Episode #029: Email Marketing that DOESN'T Suck With Bobby Klinck
Email Marketing that DOESN'T Suck With Bobby Klinck
This week on the podcast we're talking all things EMAIL MARKETING - what does it look like to send emails that not only convert but that people WANT to open and read!?
During this interview with Bobby Klinck we cover topics like:
- How to find your voice and show your style in your emails
- Playing the long game with strategic email
- Building a business that can work even when there are competitors
- Using moments from your own life to write your emails
So tune in and lets write emails that get clicked, read, and convert to buyers!
Links Mentioned on the Show From Zach:
Full Transcript:
Zach Spuckler:
Hello, hello, not so average marketers. Welcome to another episode of the podcast. I am really excited today because I have a good friend of mine, Bobby Klinck, coming on the show who is going to be talking about email marketing.
Now y'all know my emails are pretty boring, pretty straight to the point and could use a little bit of flavor. And so that is something we're going to talk about today. Now, Bobby is a lawyer turned marketer. He has done so much amazing stuff. I could go on and on, we've become really good friends over the years, and I won't gush too much. I will turn it over to you Bobby, to tell us a little bit about yourself.
Bobby Klinck:
So out of curiosity, do I qualify as an average marketer? Or am I a not so average marketer? I'm just wondering where I fit in your rubric.
Zach Spuckler:
Well, we're going to find out, let's see how the interview goes before we make that distinction.
Bobby Klinck:
So, okay. A little bit about me. And again, I like to say what qualifies me to teach people about email marketing. Clearly it's not being a lawyer, because lawyers write some of the worst, most boring, confrontational, just jerky emails out there. So that's not what it is. But to really understand me, and I think why I teach what I teach and the way I got to be the way I am is I'm the son of an entrepreneur. My dad ran a chain of drug stores. So I learned, without realizing I was learning, I learned to run a business and how to do things right by watching my dad. And he really instilled a couple things in me without me really realizing it.
And one, I like to point out all the time, there's this grocery chain called Stew Leonard's, I think it's called, it's up in the New York area or something, but they have this big rock. And my dad had this small scale example of it. He sent it to me, and it says there's two rules of business. Rule number one, the customer's always right. Rule number two, if the customer's ever wrong, refer back to rule number one.
And that really encapsulates my view and the way I approach stuff. And let me be clear if you're listening to this, customers are wrong all the time, and Zach I'm sure you'll agree with that. It's not me literally saying they're never wrong, but it gives me this idea of understanding that I should come at this from a perspective of serving my audience. That's my first question.
And one of the things that I do very differently than other people is, I don't say what makes me the most money. I say, how can I serve my audience the best way? But let me be clear, I do that because I know long term, I think it's the right thing to do, but I think also long term, that's what will make me the most money.
And I'm in this, not for a year or five years, I'm thinking decades. I want this, my business, this is the last thing I ever do in my life. And hopefully that's got a couple of decades, at least, if not three or four. And so, I'm looking to build things the right way. And so I've taken this approach. And when it comes to email, I mean, I just started sending fun emails when I was just the legal guy. And part of it, I say, "Look, if you're selling something as boring as legal templates, your marketing better be fun." So, that's how it started. And since then it's grown and I became a marketing coach, business coach, whatever you want to call it. I now say I'm actually a business strategist. I can coach people, I don't really want to coach you though. I want to look at stuff and give you strategy and give you advice. And so those are the ABCs of me as short as I can say them there, Zach.
Zach Spuckler:
I love it. So what I want to dive into is you do write really enticing emails. So we were joking before we started. I'm very straight shooter in my emails. I would say maybe one out 10 emails even has a story. And the rest of them are like, "Here's the podcast, here's the offer. Here's the email."
So how does someone who is already maybe starting email marketing or getting into email marketing start developing this idea of entertaining emails that are still moving them closer to the ultimate goal. Because I think you said it great, treating the audience as people and people first is going to take you way further than trying to squeeze the juice out of the email. But I think what you do ultimately does squeeze the juice out of the email. So how does someone get there, for lack of a better way to put it?
