Email Marketing | Keith Monaghan

Keith work as a Market Researcher has helped creative teams with projects for Nike, The CW Network, Upworthy, Specialized Bicycles, Trek, and other companies you've probably heard of (and many you probably haven't).

Previously, I created and managed e-mail marketing campaigns to millions of subscribers for companies like NBC Television, Lucasfilm (yep, the Star Wars people), and many technology companies. To my surprise, help with email marketing is still a common request I get from my clients and friends. That’s why I wrote 'Easy Email Marketing: 10 Simple Steps For Creating And Sending Email Your Customers Will Love'. 

My previous ebook, ‘15 Cost-Free Marketing Ideas: How To Engage Customers And Spread The Word...For Free!’ was a LinkedIn Editor's Choice, and is the most popular article I've ever written.

I’ve produced and hosted several podcasts of my own, but these days I’d rather be a guest. Here’s an episode from my stint as temporary co-host of The Campfire Project to give you an idea of my style. Have a podcast? Schedule willing, I’m happy to be a guest.

Podcast Appearances

The Campfire Project - Apple AirPods: The Future Is Going To Be Weird And Fascinating

Elite Marketing Tips Podcast - Keith Monaghan On Finding Your Tribe During The Crucible Times

Discover More

https://www.keithmonaghan.com

https://twitter.com/keithmonaghan

https://www.instagram.com/keithlmonaghan/

https://www.keithmonaghan.com or https://www.readeasyemail.com

How to sign up for an email marketing service https://www.keithmonaghan.com/sign-up-for-a-service

