00:00

Welcome to make more money without selling your soul. The podcast for bold entrepreneurs ready to simplify scale and reclaim their time. I’m Polly Lavarello, Evergreen scaling strategist and cushy business pioneer. Join me and my occasional guests as we explore the themes of wealth, selling and well-being, because building a business that works for you changes everything. Let’s dive in.

00:37

Welcome to the show.  Today, we have the wonderful Eman Ismail on the show, she is the person to call when you want to make money from your emails. I mean, I knew you’d want to hear about this right. As a founder and head email strategist at Eman copy co Eman and her small team help you take your email list from has potential to highly profitable. Collectively, their strategy and copy have helped generate millions of dollars for clients. Eman is also the official kit formally Convert Kit partner when she’s not working on email. Eman is hosting her multi award winning podcast mistakes that made me a HubSpot podcast that asks extraordinary business owners to share their biggest business mistake so you know what not to do on your road to success. Beyond all of those wonderful accolades. Eman is somebody who has worked with me to elevate my own funnels and was the secret force behind my 30k months when they started happening when I was running ads to a simple webinar, through an email sequence to a sales call, she really elevated the results for that funnel, and for that, I’m eternally grateful. And of course, had to share some of her magic with you on this show. Without further ado, let’s get stuck in welcome. Eman, I’m so, so excited to finally have you on the show despite knowing you all this time. For anyone who hasn’t connected with you and doesn’t yet know you as the Queen of email, please, can you introduce yourself to my listeners? Yes.

02:00

Yes. Hey, thanks for having me, Polly. My name is Eman Ismail. I am an email strategist and copywriter, and I’m the founder and head email strategist at Eman copy CO and that’s where we help you turn your well, take your email list from from highly potential to highly profitable. So we do all things, email, email strategy, email copy launches, all that good stuff.

 02:23

What is it that made you fall in love with email in particular?

 02:27

Oh my gosh. Um, so I think it’s the storytelling plus money making, because those are two things that I really love. So the ability to tell stories as a writer, and then also have the ability to persuade people to buy a thing that can actually help them, that is, of course, actually good for them. And I just think that’s so powerful, and I think it’s really interesting in the wrong hands, it’s very dangerous, but I think it’s a really powerful skill to have and and I mean, I always wanted to write. I always wanted to be a writer. And it’s funny because I never imagined myself being able to write like a full on novel or anything like that. I always knew that wouldn’t be my thing. And I remember one day in college submitting a short story, and I got a really high grade for it. Actually, my teacher said it was a publishable piece of work, and I was, I was 18, maybe 1718, and I just remember the feeling that that gave me of just the confidence in my writing, which I really needed back then. And I thought, oh, short stories. I loved that assignment from beginning to end, and I thought it’s short stories that I’m really good at. And I see like email and short stories as being, you know, very, very similar. And so it doesn’t surprise me that I came into copywriting. I was kind of doing everything. I was bit of a generalist. I used to write anything and everything, as long as as long as the first one decide was going to pay me for it, I’d write it. How long were you doing that for? Well, I was a generalist from 2018 to 2020 and then 2020 was when I switched and became an email specialist.

And I wouldn’t change that, because I think it was really important for me to get that, like foundational advertising, very long, yeah, yeah. Exactly generalist, right? If you don’t try to emphasize, you’re not going to know, are you exactly  so tried a bit of everything, then fell in love with with email. And I think it was because of that I get to tell stories, powerful stories, stories that connect with people. And then, of course, the element of, oh, this can make this can make me money too, and then, oh, I can help other people make money. So I decided, well, one day I just thought, well, what if, what if email was the only thing that I offered, instead of offering, you know, everything, website, um. Um, websites, brochures, you know, posters, even, um. And so I did, and I was so worried. I remember being so worried because there weren’t a lot of email strategists or email copywriters back then. I only knew of on the online in the online business world, I only knew of a handful. And so it felt like a huge risk, like, I don’t know if this is gonna work. I don’t know if people even want this. And back then this, I remember announcing it and getting my first email clients and them saying, Oh, this is amazing. I didn’t even know that I could get an email copy. I didn’t know that was the thing, I guess, how kind of early stages this was, yeah, probably because we’ve worked together too. Yeah, now, like, it’s, I mean, there’s a whole world that was so it’s a completely different kind of space.

05:48

I love that. I love that. And so, oh gosh, I have so many questions here. Like, you know what? I’m gonna dial it right back and ask, ask the question, what would you say is the most common misconception around email as a business owner?

