How a Nurture Sequence Generated $61,000 in One Email with Cody Hays

Prepare to be wowed by Cody Hays of Marketing Mission as he unravels the story of how he created a year's worth of emails in just 3 weeks. Plus, he was able to generate $61,000 (!) in revenue from ONE email.

This episode zeroes in on Cody's revolutionary approach to time batching 50+ emails and how he harnesses automated email campaigns that are not just lucrative, but are also rooted in cultivating community bonds.

We'll also break down his email funnel and paid ads strategy, and how it fosters a vibrant two-way dialogue that incorporates personalized video feedback.

Join us and unlock the potential to significantly amplify your nonprofit organization's marketing impact and client relationships!

Resources & Links

• Check out Cody’s vault of free resources and templates for nonprofits.
• Want to try out Flodesk? Take 50% OFF your first year! 

Applications are closing soon for my Monthly Giving Mastermind program! Ready to build a dedicated community of recurring donors to generate consistent revenue? Let's make it happen together. Learn more and apply here.

Want to make Missions to Movements even better? Take a screenshot of this episode and share it on Instagram. Be sure to tag @positivequation so I can connect with you. 

Don’t miss DonorPerfect’s Community Conference SPARK on June 4 & 5! It’s for any fundraiser wanting to excel in donor management, program innovation, community engagement, and organizational growth. Register for FREE! RSVP: https://bit.ly/DSSPARK

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:36

If we're automating 50 emails an entire year's worth of emails in advance, it has to be timely, it has to be super, super valuable and it has to be really specific to what they are focusing on in this moment. And that's how we were able to frame each one of those emails through the lens of. We know you don't have a lot of time, so here's the bare bones of what you need. Go, execute it and let me know how it goes, so that way I can consistently pour into you and provide additional feedback as you are growing.

Speaker 2: 2:19

Hey, there, you're listening to the Missions to Movement podcast and I'm your host, dana Snyder, digital Strategist for Non-profits and Founder and CEO of Positive Equations. This show highlights the digital strategies of organizations making a positive impact in the world. Ready to learn the latest trends, actionable tips and the real stories from behind the feed. Let's transform your mission into a movement. Hello, welcome back to another episode of Missions to Movement and today, from one marketing person to another, I am very excited to have Cody Hayes, founder of Marketing Mission, on the podcast today. We were just chatting. He's also in the process of getting his PhD in mass communication, so I mean, we got an expert on the line today. Cody, welcome to the show.

Speaker 1: 3:14

Thank you so much, Dana. I'm super excited to be here.

Speaker 2: 3:17

Yes, yes, yes, yes. We have been connected on LinkedIn for quite some time and then something really fun happened. Your name popped into my inbox from Flowdesk and Flowdesk, which we're going to talk about today, about email nurturing. Flowdesk is the email platform that I use and Cody uses, and I have introduced lots of nonprofits and for profits to Flowdesk, and friends of mine use it, and he was able to create a revenue of $61,000 from one email and that's, my friends, what we're going to be diving into today. So, before we get into today's amazing case study, you launched your company Marketing Mission in 2020. What led you to do that and specifically, why in that moment? Why at that time?

Speaker 1: 4:07

So back in 2020, we obviously know something happened called the pandemic, and I noticed a lot of companies maybe you notice this too kind of scrambling to figure out what to do, how to respond, and some Some did really well and responded really well, and their customers and team members praised them for how they responded to the pandemic. Others, like the past agency that I worked for, did not. So I noticed that the company that I was working with previously decided that, hey, you know, you paid us hundreds of thousands of dollars to plan these in-person events and transform these square houses into these gorgeous transformed experiences for students, but because we can't actually meet in person, we're not going to refund you that money, we're actually going to charge you more to switch over to virtual. And that to me, was like oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, friends, we do not need to capitalize on a global crisis in a moment like this. And so that really like struck, my values did not align with it and I felt really compelled to take a step back and say, no, I do not want to be part of that. So thus, marketing Mission was born as a volunteer initiative, initially to ethically support these organizations and their pivot to digital platforms. So we started Marketing Mission really as a virtual events company, doing the branding, marketing tech behind all of that to change from the in-person scramble to a safe online environment. That was still entertaining and still valuable to folks and the best part about it is we also, in that first six months, didn't charge anybody at that time.