Bobby Klinck:
And I do want to like take issue or correct, or I don't know the exact word, something you said there. I don't care if your emails are entertaining. That is not the goal for me, well, it is the goal for me, but that doesn't need to be the goal for everybody.
Ultimately, I like to step back and say with everything we do in business, you shouldn't copy anybody, because there's no way you can copy anybody. Now, you can copy particular things and SOPs and stuff like that, but ultimately what's important is for you to understand what role does every marketing channel or everything you're doing in marketing, what role is it supposed to serve in the overall mix of what you're doing? And a lot of people tend to think of an email only as basically a closing channel, a sales channel, that's how they view it.
And we get that. I mean, I say it's because so many of the email marketing teachers are conversion copywriters or funnel strategists and all that. That's part of it. But also, if you think about it, if you're on Old Navy's email list, why are you on Old Navy's email list? Because you're going to get a sale, right? That's the only reason you're there. And so a lot of us learn that. And so that's how we think about email.
What I believe, and the reason why email has worked for me is I view it as having two roles. One is to sell and close, but the other is to connect. And if you use email to connect with your audience, all of a sudden when it's time to sell, it's not hard. I don't want to say all you have to say, but to your point, at that point, you can just say, "Here's what I got. Do you want it?" And people, again, you have to explain what it is. You have to use some conversion copy in those sales emails. But if you've built the connection, if you've built the trust, all of a sudden people are warmed up and ready to buy and you don't have to work as hard.
And so it's like, people, I think do it bass ackwards. They don't email it all. They don't build any connection, but then they'll spend $8,000 to hire a copywriter to write their sales emails. And I say, "Well, you can do at, or you could write some emails to connect with people. And then when it comes time to sell, your sales emails don't have to be that good and you'll still sell."
So that's the shift that I think most people should take is really shifting to thinking of email as a way to connect with your audience. And the reason why I say it doesn't have to be entertaining, I think your emails need to have some type, to really do this well, to have some emotional reaction from people. I choose humor because that's my natural way. I'm a snarky ... Zach, you would know this. I mean, back in the day you, me and Mel, I mean, if the three of us were ever together, I mean it was just a nightmare for anybody listening because we were just going to heckle you from the stage. That's who I am. So that's what my emails normally are.
But there are other people who they're inspirational. That's what they are. And so fine, just be inspiring, but let people get to know you. And again, I think your emails maybe aren't the most entertaining, but at least people get to know you through your stuff. And that should be your goal with your email.
Zach Spuckler:
I love that. And you make such a great point. We recorded an episode a few weeks back talking about how we filled up our coaching program. And it was really passive. We had built up an email list. We had been nurturing them. We'd been sending out podcasts, and I love that you said you can just make the offer. And that's what we did. We threw together a PDF, no sales page, nothing formal. My team put together a checkout. You could click it from the PDF. And it was like an info sheet. It wasn't even a sales pitch. It was just an info sheet. And we sold out the spots in a few days because what you're saying is so key to what we have been talking about on the podcast, which is that email marketing has been historically treated as a short term gain. And what it's becoming is a long term game. And I love that you're tapping into that.
Bobby Klinck:
Well, and just so you're clear, I mean, what you're talking about, this idea that we're talking about is actually, this is one of the big misconceptions in the online marketing world. Because in the online marketing world, I think people, they don't know what the word marketing means. And I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but let me just be honest with you. Most people in the online marketing world, when they use the word marketing, they're talking about one small segment of what marketing is.
Some people use it to mean advertising. Some people use it to mean what would be called marketing communications. So it's this piece about how you deliver it. But when you look at it from a traditional standpoint and the really smart marketing thinkers, and I quote something in this book, there's this great quote that goes something like, the purpose of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The purpose of marketing is to understand your audience so well that you can create the right product where literally you simply make the offer and they will jump at the opportunity.
And so a lot of people in our world, I think, are thinking in this really weird world of we need to ... And I've said this before. You know what we ought to do? We ought to get a bunch of people who don't know us to attend a one hour webinar and condense everything we need for the entire sales and marketing cycle into one hour. And I'm like, "You could do that, but that's probably the hardest way to sell anything in the world." And especially the types of thing, like I know your listeners are the same thing as my audience. They are people who are largely selling something that's not a product.