Transcript

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Do you want me to turn my video off? You're perfect. Your audio and videos perfect. Yeah, was fine. It's coming in loud and clear. Good. Good, good, good. Good. So how's the podcast going? fair? Good. I'm only been up for live for two months and my numbers, nine numbers for downloads have tripled. Right? As long as there's an upward trend, just keep at it, you're doing something right. You know, that's what my mindset is. I also realize certain topics I'm talking about. They're not the best, and I can see it now. So it's like, okay, I love this character. But no, we're not gonna talk about that again. Yeah, that's the whole thing, right? It's experimentation to figure out what works. And you just keep going. Yeah, for you. That's awesome. Thank you. So let's get right into it. Tell me about yourself and what you do. So my name is Keith Whitehead. And I help companies with their marketing by doing market research, which is diving into the market and deep nerdy things for companies like Nike and Starbucks, and a lot of smaller companies. I also write a lot about marketing, to help small businesses. So my latest ebook, use email marketing. And that's what I'm here to talk about today. Wonderful, actually, one thing I've been needing to incorporate, but I have no idea how to do it is email marketing. So let's go into a bit of the nuts and bolts of that. Sure. So I think the place to start is to, to maybe ask, as a business or an entrepreneur, why email marketing? Who cares? Right, we've got all the social media out there. That's where a lot of the attention is, if not most of it. Why don't I focus on that, and not? Who cares about email, email, it's been around for 100 years, right? Right. And I would say this, I'm gonna use a metaphor, social media is like the daily lying that grows in your lawn, and the wind comes along, and it blows the seeds. And they scatter everywhere. miles away, and maybe one or two land and soil and grow into a new plant, right to successful. Email Marketing is more like planting a seed in your garden, and nurturing it, providing with food and soil and exactly what it needs, and then reaping a huge, bountiful crop at the end, which is your sales or your relationships with your customers. Right. And the reason I I focus on that is that studies have shown over and over, that we humans, really take our purse, our inbox, personally, we're really careful about who we allow in there. And we're really protective of who we let in there. So if you You are a business person, or entrepreneur or podcaster, and you have an existing audience that's let you into their inbox. Man, that is, that's pretty special stuff. And you have a huge opportunity to not only Foster and build a really meaningful relationship, but to increase your business. Correct. So I would say start by collecting your ideas, right? Just open, open an app, your note app, get a piece of paper, whatever. And over the course of a couple of days, just think about your business. Think about what you do what your customers have already responded to and just write ideas down for your marketing. So maybe you start with discount ideas of your product or your courses, right, maybe it's a percentage off the price, buy one, get free. Buy one give a discount to a friend. discounts on products or courses that are not selling free shipping, those optimize thrown down, don't think too much about. Another category of things to think about for your marketing email is sharing your greatest hits, right? musicians play The Greatest Hits over and over for years, because people like them, and they pay for, right. So as a business, you've got your greatest hits, you've got your products or your blog posts or whatever they're doing really, really well. Well, not everybody's going to know about. So share those with your mailing lists, write them down on your your possible ideas list. Check the calendar, what season is it? Are we near holiday? What are your customers may be preparing for? write some ideas down on your email marketing ideas list. trying to predict the future for your customers, where do you see your industry and their demands going? their needs going in the near future? Are those down in your email ideas lists? and two more that I'm going to say that that people have kind of mixed feelings about but I feel pretty strongly about, okay, what is there you have customers who love you, share quotes, share that story about why they love you, right? It feels a little self involved and maybe a little self aggrandizement. But if you have customers giving great quotes to you about how much they love you put them on your website, put a few in your email, maybe highlight them in your marketing emails story. And the last one is good marketing. Copy. But great marketers steal. And I don't mean stealing, like rob a bank, rather, look at what other people are doing with email marketing, right? marketing ideas are not they're not copyrighted. They're not. They're not protected. They're not. They're not unique. We're all just kind of looking around to see what works for other people, and pick and choose the things that work if you notice a certain promotion from a competitor. And you are set up for your competitors emails, right, that's, that's something that you should definitely do. Yes. Do you have new people? You're right, you know, maybe punch a few ideas? Do they? Do they use an image in a really specific way? Do they have a really neat button or call to action for people to click on to to buy stuff? think in those terms, right? Think about the nuts and bolts of how other people are doing it and what you admire about those marketing emails that you let into your own inbox. What is it about? Why do you let them in? poach those ideas? Look at them and roll that into your own? Your own thing your own marketing emails? You want me to continue? Oh, absolutely. Sorry. I'm thinking out loud. Oh, no, no, please ask questions anytime. Anytime. You need to feel free to interrupt me. I don't want to ramble. Okay. So and then, and then