06:04

That’s a really good question, and I’m gonna go with the misconception is that people don’t want to hear about what you have to sell, that people don’t Want you to sell to them. And the reason that a misconception is, well, it’s just not true. And I think certainly with email the situation is that people have signed up. They’ve voluntarily signed up to hear from you. They know you’re a business. There are going to be very few people on your email list who don’t expect you to sell to them, who don’t expect you to present offers. And actually, I know, as someone who has signed up to people’s email lists, I sign up because I I’m interested in hearing how you can help me. And I think if you’re someone who truly believes in your offer, you truly believe in what you sell, and I know you do because you wouldn’t be doing this otherwise, you wouldn’t be in business. Otherwise, if you truly believe that it can help people and that you know the right people should get it, then you almost have a duty to put it in front of them, because, you know, you’re not forcing the person to buy, but you are giving them the opportunity to buy, and I think it’s unfair for you not to give them the opportunity to buy so you put it in front of them, you lay out, you know what’s great about it, who it’s for, who it’s not for, and then you let them make the decision. I think a lot of people think that email, copywriting, sales copywriting, in general, is about persuading people to say yes to an offer. And actually, that’s not true. The purpose of great sales copy is to just get a person to make a decision whether that decision is a yes or whether that decision is a no. Because a no, we can handle a no, you’ve made a decision. Fantastic, great. You’ve said this is not for me, fantastic. A yes obviously is even better. But what’s worse than a no is that inertia, where you’re sitting on the fence, yeah, and you’re not making for them to sit on the fence.

08:12

Yeah, exactly. You’re paying for them to sit on the fence. They just sat on the fence, never making a decision. They don’t know what they want. And you know, it’s interesting, someone actually asked me a question recently at a workshop that I was given, and in the question that she was asking, she happened to mention that she never gets any unsubscribes. And obviously, I think most people, most people would think that’s something to be really, you know, excited about. But to me, that’s a concern because, yeah, because you are not well, that tells me is that you are not putting your what is it? What does this say? Like, stick in the ground. You’re not presenting anything that people either love, like really love and feel passionate about, or that they really hate and feel passionately, like hateful about and that’s what you want. You want to create something where people go, Yes, I absolutely want this and I love it, or no, absolutely hate this. Don’t want it. You don’t want people who are just sat in the middle who feel blah about it, you know?

09:15

Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense to me, because I’m thinking about, you know, I sign up to companies like Bowdoin, and admittedly, I’m not obviously buying from every sales email that comes in, but they’re their marketer. Like, isn’t like back in their office thinking they’ve probably already got enough jumpers. I’m not going to mention that we’ve got some new jumpers coming in, because they probably don’t need it. You know, they’ll happily promote what they’re doing. And I guess my behavior very much with emails is I will open, I don’t know, one in five, one in four, unless it’s someone who writes something particularly exceptional. Speaking of which, do you think there’s a kind of frequency as to how regularly people should be getting in other people’s inboxes for the best success in terms of having a profitable email strategy?

09:57

Yes, I think the absolute. Minimum is weekly. And the reason for this is, and I say weekly because I think a lot of people will go for fortnightly, so twice a month or monthly. But the reason I don’t think the latter two options are helpful or impactful or effective is because the thing about email is we get so many emails a day. Just think about how many emails you get in one day, and then, you know, extend that across a week. So with email, the point of email is to stay top of mind. So what you just said about the jumpers, like, Okay, I don’t buy a jumper from every email. It’s a really good point and but the reason they keep emailing you is because at some point you’re going to need a jumper. And so when you do need a jumper, one of the first companies you’re going to think of is that company, because they kept emailing you, they stayed top of mind. They made sure that you didn’t forget about them in all the emails that you’re getting in your inbox. And so when you email weekly, you’re giving that person the chance to remember you, and you’re staying top of mind so that when that person does eventually need you, you’re the first person they think of. That’s the job and the role of email, okay, but when you’re emailing your list fortnightly or monthly, your emails getting lost in a sea of emails, and it’s not enough for you to stay top of mind. And so I generally say, if you’re struggling with the habit of like staying consistent with emails, and you know that I can only do this monthly, I can only do this fortnightly. Something is better than nothing, definitely, but the ideal is weekly. And actually, there are a lot of online business owners who who email more than that, who email twice a week. I yeah, I was doing twice a week. I did three times a week in 2024, and then, of course, there are people who do daily as well. Like, I’m not on that daily hype thing. I don’t enjoy receiving daily emails, but there are people who do it, and there are people who love getting it,

12:10

yeah, yeah, no, I don’t. I tried daily at one point, and I just didn’t enjoy it. I found it hard to kind of now, I do about twice a week with a third email, which just ultimately lets people know that the podcast episode has dropped, and that seems to be my sweet spot, in terms of feeling I can like share something that actually like you say, tells a good story and activates people and gets a response. I wanted to ask you a question because one of the you were actually one of the people that helped me become aware of the changes that came about which I am not geeky enough to know what they were called, but essentially the ones which have changed the way a lot of our inboxes now look in that all our promotions are way more successfully filtered into promotions and in some unfortunate cases, spam. What have you seen in terms of the kind of I mean, can you remind me when was it that they made these updates to kind of privacy that actually it was about a year ago. First it was about Yeah, and in terms of like, have you seen much change in terms of how emails perform since then? Yeah.