Speaker 2: 6:07

Amazing, that's incredible. What has it transitioned to now, four years later?

Speaker 1: 6:13

Well, now fast forward and we have helped our clients literally, as of a few days ago, raise over $10 million, which is incredible.

Speaker 2: 6:23

Yes, congratulations, we're very very happy.

Speaker 1: 6:26

Now we specifically work with small to medium-sized organizations focused on maximizing their marketing and streamlining their time. So when folks typically come to us, you think the busy executive directors, marketing development directors maybe they have a marketing person on their team, but chances are it's probably lumped in with that development coordinator or development director and so we come in really to offload that marketing, the comms, the website, email, social to allow the development directors, the executive directors, to focus on their zone of genius, which is the one-on-one personal connections with folks. And we monitor the digital to ensure that anything that we notice, like the trends, patterns, email open rates, things like that get communicated over to folks on the team so that way they can do their one-on-one outreach. But we really focus on building up the systems, developing the strategy and building the infrastructure in the organization so that way, when the team is ready to grow and bring on a dedicated communications coordinator or manager, they don't have to scramble figuring out what do I actually post about? How do I do this? What should my graphics look like? They have everything that they need to just fall into that position and execute with ease.

Speaker 2: 7:59

Love that. That's beautiful, and I think you said you started off answering with a word that I love and I want to talk about kicking off 2024, which is streamlining. So it is the new year and streamlining marketing efforts, I'm sure, are top of mind for all of us as plans are being created. Where should someone really start when they're saying, yes, I want to streamline my marketing, help me Like, where is a good like kicking off point?

Speaker 1: 8:30

Absolutely, because this is being recorded in December. I know it won't be released until the new year, but I want to plug in what I call declutter December, and that's really the month where we sit and go through all the marketing stuff and all the tech tools that we have, all the subscriptions that are adding up in our bank account and literally just do an audit. And so that's where I say if you're trying to streamline your marketing in 2024, just do an audit of what you have already done, what has worked, what hasn't, and identify have I used this tool in the past three months? Is it worth it for me to keep paying for that, and are there any tools that I can combine? So I like to start on the tool level to figure out what is going on, like what systems, processes, tools I'm using, and then go into OK, what actually did we send out? So what emails did we send? What social posts did we send? What updates did we have to make to the website? And then write those down into a quarterly task or a monthly task, maybe like mapping out your entire year, and then you can start grouping information. So I like to do a good batch work, as I am streamlining, and say, okay, if we have, you know, 10 tasks here and three of them are copywriting, let's do all of our copywriting in this one week. So that way, you know, instead of having to sit down and write every single day for our social caption, we can just sit down for the quarter, knock out all of the captions in one or two days, then move on to the graphics one to two days, have it ready on Friday for the interview and then we're set for the week. So what I am typically looking at when we're talking about streamlining is are we using too many tools? Can we streamline from there? And then let's take a peek at what marketing strategies and what tactics are actually working, double down there and if we can group any of the things that take our time, let's do that so that way we can batch work it and set a cadence for how often we need to batch work that information.

Speaker 2: 10:50

You are speaking my language. Right before we got on this call, I was unsubscribing from one of my webinar platforms that I have not used in months and I saw that it was about to be renewed in January and so I was like, oh, and I'm glad I did, because it is quite the process and you're not able to just go into this tool and easily click unsubscribe. You have to go through like click this thing and then talking to this person and then getting this, and it was difficult. But I love the idea of decluttering and, yes, we are recording this in December. But another tip, and I just had Bex Tom's on the podcast talking about Canva. Her episode makes me wanna clean out my Canva account so badly and organize all of the things in Canva, and so I love the idea of decluttering. To start streamlining is brilliant. Love that, cody. Okay, let's jump into this flow. Desk email case study how did nurturing lead up to $161,000 email? So I love this whole concept and that concept of automation of emails. Can you break this down for us? So you spent three weeks over the summer collaborating with your team to develop essentially a year's worth of newsletter content. I love this. What was the initial strategy Like? How?

