Bigger isn’t always better! In this episode, the guys go over the best techniques to niche down your email list. The size of your email list and open rates don’t matter if those people aren’t buying! The guys go over on how to turn those open rates into conversion rates.

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This is a direct transcript. Please forgive any grammar or spelling errors.

Jason: Having a thousand people, a thousand raving fans, or a thousand of the right people on your list can oftentimes make you more money than if you have a hundred thousand people of, eh, you know, so, so, uh, people on your list.

Kevin: You know, you got to build up that relationship with your list before you could just jump in and just think that they’re all going to just suddenly start converting.

Jason: If people aren’t buying from you, they’re costing you money.

Jen: You’re listening to e-commerce uncensored with Kevin Manel and Jason Caruso.

Hey everyone. And thanks for joining us. On another episode of e-commerce uncensored. My name is Kevin Manila and I’m here with

Jason: Jason Caruso.

Kevin: Before we get started today, Jason, I want to mention our email service that we started up a couple of weeks ago. If you’re struggling with emails, you’re not seeing the revenue coming in.

Like we, like we talk about all the time and you need some help with your flows, with your campaigns, engaging your list, which is something we’re going to talk about today. Then text the word, email to 8 4 4 6 4 3 0 7 4 5. You’ll give us some more information about your business and what platforms you’re using and things like that.
And we’ll see if we can, uh, we can help you out. And if we’re a good fit

Jason: That’s right, Kevin. So Kevin, I am, uh, been in I’ve lately, joined a lot of Facebook groups, uh, about course creation, right? Like we have a journal of wildlife photography, which is, is a subscription business. We sell a course in that business.

We have some other courses, um, and I’m always trying to get a pulse on what people are struggling with. And something that I’m seeing a lot is, is relates to like email lists, your email list. Right. And a lot of people have been sucked into. Sort of the, uh, the vanity stuff, right? Like, oh my God. Like how many people do you have on your list or, oh my God, how many? What’s your open rate and what’s your click-through rate? And like, I see this all day over and over and over again as matters.

Kevin: Jason, how can, you know, in this respect,

Jason: The truth is size does not matter. That’s right.

Kevin: In fact, yeah,

Jason: That is, that is, that is a very, very good, um, good, good thing for me. Um, but that being said, you know, I, I I’ve recently, I was listening to something from Ryan Lee, who I’m on his email list.

He’s not an e-com, but he’s like an emailer. And, um, he, he had some money on there. He’s he’s promoting this product and the guy said, look, 4% of everybody who sees your stuff will join your company.

Kevin: And then sign up for your list.

Jason: No, no, just join your community. Like they’ll follow you on Facebook. They’ll they’ll just join your, your, your ecosystem.

Doesn’t matter how it doesn’t matter if it’s email, doesn’t matter if it’s liking you on Facebook or interacting or engaging. It’s just 4% of those people who see you. We’ll interact in some way with you we’ll join you in some way. And then 4% of those people will buy from you. Okay. So if we take those numbers and we, and we kinda like apply it to email, it’s pretty easy to see that most people on your list are not going to buy.

Kevin: Right. Becomes like, it becomes like a numbers game. And though, when you talk about 4%, it gets kind of like, I’m discouraging. You’re like only 4%. Like that’s going to be tough. Like, how am I going to make that work?

Jason: Right. But, but, and that’s where people think like, okay, let’s build a gigantic list. And 4% of that gigantic list, there’s a lot.

So if you have a hundred thousand people on your list, you send out an email and 4% of those people. Well, it’s actually 4% of the 4% of those people by. Right. That could be a big number with a big list. The problem is that if you don’t have the right people on your list, right, even if you have 100,000 people that 4% of 4%, or that 4% kind of.
It can go to nothing.

Kevin: So what you’re saying is people, when they, when they see that all they’re doing is like, they’re going to do whatever they can to just get as many people as they can on their email lists, because then those numbers will work out.

Jason: Right. And, and, you know, in some respects, that is true.

If you have a million people on there and 1% of those people on your list, if you have a million people on your list and 1% of those people by, yeah, it’s a big number, but most people don’t have a million people on. Right. And most people, um, even like even our businesses, I mean, like we have a hundred thousand or 80,000 or 70, whatever it is right now.
Um, and then our other businesses may only have like 10,000 or 5,000 or 20,000 or whatever. Um, but what’s interesting is, and I don’t know if this is like a market condition. If this is something that’s sort of just happening over time.
People are not focusing enough on the quality of the list, right? Everybody wants the vanity number. Everybody wants the hundred thousand person list. Everybody wants the 20 and 50% open rates and, and all these things. But the truth of the matter is if you don’t have a quality list, then all those numbers.
Really are meaningless.