choose your strongest idea, right. So this is where maybe a lot of people who start their email marketing, stumble a little bit in bit, you know, you've got this document or note of all these ideas we've just talked about, that you thought of, and the pressure is on to choose the perfect one, write it. And I would say my experience of 20 plus years of doing this, don't worry about the best one. Worry about the one that is easiest for you to implement for your business, right? If it's a pain in the butt to implement multiple discounts, well, then don't worry about the discounts. Right? Do something different highlight one of your best selling products? Right? That's easy. That's a picture and some words, right? I'll link to that choose the one that's easiest for you to get into an email and send to your customers. This is more about starting the process than it is about being perfect. So I want to interject there on the perfect part. So there was a hot moment in my life I wanted to be a drop shipper I was in an email marketing I had no fucking clue what I was doing. I'm glad luckily did not pull the trigger because the I realized that person was a scam. So but one of them they were talking about that Oh, Mr. Marketing, it's good. But you want to do texting cost more but higher return you you're literally infiltrating their personal space. What's your thoughts on that? You know, I, I've just begun to really well, I've done a few text campaigns over the past couple of years really started to get knee deep into it. I would say it's equal to we'll help you people feel about their inbox. I would think it'd be even more personal because like a mailbox is kind of like your mailbox outside your house is like Yeah, yeah, no junk mail, and I can sort out later. Yeah, the phone is like someone actually entering your house and going. So right now, and now only and it's like, Who the fuck are you? Why? Anything? Right, right. Oh, yeah. Believe me, I unsubscribe from any texts, promotions? Yeah, I would, I would say to consider this 70% of the world population that is online. Access is the web through a phone. They don't use a computer. They don't use a tablet. They don't sit down at a desk. They use a phone to do it. And I think well, texting. I know. It's Yes. It's more intimate. I see your point. But it's more of an interrupted thing. Right? Yeah. Doesn't say it's more of like the because like I was subscribed for the longest time to Jersey Mike's. Do you know what that is? Oh, yeah, we have it here. Yeah. Good. Okay. So, but every hour, they will blow up my phone. Right? Right. And that's that's just dumb, right? Because when it doesn't do it, right. And I literally like after like two days, I'm like, okay, I like them. And I get like 10% off but like, the stress is not worth that. 10% right. So you're going about the business of your day, you're busy. You get a couple more texts, which isn't stupid jersey Mike's or is it something important that I need to get to? I don't know I got a check. And that takes you away from whatever you're doing and it's a negative experience. I'm not sure where I was going with this other than I would say that the texting will it can't be more intimate is more of an interrupting strategy. I'm interrupting you from whatever you're doing with the sound, email for whatever reason. humans tend to maybe put off looking at for a while longer than they would have text. Right? I'm certainly one who If I hear if I hear emails coming in, and I'll get to it later, I'm busy. Whereas if I hear a text alert, I'm on it. And if it's a promotional one, it usually pisses me off. Yes. I will I work, currently still night shift. And my union was just blowing my phone up like the last 24 hours. I'm like, shut up. I don't buy your opinion about the $15 minimum wage. Right? And if I do, it needs to be in a format of an email or a blog post or a video that I can get to when I want to. I don't want you shoving it in my face. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, you bring up a really good point, with all marketing, is that frequency matters. Right? bombarding people is not the way to do anything these days. You know, imagine, imagine walking into a store, or maybe you've had this experience, and the salesperson or clerk is on you and won't leave your site and is constantly asking you questions. This is the same PTSD right there. What's that? Is it super PTSD? Especially the ones trying to sell you knives at cost? Yeah, literally right around the store with their knife. Like by days, it takes some weaving that at me Yeah, exactly. Right. And you're not. I don't know about you. But again, all that does is piss me off. And make me hate the company who's selling whatever they're promoting. So whether whether it's in person, or text or email, or social media, I really think less but really useful to whoever you're sending it to is far better than frequently in your face. Right? Right. So would you say for like, let's say, for my show free? We have to dissect it. I do try to do at least every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, would it be appropriate to say, every Monday, Wednesday, Friday to send an email? Hey, I just posted something kind of thing. Here's the link. Yeah, I mean, it all comes down to what your business is. So a podcast is something that, personally I want to know about as soon as a new episode is out. And I'm not always looking at my podcast app. Sometimes I'm deep in my inbox, sometimes I'm standing in line. So whatever. I mean, to me, the frequency of sending an email out, every time a new episode comes out is, is perfect. And in fact, there are several podcasts that listens to the do that, and more than once, I've looked at enough that Oh, man, I gotta get I got to listen to that. I'll put it on in the car or whatever. Right? So in your case, it's not really an empty sales pitch, you're providing something useful to your listeners that they've already subscribed to listen to. And, you know, I certainly would send an email every time you get a new episode coming out, and maybe maybe even a preview