Speaker 1: 12:17

did this start? It really goes back to this message of streamline. So we knew that I was having a hard time writing the emails every week for us to send out, and so what we did was sit down as a team and we went through all of the emails that we had previously sent one off, and we went through all of the social posts, the Instagram posts, that I had posted for the past year and a half, and said, okay, what are people actually responding to? That was the indicator to say people are liking this and the engagement rate is double what it usually is. That'll probably make a good email. And so we pulled those captions and just like dumped them into a document. And we pulled the existing emails, dumped those into the document and we realized through that that there was some themes to what we were talking about, obviously because we're marketers and we were able to take that and really understand if this is the top topics that our audience actually cares about, let's double down there. And so what we did was essentially take all of those little captions and one off emails and create a template that we could use, for each email essentially has, like the introduction, the main meat and potatoes, the call to action and then a PS section, and our goal was let's get just connect with folks once a week to ensure that we're staying top of mind, let's ensure that that meat and potatoes content is super, super valuable. So that way it literally is like giving them a strategy every time they open up the email that they can immediately implement. And then let's give them the call to action to either respond to us to let us know how their campaign is going or to send us a progress update and send us the landing page that they're working on will review it. So really just treating this sequence as a way to actually communicate with folks, not just as like a hey, here's our emails, but actually, hey, I want to have a conversation with you and if you want feedback on the work that you're doing, just reply to this email and I will personally record a video for you giving you feedback, and so just little things like that to make sure that, yes, if we're automating 50 emails an entire year's worth of emails in advance it has to be timely, it has to be super, super valuable and it has to be really specific to what they are focusing on in this moment. And for us. The common theme was I don't have enough time in my day. I don't really care about marketing, but I know it's important, so what do I do?

Speaker 2: 15:25

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 15:26

And that's how we were able to frame each one of those emails through the lens. We know you don't have a lot of time, so here's the bare bones of what you need. Go, execute it and let me know how it goes, so that way I can consistently pour into you and provide additional feedback as you are growing.

Speaker 2: 15:47

This is awesome. So these emails were the emails that you sent out to your email list once they were in your email list, right?

Speaker 1: 15:55

Yes, correct.

Speaker 2: 15:57

And then you had a nurture sequence. People came to your emails. How did they come to your email list and what would they receive before getting into like this funnel of monthly emails?

Speaker 1: 16:10

Good question. So our lead generator, which is the tool or the freebie that we use to get folks to actually sign up for the email list, has changed quite a bit. So when we first started out, we had a webinar and then we changed that to some free templates. Now we have an entire vault of nonprofit templates and trainings that organizations they sign up for. You get like 30 plus templates to go through. Realize this evolution also was again came through the responses that we were getting from email and from the social posting hey, I need this or what do you do about this? And so well, we have a template for that. Let's just refine it a little bit and get it up on that template shop. Really, that vault of free templates is meant to again solve an issue or solve a problem for folks, and so essentially like using that lead generator to collect the email addresses and then we would send an email immediately after someone signs up saying, hey, thank you so much for signing up. Here is access to those free tools that you requested, whether it's the training or the template or what have you and then they get that. We wait a few days and then we start that 50 part series. So, essentially, by the time that they are signing up and they get that free resource, and then the emails that follow give them a very clear steps on how to implement that resource and develop campaigns using those resources. So it's not just a you wanted this great runaway. It's like you wanted this great. Here it is, and here's the support and here's follow up for literally an entire year to ensure that you are implementing it and has support as you are implementing it.

Speaker 2: 18:10

That's amazing and that's provided so much value. So in these emails, so right, I get access to the templates and then the monthly. Is it because it goes straight into the monthlies or is there a welcome sequence? That happens first, then they get sent into the monthlies.