I don't need to know much about Nike other than their shoes. But if you're going to buy from me as a person, you're buying my expertise, my personality and all of that. And so there's this very important role of helping people get to know us and really decide, "Hey, do I like Bobby? Do I like Zach? Yes or no?" Some people won't, just FYI. I mean, there's a lot of people who don't like me and that's fine, but the more that I'm willing to let people who don't like me realize they don't like me. I'm also going to attract the people who are right for me and who will be the people who I say, "Hey, I got this thing. You want it?" And they're like, "I'm in." And I don't even have to sell much to them. And that should be what email, what social, what all the stuff you're doing outside of the time you're selling, that's what stuff is supposed to be doing.
Zach Spuckler:
Yeah. I think that's so understated in our market, in our space that people do say things like, "Oh, just do your webinar. Just do your challenge. Just run Facebook ads to fill up your stuff. And people will buy from you." And it just doesn't work. I mean, if we're being completely honest, it did work. And that's the problem. It worked for a little while, because it was novel and new, but the market has become sophisticated.
So can you talk to me a little bit about how maybe you've addressed like market sophistication with you being a digital product? Because you're in the consulting space, the online business space, it's saturated. So how are you overcoming that with your email marketing? And I know we already touched on this, but I'd love to just hear, when it comes to email, what are you doing differently that helps you stand out in the long run or have that steadfastness that you want to have that you talked about earlier?
Bobby Klinck:
So a couple things. I love as you talk about market sophistication and market saturation, because this is an important concept. And again, Zach, you and I have both been in programs where they tell us to don't go into red oceans, find a blue ocean, which listeners, if you don't know this, it's this concept of go create a product in a market where you're the only person. So there's no other sharks. It's just you.
The problem is if you find a blue ocean, guess what's going to happen. If you start making money, a bunch of other people are going to rush in there and they're going to make it red. So you have to be able to build a business that can work even when you have competitors. And so that means you have to figure out what is your differentiator? What is that point that like makes you different? And I think a lot of people hear that and it becomes daunting because they think, "I've got to come up with one thing that makes me different from everybody." That's not true.
I have some things that make me different from some people. And I have other things that make me different from other people. But ultimately, in our space, when you're selling coaching, consulting, info products, implementation, any of this stuff that we're talking about, coaching courses, all of those things at the end of the day, one of your most important differentiators is you. It's, do they connect with you as a person?
Now, I want to be clear that won't allow you, and I don't think long term, it's not going to allow you to charge $10,000 when there are a lot of competitors charging a hundred bucks, that's not going to work long term. But if someone is looking between your product, which is 2000 and someone's which is 1500 and they like you more. Guess what? They're going to buy from you. They're not going to go down and say, "Well, what are the features," one by one and look at them. That's not how we're doing it. You're not looking at specs.
So ultimately, what you need to be doing is building that. And what I try to suggest to people is that ultimately, I don't think we're personal brands, but we are personality brands. And it is like people will want to work with, buy from people with whom they connect. So it's that personality. It's the knowing what you stand for, too.
And so in email, some of the stuff I teach is one of the things I teach people is you have what's called a welcome sequence, which comes pretty soon after they get on your list, depending on some other things. But part of what you tell people in that is what you stand for. And what you stand for is how do you view what you do differently than other people? Or how do you approach it differently? And that can come in a lot of ways. Some of it is directly about maybe what you do and how you approach the work, but it doesn't have to be.
I know a lot of people who are taking stands on cultural or social or political issues, and that can be part of it, too. Let's just be clear. People who are avid Democrats, like an avid progressives, they're going to want to buy from people who express those values. People who are hardcore Republicans are going to want to buy from people who express those values. And so I'm not saying you have to take political stands, but if it's important to you, why not?
Because it's going to drive people away. Let's be clear, but it will make the people who are thinking about buying from you, who are your ideal person, they'll say, "Yes, Bobby is for me." And so part of it is tho those things you stand for, but it's also your personality. So people need to know I'm snarky. If you want a straight laced, buttoned up, very formal type of person, I'm not your guy, because I hate suits. That was what I hated most about being a lawyer. I hate stilted language. I hate having to use everything in perfect grammar and all that. That's just not who I am. And I want people to know that. And so that way people really do experience me. And I think of email just as part of the experience, part of them understanding who I am, who my brand is. So they can make the decision whether they want to stick around or not.