13:11

So I have seen that the stats, open rates, click rates, are not as reliable. I still use them. I still use them to kind of like gauge how well an email has done, but they’re not entirely reliable anymore, which is a shame. People will usually say, yeah, it’s just open rates, but it’s click rates too, because now there are programs that open up your email and then automatically click every link in the email, and I think it’s checking whether the links are safe or whatever it’s doing, then the problem with that is that it messes up, like, you know, your trigger sequences or any trigger automations, because it’s just clicked through everything. And so it’s ruined things a little bit, a little bit. But I think we still have, like, a good foundation. There are people who will say, we can’t trust open rates anymore. We can’t just click create like, just throw them all out the window. They don’t mean anything anymore. And I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think that’s true at all. But yes, that things have changed also. I guess the unsubscribe button is now much more accessible, so Google specifically has now a one click unsubscribe button at the top of its emails. Yeah, yeah. So that’s interesting too. But I actually think that’s like, that’s nothing to fear at the end of the day. If people are not enjoying your emails, let them unsubscribe. It’s okay. It’s no skin off your nose. And actually, I think it’s probably a good thing, because it adds more, I don’t want to say pressure, but it means that we as email creators are working and have to work a little bit harder to actually create one. Good emails that people actually want to read. You know, you can’t get away with drivel basically, anymore.

15:05

Yeah, that makes sense to me, and I feel like there’s a real unique opportunity with email in terms of when I look at how AI has impacted and we definitely need to talk about AI. We’re really geeking out on this conversation. Normally. I’m like, tell me about your journey. I’m like, No, let’s get straight into the nuts and bolts. But yeah, with AI, one of the things I’ve noticed about social media platforms is there’s been a lot of kind of evolving and shifting as a kind of landscape. Like, at one point it felt like everyone was going nuts doing their kind of AI driven kind of carousels. And so a lot of the content seemed really shallow, and that’s why I feel like email really, it’s always been a deeper form of communication, but it felt all the more important. It felt all the more real. But obviously, a lot of people are also using AI as a way to ensure that they’re still being consistent sending regular emails. Do you have any kind of do’s or don’ts around? How to use AI effectively? I mean, how are you using it as a copywriter, or are you using it, I guess, is the question.