Kevin: Yeah. I’m a hundred percent guilty of falling into this trap taste. And I do it all the time. Like even when we meet new people and we look at their, we, you know, we kinda look at their email lists and we see these big numbers. We’re like, oh, there’s so much potential here when there is, but it’s a little bit, you know, you’ve got to build up that relationship with your list before you can just jump in and just think that they’re all going to just suddenly start converting well that,

Jason: and also like if you’re selling basketballs and you got a bunch of hockey players on your list, Or maybe, I mean, we have a client right now who sells baby stuff and, you know, she only sells stuff from like zero to two years old. So if like you have a list of people who have three-year-olds or five-year-olds, it may not work as well. So you have to understand your list too. And, and, but I guess, I guess my point in this is, is this having a thousand people. A thousand raving fans or a thousand of the right people on your list can oftentimes make you more money than if you have a hundred thousand people of, eh, you know, so-so, uh, people on your list.

Right. And, and, and I think that’s what the point is, is that, you know, w we’re we were running some Facebook ads for our webinar for, for one of the courses we have. And you were talking a lot about, oh, it’s costing us $10 to get people to see the webinar, but what is that person that $10 person worth later.

Kevin: Right. And I think that’s, that’s the hardest part to come, come to grips with is like, you have to see that through before you can really understand what that number means and you know, it starts with how you. Like, how are you attracting that person? And what is your messaging like at the very beginning of their whole journey through that?You know, I think he, you got to think about that. Like are, like you said earlier, that’s an, I know it’s an extreme example, but. If you sell basketballs and then like having a lead magnet, this folks have focused on golf or something like that, just so you can build up your list, be like, oh, they’re they’re athletes.

Jason: They play, they play a sport. So maybe down the line at some point they’ll buy my basketballs. So I think it’s really important to look at that starting point of how you’re attracting the right person. I remember, I remember years ago when we first started working together and we. We wanted to build our list and we figured we just buy, we just collect a bunch of people who, uh, were entrepreneurs or something like that.

Kevin: And I did that magic trick. Remember that stupid magic trick. That was one of like the first campaigns we ran each other for this podcast. And I did a silly magic trick with a little bit of marketing messaging. We were getting a ton of people like clicking through, but like, it was just like they were cooking through for no reason.

So you have to look at that and be like, well, these people aren’t interested in what I’m selling. It’s just, they’re just interested in like the content I’m maybe putting out at that time.

Jason: Yeah. And, and, and also like you got to like really be aware of, you know, I’m thinking about, we just spoke to. You know, last week and, and this is something that we haven’t really talked much about, but we spoke to a prospect last week who texted us through, uh, this podcast.

And the company is by all accounts, a pretty well-known known company. They, they sponsor, uh, uh, some big sports events. Um, but their online presence isn’t as big as let’s just say their offline presence. Right. Right. And you have to sometimes think about those things because if you’re at a sporting event and there, and your product is literally the only product there and people buy it.
Right. And then you collect their email addresses from that event. Right. And you put them into your, uh, your, your, your email program or platform, sorry. And you start selling or trying to sell to them. Well, even though they bought your product, even though they consumed your pot product, It doesn’t necessarily mean it was even their choice to do it. Right, right. Because it was the only option. So those people, although they did consume your product, although they did use your product, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re interested in your product. Right. So you have to understand those things and you have to be able to differentiate that you have to be able to say like, look, how did I build this list?
Also? You have to remember. It changes like things change over time. It’s not the market conditions are not always the same. For example, let’s take toilet paper back during COVID. It was really easy to sell toilet paper. Well, try selling toilet paper to those same people.

Kevin: Today. And I, I think even though your, your point about collecting email, just that the event is a good strategy to get people on your list, to get people who have tried your product to build that up.

I think it it’s a matter of. You know, evaluating those people that come in that way. Right. And, and speaking, grading them separately. Like those are the people I got from that event over there. I need to speak to them about, you know, events and maybe get them to go to another event or, or whatever it may be.
But that part of the journey is also important. And then, you know, as you evaluate that, you can see how things work and why they, you know, are they engaging with your list? Are they making. Uh, you know, adding things to the cart and not buying out, are they getting to that point and evaluating whether or not that was a good strategy to begin with?And then you can, you know, if, if it’s not, you could start filtering some of those people out, or you could start to communicate with them a little bit differently, but keeping them engaged in building up that relationship is really important too.

Jason: You know, one thing I was thinking about Kevin the other day, or visit today, or I don’t remember what.

I was thinking about how back in the day, no one wanted to delete or purge any part of their list. Right? Like it was such a coveted thing. They spent money to get people on their list. I think today, It makes a lot more sense to purge your list aside from like costs going up. Um, if people aren’t buying from you, they’re costing you money.
Now, if you are a big, if, if you, if you are a big company that has a lot of money to just waste, it’s a different story. We’re not, you’re, you’re a different person. You’re a different customer because. Coca-Cola spends millions of dollars on marketing that doesn’t bring in a return. So if you’re Coca-Cola, which my guess is that you’re not, but if you are, then yes, you could spend millions of millions of dollars on just getting the name out there.
But if you’re looking for a return, if you’re a small business, like we like we own, I think there is becoming more and more. There’s an increasingly better. For letting people go if they’re not

Kevin: buying. Yeah. I think that’s something that we need to do to, I mean, we we’ve, we’ve held onto our list ourselves and I think it’s something that we need to see for our, you know, online magazine.