And I actively tell people to leave. So now certain things, certain treaties that people come into, like, I don't use double optin because I've heard a lot of times those double optins they land in spam folder. So people never see it. But what I do do is the second email I send on a lot of people, it literally says like, I think the subject line is, the Clash had it right. And I refer back to the Clash song, Should I Stay or Should I Go? And I say, "Right now you have a choice. You got the freebie. Do you want to stick around and be on my email list or not? If not, no worries, click this button and I'll unsubscribe you. But I want to make a pitch for why you should."
And I tell them what to expect. I'm just like, "Hey, let me be honest." And then in my welcome sequence, I start off with telling people, "By the way, I'm weird. There's going to be some four letter words. There's going to be some snark, there's going to be some of those things," just so they know.
So to me, all of this is building connection, building the differentiator. And so that with me, especially, the people who are in my world, they may not buy my legal templates today. That's one of my offers, but when they need legal templates, they don't even think about buying from someone else. And so it's kind of, that's what I'm trying to do with my email. So I just become their person for the particular things I can help them with. And that's how you can use email in a very strategic way to play the long game so that you don't have to worry about your competition.
Zach Spuckler:
Yeah. I love that. And I think some people get really tripped up because they're like, "Well, how do I convey that in an email?" And I'd love to get your thoughts on this. But I think for me, it's like, the email is just the vehicle for sharing the stories, the context, the way you talk conversationally. If you've ever been on a webinar or a training with me, I make jokes. I laugh at my own jokes. I'm a little snarky, I'm a little tongue in cheek. And that doesn't always come across in my emails, but it does come across in my podcast. It does come across in these live events, which my email can be the vehicle to get them to, too.
So can you talk to us just maybe about how for people who are like, "Okay, this is great conceptually, but I sit down and I'm just staring at that blinking cursor." How do I actually like pen to paper, start writing emails that do differentiate me?
Bobby Klinck:
Yeah. And so a couple things. Number one, I say, don't think of the email ... Outside of sales emails, which you're going to use conversion copy. But outside of that, the first thing I want to do is give you permission. Not that you need my permission. But I'm going to give you permission to not give a crap about any concepts of conversion copy or writing it in any particular way. Instead, just say ... If I was going to write a note, if I was going to write an email to a friend, and Zach, you're probably too young to be someone who emails your friends, but I'm of an age where I still do it. Email was, for much of my life, was my primary form of communication.
So let me say, if I was going to send an email to a friend, how would I approach it? And that, I hope, will maybe say, "Okay, I don't have to think about NLP or open loops and any of that stuff." No, just think how would I send a note to a friend to express what I want to get across. And if you look at it, that's going to mean a couple things. Number one, you are not going to be writing in perfect grammar unless you happen to be someone who talks, speaks and everything is perfect grammar. Very few people are.
And so I want you to understand that the more that your email just conveys, reads like the way you talk, the better. One of the things people catch about me is I often do asides. I'm talking and I get, oh, a squirrel, let me tell you this other little thought. Now let me come to the point. I do that in email all the time.
Now, a lot of times I put parentheses around side note. So people will literally know it's a side note. But I'm literally getting that. And people have said to me, if they've read my emails and they've listened to me talk, it sounds the same. And it's because I've given myself permission to say, "I don't care about the rules of grammar." I write in fragments, run on sentences, and I do that stuff because that's how I talk. And I just use that cadence.
Now, if you struggle with that, something I'm going to suggest to you, jump on a Zoom call with friends and record it and just then watch it back and see how do you actually talk when you're just talking to friends. And then practice just writing in that style and that will make it much easier so that you're not putting pressure on yourself.