16:06

Okay, really good question. Yes, I definitely am. I was hesitant to at first, because I was really skeptical about how it could help. And also, you know, this was a really big deal in, obviously, every industry, but certainly my industry as a copywriter, because it has freaked a lot of copywriters out. People have left the field because they’re so convinced, yeah, they’re so convinced that AI is going to take their job. And there have been people who have seen, like, posting on LinkedIn and saying, I’ve lost all my clients to AI this month. But I wasn’t. I was never really worried about that, because first of all, I’m an email strategist, first and foremost, and AI right now anyway, is not very good at the email strategy side of things. It’s not very good at pulling that stuff together, and it still needs a lot of strategy support to get to the place where, like you want it to get to. And so yes, while I wasn’t using it initially, I that I saw a post by someone called Joel clerk key. You might know him, maybe I don’t know, but he’s a, okay, so he’s a copywriter turned agency owner, and I saw him say that he basically has chat GPT open all day. It’s just a tab that’s just open all day. And when I heard that, I was like, What on earth could he be using it for? That much, you know? And so I decided to experiment and figure this out. And chatgpt is basically now open for me all the time, I use it as an assistant. And I heard someone say this, and it was a really great shift for me. I heard someone say, like, treat it as a human treat it as a human assistant. Like, talk to it like, you know, you are, you know, trying to get feedback, and you’re, you know, you’re refining and you’re correcting, and you’re, you’re working together on something like, it’s a collaboration, and that changed the game for me. So yes, I absolutely use AI. I use it for a lot of brainstorming, for a lot of ideation, a lot of like jumping off points. So for example, I might write an email, put it into chatgpt and then say, Give me 10 subject line ideas, each with preview text, yeah, for this email. And then I’ll go through it. And, you know, the first, generally, the first, like, set of the things that it gives me is no good. And so then you refine it, and you say, Okay, pick one. This was a great start. But now I want you to, you know, change it, or this, or, you know, I want it to be funny, or be, I don’t know, more humorous, or whatever, whatever it is. And you’re so you like, you’re working together to get to that point. And then it finally spits out something you can work with. And again, it’s never like, okay, copy, paste, great, satin. I’m refining it a little bit, and I’m like, Good, great. It got it gave me, like, 50% and then I need the other 50% so a lot of brainstorming, a lot of, yeah, ideation. I’ll even work on something and then ask chatgpt to tell me, like, what would you do? I need to write, like, five part email sequence selling this thing. Here’s my sales page, for example. Give me the strategy that you would use, email by email, and it does it. And sometimes it’s like, Oh, that is terrible. And then other times like, oh, actually, that’s quite a good idea. I can I can bounce off that, like, that’s a good starting point, and then it kind of helps get me going. So that’s great. And the other really big thing that I use it for is research and analysis. So one of the very first things I do with any email project, and that my team does with any email project, is customer research. So we’re doing a lot of surveys, and sometimes we get hundreds and hundreds of responses, and before, like before AI, we would literally have to sit there and read through every. Single survey response, hundreds This is a week’s worth of work, right? Yeah, I can imagine, yeah, like full time, weeks worth of work. And now you just put the survey responses into chat GPT, and you tell it what you want it to, like, focus on, and then I tell it how I want it to format the analysis, what I want it to include. I want it to include, like, specific direct quotes, unedited, so I can see, like, what actually people are saying. But I want you to categorize it and theme it and tell me the common themes that you’re you know you’re seeing press send, and it’s done in what, two minutes. And I when I say I was mind blown. I mean, work that used to take a week takes 15 minutes.

20:51

Oh, my goodness, yeah, I love that you’re sharing this as well, though, because I feel like that is the secret. I don’t think people need to go out of business because of AI, but I do think if we’re not leveraging it, then we’re going to be working less efficiently and then essentially setting ourselves up to fail. Yeah, but I love what you sharing as well, because I was totally the same, like, I love words, I love writing, so I was really offended by AI’s existence, and I really held back. But similar to you, it’s kind of good for inspiration, good for tidying things up and, like you say, pulling on themes and stuff.

21:25

Well, let me just say that I’m the type of person who, like, I agree. I was offended, and I was like, I refuse. Like, I’m not, like, I don’t want anything to do with this. And I use I I’m so, like, amazed by it, and just, I’m trying to find different ways to play around with it and utilize it. Even my husband came to me, who’s a big like, AI person, you know, we have our comments about it and all sorts, because it affects his industry too. And he’s like, I’m really surprised. Like, I’m really, like, happily surprised and pleasantly surprised by how you have taken this on and how you’ve just like, thrown yourself into it and found a way to make it work for you. Because I really thought you were gonna be like, resistant forever. And I was like, I know me too. I thought that too. But then I figured out, oh my gosh, it’s so much easier when you don’t work against it and you just work with it. Because, like you said, it’s the efficiencies, it’s the it’s almost like having another brain, which is great. Oh, and I want to say the other thing is, this isn’t actually email related, but I use it a lot for, like, business development stuff. So everything from oh my gosh, from helping me write SOPs, to just like those admin tasks and those like big writing related business development stuff, it helps me. It helps me a lot. Yeah, even things like, I’m about to go on maternity leave, I was I asked AI to come up with some ideas that could keep the podcast running over the over my maternity leave, and it gave me some really good ideas so that, yeah, I love that, you know, I think what I was gonna say, which Sunny, like, departed my head in relation to what you were sharing, is what you shared about how sometimes it will turn out something really good in terms of, like, an email series, you know, like, or ideas For, you know, how you could promote, like, say, five day email sequence for an offer, and then other times it can, like, show something that’s not good at all. And I think that’s one of the dangers of AI, is that it’s really inconsistent. And one of the things I really like when I think about emails and brands is I love it when a brand has a kind of signature way of communicating what they’re doing. And that’s one of the things that will have me opening up every single email, is a kind of understanding of, like, oh, well, I know her emails are always, I don’t know, inspiring or activating or have really useful tips on, like, I know this that I could buy or, like, they always share good tips on podcasts to listen to. And there’s something about or maybe just a really nice writing style, but there’s something in there that I want to kind of look at, and I think that’s more and more relevant, particularly with the raise, Rise of AI. Raise of, I’m always getting that the wrong way. On the rise of AI is that, yes, we can all now kind of write emails that people want to read, because it can, you know, be broken down into kind of, you know, all the kind of, like copywriting roles that a lot of people tend to ignore. They’re harder to ignore now, if you kind of put it through an AI filter first before sticking it up, but in terms of, kind of having that awareness of, like brand messaging and signature styles and like what it is someone wants on the other side, AI can’t do that right?