Speaker 1: 18:28

Because, I'm simple, we keep it all in just one workflow. So anytime someone signs up, they're getting that initial here's your freebie, the first two emails. After that do you have sort of the welcome-esque and the traditional like hi, here's who we are. But I'm still jumping straight into that value add and so, rather than I know some folks will have like here's the freebie and then here's your three part welcome sequence and then you can go into the nurture sequence. I'm like they're here because they want something Like. The reality is I'm going to target. I don't really care about the name of the person who's like helping me, I just want my stuff right. So, recognizing that, and I was like people don't really care too much, I was like, oh, I got this. Who actually made this? It's like, no, let's just, I got this stuff. Here's value, and if you decide to keep scrolling, that's when you'll learn about me. But the most important thing is to ensure that you actually have the resources that you need and that's where we kind of built that trust with folks over time, because we know email a week is a lot, but again, if it's providing value and it's actually helpful and applicable. I know I personally don't see those types of emails as a nuisance, but rather as, like, an extension of the strategy work that I'm doing.

Speaker 2: 19:57

Yes, brilliant, brilliant. How does that sequence and I want to talk about the dollars and where that comes into play here but how does that sequence perform for you Then? Where do you start to see the revenue come in? Where down is there a certain number of emails that people receive and then you're offering the sale of something. I guess two parts is performance of open and click-throughs and then where do you normally see the sales start to trickle in? I think this is relevant for anyone who's creating an automated email sequence. Then also, I think in the nonprofit sector, organizations always want to know how many emails do I send? When do I make the asks? How many times do I insert the ask? I'm wondering if you have any insights on that just from your own personal work.

Speaker 1: 20:44

Absolutely. Let's take this in two parts, first one being the actual marketing analytics and then part two being the money, the dollars, with how it performs. So our sequence typically gets a minimum of 40 percent open rate and then have a 3 percent click rate. Our goal for the nurture sequence is to get folks back to the website. I don't really care if they are looking at a call, but obviously that would be lovely. I'll say the main goal is to get them back onto the website because we have social ads and Dana ensures the expert, and to retarget folks, but-.

Speaker 2: 21:30

Quick note on that. Let's do a pause here, because I think it's interesting for people to understand how this works. When you're running social ads, you are retargeting people who are visiting your website.

Speaker 1: 21:41

Yes, correct. Okay, I can give you the full funnel if you want it.

Speaker 2: 21:45

Yeah, let's do it, I love it.

Speaker 1: 21:48

Okay, essentially, we have top of funnel ads for anybody who's never even heard of us, and that goes to the blog posts, like our top performance blog posts. Then we have top of funnel ads for those to sign up for the free resource, the vault that we were talking about, and then that's when they start the actual email sequence. Yeah, then, after they've signed up for the vault, if they don't sign up to purchase the nonprofit starter pack that we offer and they'll get sent an ad for a nonprofit starter pack that includes a nonprofit marketing strategy, template canva templates, email welcome sequence, bunch of tools from the template shop. Then, if they do purchase from there, then they'll get an ad to join content club. If they don't purchase from there, then that's okay, we're going to just keep them in our fold and we'll likely reach out to them.

Speaker 2: 22:52

Nice, that's a very concise funnel, sue. Are you constantly for people I'm sure are curious? Are you constantly going in and updating those email lists, or do you have that automated through something like Xavier?

