Podcast appearances and mentions of val geisler

Soooo there's good news and bad news about improving your CRO ahead of Black Friday. Bad news? The best time to start was right after BFCM last year. Good news? It's not too late to pull off some quick wins that'll give your store a serious boost ahead of the holiday season. Luckily, CRO expert, Kanika Misra, is breaking it all down on this episode of Ecommerce Marketing School with Val Geisler.  Follow Val on TwitterFollow Kanika on TwitterTry Privy for FREECheck out the Triple Whale Network

Val Geisler is a retention specialist and she's been around the block working for SAS companies and eCommerce as well.  She's even gone ESP side and done great work for Convert Kit and Klaviyo.  Now she's helping mothers by promoting a better breast milk alternative at ByHeart.  I had such an enjoyable conversation with Val, and I think you'll really enjoy listening to us.   Some of my favorite lessons that came out. Talk to your customers Turn Retention into Acquisition  Send less email to make more money with Segmentation  Retention is finally cool 

Welcome back to Privy's Ecommerce Marketing School, now part of the Triple Whale Network! Meet your new host, Val Geisler. She's obsessed with email marketing and retention. Like really obsessed. And on this season of the show, she's chatting with 30 of the best ecommerce experts in the biz to share tips and tricks to help you grow your business. On this episode, she and Triple Whale's Lucas Walker tease what's coming and how you can get involved.Follow Val on TwitterTry Privy for FREECheck out the Triple Whale Network

In the third episode of Season Three, Eli chats with Val Geisler about all things retention. We chatted about how retention has changed over the last ten years, how to think about “fixing” retention in your first 30/60 days, thinking about retention across customer journey, and how community-building and retention go hand-in-hand. If you've not yet left a review for Down To Chat, please do so. It helps us get the podcast out to more folks.

Val Geisler is the Customer Advocacy Lead at Klaviyo, an email and sms marketing automation platform. On this episode of ITS, Ali interviews Val and Haven's Kitchen Senior Brand Manager, Maddie Kennedy all about email marketing. They discuss everything from "Why email?," To opt-ins, segmentation, flows, and what metrics really show brand love and community.Heritage Radio Network is a listener supported nonprofit podcast network. Support In The Sauce by becoming a member!In The Sauce is Powered by Simplecast.

In our fifth episode, Val Geisler, Customer Advocacy Lead @ Klaviyo, joins Stephanie and Matt and shares what customer advocacy means in e-commerce, why vibe matters -not the numbers and how to scale from one-on-one conversations.Season 1 is proudly sponsored by Postscript, a leading SMS platform for growing Shopify stores.Click HERE for your Postscript 30 Day Free Trial.Ask us a question, give us feedback, or keep the convo going on Twitter! @QueenDTC @MattLady @ConvoCommPod @HighKeyGeek_ @PostscriptIO

Today we're asking Val to take her marketing hat off and put her customer hat on. Here's what we talked about today: Not everything needs to be tracked as a customer we just want to be appreciated and seen/heard Val's daughter treats mail like most of us treat email... we assume its junk  The value of brands teaming up with other brands (friends)  Why Val is much bigger fan of gifts than offers  Why Val doesn't subscribe to a brand right away and what needs to be true for her to subscribe  We talk about how to literally evaluate your own brand through a new customer's eyes Exit your bubble to be your customer Brands mentioned in this episode: Rvitta  Book of the Month  Herschel  Lovevery  Three Ships  Mid-day Squares  Olipop Chewy  Run Gum 

