3. The HUMAN Approach to Email Marketing

Email marketing gets treated like the boring part of business, but honestly? It’s still one of the best tools you have if you actually want to build relationships, nurture your audience, and make sales without relying entirely on social media.
In this episode, I’m breaking down my very human approach to email marketing: how to grow your list, what automations actually matter, why storytelling converts better than constant selling, and the biggest mistakes I see brands making over and over again.

We’re talking nurture emails, lead magnets, analytics, subject lines, conversions, and why I think way too many people are overcomplicating this whole thing. I’m also sharing why I care so much about email marketing in the first place, why I think it gives you way more control than social media, and why your newsletters do not need to be perfect to work.
If email marketing has been sitting on your to-do list for months or even years, this is your sign to finally start.

In this episode, we talk about:

• Why email marketing still has one of the highest ROIs in marketing
• Where email actually fits in your sales funnel
• How to grow your email list without annoying your audience
• What makes a good lead magnet
• The automations every brand should set up first
• My thoughts on AI-written newsletters
• The metrics that actually matter
• Why unsubscribes are not the end of the world
• Common email marketing mistakes I wish more people avoided

Connect with me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsallmost/
Visit my website: https://www.itsallmost.com
Join The Conversion Club: https://itsallmost.com/the-conversion-club

Sources:

• As of 2026, email marketing continues to lead on ROI, seeing a return of $36 - $42 with every $1 spent (still offering better conversion rates than social or search and making it the most profitable channels in email marketing) (Omnisend 2026 report). 
• Email marketing generates between $36 and $40 for every $1 spent (Omnisend 2026 report). 
• Open rates rose for the fifth consecutive year, even as click rates declined. At the same time, click-to-conversion jumped 53% YoY, meaning fewer people clicked, but those who did were far more likely to buy. (Omnisend 2026 report via Enterprise Times)
• Automations delivered outsized results. They represented just 2% of email sends, but drove 30% of revenue, earning 16× more per send than scheduled campaigns by reaching shoppers at high-intent moments. (Omnisend 2026 report)
  •  For this reason, automation (abandoned cart, welcome series, and back-in-stock emails) can be the real money-maker.
    • Automated emails = 2% of sends → 30% of revenue (Omnisend)
    • Generate 16× more revenue per email than campaigns (Omnisend)
    • Have 2,361% higher conversion rates than batch emails (Omnisend)
• Nearly 1 in 6 marketing emails never reach intended inboxes (Validity Report via LandBase)
• Back in the 1930s, when the “Rule of 7” was first coined, people were only seeing 50 - 200 ads a day. In 2026, that number is between 4,000 - 10,000 ads daily. 
• Back in the 1930s, when the “Rule of 7” was first coined (Science of People), people were only seeing 50 - 200 ads a day (average based on online sources). In 2026, that number is between 4,000 - 10,000 ads daily (Colorlib). That’s roughly a 5,000% - 8,000% increase, meaning we’re now exposed to 50 - 80 times more advertising than people were back then.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello, hello, Kieran here. Welcome to episode three of the Conversation Club. Today we're gonna be talking all things email marketing. So you've heard a little bit about me, you've heard a little bit about some of the hot takes that I can have. And now we're gonna talk a little bit about what I do and how I support my clients, how I work with people in my everyday life, and some of the things that I find really helpful as someone who focuses on email marketing for their clients. All sorts of brands I've worked with, as you know from the first episode, worked in the cannabis industry, I've worked in alcohol, sex tech, highly regulated spaces. I've also worked with a lot of beauty and wellness brands. So this is kind of an overarching sort of email marketing essentials conversation that we're gonna have today. But hopefully you'll walk away with some helpful tips and some other ways to be able to dive a little bit deeper into email marketing if you want to as well. I think first things first, a lot of people are always curious like why email marketing? Why is it important? Why should I care about it? And as a marketer who's been doing this for well over a decade, I think that email marketing is just one of the best places for control over the content that you have, that you can share, how you can share it, how you can represent it. I think I'm not gonna knock social media because social media I think is also crucial, and I'll talk about that in a little bit, in terms of your marketing funnel, your sales funnel. And I don't want to discount social media, but I know that there are so many things that are challenging and volatile about social media in that, you know, you don't really own your account, the algorithm, who knows what that even really still means today. It's completely at the whim of others. And I really think it's important to be able to have ownership over the content that you're creating and over the content that you're sharing with your customers. So I always say, you know, if you're looking for a place where it's not going to be at the whim of a crazy social media CEO or at the whim of random rules and regulations. I'm not saying email marketing doesn't have rules and regulations, but you know, TikTok can get banned, Instagram can get shut down, your account could get taken away, you can, you know, have posts taken down, and that's just something that is a little bit more risky. And I I'm not saying it's not part of the equation, but I do think folks really discount the power of email marketing and what you can do with it. According to Omniscense 2026 report, as of this year, right now, email marketing continues, continues to lead on ROI when it comes to marketing platforms. It sees a return of $36 to $42 for every dollar you spend. That's a way better rate than I would say all of the other marketing channels. And it's it's a lot more accessible. So it's gonna be one of the most profitable channels that you could be using when it comes to your marketing strategy. And I don't think enough people realize that email is returning on average $40 for every dollar you spend. That's a great rate if you think about it. It also gives you the ability to see your customers' behavior with email