24:41

Exactly. It’s so true exactly. I recently had a brand voice and messaging guide written up for my company, and it was, it’s so cool to see like it out of my head and written down. How do we communicate? How do we communicate across everything? Email? Or social media, you know, with clients, just via client communication. And it’s so true. It’s that like, familiar brand, voice and style, that creates that trust, and also that, I want to say, like, reliability and consistency. And it’s that consistency, consistency. That makes people feel like, oh, their emails are always good. I’m going to open up their emails. Or, you know, their offers are always good, or their webinars are always good. I’m going to sign up for that. I’m going to buy that. You know, yeah, yeah.

25:33

That makes sense. Really important. So I’m recognizing I started this show, teasing the kind of theme of making money with email. And I know we’ve kind of dived into different themes of using AI and regularity, but I would love to kind of be, yeah, talk really specifically to if anyone’s listening and thinking making money with email. I’ve heard that so many times, and I’m not seeing a penny right now. You know, are there? Like, could you give me two to three pointers you’d give to somebody who currently isn’t seeing success? You know, if they’re doing the whole I’m sending the emails like, going out at least once a week, but you know, I’m not seeing the conversion rate I’d like to see on them. What two or three tips would you give them?

26:16

The first thing I would say is, is your audience like, does your audience match the offers that you’re putting out first of all? And I know that sounds really simple, but I think often we go through so many like changes and pivots and things in our business that sometimes we miss that. Oh, okay, actually, maybe my subscribers like their interests haven’t changed, but what I’m doing has changed, and now maybe their interests and what I’m doing now aren’t aligned anymore. That could be one thing. And the second thing is, one of the biggest issues I see, and I’ve had this issue with my own email list, is that your list will stagnate if you don’t make list growth a priority. So if you’re just selling the same things over and over again to the same list, if you’re launching and relaunching and relaunching after a few launches, the people on your list have already they’re launched out. They have already decided, like, the people who are going to join have joined. People who are going to buy have already bought, and now it’s a case of, well, the other people on the list don’t want this specific thing. Yeah, it’s so important to make sure that you’re getting new people constantly, that you’re constantly getting new subscribers.

27:38

Caucasus, you’re saying that, right? Yeah, I love that you’re saying that, because I think it’s really interesting that I feel like there are some people in this world who imagine at some point their entire mailing list is going to buy from them. It’s just not insane how it works, right? Yeah, no, no, that’s definitely not how it works. And I even I’m at the stage now where I just feel like I’ve hit my limit in terms of organic email growth, and the next step has to be paid ads at this point, because you just you hit a ceiling with organic growth for your subscribers, where you actually need something more. And it’s so funny, because as soon as you like, open your kind of mind up to that. Because I wasn’t open to paid ads for a long time, I started realizing, and obviously I work with these people, these coaches, course, creators, service providers, who all use ads as soon as they are able to afford to invest in ads to get new subscribers. That’s the biggest way that subscribers are coming in to that, you know, coming through to that list?

28:38

Yeah, no, I Yeah. I want to reflect it is such a game changer. Like I launched a webinar last February, and it was called, like, how to create a gold standard group program. And at the time, I would usually validate things organically, but I must have had a really fatigued audience at that stage, because just nobody was picking it up. I had like, three people sign up, which was just obscene, just rubbish. And so I kind of almost started to question whether there was a demand for a webinar like that. But as soon as I switched on the ads, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, you know, like the email is filling up, and then I actually did the launch, and it converted beautifully, like that was my first ever cohort of my now signature accelerator. And if I’d not run those ads, I might have doubted that as a funnel. I might have assumed that funnel didn’t work. So you’re so right. Like advertising, people can feel a lot of resistance to it. It’s amazing. People throw money at software, at mentors, at various things, but they will really hesitate when it comes to advertising. And anyone who is listening, who’s thinking about this, I just want to, like, drop in my penny’s worth here that, like, you really don’t need to spend a huge amount. You can spend as little as five to 10 pounds a day, and be growing your list and gradually reinvesting, you know, like, I’ve got a low ticket offer where I essentially reinvest any sales I make from that low ticket offer back into advertising. And that, that’s a. Really great formula. But anyway, so that was point number two, and I interrupted you before point number three, oh my gosh. I don’t know if I remember point number three. I love, I love what you just said about only having to spend five or 10, you know, pounds a day on it. And I’m like, oh, okay, good to know that works.