Again, I think the big problem most people have is they're putting pressure on themselves about it and they're worried that there's a right way to do it. What I tell people is, I mean, if your emails sound like me, you're doing it wrong. I mean, your email should sound like you. Like Zach, you should not be writing emails like me and you should be writing emails like Zach. And again, we have similar things, but you are much drier than I am. I am much more animated all the time. Now, we're both snarky, but you have, like, I don't want to say it's like a British feel, but almost like the British wit where it's just this dry. Whereas I'm always I'm very active, very hyper when I'm talking. And so naturally, if you think about it, because of that, you would expect our emails to sound different just because we sound different in real life.
But also, there's a lot of people who they're inspirational by nature. Well fine, then be inspirational. I mean, I know this one, she's a doctor who coaches other doctors. And I mean, everything she writes is like, it's stream of consciousness, but that's how she talks so you just come to expect that out of her. And that's what you want to do. So that's finding the voice.
Now, we could get more refined. And as you learn these things, I'll tell you should think about things like brand avatars and the Jungian archetypes, but that's more advanced stuff. And you don't have to worry about that front. I mean, so that Carl Jung defined various archetypes and there've been branding experts who come up with the 12, 16, I think it's 16, 16 different archetypes.
Well, I am a mix of the rebel and the jester. Those are my avatars. So to put it in Star Wars language, I'm not Obi Wan Kenobi. Again, when you're writing these weekly emails, don't believe that you have to follow this StoryBrand concept that you're a [inaudible 00:21:43]. I'm not, I'm Hon Solo. Now, I'm not nearly as cool as him. I'm not nearly as good looking as him, but I'm more likely to help you by coming in from out of nowhere and shooting Vader who's behind you so he doesn't shoot you than I am to lead you along the way. And I'm going to make jokes. And I'm going to seem like I'm all about the money, but you get a sense that maybe I really do care about you. And that is, understanding those things will help as I'm thinking about the stories I want to tell. I want people to see that side of me because that's who I am.
And so once you figured those things out, and again, that's more advanced, you start looking for stories. How can you find little tidbits from your life that you can turn or spin to pull a point out of it that you can then relate to your business? And sometimes, by the way, in an ideal world, you can make that pivot. Sometimes I can't, Zach, and I say, I'll literally say, "This story is just too good. I don't know what it has to do with today's podcast episode, but I just wanted to tell it." Anytime I do that, I have people who respond and say, "Oh, here's how it relates." And they'll tell me, so you can sometimes do those things. And it's just fun.
Zach Spuckler:
I love it. Yeah. And I think that that's a big thing that people don't necessarily process about emails that are more conversational or personality driven is that you do need stories. And we tell stories from time to time in our email. And I know one of our most successful emails was we actually take a picture of a notebook from five or six years ago. And we're like, "Look at what we used to do. This is just crazy to think about." And that's one of our most effective emails we've sent to date. But I also think it's worth noting that sometimes it just doesn't work or doesn't land. And I think that's okay too.
We wrote an email about how, oh, I got this tattoo and I drew it out and planning is so important. And I think I got so in my head writing it, that when I got ... The response was terrible, the click through was horrible, the open rate was atrocious. And I read it again, I was like, "This is not even a good email." So it is this practice of doing it and finding stories in your life. And I know this isn't really necessarily what we're talking about, but I do think it is important to understand that there's also this element of being in your own world. We're so used to the online space of taking courses, listening to podcasts, doing this, doing that. Not being "on the grid" is where some of these stories come from. It's like going for a walk in nature, spending a birthday party without checking in on Slack. That is where these magic things are happening.
Bobby Klinck:
Yeah. And in a lot of ways, that's the best stories. When your emails will really start to land is when ... When you start a story, people are like, "How is he going to land this plane? How is this going to have anything to do with his business?" But you'll get to the point that it does. Some of my most famous stories are about getting an email from my daughter's school, two weeks into kindergarten about how there was a confirmed case of lice in her class. I mean, that has nothing to do with business, but I was able to talk about how, because I have a business that nothing is ever urgent, I was able to spend four hours going to the depths of the internet, figuring out how in the world I was going to make sure lice did and get into my house. But you see that has nothing to do with anything.