marketing. There are so many powerful analytics, and we'll get into that in just a second, too. But the analytics really, really get to dive into exactly what your customer is looking for, what's gonna entice them, and what's gonna convert them. And so being able to see that behavior, you know, where someone clicks if they open an email, where they're clicking, what products they're buying based off of what you're sharing within those emails, it's quite a powerful tool to be able to peek into your customers' brains a little bit more. And so when I when I talk about email marketing, some people I think confuse where it sits in the sales funnel. So if we're thinking about top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, bottom of the funnel, top of the funnel being awareness, right? People are finding you, people who don't know you yet or know your business, that's kind of where they're gonna find you. It's just right at the top. The middle of the funnel is where you nurture. It's where you, okay, they've they've expressed interest in learning a little bit more about you, and this is your time to share, share more about you, your business, your services, your products, whatever it is that you are, you know, selling to these customers. And then the bottom of the funnel is where the sale happens, right? It's where, you know, if you're gonna follow the no, like, and trust, top of funnel, tofu, is the no. People are gonna get to know you. Middle of the funnel is like. People are building the like, they're building the okay, like we're friends now, I want to learn a little bit more. And then the bottom of the funnel is trust, right? We've built enough trust that I'm ready to give you my money and I'm ready to interact with you as a paying customer. So if we're thinking about this funnel and we're thinking about where email marketing sits in that funnel. So the top of the funnel is probably gonna be like social media, right? People are gonna find you on Instagram, people are gonna find you on TikTok, on Twitter, YouTube, whatever it is, or on a podcast, right? It could be a podcast interview on someone else's podcast, it could be on your own podcast, it could be on your blog, it could be through press hits. This is kind of where people who have never heard of you before are gonna discover you. And then we move towards the middle of the funnel. Now, the middle of the funnel is really where email marketing sits primarily. Because this is your chance, people have found you on social, they've given you their email, and now they're ready to learn more. And this is your time to build that relationship, to build the like and the trust factor with your customers. And in order to do that, we, you know, send emails that are helpful, that have value-packed information, that give a little bit more about who you are and how you can help your customers. And we're gonna get into all of the essentials in in just a second. Bottom of the funnel, you get a little bit of email in there, right? Because you're interacting with folks in a way that those emails are gonna help secure that conversion, secure the sale. But but email really sits primarily in that middle of funnel area. Let's get into it. Let's talk about what email can do for you and why it is so powerful, and some of the things that hopefully by the end of this episode you'll be able to take away and you'll be able to implement some of this today. I'm gonna give you a little bit of homework at the end of this episode, and I expect you to follow through to show me that you did your homework. So I want to share with you the almost ALL M-O-S-T, almost certified human approach to email marketing. Okay, why do I emphasize human? Now you heard me talk in the last episode about how I feel about AI, and that I really firmly believe that we can all be doing things without AI. We don't need it, we don't need it. So I came up with this beautiful, beautiful approach method, if you will, on how to do this as a human without AI. Okay? The human approach to email marketing. Are we ready? Okay, here we go. Starting with H. How? How do we build a list? How do we build our email marketing list? That's probably one of the first questions I get from people who are like, I don't know where to start. I don't know where to send emails, I don't know like my list. I have 20 people. That's okay. That is okay. So we're gonna go over how to build your list. Now, this is not gonna be sort of a deep dive into every single one of these steps when it comes to this approach, but I'm gonna give you a little bit of an overview of what to expect, okay, when we're talking about how to do this, how to build your email engine so it's beautiful, it's purring. We're taking it from this junker car to this beautiful luxury vehicle. That's what we want. We want all the cogs turning, we want it all singing in harmony as a symphony. It's gonna be beautiful, okay? And that is sort of the the five, six steps that I have for you today. So, starting with how to build your list, we want to think about three very simple steps to start out with. What are those steps? Well, first, people ask me, you know, how do I build my email list? And my very, very first instinct to ask is, have you told people you have a newsletter? Have you told people you have an email list? And I would say probably like four out of five times, the response I get is, oh no, I guess I really haven't told anybody that I have an email list, right? So the very first step that you're gonna take is you're gonna tell people you have an email list. You're gonna tell people that they should sign up and why. So, what is the content that you're gonna have in your newsletter? Why should they sign up? Why is it valuable? And we'll get into content in just a second as well. So tell people you have that list, make sure they know, and then make it easy to find. Okay, so if you don't make it easy to find, if you if there's any sort of difficulty in the process of, okay, maybe I saw it on social that I should subscribe to this newsletter and I go to the site and I can't find it. I can't find where where to go, I can't find where to put in my email. That is gonna prevent someone from actually finishing that step, right? So make it easy for them. Use a pop-up on your website. The very first time someone goes to your site doesn't have to be every single visit, but the very first time they go to your site, make sure that pop-up shows up and says, hey, here's a reason why you should join my newsletter list. Another thing to think about is to put it in the footer of every single page that you have on your website. Just make it really, really easy for people to find. Link the signup page or the signup link in