We’ve gotten so many people in we’ve built our list so many different ways. It’s time to start, uh, you know, analyzing how the, what those people are doing now. And like even our, even our giveaway, you know, even though that had helped our revenue. We built up our lists a lot through our giveaways and things like that.
We started to learn that maybe they weren’t the best people. They were looking for giveaways. They weren’t really interested in a, in a, in a long-term consumer relationship with us. So you gotta really like, just come to grips with the fact that some people are just like, you know, freeloaders and, and it was just wasting your money pretty much.

Jason: And keeping that list healthy does a lot of good things for you. If your open rates go up. Right. Like your click-throughs go up, you know, if you’re, if, if the list is nice and clean of only people who are supposed to be there, you’ll get better results. You’ll see, you know, I always laugh at people when they’re like, well, I only have a like 10% open rate.

Like, okay, well, what if you said. The people who have opened up an email from you over the past 90 days, and you sent them an email. I promise you the open rate would be much higher. Yeah. Right.

Kevin: It’s just a matter of, and it’s a numbers game too, because we did it with this one of our new clients. Right.

It’s like, We did exactly what you said. I think it was over Memorial day. It was like 180 days open and the open rates were like 40%. And then the rest of the list who haven’t opened, the open rates were like 1%. Right. So what does it really matter? Right. You’re comparing 40% to 1%. So more people are seeing it on the other side anyway.
So what’s the difference. Get rid of them. Let them go. Figuring out why they’re on your list to begin with and just kind of filter them out.

Jason: Yeah. I mean, like, I, I see a lot of people doing this. We have not done this, but I’ve seen people like send you an email and say, look, I’m going to, I’m going to remove you from my list.

You don’t seem like you’re interested reply to this email if you want to stay on it. Right. So, I mean, there’s, there are ways, but I think the, the overarching, uh, message is that look. A clean list, a list of people who should be on your list, a list of people who are your quote, unquote dream client or customer.
That’s how you should be building your list. A lot of people these days are talking about building a list of buyers and it’s because buyers tend to buy and people who aren’t buyers tend to drag. So, you know, I could tell, or we could tell you guys firsthand that the size of a list is not indicative of the amount of money.
You’re going to make, so stop building your list just for the vanity number, build it with people who are going to buy. And if they don’t buy over X amount of time for us, if somebody doesn’t open in, I would say six months, Kev, we usually say, you know what, they’re just not the right person. Um, so, but, but it’s so important because we get to see a lot of people’s emails.
Okay. Uh, I can tell you that. I see a lot of people that have built lists of people that are just people.

Kevin: Yeah. And I wanted to mention one last thing too, about that as like you, do you talk about building lists of buyers, right. And I think that can start and we it’s become more and more apparent that, um, you know, when you’re running Facebook ads and you.

To find a buyer to use your objectives properly in Facebook and your Facebook ads. So if you want to find a buyer use purchase conversions, if you want to build your list to, you know, a huge list, you can use those, you know, those lead conversions, which will build the list cheaper, but not necessarily.
Get that buyer on your list and that that’s becoming clearer and clearer to me use Facebook’s algorithm. They know who’s buying, they know who’s interacting with e-commerce businesses who are actually buying online and they’ll help you bring in the right type of person.

Jason: Yeah. I mean, that’s, that’s obviously a little, that’s like granular and that’s actually a strategy, but that’s.

Definitely something that we have been doing more and more of like ignoring people that don’t buy and just trying to build it with people that do buy your cost of acquisition. In that case, we’ll definitely go up, but it’ll be a better person.

Kevin: Oh, it’s per email will go up for sure. When you use that type of conversion Facebook ads.

Jason: Right. And you know, these, you know, uh, you know, just getting people on your list. A a small sale. I don’t mean like a 50% off sale. I mean, like selling them something like a low, lower price point could actually be like a really good way to kill two birds with one stone. Right? Like you get someone who is actually buying on your list

Kevin: after they buy. Right. Exactly.

Jason: So it’s really important. I mean, I, I sometimes give, we talk about things on here. I think our home runs and they’re not. And then like, we talk about things that like, I feel like, uh, aren’t home runs and they, they tend to be home runs in this, in this case. I think that. Not enough. People are talking about this.

I think a lot of people are talking about the vanity numbers. I think a lot of people learn other people in, by saying I got a million people on my list. Like I I’m seeing it in these groups all day. People are talking about, oh my God, I got, I just hit a thousand people on my list. Like, uh, who gives a shit?
Like how many sales have you got? That’s all I care about. How many sales have you got? None. You’re not doing

Kevin: it right, right on, man. Agreed. All right, cool. Uh, once again, you guys looking for help with your email campaigns, your flows, your overall email strategy. Send us a text, text the word, email to 8 4 4 6 4 3 0 7 4 5.

We’ll get back to you. We’ll learn a little bit more about you and we’ll see if we can, uh, we can fit in with your company. Thank you guys so much for listening as always, you can check us out at e-commerce uncensored.com. And we’ll talk to you guys real soon.

Jason: later.

 

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