email for the week of what's coming up. You know, that's a good point, because that was actually one thing I was just thinking about, as you're talking about that. It's like, Okay, this the the three days, so they expect to every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, so it won't interrupt their flow. But it's like, let's say maybe like, Saturday, Sunday, I don't really do anything and say, Hey, just a heads up. This is what I'm thinking for the week. That's who I got lined up. But also, I have like this, like, a special merge kind of thing. Just for you guys. Maybe like Limited Edition. Would that be too pushy anything? Personally, I don't think so. And I'll give you an example. I listened to a podcast called side hustle school that I really like, and he does an episode every day. How to hustle. Right? Right. And he's been doing it, I think 1500 days in a row. It's unbelievable. He's got a day off. I think what he does is batch episodes, he'll do a bunch of different and then go publish them. Anyway, he sends out an email every Sunday morning. And it reviews the previous week's episodes. Here's a brief description of them. Here's what we talked about. You can listen to them here if you missed them. And a little teaser at the end about who's coming next week, maybe one or two sentences about and again, I don't always get a chance to listen to every episode. I'm not always looking at my podcast app, but I read that email because I know I'm going to in a glance, I'm going to see everything he's done last week and know which one I can cherry pick and listen to. And what's coming up next week. So I would recommend it. I have to take a note on that. Yeah, I'm definitely gonna I just for me, MailChimp. It makes no sense to me. How do I like how does an amateur amateur work with MailChimp? Well, you you really hit the nail on the head there. I've used MailChimp I've used it a lot. And excuse the pun, but it requires a lot of monkeying around to get it to work guys and they really are not happy with their name. Right? Right. MailChimp is built for really large marketing campaigns companies who were sending out 1000s or millions of emails multiple times a week, different campaigns that kind of stuff. You can certainly use it in my experience is far more far too complicated. It is or I was like, I sat there, it was on Fiverr. And I'm like, Okay, I have no clue. This chick says she'll literally do like five campaigns for 100 bucks. I'm like, even if it's 25, and campaign, but I'm like, but how do I know it's actually gonna work? Because like I did one I just tested on myself. I had a speakpipe. So you could go to my website and send me a voice clip. Oh, right. And I was like, That's brilliant. Because then I paid for everything. So I tested it on myself. It sent my address, and there was no way of getting rid of it. And I'm like, Well, shit, so I just cancelled like everything cuz I'm like, I don't want them to know where I live. I'm like, I appreciate them. But I don't want them like out. Yeah. And you know, that's something that legally mail marketing email services have to do, they have to provide a physical address, because that's what's required by law, but peel box be better than Yeah, and a lot of them pop in a, just a generic address. You know, it's maybe their headquarter address or whatever that in my experience, they don't check the address. So I'm not telling you to put a fake address in there. But no, gotta go give me a peel box. Now. I would you know what I would do? I would just know I shouldn't be saying this on a podcast, but fine. Put it put any old email address or any old physical address in there. I didn't really it really bothers you know, I thought about putting the city hall address down. No, I thought about that. No, don't worry with me, it's fine. So as far as I'm no go email services that are easier to use than MailChimp. Fortunately, there are a lot of them. I have a newsletter and I use a website called review our Edu E. It's absolutely free. Super simple to use. It can be up and running in no time. There's one called moon mail mo and mail super easy to use. They have a free tier two tiny letter ironically owned by MailChimp. But it's a text only super easy to use. Email marketing thing? No, it's a view like as in a review for movie right? It's spelled RDU e i just that's the fancy way to spell it you II. Yeah, I think that the domain is get review.co interesting. Yeah, I know. There's like now with like lift instead of I you put Why are you trying to cool and I think that's just to get around copyright issues and people who also have the same man is now there's too complicated large numbers of symbols to write. Right? Great. So read reviews, good. Tiny letters. Good. If you want much, you really don't need much more than that moon mail is good in my ebook, easy email marketing. I list five, six of them that are far easier to use MailChimp. Moon mail is one mailer light, email octopus. And honestly, I think if you google review, you're going to get results for a lot of competitors that are the same thing. Very simple, very tree, and that kind of thing. So yeah, I'll look that up later. That's my recommendation for that. So then for your letter, you're sorry. Now your letter your book. You You mentioned you talked about that. So I've actually been looking into buying a book might be buying yours said, how would you? Would you go into explaining, read the review mail moon mail, and how it works and how to set it up and what works with that. Right. So I've got an ebook. It's free. You can read it online. You can download it for free. No signup necessary. Just go to read easy email.com. There are also links for Amazon Kindle and Apple books if you care to get there. I like I like holding the book. It's unfortunately an ebook. It's not long enough to be a physical book. But you can read it online. Either way. That's good. Yeah, you can read it online free. So I don't go into how to set it up. But I tell you which ones. I like the best because they're simple and what their limitations are. So for example, Moon