your in your bio, in your bio of whatever social media site that you're on. Make sure that people can find it easily. If you're on Instagram, for example, throw it in stories and say, hey, a newsletter is going out tomorrow. Drop your email in this box, submit your email, DM me your email, whatever it is, and I'll add you to the list. Make it easy for them. Okay, that's what we're trying to do here is make it as easy as possible for them to get on that list. And then continuously remind people that you do have a list. Okay, it's important that people know that your list exists and that you're still sending out newsletters on a regular basis with information that they're gonna find helpful if they either have your product or they want to. These are all things that we're trying to share more readily with our audience to get them again on our email list. Another great way to sort of gather those emails is to create a lead magnet. So, what is a lead magnet? A lot of people are like, oh, shouldn't I just like provide a discount or you know, whatever, like 10% off your first order? Well, first of all, I don't super love that strategy because it eats into your bottom line, it kind of sets you up as like uh, you know, we're gonna provide discounts for you, maybe in a very common cadence. It's it's it just doesn't make discounts and and those kinds of things feel as special, right? So if that's the tone that you're gonna set and you wanna set it that way, great. But I like a lead magnet because it's essentially a valuable free, free in the fact that you pay with your email. It's a free resource that either does one of three things. It either saves your customers time, it solves a problem, or it provides some kind of unique perspective or insight that you have about hair care or breath work or whatever it is that you're that you're promoting or providing. So it saves customers time, solves a problem, or provides a unique insight or perspective. Okay, that's what a lead magnet is. It doesn't have to be all three, just has to be one of those things. But it's a free resource. So think of it as three steps to shiny hair in 30 seconds. Amazing. I love that. Sign me up, tell me where. Or any kind of thing. My free resource is my lead magnet is an email marketing analytics tracker and content calendar, right? So that you can track your analytics the way I'm about to teach you is important, and that you plan your content out so that you're not just scrambling each month, every other week, each week, to put content together and send it out so that we're planning ahead. And so that's something that I'm providing to all of my potential email list subscribers because that's a valuable free resource that I can provide that I use myself that's going to be helpful for them as well. Okay, so that's something to think about when we're thinking about how to build our list. Now, I could and I probably will do an entire episode just about building your list. But for now, let's move on to the next step. You utilizing your essential automations. So, what do I mean by automations? You might have heard that word thrown around, you might have heard it as a flow, a sequence, an automation, a series. These are the emails that, for example, like your welcome, when someone takes an action, it automatically triggers an email series that they get that you don't have to manually send out every single time. So, for example, with your welcome, someone's gonna sign up to your newsletter list, and what's gonna happen? One, they're gonna get an email from you right away, and then they're gonna get subsequent emails to introduce them to who you are, how you can help them, and also what they can get out of continuing to subscribe to your newsletter list. Okay, so that's a little bit about the welcome. Again, we can get into all of this in way more depth in a future episode. But for now, I just want you to understand that this is important. Putting together our automations is important because we've got our welcome series. We've got our abandoned cart, right? For those of you that don't know, our abandoned cart is when someone is shopping, and then maybe for some reason they don't finish that purchase. Either they weren't ready to buy, they saw the shipping cost and they didn't want to complete it, or the doorbell rang and they had to answer and they completely forgot to finish their order. Whatever it may be, an abandoned cart is gonna be really important to, you know, just at least you're not gonna recapture every single sale, but you're still gonna get some sales back. Okay. We're also talking about a post-purchase. So a post-purchase series is for when someone buys from you and you want to go ahead and thank them for making that purchase, and you also want to follow up and ask them for a testimonial, obviously, after they've had some time to use your product. So, with that, we are sending out this email that not only shows our appreciation for our customers, but also gathers a little bit more data from them and keeps us top of mind for them when they're ready to replenish or when they might want to add some more products that are gonna help them the way that the product that they just purchased has helped them, right? You you picking up what I'm putting down. So these there are so many more automations, but I would say these three are some of the most essential ones that you want to start with. And why are automations important? I mean, first of all, they're gonna help you make money while you're sleeping, right? You're not gonna have to manually put these together and send them out to everyone that doesn't, you know, buys from you or abandons a car or joins your email list or you know, whatever it is. These are making you money while you're sleeping. And isn't that what we all want, right? So according to Omnisend, again, their 2026 report, they found that automations delivered so many more results than just your average newsletter. Okay, they represented only about 2%, 2% of email sends. Okay, that's not a lot, but they drove about 30% of the revenue. Okay, so they earned 16 times more percent than like a scheduled newsletter or campaign. 