E355 - Crafting effective email marketing strategies for small businesses: Best practices from an expert | with Scott Hartley

The One Big Tip Podcast with Jeff Mendelson

Serial entrepreneur and Founder of MasterPlan4Success, Scott Hartley built his first company into a multi-six-figure business from scratch. Taking his knowledge and experience in 2017, Scott decided to teach other small business owners about marketing strategies, systems, automation, and - in particular, optimizing their email deliverability to maximize their profits. He has helped a wide variety of clients, including attorneys, IT consultants, financial advisors, psychologists, community organizations, and many others to make more money, get them to win, and keep more customers. Scott has shared the virtual stage with experts like Grant Cardone, Loral Langemeier, Kim Walsh Phillips, David Milton, and many more.

A small IT company in rural southwestern Indiana was the starting point for Scott. Initially, friends and family reached out to him for computer assistance, which eventually led to him establishing a business. Despite having limited knowledge about running a business, he persevered and built it into a multi-six-figure company. However, he started feeling burnt out with technology and discovered a passion for marketing, which led him to work with small business owners from around the country. Email marketing caught his attention, and he noticed the flaws in the way small business owners executed their email campaigns. He dove into it and discovered four fundamentals of email marketing that he now teaches others to help them succeed.

Scott advises small business owners on effective email marketing strategies. He emphasizes the importance of monitoring engagement metrics, such as open and click-through rates, to ensure that more emails get delivered. He cautions against using bought or cold email lists and recommends segmenting your audience based on their interests. For example, if you have dog and cat lovers on your list, sending dog-related content to cat lovers will hurt engagement. By sending relevant content to engaged subscribers, mailbox providers like Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo will prioritize your emails and land them in the inbox.

Many YouTube videos discuss different techniques for warming up email boxes, including technical aspects like SPF and DMC alignment. Scott recommends avoiding cold emails, as they can quickly damage the sender's reputation and negatively affect email deliverability. He advises clients to find alternative methods for building their email lists, such as social media or direct mail. Regarding selecting an email service provider (ESP) like MailChimp or Active Campaign, he suggests starting with one of these platforms early on, even with a small list of people, for the benefits of automation and engagement metric tracking.

The increase in the list can come from a variety of things such as improving the subject lines, personalization, segmenting the list, sending more valuable content, and improving the overall design of the emails. Some companies also offer services to help with the creation of content, managing the list, and setting up advanced automation to streamline the process. However, it's important to note that email marketing is not a one-size-fits-all approach and what works for one company may not work for another. It's important to continually test and adjust your strategy to find what resonates best with your audience.

In this episode:

[02:00] Scott shares going from not knowing how to run a business to building a multi-6-figure-a-year business.

• Experiencing burnout with technology and discovered a passion for marketing.
• Dedicating himself to helping businesses increase their email deliverability.

[4:50] Monitoring email engagement to determine how audiences interact with content.

• Open rates and click-throughs are crucial metrics.
• Understand how many subscribers regularly open your emails to help mailbox providers determine the email's fate.

[8:00] Cold emailing can harm email reputation, harming the sender's reputation.

• It's better to find alternative methods, like social media or direct mail.
• Build a relationship with subscribers by providing valuable content, and sharing actionable and engaging content through storytelling.

[11:00] Small business owners should see their email list as people, not numbers.

• Focus on composing emails that sound like you're talking to a friend.
• Building a relationship should be the priority in email marketing as it establishes trust and adds value.

[13:50] Email marketing through consulting, copywriting, and automation setup.

• Understanding email engagement metrics and technical aspects is crucial.
• Maximizing your email marketing potential from numbers to authentication.
• Helping to get emails opened with subject line templates and craft copy to get recipients to take the desired action.