One of my famous emails, like in sales sequences, one of them that I used to use as the very last email, my last call email was me walking on the streets of Washington DC, going out for walks early in the morning at 6:00 AM, seeing people walking around in these bright shirts, looks like they're going to the club. And me just being confused and telling my wife about it, her rolling her eyes and saying, "They're doing the walk of shame, dummy." But again, that has nothing to do with business. But I then say, "And I don't want you doing the walk of shame tomorrow because you missed out on the deal."
So that's how I make the turn, and you'll get good at these. But my stories, I would say let less than 10% of the time have anything to do with business. They're about life. I tell stories about high school debate. I tell stories about beer, because I like beer. I tell stories about my family. But so that I'm clear here, I tell stories about my family, but people have gotten to know my wife and my daughter, but I've never once included a picture or their names. People on my email list don't need to know that detail. They know I have a wife. They know I have a daughter. They know I do things with them and I care for them. But for reasons that are just about what my family's comfortable with, we decided not to use my family actively as part of our marketing. And you can do it and people still feel that level of connection with me because they still know, "Well, Bobby's a dad. Bobby cares about these things."
And I've told stories about things from church. I've told stories from all of these different parts of my life. One of my most famous, it's not even a story, but it's storyish, was started because there's this one guy who would always bring this atrocious beer to my house. And it's called Sweet Baby Jesus.
Zach Spuckler:
Had it.
Bobby Klinck:
So one year a few years ago, Easter week, my email subject line was, "I don't like Sweet Baby Jesus." And I immediately diffused it by saying, "I'm not talking about the person. I'm talking about the beer." But my point there I said is, for people who don't know Sweet Baby Jesus is a beer that has, it's a strong beer that then has chocolate and peanut butter flavor in it.
Zach Spuckler:
It's really intense.
Bobby Klinck:
And I say it's an atrocity. And I was making a point, look, blame it on my German roots, but I believe that beer ought to be wheat or barley, hops, water and yeast. And that's it. So I made the point, to me, a good beer is like a good business. It's simple. And I used that by using the story that came to me because literally I was like, "What in the heck am I going to write about this week?" And I opened my refrigerator, and I saw this freaking beer, because he would bring it all the time. No one ever drank it. And so they would end up staying in my fridge and I was annoyed. So I was like, "Ah, happens to be Easter week. Good time to tell a story about this."
Zach Spuckler:
Yeah. I love that. And I think you've made such a good point, which is, you're just telling stories about life because that's how people get to know you. How do you interact in life? How do you show up in life? What are the things that you're doing?
We sent this email a really long time ago. There's this picture. I should find it and use it for another email. That's what that's making me think, of my dog sitting. He just jumped up on the table and it looked like he was on my laptop. So I took a picture and that was one of our best emails back in the early days of Heart, Soul & Hustle because people would come onto our live streams and be like, "Where's Ted, where's Charlie?" Because they knew I had dogs and people relate to that.
And I think that that's really the deep message here that I'm getting throughout all of this is, it's not about, "You'll never believe the time I hired a mentor and made a million dollars." It's like, "You'll never believe that time I tripped on the sidewalk in the middle of the street and broke my shoe." That's where people get to know you.
And so if you're listening to this thinking what do I even talk about? I've actually never watched Seinfeld. I know, I'm a bad person. Now you know, personal tidbit. But it's like, it's the show about nothing. That's what people love. They love the nothing. Just like Friends. Friends was never really about anything except a group of friends doing stuff. And it was so wildly popular because ... And even to this day, people are like, "Oh, you're a Monica, you're a Chandler, you're a Rachel." That's what you're trying to communicate in your emails is, who are you? Because that's what people really to resonate with.
Bobby Klinck:
Yeah, exactly. And I don't remember if this made it into the book, but one of the things I always say is, when you're thinking of stories, think Seinfeld, not Game of Thrones. Most of your stories should not be epic, big things. The best stories are things that are a 15 second tidbit from your life that you can do. And part of that is look, if every email you send is going to take people 15 minutes to read, I mean, they better be the world's best emails and you better be the world's best storyteller.
But if they're two or three minute reads that maybe gives them a chuckle or something, that's the stuff that really matters. And again, I mean, you talk about like, people [inaudible 00:30:08]. One of the things, Zach, maybe you don't do this in email, but I know people know that you love Disney. And that's an example of just letting people know that about you.