16 more, 16 more that they have earned. So automations are gonna be important because they're gonna be able to drive a good chunk of your revenue while you're sleeping, even though they're only just a few emails that you need to send in schedule. So these automations, your abandoned cart, your welcome, your back in stock emails, your post-purchases, your win back series, all of these things are fantastic for actually driving revenue while you're sleeping and while you're awake too. Okay. So we really want to not just, you know, build that email list, we want to set those automations up properly. And then the next thing we want to think about is we want to think about newsletters, about our nurturing emails that I was talking about earlier, right? So with those nurture emails, you're gonna want to, you know, people ask me, like, okay, so like what kind of cadence are we thinking about? What do we need when we talk about our nurture emails? Yes, we need to be thinking about when we're sending, what we're sending, how often we're sending. And I will say, when it comes to content and it comes to the one one of the biggest questions I get asked is do I send more emails that are like value-packed, storytelling, nurturing, or do I send more emails that are like sales-y and like, hey, we've got a sale, buy now, discount, whatever it is. And I will say that every brand is different. I mean, throughout the, I should have said this earlier in the episode, every brand is gonna have a different experience. Even if you have the virtually the same product and virtually the same audience, your audiences are actually gonna want different things. So you're not gonna know until you test. Okay, that's that's just number one. But when we think about sort of maybe a ratio, and again, I'm not gonna say that this is applicable to every single brand all over the world, across every industry. But what I will say is that in general, when we're thinking about maybe a ratio of nurture, you know, value storytelling versus sales, like pure sales emails. The most I would do is probably like two to one. So for every two nurture emails, maybe you send one sales email. Frankly, I would send less than that. I would do maybe for every three nurture emails, I send one sort of sales email. I know other people who would recommend even less sales emails. So it really is up to you, and you really do need to test it. But what I will say is that the majority of what you're doing should be nurturing and should be providing value, it should be explaining your product, should be doing all sorts of things. And we'll literally get into that right now. So the next step after we're thinking about building your list, after we're thinking about utilizing our automations is mastering our content, is making sure that we're understanding what it is that we should be putting in these nurture emails. Now, once again, this is the human method to email marketing. So we are not gonna be needing AI for our content, and we are not gonna be using it. Okay, Kabish. So, a big, big, big word, I'm sure you've heard, is storytelling, right? Storytelling, essentially, if we're gonna break it down, is you telling your story, telling your customer story, telling stories from your everyday life that are gonna relate back to the value of this product. What problem is this product gonna solve for your customers? How are customers gonna? Get the most out of the product that you're selling. Right. So you can storytell virtually anything, but great places to start are telling your own story as a founder. Why did you start this business? Why did you create this product? Why did you put these ingredients in it? Why did you make it out of this material? Why is that important? Okay. So your story, incredibly, incredibly powerful. Your customer stories are also super powerful. For example, testimonials, experiences that customers have had with your product. If you want to share a little bit more about how Nancy from Wyoming, or you know, whatever it is, found a lot of value out of putting your skincare on her hands in the winter when her hands were dry and cracked and red and angry. And your product helped her deal with that. That's a fantastic story to tell. You're giving other customers an idea of what their lives can look like with your product, right? But it could be honestly anything. You can use stories from your brother, you can use stories from your cousin, you can use things that you see on TV, on the street, in everyday life as you're walking down the sidewalk, whatever it is, these things can inspire you to relate it back to your product and to relate it back to the problem that your product is solving for your customers. Okay. So I'm not gonna get into the weeds of all of it just now, but insights, tips, tutorials, FAQs, customer testimonials, product education, where to shop, all of these things are great places to start when it comes to mastering your content. Another big one is repurposing your content. So back in the what was it, the 1930s, when we first started seeing ads come out in newspapers as television started getting more popular on TV, things like that. Back in the 1930s, there was this thing called the rule of seven that was coined. And essentially, people needed to see something, an ad, for example, seven times, seven times before they were like, okay, you know what? Now I'm ready to act, right? On average, that was the rule, rule of seven. Now that was almost a hundred years ago, okay, which is kind of crazy to say that the 1930s were almost a hundred years ago. I feel a little sad saying that. But now in 2026, so we were seeing in 1930s, people were seeing like let's say 50 to 200 ads a day. Okay, 50 to 200. Now in 2026, we see on average between 4,000 and 10,000 ads a day. Okay, that's 50 to 80 times more than we were seeing in the 1930s. And so if we do the math a little bit, seven times 50 to 80, that means that the rule of seven, when applied to the number of ads we were seeing back in the 1930s versus now, which we're seeing again, as I will remind you, four to ten thousand ads a day. Stands to reason that seven times is not enough. Not enough times you need today in 2026 to see the same ad, the same content, the same message over and over again. Seven times is not enough. Now, if we're gonna do the math, it's about 350 to 560 times, right? So again, we're probably not gonna be sending messages, you know, 300 to 500 times. But don't be afraid to like use the same content, is my point here. Don't be afraid to say it on social media, say it in your podcast, say it in an interview, say it on your blog, say it in your newsletter, and then say it again next week and next month and the month after that, because people need to see it. And you don't even know if, you know, at least with email, you know what's getting delivered into people's inboxes. But on social, for example, you don't know who saw that. And so don't be afraid to repurpose your content. I feel like so many people think, oh, I have to come up with all this new content, I have to come up with new stories, I have to come up with this and come up with that. You don't, though. You have your content pillars, the things that are, you know, your product education, your lifestyle, your whatever it