30:19

Good. Really works. It really, really works. Yeah. And then I think, Oh, wait, okay, remind me what the question was. Again. So pointers for anyone who’s not making money with their emails, and so you reference that, you know, is it the right offer for the people on your list? Is your list growing? Which I’m so like, I say I’m so happy you touched on that, because I just think people will spend ages being like, it’s the name of my offer. It’s this, it’s that, and it’s like, no, you just need volume. So yes, anyway, exactly. Mike, back over to you. Well, the other thing is that, well, I do, I do email strategy console calls. So like, one hour strategy calls, so I get to peek into, like the emails of a lot of businesses, and what I have found is that some businesses, some people, just forget to actually put a call to action and put the offer in front of their subscribers, in all seriousness, so they are so consumed by the need to provide value, which, yes, we want to provide value, we do, but we also want to sell. And you’re not going to sell if you don’t put your offer in front of your subscribers and say, Hey, I have this thing specifically. Here’s how it’s going to help you. Here’s how you can buy it and give me your money. And so a lot of business owners, a lot of businesses, a lot of emails, don’t actually do that. And so when I’m auditing emails, the first thing I do is I’m like, These emails are fantastic. I’ve learned so much from you, but I also I still have no idea how to buy anything.

32:01

Yeah, yeah. No, I can really believe that. And funnily enough, well, not even funnily enough, because obviously you’re the queen of emails. So when I received one of your one of your emails, I looked at your signature where you kind of listed out the three or four different ways that you support people, I think, going from freebies all the way through to your paid offers, but kind of contextualizing them, kind of saying, if you’re looking for this, then this is a thing. And if you are, and I was like, it’s such a simple thing to do, but so effective, because so often I become kind of, I just stop seeing the same CTAs that are the bottom of various people’s emails, because there’s nothing. There’s no kind of reason to dive in on nothing that’s making it easy to dive in while you just adding that little sentence next to the invitation just was enough for me to go, oh yeah, no, I am that person. Maybe I should look into that. And it just makes such a big difference. I often find myself saying to my clients, you know, make it easy for people. Don’t have them having to guess or assume, might this be good for them, or might this be the right time? Like, tell them all those pieces, yeah, yeah. And actually, the first time someone clicks on one of those, if it’s one of my digital products, they get entered into an evergreen sequence, yes. And so that’s how my evergreen funnels work. And so that’s how I make my kind of passive income from digital products. Oh, my goodness. Why didn’t we dive into this at the beginning, I didn’t know you’d gone into evergreen. I think I thought I saw you sharing on social that you hadn’t gone into Evergreen. And we’re regretting that I didn’t know you had funnels. Tell me a bit more.

33:35

Okay. Well, what I was regretting was I did the Evergreen funnels. They were working, but previously, all my digital products were for a specific audience, so they were only for copywriters. And then I launched my podcast, which is for all kind of business, just business owners full stop. And then it felt like this really weird. And this is what I mean when I say, like, you know, you change how you do something in your business, and it kind of changes how you want to speak to your audience, and whether this your subscribers are still the right, you know, kind of people and and it just made it really difficult, because I was like, well, now I have this, this great podcast, but when I try to sell my digital products, I’m like, if you’re a copywriter, when actually, yeah, maybe half the audiences and the other half is not. And so I was like, Okay, I need to, like, I need to redo my offers, because they’re all actually applicable to non copywriters too. But that meant changing the changing the actual offer, like re recording the stuff, and then also, you know, relaunching it and repositioning it as well, and changing how everyone thinks about my offers and what I offer. And so I switched off the Evergreen funnels to redo this. And then I got pregnant, and then now going on maternity leave, and I was like, that was the worst time for me to turn it all off. I could have really done with it still just, you know, running because it was working, like I’d be sitting watching Netflix and have a one. $1,300, payment come through because somebody clicked on the PS and the email that was like, Hey, If this is you and you’re struggling with this, check out this. Then they’d click on it and be entered into my evergreen funnel, and they’d be going through that evergreen funnel for a week, unless they opted out of the emails. And then ideally, of course, they buy it. And people were buying. So I was a bit frustrated by that, but I have faith in the fact that my plan is a good plan. It’s just been delayed a little bit. I’m gonna have to have the baby first and then come back and then finish off the plan. So I think this is another thing that’s really changed with email, is that audiences, subscribers, expect personalization. I’ll explain what personalization is in a second, but it’s not like a conscious expectation where they’re like I expect personalization. It’s that they will recognize when your emails are not personalized to them. So most people assume that personalization means using the first name merge tag, so you’re saying hi Polly in your emails. It’s so much more than that. Personalization is about creating an experience, an email experience, that is personalized to individual subscribers based on what you know about them. So first of all, in order to know anything about them, you need to have some kind of segmentation strategy where you’re trying to figure out who are these people, or what do they need, or what are they struggling with, or what are they interested in, or what are their goals, or how can I help them best? Whatever it is, you found a way to find out something about them and that bit, and then based on that information, you’re sending them relevant emails. So it could be as basic as for me, my subscribers are made up of either copywriters who are like, following just my business and want to just see, like, what I’m up to in business. Maybe they want to learn from me, like, how to how to do business. They’re interested in maybe one of my business courses. But then, of course, I have the non copywriters who want to learn stuff about email, email copywriting, email strategy, who maybe want to hire me in the future, or book a strategy call or that kind of thing.