mail, you can send up to free 300 emails a month. No big problem. Oh, you're like you could send 1000 subscribers unlimited emails for free. So that's a teeny letter right for the tidy letter. I don't know what their limit is. No, this is something called mailer light that I list in the book. And you can I can send you the link to the page online, the email marketing that has all this stuff, but the bottom line is thanks simple. And I honestly don't think anyone who's sending email to 1000 people or less needs to worry about paying for anything. Because you can do the free tier on pretty much any marketing email platform and not have to pay anything. Right? There's no reason to pay pay money. And to be honest, what you get when you pay in my experience is you're just getting the ability to send more emails. And if you're not sending 10,000 emails, why pay for? Exactly? Yeah, that's because MailChimp was like, Oh, you get like 1000 a month and say, great. I don't even have that much. But you only get one contact for 1000 a month. I'm like, screw you. Yeah, exactly. They all they all structure it in a way that motivates you to pay. But if you're willing to poke around tiny letters, a good place to start with you, is unlimited. Free and unlimited for review. So is there like a capital? a? I have no idea. I know some really popular newsletters are sent out through review. Okay. Twitter just bought review, which is probably why it's free now. Yes, it was they did there. The price is now whatever you talk about. They know, right? You're the product. Yeah. Which I'm pretty sure is the way anything free is a lot of a lot of stuff. Like so I'm learning trading training. I'm training myself in trading. And I was using TD Ameritrade. They're free. And I was like, it's great. Then as they come to find out, I did a trade. And I knew I got out a certain number. And they said I lost an extra$300. And I'm like, yeah, cuz they take high frequency traders. Oh, over me. Right the product, right. So the high frequency get priority, and then you That stinks. And I'm like, I just lost literally in one second. I lost$300. That's remotely, I just I cut my account. I'm like, screw this. So yeah, I'm working with an error company to get into theirs. I'm paying them a little just the fact I'm paying them, then they won't do that to me. Yeah, yeah. And unfortunately, that's the freemium model, free premium model is to get you in to something free. That's kind of sort of good and hope, hope that you'll pay for something better. In my experience. The email marketing companies I mentioned in the book, have a really good free tier, and it's not screwing at all. They don't really screw you over in any way. It's just limited by how many you can send out right. Now that that's completely fair, though, because you don't want to give the keys to the kingdom for nothing. Right? Right. And that's a legitimate business model. You just need to find one, like you did that works for you. Right? Yeah, there's that I still remember that. Because I'm like, I knew I was like, let's say it was at 50. But I said I got out at like 48 and a half. But that 48 and a half is $250. Then they tacked on a little whatever. 300. Mike. I didn't do that though. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's, you know, especially trading. It all has to do with speed. And if you're, if you're a free low tier, you're not going to get the speed that the paying customers get. No, not one bit. So one thing I want to go into with you. Yeah, because you you agreed is the speakpipe. So because like I said, it gives me an email. But there's so there's really actually reasonable price. I think it's like 11 bucks for the month and unlimited like calls. You just have a data limit for their serve. I see. I see I just one of those. Would that be a next, incorporating the person in anything can just be even for like, mom and pop shops? Sorry, my little guys. No worries. I have a couple here that may bark soon. Okay. But just incorporating just seeing you as Keith can actually stand here, no jump jump in and talk. Do you think that, that but the price is your email? Do you think that's worth it? I think I think if there's evidence that people will do it, it's worth it. I don't have evidence to that I don't have data. It's not like I can just whip out machine be like, here you go. Right, right. I mean, if people are doing it, then often it's always worth the price because you can convert them into listeners or customers. That's a good question. It sounds to me based on what you describe that that's something that would require some experimentation. And the question is, are you willing to experiment based on what the cost is? Yeah. The only reason I even took that there's so there's two guys I listened to one, Shannon Hernandez. His podcast called the podcast therapist. And he literally he goes into explaining how your website is the next thing I want to get to with you. Your website is more important than your email marketing. He's a second to email. But he's like, but you also want call to actions. You want them to be able to talk to you. And that speakpipe kind of thing. Yeah, it's speakpipe sp a Yep. Kick p IP, no funny letters. It just ran together. So it's, it's like voicemail. Right? People are Yeah. So the other person that gave me the inspiration is do you know Ralph Garman? No. So he's a he was a very big radio host out here in California. Awkward of thing happened at the radio studio. He had to leave. Four years later, he has this very successful podcast. His thing is, though, you call in You are the show. Got it? kind of thing. He just interjects, little funny things like a regular show host today. Okay. So today on the news? Yes, Lady stubs a pickle up her ass. Let's talk. Yeah, I mean, so it sounds to me, like, the guys get the therapy podcast and this guy. They've got an audience that, in some sense, expects the conversation, right? Because it's very similar to the days of radio where people were calling in and doing stuff. Right. And especially with the therapy thing, I think people that's