So again, now that you're, obviously it was easier when you were in California, you could go all the time. But if you have an interaction with Disney, you should talk about that. Because that's part of what you do. And with me, that was beer. I talk about beer, even if it's not story.
I mean, one of the stories I tell in the book ... Chapter one of the book is titled, let's start by pissing everybody off. So I talk about how American craft brewers have destroyed beer. Which I basically say they're trying to do extreme, and there's value and beauty in balance. And I tell this story about going down the aisles of a craft beer section and seeing this beer called Palate Wreaker. And I was sitting there literally thinking to myself, "Who in their right mind said, 'You know what? Let's say that if you drink this beer, it's going to destroy your taste buds.' And how do they not have an adult in the room that said, 'Maybe this is not the best thing.'" But again, it's hilarious because it is memorable.
But that's again, you think about it. That's a literal story from my life that also relates to something I love. And people learn a lot about me from that little story. And so those are the kinds of things. It's not big stories, it's just like these little, huh, it's a funny moment type of things in your life.
When I did webinars that were live, my last reminder email, the one that would go out 10 minutes before or something, the subject line was, the best advice I ever received and 10 minute warning, something like that. And it started with a story about how I was going to be in my friend's wedding, and right before we were going to go out there, his dad pulled us aside, "Let's go to the bathroom." And we said, "We don't need to." He said, "I don't care. You never pass up an opportunity to go to the bathroom."
That's the entire story. But literally I said, "That's the best advice I ever received. By the way, now you should go to the bathroom because you've only got 10 minutes till the webinar starts so you don't want to have to miss any of my brilliance." So again, 10 seconds of my life that story came from, but you can just pick these things, and once you get good at it just starts to be this thing where you'll find these moments in everyday life without having to think about it.
Zach Spuckler:
Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Bobby, this has been so good because we're really ... With this show, part of the brand and part of the persona that I put out there is that we really want stuff to be actionable. And I think the biggest thing that I've taken away from it, and I'd love to hear what you would have people do, but is to go tell stories. That's really what it is. Make your emails enjoyable, if you can. And make them with your personality, not ha ha this has to be funny or, oh my gosh, that's so inspirational. It's like, who are you as a person? How would you talk? What would you share if it was just 10 o'clock over a couple beers at the bar with your friends?
Bobby Klinck:
Yeah, exactly. And so we are always coming up with new resources and one of the ones that we're working on is something that we're calling Better than a Template. Because one of the things is a lot of people are like, "I want templates. I want templates. I want templates." And I would say, if you use my template, literally a fill in the blank template for email, it's not going to work because it's my voice, not your voice. But instead, we're coming up with a framework and we basically say there's a hook, which is going to be your subject line. Then there's either going to be a story or an analogy, and we talked about both here. Stories are more about things that happen. Analogies are, I don't like Sweet Baby Jesus. I didn't really tell the story about it. I just said I don't like it. And it's an analogy. I want something simple.
But both of them, the point is to make you or what you believe relatable and let people in your world, then you're going to have some lesson in a call to action. And that's it. That's all an email is week to week. And by the way, so that I'm clear on the lesson. If you're putting out weekly content, your weekly content already has the lesson. You just pull a thread out of that and you have one line, which is like the bridge between the story or the analogy, and the, "Hey, in this week's episode of the Not Your Average Online Marketing podcast, we talked about," blah, blah, blah.
And so it's just that simple. And so the story or the analogy is the bulk of what you're doing. And just start telling stories. And I tell people, be willing to suck because you will suck up front. And when you start writing stories, you're going to write way too long, you're going to write way too much. But over time you figure out how to just cut out the stuff that doesn't matter. If it doesn't matter what day of the week it was, don't say on Tuesday, because that doesn't matter. But you start to whittle it down and get the stories tighter and tighter. But when you get good at it, and this is the thing I want people to get across is that once you start doing this, you have to practice. It's like anything else. But once you do, it gets to the point ...