is, and then you continue to share it. Maybe, you know, present it in a different way so that it's not tedious and boring, but like it's okay to share the same message across multiple different platforms multiple times. Okay. And if you needed permission, I'm giving you permission right now to do that. So now that we're thinking about, okay, we've we're thinking about building our lists, we're thinking about our automations, we're thinking about our content, now we get to A. We get to activating and optimizing our newsletters. So this is what I talk about with cadence, with open rates, with click rates. How are we gonna get people to the conversion, right? Which is which is the ultimate goal. So if we're thinking about cadence, how often should I be sending my newsletters? That's another big question I get. I I will say, preface this by saying do what you know you can be consistent with. So if I am gonna say in a couple minutes, yes, weekly emails are fantastic. That's a really great cadence to go from. So one once a week for a month, presumably. Some people can't be that consistent. Some people might be able to start there and might be able to do weekly for maybe two months, and then they're like, oh, I'm so tired, I'm so bored, this isn't working, and then they drop off. That's not what we want, that's not what we want. Okay, what we want is to be able to send at a pretty predictable, consistent basis so that our audience can expect to see us and expect to see more information from us. So if you're like, I can't be consistent about once a week, I don't even think I can be consistent about once every other week, but I know I can do at least one email a month. Okay, great. Start there. Start there. You don't need to build to once a week after six months, after you know, two months. You can work your way up to weekly emails. That's okay. So, again, I know this is probably not gonna be the same answer that other email marketers are gonna give you, but my biggest thing is do what you know you can be consistent about because I would rather you send less emails and be consistent than send more, get burnt out, and give up, and then just kind of abandon the whole platform together, abandon email marketing altogether. That's not what we want. Okay. So that's that's my answer on cadence. When it comes to things like open rates, subject lines are gonna affect, you know, the little subject line that you see before you actually open the email, send times, those are all things that are gonna affect whether or not someone opens your email, right? What I will say again from Omniscent's 2026 report, and we'll link all of these resources that I'm sharing with you in the show notes. When it comes to open rates, according to Omniscent's 2026 report, they rose from 2025 to 2026. They rose. Open rates increased for the fifth consecutive year, for the fifth year in a row. Okay, click rates, unfortunately, have been declining over the last few years, but open rates actually have been increasing. At the same time, the conversion, the click to conversion, so the click to sale actually increased by 53% from 2025 to 2026. So that means, what does that mean? You're like, you just throw a bunch of numbers at me. I don't know what you're trying to say. What I'm trying to say is that less people clicked on emails, but those people that did click on emails were actually much more likely to buy. So this is kind of telling us, like, okay, maybe less people are clicking because they're still being nurtured, they're still trying to understand what your product is and who you are and who they're gonna give their money to. But when they are ready, when they are nurtured and they have built that like and that trust with you, that they are going to be so prepared to buy that they're just gonna click through, make that purchase, right? So that's kind of what we're going for when we're talking about activating and optimizing our newsletters. Now, there's many other things like you know, the formatting of the newsletter, having clear calls to action, something I just talked about in one of my recent newsletters, which shameless plug, you guys should subscribe to because I share even more free email marketing tips beyond just this episode. So we we went over kind of formatting, we went over clear call to action, call to action language, which is essentially like buy now versus explore here, you know, like explore the site. Oh, I fucking hate that like phrase because it's not helpful. It's like explore the site to do what? What do you want me to do? So, anyway, as you can tell, I feel very strongly about that one. We will probably do a separate episode on sort of each of these steps. So I'll get into the nitty-gritty then. But we're thinking about things like A-B testing. We're testing two different subject lines to see what someone's gonna open on, or we test two different send times, or we test two different formats, a shorter newsletter versus a longer newsletter. We want testing. It's so important because, like I said earlier, you could have the same product as someone else, virtually the same product, and you could have very similar demographics when it comes to your target audience, and they will still want different things from you. They want different structure, they want different call-to-action language, they want different wording, they want different, you know, formatting, subject lines, open rate, send times, that kind of thing. All of that goes into activating and optimizing your newsletters. Now, when we think about spam and delivery as well, right? People are like, oh my gosh, like my emails are ending up in the spam box. Like right now, you know, deliverability is actually sort of a huge issue at the moment. Like, I think it's one in six emails or something like that never reach their inboxes that they're intended to reach. And so we want to think about okay, how do I make sure? How do I make sure I'm sending emails in a way that I don't get flagged by Gmail, by Yahoo, by Outlook, by whatever it is to go into the spam folder. Then I'm not sending all these like spammy emails that that the email provider filters are are getting when I send them out. So these are all things that I talk about when I talk about activating and optimizing your newsletters. Okay. Now we've we've gone over the first few. Ready to talk about numbers. Numbers are really important. So now that we've talked about building our list, now that we've talked about setting up our automations, and we've talked about, you know, setting up those newsletters to be optimized for nurturing and for conversions and things like that. Let's talk about numbers. And the fact that numbers are your friend. Okay, they should