probably pretty compelling stuff. And he's talking to people firsthand. You know, I, I think that again, it's one of those things that you're just going to have to experiment with to see if it happens to see if it works, right. And unfortunately, that's the way a lot of marketing and businesses, you just got to try it. Set your limit on how much of a loss Are you willing to take or what your cutoff is? And when it does or doesn't work? And give it a shot? It looks interesting, though. Yeah. And it's one of those I didn't even know about this option for speakpipe. I was gonna buy this weird Chinese, like, plug in thing for like, 20 bucks for the lifetime. But then I found this, I'm like, Oh, it's the same thing. But cheaper. Got it? Yeah. And it seems it seems like it's developed here in the US. So or I think, I think it's developed in the US, but the billing for some reasons in Russia. Yeah, you know, a lot of a lot of software as companies, they outsource software to building to Russian stuff. So that might be the thing because he is the guy that I had an email with one guy's like, Hey, I didn't actually like buy this kind of thing. What happened? But then it's Vladimir. I'm like, Hello, Vlad, how you doing? That's funny. Well, I see here on the bottom of their page that they've got some tweets by people about speakpipe. And they've got one by Pat Flynn, who is a really popular business podcaster and the episode he done is how to speak pipe work. Do I have to worry about it? So you could look up Pat Flynn and listen to that episode? Maybe that dude has so much shit to spit for? Oh my god. You anything involving online? Like He's incredible. Oh, yeah. And he's super calm about it. Like, Gary Vaynerchuk. Yeah, good to light a fire up your ass. But then right? Like, love the guy. He's inspiring me do this. But that's about all he can do. Yeah, I feel the same way. I think Gary Vaynerchuk is probably a really good good man. Good guy. But I can only take so much, you know, and he's good for calling me on my bullshit. Oh, yeah. But once he does that, I need someone who's a little more relaxed. It's the you can sit and have a beer with them and just be like, exactly. like, Alright, we're getting exactly. That's and that's I think that's key. And I think that's probably really, it's amazing that you're doing that in your podcast, right? We've got this kick you back having a beer or coffee or whatever kind of vibe. And personally, that's when I learned the most, right? It's talking to people like that. Same that's my whole goal. So like I personally named segments in my show. And this one, I just jokingly tell myself, this is coffee with Titans. But we're just having a cup of coffee kind of thing. That's funny. That's funny. Well, I don't consider myself tight. That's for sure. But But thank you. Well, you've done this for 20 years. I have barely any experience. So you compared to me, you're huge. Well, I'll tell you, like anything in life, and I'm sure you're gonna find this I just fell into it a long time ago. And it kept asking me about it. So here we are. Right here we are. The the very least talked to a few CEOs and then and one c not fo CEO. And they all say that. They're like, we never actually wanted all this responsibility. It's nice that we get all this money, but they're like, we like the puzzle. We like to hunt, guys, man. You really you really hit the nail on the head. I mean, for me It's about solving the problem and fitting the moving pieces together and coming up with something that works for my clients. That's what it's all about problem solving. And I totally agree. And for some reason, the world likes that. And so, you know, as long as you continue to problem solve for people, especially in the podcast here, I think it's going to be successful. Yeah. And I agree. That's the The one thing I realized I'm good at too is solving a puzzle. I don't like chaos, but I can work in it. kind of thing. Right? And it's, it's kind of one of those. Some one of my first guys His name is Charles Reed. He even told me, he's like, I did not have this plan at all. He's like, I was a marine in V, like Korean War. Well, he's like, I came back. And he's like, my VA like sponsors, and he just said, you really good with numbers kid? Like, you should go to school for this? And that was it. That was it. I just wait. And I realized he's right. Yeah, it's so funny how often other people point out to us the things that we are good at. But either value it for no value, right? I mean, for a long time, I didn't do an even marketing, I would, you know, I had done it for so many years. And I got into market research and bigger clients. And when people would ask me et CIE, I just point them to an article or a video or whatever, but it kept happening. I thought, this is dumb. I people love it. They want to know, why am I not helping them? This is what I do. I like to help people. So I know exactly same here. And I know, like, for me, writing is not my thing. That's partially why I'm avoiding the email marketing. Talking is more my thing? Yeah. Well, I mean, well, we can I mean, I can bring the circle that back around to email marketing. You know, in all my years of copywriting for ads and commercials and that kind of thing. I've learned one thing and that's fewer words is better. When it comes to writing. More is less. Yeah, and clear is better than clever. If you're gonna send out your, your newsletter, to your podcast listeners. Don't you don't need to be fancy. You just need to be factual. Here's what we listened to last week, in case you missed it. Here are the links. Here's what's coming up next week. I can't wait for you to listen to her here, whatever, boom, done. And there you go. It doesn't need to be a work of art. And frankly, people don't want to read a novel. They've, you know, they, they, they want to skim their email from you see what shows they want to listen to. And then they're on the on the way to their day. And so, I'd say don't put the pressure on yourself to write something great. Just make it factual. Like I literally bought Grammarly because well, first of all, because I'm not a writer, like I missed common commas and it's just like, Okay, I'm gonna This is worth $100 a month. 