So two very different audiences who want to do very different things from me, who are interested in different things. And so the way that I create personalization for them is by first of all, figuring out who is who, so through segmentation. So I know the copywriters from the non copywriters, because I have an additional question on my opt in form, which kit formally Convert Kit lets you do, which is fantastic. So when they actually sign up to my lead magnet, I know. I ask for their name, I ask for their email address, and I ask for basically what they do, so I know if they’re a copywriter or non copywriter, and then they get specific emails based on who they are. So they’ll get a welcome sequence, which is an automated set of emails that new subscribers get. And they’re in that welcome sequence for, I want to say eight or nine days, but depending on whether you’re a copywriter or a non copywriter, you’ll get a different version of the welcome sequence. So for example, yeah. So for example, the copywriters in the welcome sequence will get an extra email that tells them about me being featured in this copywriting book by a very well respected kind of copywriting educational company that they’ll really respect and will immediately show them that, like, I have some credibility and have some authority, whereas the non copywriters don’t know these people. They don’t know the book, they don’t know the author, they don’t care. It means nothing to them. So they don’t want, they don’t need to know that, and they don’t want to know that, but it’s a big deal for the copywriters, so they get that extra email. And then, for example, the work with me. Email is different. So the copywriters will get a work with me that’s more coaching related, but the non copywriters will get a work with me email that’s, here’s how to hire my email agency, and here’s how to get us to do you know, all your email strategy and copy for you. And so that’s the example of personalization that I want to give is actually personalizing the experience, the email experience, based on what you know about the subscriber as an individual. And then you can go even deeper. So for example, the fact that my evergreen funnels are trigger based, and they’re behavior based, they’re based on somebody actually clicking on something and showing me that they’re interested in a thing. So now I’m personalizing their email experience, because Polly’s clicked on the link, but Holly, Holly hasn’t, so Holly continues down one email experience, but Polly’s email experience has now changed because she clicked on the link in the PS, and now she’s gone down an evergreen funnel that basically encourages that interest and ideally gets her to the end of the funnel where she buys the thing that she’s specifically interested in because she has a specific goal or a specific problem. So the issue is that. Right? The subscriber won’t know that you’ve personalized the experience for them. They don’t know that they’ve gone down a different route or a different path. But what they do know is when you don’t personalize their email experience. So if you’re just sending like one general blast to the entire list, and you never consider those, like, different subtleties between your audience, what happens is people start getting emails that are irrelevant to them, yeah, that don’t matter to them, that, you know, you’re asking them to do a thing, and they’re like, Well, I don’t care about this, or this wasn’t meant for me. Or, you know, why is she telling me to buy this book for copywriters when I’m not a copywriter? And so what do they do? They check out, they stop opening they unsubscribe. They might even report you a spam. Yeah, emails are so irrelevant, and so that’s what I mean when I say they won’t notice when you personalize, they will appreciate it, and it’ll keep them on your list, and it will make them buy from you. But they, they certainly will notice when you don’t personalize. And I think it’s, it’s a must now it was, like, it was, it used to be a nice to have, like, you’re really, you know, your email strategy is really sophisticated if you’re using personalization, but at this point, it’s a must have if you want your emails to make you money.