not be scary. I know a lot of people out there are like, oh, I'm not a numbers person. I don't know what to do, I don't know where to go, I don't know what to read. What does this mean? What I will say is that numbers are your friend, okay? Analytics are here to help you. Like I said at the top of the episode, email marketing is so powerful because you can understand your customers' behavior in such an in-depth, almost scary way. Like if you think about it, it's a little scary. How much you know we can learn about our audience. We can learn about what it is that they want, what they're doing, when they're opening, what they're buying, that kind of thing. But you want to be paying attention to your open rates, you want to be paying attention to your click rates, you want to be paying attention to how many people actually click through to your site, all of those things. But like I said before, there is no overarching number for your open rate or your click rate that is gonna apply to every single brand and every single industry and every single company. Okay, that's just not gonna happen. But if if you really, really want to demand a number from me, I'm gonna say roughly we're gonna wanna aim for at least a 20 to 25% open rate. At least. Okay, we want at least about a quarter of our audience opening our email. Now, the higher that rate, the better, of course. We're also thinking about our click rates. But again, like I said earlier, click rates have gone down year after year consecutively. Yes, less people are gonna be clicking our emails. So, like what I would have said is about let's aim for two to five percent at least, two to five percent might be a little bit lower now, and that's okay. What we care about is at the very least getting to the conversion, getting to the sale. That's the ultimate goal, right? And people are like, okay, well, what about unsubscribe rates? Well, let me tell you, one of my biggest hot takes when it comes to email marketing is that unsubscribes are actually a really good thing. They're actually kind of great. And you should be thankful that you get them and you should be excited when you get them. Why? Because the trash is taking itself out. I mean, I don't mean to call non-customers trash. You're not. You guys are all great. But when people unsubscribe, they were probably never gonna give you their money anyway. And now you don't have to pay for them to be on your list. Because a lot of these platforms these days pay per subscriber, right? So if you have 500 people, you pay this fee versus 5,000, you pay this monthly fee to Clavio, to Mailchip, whatever it is. So if you're seeing people unsubscribing, they were never really gonna engage with your list, they were never really gonna engage with your content, and they were probably never gonna give you any money. So let them go. Say goodbye, say thank you for making room for someone who's actually gonna be an aligned customer, who's actually gonna convert. If you're gonna take anything away from today, take away this. Unsubscribes are a good thing. In fact, they're a great thing, and you actually should be excited to. I mean, look, if you have like a 50 50% of your email list is unsubscribing, that's concerning. That's alarming, and and we don't want that, right? But if it's like, oh, you know, 20 people unsubscribed from my newsletter, that's not the end of the world. I mean, it is if only 20 people were subscribed to start. But like if you've got, you know, thousands of people on your newsletter list and 20 people unsubscribe, it's not the end of the world. And with any of these numbers, if you see differing things from the pattern, so like more people are opening than usual, or less people are opening than usual, or more people are unsubscribing than usual. Those are things that you want to be paying attention to to understand, okay, something either worked or didn't work, and I need to adjust to understand is this what my audience wanted or is it not? Right. And that kind of leads to the next, the next step, the next point, the bonus point, which is we always want to be serving our customers. So when it comes to the human approach to email marketing, it's not just human in that we're not using AI and that we're getting down to the basics of humanity and what it means to be human. But we're also thinking about the humanness of the interaction that we're having, right? We're we're using this email list to nurture an audience, to build a relationship with an audience. And in order to do that, we want to build our community with them. We want to start a dialogue with them. We want their feedback. We want to hear from them. We want to interact with them. It's not just broadcasting, it really is community building, relationship building. So don't be afraid to ask your customers for what they want, what they want more of, what they're looking for, what would be most helpful for them. Chances are they're gonna want to tell you. You know how customers love to tell you what to do and what they want. And then really just listening to them. I know a lot of people out there ask, but they don't actually end up listening. They're like, no, I'm just gonna still do what it is that I want to do. Well, that's not listening, right? If we're actually listening to our customers, we're starting that dialogue and then we're hearing what it is they have to say that they're sharing in their feedback. And with that, we're going to continue to hone, refine our content so that we are satisfying them and answering their questions and helping them with whatever it is that they're looking for when it comes to your product. With all that, what is the end result? What are we trying to achieve here? We want more customers, right? And in order to get more customers and in order to bring customers back for repeat orders to become brand champions, to become people who talk to their friends about your product and about your company in a way that, you know, kind of helps nurture and convert for you, right? And so, in order to do that, we want to be sending out newsletters that, again, you're gonna be sick of this word by the end of this episode. Nurture your audience towards a sale, towards a conversion. And we're gonna help you make money while you're sleeping. That's kind of what we want to do here, right? I know this episode's getting a little long, so let me keep the rest of this pretty short and sweet, and we will get to the nitty-gritty, the meaty good stuff in subsequent episodes of this podcast. But some really quick common mistakes that I want you to avoid. First of all, it's okay to make mistakes, okay? I'm not saying you shouldn't because you will learn from them, but I've already made some of