Speaker 1: 23:05

It's automated. Of course it is. That's really the main piece with this is the purpose of this email sequence and the way I liked around my marketing is we should really set it and forget it and tweak when we need to. I think if things are working and if that consistency is what we are after like, let's set up that quality email sequence and great. When it comes to the money side of things, let's dive in a little bit on that. The email nurture sequence at the bottom has an ad for a digital product template and that's relevant to whatever we're talking about. That's where some income comes in through digital product sales, template shops, things like that. But the real piece and I think the piece that you're wanting to know, for instance, the $61,000, that piece is a one-off email. So what I'll do and I'm actually sending it this week, so if you're on the list, keep your eyes out is I'll pause all of our email sequences, including that nurture sequence. It doesn't matter if somebody's signed up and is in like email 10 of 50, or if they're in email 40 of 50, to me, because I'm just sending that one-off sales email a year, I don't really care who sees it. I'm like the person who signed up yesterday may be ready and may be looking, and so I'll send out the email and say this is how you can work with us in 2024. And I'm not listing all 10 services and 10 different projects that they could work on, I'm just choosing the top level, which for us is one-on-one retainer work. So we work with four organizations throughout the year to maximize their marketing and streamline their time, and we have two open spots for that for 2024. And so I'll send out that email to the list and we'll see what happens. Historically, we've had our retainer clients come from that email and this will be the third year I've sent it and so we've been able to generate some pretty large, significant retainer packages for an entire year of service from those one-offs. So I'll track the open rates with that email, because I know it's being sent out to just over a thousand people, and so I'll track that and say, okay, who opened that? Who clicked to the landing page? Who responded to the email? All three of those, like the engagement metrics, gives us a much shorter list. That's essentially like these people are actually interested, and so that's where I'll go through and come through those people and be like, okay, who do I actually know on this list and let me forward this email to them and I'll wait like a week and send forward the email that I previously sent with a personal note that says hey, I think you would be a really good fit for this package. This is what I think we can accomplish together in 2024. Would you be open to a coffee chat?

Speaker 2: 26:26

Love it.

Speaker 1: 26:27

Simple as that.

Speaker 2: 26:28

Yes.

Speaker 1: 26:29

So rather than having to go out and do like a eight week sales campaign or like post for two weeks straight trying to get clients, that's like not my vibe. I'm not a big like salesy person. I like to actually just like build one-on-one relationships with people and kind of let them see like are we a good fit for each other and can I actually provide what you need, rather than just try to like sell, sell, sell and like the reality is nobody's going to pay $61,000 just because you sent an email. Of course, it's the relationship that has been built over the entire year and the one off personal correspondence and showing up for that person with a very specific vision of where we can take that organization in the future.

Speaker 2: 27:29

Yes, such a great strategy. I hope everyone is writing a ton of notes. Have you ever looked at from the organizations that end up signing up for that retainer? Do you look to see when did they initially subscribe and is there any logic to oh, they're 50% through the nurture sequence or they just start, or did they complete it and they've been on there for a couple of years? Have you done any research into that?

Speaker 1: 27:55

I've done the research but there's not a pattern. I have folks who will sign up and immediately book a call and, like in a few weeks we're working together. And then I have folks who we've been introduced via like personal connection. I said, oh great, like sign up for our resources here and then within a few months or within the quarter we're on a call. Basically, like once they get through that initial like marketing 101 sequence that I offer, which is about like 10 emails long after they sign up for the vault, then I'll usually get folks kind of replying to that because they get like a certificate of completion and so that people will respond to that and then we'll schedule. But then folks that go on that longer sequence. It's really like I'm checking in with you whenever you are ready and we are here.

Speaker 2: 28:48

Brilliant. Oh, my goodness, this is so good. Kodi, I love getting like literally what I say this show is about, which is behind the feed, and thank you for being so transparent and sharing with us, and I hope this is super useful to anybody else, and I mean what it seems like to me at the core is value, value, value, right, like you're like, how can I help? How can I help? How can I help? And then, when you do decide that you want to take it to the next level, hey, we're here and we hope that we built this relationship with you and we can be a good fit. So good for this year, for 2024. Do you go in and make tweaks to those 50 emails or did they stay pretty consistently the same?

Speaker 1: 29:25

We did our tweaks and adjustments over summer, so we basically let that sequence run for about a year and a half and then went through it and said, okay, of those emails that we sent from again, think back to when we initially pulled our one-off emails, pulled our social posts. But as we've grown our audience with more specific non-profit organizations that are aligned with our values, we were able to go back through that initial Lotus sequence and say, oh, they didn't really resonate with this one, let's pull that out. Are they really resonated with this email? because it has a 60% open rate let's write a few more like that, and so every year we will kind of do an audit per se of like, okay, how are things going? And if we need to adjust, and some emails like say, for example, they have an email that's like a 20% open rate, that's like okay, we just need to like change our subject line. Friends, something is not working. And so the piece with this and having such a large funnel is that doing it periodically, like annually, is enough for me, and just because I want to get enough people through the entire funnel before I actually make any adjustments, because we can't necessarily make the most educated assumption with just a few hundred folks in email 50 and where, like it'd be great if all 1000 had already made it to that point.