Now for me, my weekly emails, I sit down the day they're coming out. I don't batch them. I should, my team wants me to batch. I never manage to. I sit down, I write them in 15 minutes, and I hit said. And there's almost always at least one typo, if not two, but I don't worry about that. I just say, "Hey, people," that's what people should know about me. This literally is coming from me almost in real time.
And again, it's funny. Zach, I remember you talking to me at some point way back during the launch, you would answer people when they had questions for you, and often they didn't believe it was you. So you would have to give him a voice or something so they would believe that it was actually you, not someone on your team. And it's the same thing with me. But people have figured out eventually that, "Oh yeah, these emails are from Bobby. It's not from his team because his team would never allow this many typos to be in it. This must be Bobby just sitting down and typing something up and hitting send." And there's value in that.
Zach Spuckler:
Love it. So for people who are listening that are saying, "I want more of this." What can they do?
Bobby Klinck:
Okay. So as this goes live, it's not yet out, but Tuesday my book, Email Marketing that Doesn't Suck, will come out. And you can buy it on Amazon the first week. So March 3rd, or not March. Really, March? brain fart there. May 3rd through May 9th, the e-book will be on sale for 99 cents. You can also buy a standard paper back, but I have a limited number of the hard copies that people can get. If they buy the ebook, we'll sell that at a discount. You can reach out to me. You can find that.
But I think of the book as the high level overview of giving you what's the approach and all that. And hearing that, you're probably thinking, "Oh great, he's coming for my wallet now," because that's what people do, right, Zach? People are like, "Oh."
Zach Spuckler:
Always.
Bobby Klinck:
I mean, the book is, I like to say most people use the book like a drug dealer. That's how they give you the taste to get you hooked. But if you want the real info, you got to buy. That's not the way I operate. We have a page, bobbyklink.com/email, where we have tons of resources. And also I have an online course about [inaudible 00:37:19] marketing, which also free. We don't join for it. So you can get all of that info at the page, the bobbyklinck.com/email.
And also, if you buy the book before May 25th and give us your proof of purchase, you'll get invited for free to a two day bootcamp we're doing May 25th and May 26th where we're going to help people do the stuff that you were talking about, Zach. Like, how do you find your voice? How do you find that? We're going to really dig into that because I find that's the big challenge for people. The technical stuff, you can learn how to put together a series and all that stuff on your own or a sequence.
But ultimately, people struggle with how do I find my voice? So we're going to spend two days working with people to really find their voice, find their style, and to help them so that they're set up to be able to go and do email right. And for it not to be a challenge. So like I said, you get that for free if you buy the book, even just the 99 set e-book before May 25th.
So best place to go right now is bobbyklinck.com/email. Come May 3rd, you can go on Amazon and buy the book. And that's what I would love for you to do.
Zach Spuckler:
I love it. Well, I know that I will be reading a copy very soon, and I will be grabbing a digital copy. And I don't know if I'll attend the event because I actually am out of town that week. But I would encourage all of you to check it out. Bobby's a really good friend of mine. And you guys know I don't bring people on the show that don't bring immense value. So highly recommend you check it out.
Bobby, thank you so much for being here today. Guys, we will link up the entire show in our show notes. Or my goodness, we'll link up the transcripts in the show notes, which we'll give you the URL to at the end of the episode. You will link up to Bobby's email resources. We'll link up to the show that he has. We'll link up to everything. So you can head over to heartsoulhustle.com, we'll have that linked up there. And Bobby, any parting words before we wrap up?
Bobby Klinck:
Just get started. I mean, seriously. And I think that's true of everything. Email, everything in business. One of the things I suggest to people is we think way too hard. And it was hilarious you were talking about the planning for the tattoo, because it's the same thing. I mean, we think we can think our ways out of these problems and we can't. I mean, you're not going to figure out the solution to anything in your business until you just get started, see works, do more of that, and do less of the stuff that's not working. So my advice to people is always just get started.
Zach Spuckler:
I love it. Well, Bobby, thank you for bringing here. Guys, heartsoulhustle.com to get all those links. We will give you a final link. I'm actually recording this early, which is super rare for me. So I don't know exactly which episode this is going to be, off the top of my head. So we'll get you that formal URL and a little edited sound bit right after this. But until next time, write some emails and stay not so average.