41:17

Yeah. I mean, we’re seeing it across the board in so many other kind of areas in our lives that it’s kind of become like, you say, the norm and the expectation. So if it’s not happening, I also wanted to reflect, I love that you work with copywriters, and then, more broadly, with coaches, like I’ve worked with clients in the past who’ve said to me, oh my goodness, so many peers are like, just following my content and looking at what I’m doing and kind of getting annoyed. And I’m like, do you not? You know, I’m off night. There could be an opportunity here, you know, like, um, yeah. One of my clients is a nutritional therapist, and she now, like, one of her most profitable offers is working with peers who wanted the kind of her super niche expertise, you know, training. So there is such an opportunity there. And like you say when you can then simplify things by having those separate email sequences. Because other, also, the other thing I hear people saying is like, well, then I need two separate businesses. And I’m like, No, this is where email segmentation really kind of comes into its own. And obviously, like in your case, where you solve a clear and valuable problem, and obviously also why evergreen suits you so well? Because, again, live launching in the context of helping people with emails, it cannot make sense in some contexts. But there’s also the whole element of, if someone needs help with emails now they need help now. They’re not going to wait till September, or whenever it is that the next launch push is happening. So I love that evergreens work, yes. And actually that was one of the reasons I changed, because I was really frustrated with and it was only it was my fault, but I was really frustrated that people would come to me and say, hey, you know, really interested in your thing. When is it next? Launching? And I tell them, and but that they have the problem now, and they needed a fix now. And so they’d go and buy from someone else. Yeah, like, Damn, it’s really frustrating. And so, yeah, and this is the thing. It’s email is about, you know, getting the right emails to the right people at the right time. And so if you can get all those three the right email to the right people at the right time, then you’ve, you’ve nailed it.

43:19

I love that. And I feel like it’s a really nice, neat, tidy way to kind of wrap up this delicious conversation. So if anyone’s listening to you and thinking, I need I know you are about to go off and have a baby, but I’m also a you’ve got your team supporting while you’re away. So if anyone’s listening and thinking, how do I learn more from this wonderful beacon of knowledge, where can they find you? And you know, do you have any kind of entry things they can dive into to learn more about the amazing work you do?

43:47

Yeah, absolutely. So yes, my email agency is going to continue running. We have an amazing team of email strategists and copywriters so you can find out more about how to work with us, for us to do your emails, and also sales pages. We do sales pages too, because it makes sense at emancopyco.com and you can just go to the work with me pages and have a look there and get in contact through there. But if you want to get, I guess, either on my email list or you just really want to know more about how you can do email better, I have a great email quiz at emancopyco.com/quiz.

44:24

I did it. Oh, it’s good. Yeah, thank you. Well, this quiz is called discover your perfect newsletter style. And the reason I created it is because I’m convinced that people struggle to stay consistent with their newsletter, to write good emails, because they’re trying to do email in a way that doesn’t suit them, that doesn’t suit their personality or their goals, and they’re trying to do email in a way that they’ve been taught to do email. But actually, there are so many different ways to do a newsletter, to write a newsletter, and so I have come up with this way. Well, I analyzed hundreds of emails. Styles, and then came up with eight different newsletter styles. And basically this quiz will help you figure out what the right newsletter style is for you, so that we can make your your newsletter you know, easier to write, more fun to write, and also more profitable too. So once you figure out what your newsletter style is, you’ll also get a video that walks you through of that walks you through real life examples of these newsletter styles out in the world, so you can see how all the people are doing it, and get inspiration about how you can do yours as well. So if that sounds interesting, head over to emancopy co.com/quiz, and take the quiz amazing. And the link for the quiz will be below, as well your amazing podcast mistakes that made me we’ve not really touched on it, but it is a fabulous podcast, so that’ll be linked below, as well as a link to Eman website. So it’s all there. Just dive down into it. Thank you so much for your time today. Really, really enjoyed me.

45:54

Thank you, Polly, thank you.

45:57

Well. I hope you found that conversation illuminating, whether you already have a funnel, or whether you’re thinking about building a funnel, thinking about ways to personalize the experience is going to make all the difference to your results. And I want to say, if you haven’t already enthusiastically dived into the show notes to give a man a follow and see what it is that she’s doing, I highly encourage you to do so. Eman is not just somebody I’ve invited on this podcast. She is somebody I have hired in the past, and I will say that through the funnel she supported me to build both with email sequences and with sales page. That is how we hit our first consistent 30k months. So she is just phenomenal. So anyway, I will be back in your ears next week, and I will be sharing with you a solo episode where I will be supporting you with everyday sales systems and what we’re doing. I wanted to share with you feet on the ground kind of footage, obviously recorded about what we’re doing with my funnels currently, to up level them before we do a bigger push with our marketing for the rest of 2025 so I’m really looking forward to sharing those updates with you, and you’ll be able to take a little nosy by then into what those funnel updates also look like too, to see how you can take the learnings that I’ve taken from mine and the optimizations that I’m using for mine so that you can improve your own Sales funnels. It’s going to be a juicy one.