Speaker 2: 31:03

I love this so good. Oh, my goodness, if I can do it, man, I would love to write all emails in advance. This is giving a challenge for years.

Speaker 1: 31:15

It's honestly a lot easier than you think. Once you get into the like writing flow, then it all of a sudden just like starts pouring out of you and you're like, oh, should I be an email copywriter for the rest of my life?

Speaker 2: 31:29

Well, my emails. I mean, if anybody gets my emails, I literally am just talking and then I write they are Dana's, whatever is flowing out of me that day, but they are definitely not drafted. They are usually drafted the day of or the week of, not a year in advance. I am horrible at doing that. That is something I want to work on for this new year for sure, and take your best practices into use. I want to jump into Codate. I am so thankful for your time. Last two questions for you. One is what is one thing that you would like to ask for help or support on going into this new year?

Speaker 1: 32:05

Well, dan, I know you're known for your expertise in social advertising and digital advertising, so I'm curious to how you think we could integrate advertising into our broader marketing strategy. We talked a little bit about social ads, but you are the expert, so if we need to adjust anything, let us know.

Speaker 2: 32:25

I mean, it sounds like what you're doing is awesome. The only thing is I don't know what you are. Obviously we haven't gone into ads manager and seen what, like Cosper clicks or through play percentages are or all that kind of stuff for lead generation costs and whatnot. But I would just say to continue to iterate audiences and content copy to see if you can always lower down costs depending upon where they are. They tend to fluctuate throughout the year as well. But it would be interesting and I'm sure you've already done this, Based upon those emails that you say have really high open rates, is there an ad that can correlate with that topic? Because it sounds like he's giving me the oof face Because if that language is getting opened on emails, it would probably get a high click through rate on social ads and it sounds like also that topic or that interest would be compelling. So that's something interesting that you could put together.

Speaker 1: 33:25

I love that. Thank you, you're welcome.

Speaker 2: 33:28

You're welcome Anytime. I can share some ad advice, I'm happy to, and I love the fact that you start with top of mind, I think, something that is so important. We are in the attention economy and if you can just stay top of mind when somebody is ready to make that purchase, when they're ready to make that donation, when they're ready to do what Like, if you have been seen and we need to be hit over the head constantly and with somebody, brand or visual item, then you are going to be the person thought of if they're seeing you in this omnipresent marketing space that we're in. And then coding number two, which is so important where can listeners connect with you and how can they sign up for this email list, because I know they're going to want to see it in action.

Speaker 1: 34:11

Absolutely, so you can sign up at marketingmissionorg forward slash resources. So this is the nonprofit template vault. So essentially, you'll find a ton of free marketing templates and video trainings designed specifically to help you maximize your marketing and streamline your time. So we have things like copywriting templates, we have AI prompts, we have social media strategy templates and canva templates for social as well. So just a ton of valuable and easy to use strategy templates specifically for nonprofits.

Speaker 2: 34:50

Brilliant, so cool. Everyone go dive in. I will make sure to link below in the show notes to those resources. Cody, thank you so much for your time and I am wishing you the best 2024. And you know what? We're going to have to do another episode in a few months to see how everything went for this year Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 35:09

Let's do it Awesome Thanks.

Speaker 2: 35:10

Cody.

Speaker 1: 35:12

Thank you so much, Dana.

Speaker 2: 35:14

Can you tell I love talking all things digital To make this show better. I'd be so grateful for your feedback. Leave a review, take a screenshot of this episode, share it on Instagram stories and tag positive equation with one E so I can reshare and connect with you.