these mistakes for you, or my clients have, and I've helped them, you know, kind of fix those mistakes and avoid them in the future. So I just want to pass that along to you. Here's where people fuck up. In terms of email marketing, some of the most common mistakes I see are number one, not linking things properly. Okay, either the the link is to the wrong page or to the wrong place, or you're missing opportunities to link text, to link images, to link buttons. You never know where someone's gonna click. So I always add links to images, I always add links to graphics, I always add links to text. I mean, it's not like riddled with it all throughout the email, but I never have a missed opportunity when it comes to a link because I never know where someone's gonna click. And more times than not, what I've experienced is that people do like to click on images. They do like to click on places that you don't actually expect them to click on. So don't miss that opportunity. And also, for the love of fucking God, please, please make sure you send a test email before you schedule that email to go out to publish. You wanna be double checking the experience. You wanna be checking that there are proper links, like I said earlier, that your subject lines and your preview text aren't getting cut off. You want to see how the email is going to be formatted mobily, how it's gonna look on a laptop. All of these things you wanna see before you actually publish it to go out, right? Before you schedule it to send. So please, I know I said the unsubscribe thing was the thing I wanted you to take away. This is actually the thing I want you to take away. Do not, okay, do not fucking send a newsletter out without sending a test to yourself first. Okay? Okay, great. Glad we got that cleared up. Another mistake that I see with a lot of brands nowadays, because we want these beautiful emails and we have Canva that we can use to build these beautiful newsletters, is that people will build their entire newsletter in Canva, right? So that it's this long one, and they're just gonna drop it into Clavial or MailChimp or whatever platform you're using. They're just gonna drop it in as an image, as just one single PNG or you know, whatever it is, file. Now, why don't we wanna do that? We don't want to do that because A, the file size might be huge and it's gonna make for a slower load time, which, as you know, I'm sure as a customer, when you see something taking forever to load, do you wanna do you wanna continue to wait for it to load or do you want to click out and do something else? Right? Another thing is that if you drop in just like one big, albeit beautiful, beautifully designed email as just one single JPEG or PNG file, it's only gonna have one link that you can click through. And that might be okay, but the thing is, is you won't know where. In the email, someone clicked. So if they clicked at the bottom, that tells you, okay, people made it to the bottom of this email. Fantastic. If they clicked at the, you know, exclusively at the top, like majority of people only clicked on the top few links, that's going to tell you that people aren't making it all the way down to the bottom of your email, which might mean that they want a shorter email from you, that they don't want longer emails. So when you put in just one image as this, yes, beautifully designed email than Canva or Adobe or wherever it was that you created it, and you just drop that one image into your email marketing platform, it's actually not going to tell you the information that you want to know when it comes to the analytics, when it comes to your customer behavior. Okay, so let's not do that. But if you do still want to design in Canva or in Adobe outside of the email marketing platform, just split those sections up so that you, you know, maybe have three sections. And then you're understanding where people are clicking based on the content. You know, maybe you have a little bit about your blog in at the top, make sure that's just one section. And then you have a little bit of a testimonial underneath, make sure that's one section. And then underneath you have, you know, a promo, a sale, whatever it is, make sure that that's its own section. So you're understanding what part of the email and what kind of content your audience is looking for. Okay. Another thing that I really want to encourage you to do is don't be afraid to sell. I know I said, yes, you should be nurturing more than you should be selling, but so many people are so scared to sell that they just don't. And they just say, Oh, here's all this information, da-da-da-da-da. But they don't actually say, call to action, buy this product, right? People, I think these days a lot, the experience that I have is that they're treating email like advertising instead of relationship building. And like I said earlier, the whole point of email marketing is building a relationship with your customer, right? So don't be afraid to sell. I mean, don't only sell, because if you're only selling, it's probably not gonna be super effective on your audience, but don't be afraid to sell, okay? And also don't be too formal in the voice. Like, I know a lot of people, especially luxury brands these days, they're like, oh, you know, we're gonna use a very stuffy tone when it comes to our email copy. And it's like, no, that literally people want a conversational tone when it comes to newsletters now. They want it to sound like it's coming from their friend that's just dropping into their inbox and saying, hey, I've got some like cool shit for you to take a look at, you know, or whatever it is, whatever brand, obviously voice that's appropriate for you for your business. But don't be too formal. Don't be like the almost newsletter, edition number five, subject lines. Like, that's way too, you know, I would rather, and I did recently send an email that was more like, want to know how to write subject lines, or like the lazy writer's guide to subject lines, or you know, whatever it is. So, like, don't let it be too hoity-toity, don't let it be too formal. Okay. And then the last mistake that I want to go over is really just thinking that it needs to be perfect, or that it needs to be this beautiful long-form newsletter for it to go out. One of my favorite newsletters, if you've listened to any of my podcast interviews lately, you know that one of my favorite newsletters is one sentence long. I love it. I love it. It's literally one sentence. It's like, here's the email that you need to send before you start cold pitching, or you know, whatever it is. Like, and I'm like, ooh, what email is it? Like, let me click through. It's very clear. It's the one link that's on here. I know