100 bucks. Yeah, Grammarly is pretty good. Well, you know, to make you feel better. I wrote email marketing, and I wrote four different drafts of it, and went over them perfected the nice paid someone to edit it. Okay, from the New York Times used to be an editor. Okay. paid good money. And he came back and his his the things he found, and they were embarrassing, like, shocking to some shockingly bad sentences. And yeah, he's like, Hey, you missed all the whatever, but it was worth every penny because writings hard, so don't feel bad, because it's hard for people to do it. Right. I do it all day long. I paid someone to tell me how bad I am at it. Great. So go easy on yourself to use grammerly. It's more important to you, in my opinion, frequently reach out to your podcast listeners, and build a relationship of reminders, reminding them of what episodes happened the previous week, and what's coming up in the new week to get them excited that it is about worrying about a comment here or period there are a great sounding sentence, you know, yeah, cuz it will assist, you can have great, great sounding sense. But when we first started this whole thing, I said more was less. I meant less is more. Right. But I still knew what you were talking about. Right? And I didn't I didn't even pick up on that. Okay, good. I did I mean, crap is so secret, you're tougher on yourself than anyone reading your email or listening to you is going to be right. That's the way it always is. We're always tougher on ourselves. We are sorry, I just got a notification with what's that. So we've touched on social media. I love asking this question to get different people's point of view. What's your point of view on social media? Is it is it tearing us apart? is it doing a good negative feedback loop? Or is it is it good? kind of thing? Just there's a lot more cons, right? So society as far as society goes, What's Yes. Wow, that's a heavy question. I've come to the it's a two edged sword. Yeah. one edge is great. But you also have to remember the other one can cut you too. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, I think in, in my world, you know, I still stay abreast of all this stuff. My kids are in it. So I'm deep in it. I'm in it for work. I think I think really valuable relationships can be built between human beings on social media and between businesses and customers on social media. Okay, that's, that's undeniable. But I think that the exception and not the rule, I think there's far more of a negative effect by this faith. Way, a lot of people present themselves on social media that they put pressure on other people to live up to. And I think we all need to come to a reckoning with that and realize that it's not real, a lot of it's not real. And a lot of it's not healthy. It's not and that's, that's actually what person was telling me. So it's nursing with social media, they're like, you should use tik tok, because they literally, their algorithm has to find you what they perceive as your friend. And I'm like, well, then it also means that to deal with people that don't like me, and they were very loud kind of thing. Right, right. Well, right. And, and, you know, I mean, how many? How many people you are, as far as I know, based on what my children's know me. And what I've seen, there's a lot of dancing on tik tok. And quite honestly, I don't need social media dancing in my life. I'm an I'm an old guy. You know, I have enough. I've got Instagram, I've got Twitter. I don't need people dancing around. If people are into people dancing and acting silly, go for Tick Tock. And a search. You don't need an algorithm. Popping that stuff out at me? No. And it's creepy. Like you don't even have to interact with the algorithm directly. And it knows what you're thinking. Yeah, so what a lot of, we're kind of veering off here. But it's kind of in the marketing. Well, what a lot of companies and algorithms will do is once you enter your email address, they're going to crawl the web looking for any, any thing else that uses that email address. Okay. And a lot of companies like Facebook or Twitter or Google will not share your personal information, but they'll share through what they call an API secure connection. What email addresses they have, right? And so you can I'm not sure I'm not saying Tick Tock does it this way, but they can access your interests on Google by paying Google to access that data. And that's parsed into part of the algorithm of finding people you like, on Tick Tock. Facebook is notorious for that. But everyone knows about Facebook. That's where it's not shocking anymore. They're like, Oh, we're gonna privacy out of your life. Like, yeah, whatever. Facebook, although i think i think a lot of people don't know the depth of Facebook's, now they don't have looked into it more than their thing I want to get to you with with the Pixel THING for your website, too. So frickin scary gray for a marketer, I tell people great for marketing. It's like, I literally get to see what they're doing. And it says the customers like this absolutely terrifying. Yeah. And it's not unusual. Right? You know, back in the day, when we first started doing email marketing, I think it was the first time I was exposed. It was like 1998, the company I was working at. It was text only there were no images and email. And then one day Microsoft updated outlook and you could put images in email. And somebody somewhere figured that if you could put one invisible little pixel in the email, then you can see know who opened the email. And we had a massive, massive debate brawl fight about how unethical This one is at the company. Of course, you know, those of us who thought it was unethical last and it happened anyway. And here we are, right. Many years later, this escalated into something. Now they just outright tell you we're taking all this information if you want our service. Yeah, they just do this when they say we want access to your folder. People