they doubled their sales compared to the same period the previous year.

Once they joined our programme, they implemented our sequence (the Getting to Know You sequence) and gradually added more campaigns to what we call their email engine (i.e. a series of automated email campaigns linked to each other). This is when things started to work out for Paul and Emily – in their email marketing but also their business!

They started sending out emails more frequently (Monday to Friday) and noticed that people would now reply. Paul and Emily no longer felt that their emails were ‘salesy', but their sales were increasing! Just by implementing a few of our email campaigns, they doubled their revenue. When they embraced our teachings, their metrics improved immediately. In fact, 2021 was the first year Paul and Emily made a profit in their business!

It's no coincidence, of course. Because email marketing isn’t just ‘something else' you have to do. It points to the things you’re already doing in your business, and it amplifies them. The way we teach email marketing is designed to make business owners' lives easier – it gives people less to do. It's not about following an approach based on ‘trying all the things’ and not knowing what’s working.

The majority of what Paul and Emily do in their business is automated now. Except for their daily emails, their email engine runs on its own. So they have the confidence that what they’re doing is making a difference.

What’s the first change Paul and Emily made to their email marketing?

The first change Paul and Emily implemented when they found our teachings was sending out daily emails. After that, they started adding our email campaigns to gradually build their engine. This allowed them to establish a relationship with their audience. They would send out hilarious stories about their lives and turn them into lessons with a call to action at the end. That got them replies and, most importantly, sales!

We think it takes a level of bravery for people to go from sending sporadic emails to suddenly emailing every day, as we advise. But Paul and Emily are proof that doing it pays off! Plus, as Emily pointed out, emailing daily allows you to build a habit. And that makes it not only easier to do day in and day out but also harder to slip up and forget. That's how you don't fall off the wagon time and time again!

Now, when people join Paul and Emily's email list through their webinars or summits, they receive their welcome sequence. At that point, Paul and Emily also send out a survey where they ask parents what age their children are. This allows them to segment their audience and send out relevant content.

How are Paul and Emily getting people onto their email list?

Webinars have been a game changer for Paul and Emily when it comes to list building. They first started with a summit, which they promoted using our campaigns, and it was a great success. Now, Paul and Emily inform schools about the free webinars they're running for parents, and the schools promote them on their behalf. Their webinars currently have a 61% show-up rate and a 21.5% conversion rate, which is fantastic!

What’s ONE action Paul and Emily recommend people take?

For people who want to give email marketing a go and move the needle in their business, Paul and Emily recommend starting to email daily. Secondly, they would encourage anyone to create an email engine of automated campaigns that runs in the background. Having a sequence of emails that follow on from and build on each other means you make sales while you're focusing on other areas of your business. The engine does the work for you! It explains what you do, why you do it, how you do it, and why it’s useful to your audience.

And if you follow our teachings, you get to do that in different ways by following the SCORE system (Sale, Content, Objection handling, Risk removal, and Engagement). Over time, people go through your email engine and get the chance to become your customers.

Do Paul and Emily feel like email marketing has taken over their lives?

Now email marketing is just a small thing of what Paul and Emily do in their business. When they’re ready to set up a new email campaign, they trial it live, check the metrics, and if it works, they automate it. If it doesn’t, they tweak it and try again. Their daily emails only take about 20 minutes a day to write and send, and that's it!

This is music to our ears as we always say that when you write emails with no strategy or automation, you’re spending time in the activity, but you’re not creating an asset. Done like that, email marketing becomes an expense of time. And you won't be getting that time back – ever!

But when you’re creating an email campaign and then automating it, it becomes an asset you’re investing in, which produces a return long-term because every person who comes through your list receives email campaigns that string together and create a compound effect that encourages them to buy from you. Building an email engine is an investment. And it pays off.

Join The Email Hero Blueprint

If you want to get access to all the resources and campaigns that Paul and Emily successfully implemented (including our training on daily emails), you can grab it inside our programme The Email Hero Blueprint. And just like Paul and Emily, you can start implementing the system and the strategies straight away and see amazing results. Go check it out!

Subject line of the week

This week’s subject line is “Try this (with your next video)”. This subject line works because it creates compound curiosity but also includes implied specificity. First of all, it invites the reader to try something – it's an invitation rather than a command. It suggests that whatever ‘this' is, may be a little experimental. And that drives compound curiosity.

But what's great about this subject line is that it adds specificity by talking about ‘your next video’. It implies you’re going to have to do a video. As you can see, compound curiosity doesn’t have to be vague – it can be very specific. So check it out!

FREE list 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. Here's a 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 the FREE Facebook group

Do you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber? There's a way! Every business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. You'll find a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.

Try ResponseSuite for $1

This content 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 Email Hero Blueprint 

Want more? If you're a course creator, membership site owner, coach, author, or expert and want to learn all about the ethical psychology-based email marketing that turns 60-80% more of your newsletter subscribers into customers (within 60 days), The Email Hero Blueprint is for you. 

This is hands down the most predictable, plug-and-play way to double your earnings per email subscriber. It allows you to generate a consistent flow of sales without having to launch another product, service, or offer. Best news yet? You won't have to rely on copywriting, slimy persuasion, NLP, or ‘better' subject lines.