exactly what I need to do to click through and take the action that you want me to take. So, like, this is your this is your permission to literally send an email with one sentence and one link. That's okay. That is okay. It doesn't need to be perfect, it doesn't need to be long form. It doesn't need to be all these things that you think email marketing needs to be. It just needs to be authentic to you. It just needs to be the friend that you're trying to be as a business for your customers who are also your friends that you're just trying to help, that you're just trying to solve a problem that they have, you know, and that your product is going to solve for them. So, some of those tips I hope you take away. I hope it's helpful. And I really do before before we sort of close out and I give you your homework, because we always want a little bit of next step to go with when it comes to some of these tips that I've shared with you, is some realistic expectations when it comes to like what a good list size is, where should I start? Because I know a lot of people are just like, oh my gosh, like I feel silly sending to like 15 people on my newsletter list. And it's like, yes, sure, we don't want to only have 15 people, but it's it's a place to start. Okay. Big lists are not necessarily a good thing. I know plenty of brands that have huge lists, lists of thousands of people on it, and they don't convert a lot because those lists are very, very unengaged. They're actually not really effective. I've seen people with only 500 people on their email list, only 200 people on their email list, only a thousand that have converted the majority of those people into sales. So please do not think that a small list is not a good thing. I promise you, it is. It's a great thing. So just start, just start. I know I've been saying this every two seconds. Like if you're gonna take one thing away, but really just start. Just start and just start sending and just start building. Go back and listen to the beginning of this episode all the way through and take some of these things, take some of these action items, and start. Just start. Okay. You can start with, you know, a thousand people to aim for. Let's get a thousand people on your list, right? But again, I've seen people with like 300 to 500 people on their list make huge sales during launches and releases of products and services and programs and whatever it is. So maybe just aim for a thousand to begin with and just go from there. Okay. You have my permission. So, what is our homework? What is our homework gonna be today? Well, I want you to go back, number one, go back and listen to the beginning of the episode and double check that you've taken those three steps that I talked about. Okay, that you're telling people you have a newsletter, telling people to subscribe on a regular basis, and making it super easy for them to find on your website, in your social media links, in your newsletter, whatever it is. Okay. Make sure that it's easy to find, to share, to get people to subscribe. Second piece of homework. Just craft a newsletter this week to go out. Okay, add my email. I'll throw my email in the link in the show notes below. You're at it's almost.com. Add me to your newsletter list. Subscribe me. I want to see your newsletter go out this week. Okay. It doesn't have to be perfect, remember, it doesn't even have to be long. Just do it. And then the last thing I want you to do is I want you to start brainstorming a lead magnet. So something that's gonna help save your customers' time, help solve a problem, or share a unique perspective or insight that you have. Some kind of free resource. It can be a guide, it could be just a simple checklist, it could be a webinar, it could be a tutorial video, it could be a quiz, it can be just anything. Like I said, I have an analytics tracker, I also have a marketing content calendar planner in there. These are all things. What's a resource that's gonna be helpful for your customers when it comes to whatever problem it is that your product is solving? Okay, so I do go over all these things in the conversion club, our monthly email marketing membership that is gonna help you learn everything that I just shared with you in this episode in even more depth and with even more detail. We go over one of these topics a month from super foundational email marketing all the way up. We're gonna get more advanced as we go along. But you're gonna come and you're gonna learn one of these things in depth each month. And then two weeks later, I'm gonna give you some time to implement. You can come back with any questions you have, and we're gonna have a two-hour implementation session where you can come, ask your questions, get support from me, clicking those buttons, and then also really just get feedback, get strategy, get my eyes on things. I'm there to share, connect with other founders, connect with the community that's in the membership, get their opinions, their thoughts, you know, get them to review your newsletters, get them to review your lead magnet, get them to review your automations and me as well, Kieran. I'm I will be looking at all of that. I will be sharing my recommendations, how to optimize. Like you really get this one-on-one time with me. So come join us in the conversion club. Um, if you're listening at a time when doors are not open because the doors are only open twice a year. Message me, message me, and and we'll get you, we'll get you on the wait list. Okay. You can also in the show notes join the wait list for the conversion club. And I hope to see you in there. I hope to see all of you sending out those newsletters and utilizing all this information for your own email marketing, for your brand, for your personal brand, whatever it is. I hope you all found this podcast episode helpful. If you have any questions, you can always DM me, come join the conversion club, get even more in-depth information. And I will see you all in the next episode very soon. All right, ciao ciao. If this episode gave you something to think about, please take it and do something with it. If you want more of this or you want to see what my life actually looks like, follow me on Instagram at it's almost with two L's. We'll be sure to link it in the show notes. You can also follow me at almost consulting for some juicier, spicier takes. And if you're serious about getting your emails to convert, you can check out the conversion club. A monthly membership for founders ready to turn email into their most profitable and sustainable field. With expert guidance, plug and play tools, and strategy you'll actually use. Check it out at the link in the show notes. I'll see you in the next episode, yappers!