don't realize they're accessing everything you write your search signal, your provider, your banking stuff, whether you like it or not. Right, right. In Facebook, my understanding is that they go even further in that they will build what they call dark profiles of people. You know who we're not on Facebook. Mm hmm. So if you and I know the same person, but they're not on Facebook because you and I are on Facebook and associated with each other. Will by default, make a default process of elimination and artificial intelligence figure out we know this third person who's not on Facebook, because he shows up in Keith's photos and Josh's photos. So right guy must be related to the same pub together, even at the same bar together, whatever, and it accesses it, does the facial recognition crawls the web, finds more pictures, figures out where it is, and builds this dark profile? And it's just as detailed as the profile of those of us who willingly cottoned on to Facebook. And then that data is sold to advertisers for this person who's never signed up for Facebook. Right, then, you're like, I didn't do this. Why am I getting an email? That that's weird. I was talking to like, Keith about that. So weird. Yeah, right. I can I can give you another example that I found really spooky. We have an Amazon Echo in our kitchen. And we're gonna get rid of that a long time ago. I'm about to get rid of it. And I'll tell you why the story, I'll tell you why. My wife and I were talking in the kitchen. And she met mentioned wanting short ribs for dinner. We didn't have me and said, Okay, fine. I'll put it on my list on my phone. So I did. And there was another thing she mentioned, like milk or something. And two days later, I'm sitting here in my office, I get an email from Whole Foods, which I rarely ever go to. But it's owned by Amazon. Right? what's on sale? Milk in short rows. That's exactly what happened to me. Really? Well, not milk short ribs. But but the same idea. Yeah. Literally, I was talking to one of my buddies. Actually, this is even scarier part. He had his own I went out I was the ADHD guy had to buy everything kind of thing. Yeah. So I bought him an Amazon. I had my own. I talked at his house at his Amazon about, I was thinking of buying whatever video game at the time, but I'm like, I don't have money for it. I gotta like work a couple extra weeks to get the money. Can I just borrow yours? Because he was done with it. This is back before like, downloadable things were a thing. Literally, I get home, I opened my phone. And on my Amazon Alexa app is Hey, Josh. Here's your game you wanted? Like 60% off? Yeah. Mike, fuck you this one boy. Yeah, like done? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think surveillance in society is far more prevalent than we we know. The one thing I joke with all the privacy people where they're like, oh, like, we got to make sure they don't do this. Like you have a phone. It's always listening to you. Right? it hears you screaming in the night when you're scared. Because even. And the truth is like the story I told earlier about that, that single pixel and email way back in the day, we've never had privacy online. No, never. I wish we did. And I think a lot of us come to our own terms about how we navigate that and what we're willing to sign up for and what we're not. But the idea that we've lost privacy, I think is is misrepresentation. In my experience. We've never had it. No, no, we never have it's just now because of like Twitter people more vocal about it. They can get their voice out quicker. Yeah, exactly. That's that's the only difference. Exactly. Yeah. So it was like back in? Oh, six or eight, this game called Call of Duty Modern Warfare came out. Okay. Yeah, it's, uh, it compared to the newer stuff. It's, it was a legend for the gaming. But the graphics were terrible. But it was one of those. I was dumb. I had a new phone. So I like just back when Apple just introduced smartphones. That's how I'm dating myself on that. So I was like, oh, a bar, my buddy's phone and I got my own. And I was like, What's an RPG is like role playing game, right? went down this whole rabbit hole. And I'm like, Oh, dude, me being like 16 and dumb. Yeah. I'm like, how do I get this RPG kind of thing? So I joke with everyone. I'm like, I've been on the NSA. shitless since like, God, yeah. Whenever they lose a friend stuff. Well, you and a lot of others, I'm sure. Probably. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of those. I just, I always joke with people. I'm like, I'm not scared anymore. It's just like, I'm on their shit list. They're like this kid. He's looking at some weird stuff. Do we want to look at it? No. You're not you're not only you can't be the only one. I mean, certainly, I suspect and from what I've read Most most people have got some kind of record or some type in some government agency, not not, you know, not a conspiracy theory or anything but just data is is like oil. If data is money data is oil data is it from its gold is that it's gold. It's that's that's what society runs on now. It's one of those we have an idea, but it's the we don't want to admit it because it's too comfortable. Right? That's a very good way to put it. Ignorance is a lot more peaceful than the reality. Oh, I think my ups guy just came. Alright, so go ahead. Let's finish this up. Yeah, you want to plug. Um, you know, you can just anyone who has got any questions about email marketing or marketing in general, you can just go to read easy gmail.com that'll forward you to my website. And you can email me You can download the book free. I've got some articles there a newsletter. I'm more than happy to answer questions anyone might have about marketing in general. And that's about it. I'll send you an email right now saying his subjects thanks for the podcast. So anything extra you want to throw in that we didn't mention? Go for it. Okay, great. We'll do. All right. Well, thank you. All right. Thanks a lot, Josh. It was great YouTube. And thanks for having me. A lot of fun. A lot of fun. Stay safe and stay well. All right.