Today's episode is an expert panel discussion from the Commerce Accel Conference. The session was hosted by Rosie Bailey, with an expert panel consisting of Ban Parr, Val Geisler, Dan McGaw and Meghann York.We all know that there have been seismic shifts in the marketing landscape. The iOS 14 update has made it difficult for ad platforms like Facebook to collect user data. The end result is that ads targeting is not as precise as it used to be. But it doesn't stop there, other policies like phasing out of cookies are going to further reduce targeting capabilities.We are now officially living in the world of owned audiences. If you don't own your audience data, it will become progressively harder to market effectively in the future. This starts with building your email lists and communities. Many might say if you don't have a list already then you've missed the bus. But that is not entirely true, you can use the upcoming holiday period to get started on your data collection strategy.In this episode, our expert panel discusses how marketing teams can actively and passively collect, process and use data to deliver personalized experiences to both customers and prospects. You will get to hear about best practices for personalisation and specific tips for the holiday period. This is a great episode for marketers and merchants alike.This event was sponsored by our good friends at: Juni - The financial companion that tracks returns on your entire business in one place. Measure all your ROI at juni.coEmarsys -The omnichannel customer engagement platform of choice for more than 1,500 companies worldwide. Do more at emarsys.comPostscript - Making SMS for eCommerce easy. Automate your SMS marketing at postscript.ioRecart -Sell more with FB Messenger Marketing. Reduce abandoned carts at recart.comOmnisend -Increase your sales not your workload. Take the shortcut to revenue growth at omnisend.com Bolt - Connecting retailers and millions of shoppers in a unified network. Your shoppers are one  click away -bolt.comBeProfit - Get all your ecommerce profits at a glance. Track all your expenses at beprofit.com-----------SPONSORS:This episode is brought to you by:Klaviyo This episode is brought to you by Klaviyo – a growth marketing platform that powers over 25,000 online businesses. Direct-to-Consumer brands like ColourPop, Huckberry, and Custom Ink rely on Klaviyo.Klaviyo helps you own customer experience and grow high-value customer relationships right from a shopper's first impression through to each subsequent purchase, Klaviyo understands every single customer interaction and empowers brands to create more personalized marketing moments.Find out more on klaviyo.com/2x.  RewindThis episode is brought to you by Rewind - the #1 Backup and Recovery App for Shopify and BigCommerce stores that powers over 80,000 online businesses.Direct-to-Consumer brands like Gymshark and MVMT Watches rely on Rewind.Cloud based ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce do not have automatic backup features. Rewind protects your store against human error, misbehaving apps, or collaborators gone bad with Automatic backups!For a free 30-day trial, Go to Rewind Backups, reach out to the Rewind team via chat or email and mention '2x ecommerce'GorgiasThis episode is brought to you by Gorgias, the leading helpdesk for Shopify, Magento and BigCommerce merchants. Gorgias combines all your communication channels including email, SMS, social media, livechat, and phone, into one platform.This saves your team hours per day & makes managing customer orders a breeze. It also integrates seamlessly with your existing tech stack, so you can access customer information and even edit, return, refund or create an order, right from your helpdesk.Go to Gorgias.com and mention 2x ecommerce podcast for two months free.CloudwaysCloudways is the hosting platform of choice for thousands of ecommerce merchants, SMBs, and agencies all around the globe. They offer a high-performing custom stack, top-notch security, the choice between 5 cloud solution providers, ease of scalability, affordable pricing plans, and so much more.Cloudways also offers support for all PHP-based applications like Magento, WooCommerce, WordPress, Laravel, and others.Experience an unbeatable managed cloud hosting experience with Cloudways today. For a $20 Free Hosting Credit use the Coupon code: **BOOSTMAG**

iOS 15 is here and it has completely changed how brands work with marketing and consumers. We are ushering in a new era of data privacy, where the consumers own their data, and brands have to earn the trust of consumers. Everything from email to Facebook Ads is changing but before you change your strategy, you need to understand what iOS 15 is, what's different, and how these changes will change the different marketing channels. Today's guest is Val Geisler who beyond being an email marketing extraordinaire, is the Customer Evangelist for Klavyio! In this episode: Val breaks down data privacy, iOS 14.5, and iOS 15 Learn how Klaviyo is helping brands with the iOS 15 change Val gives some email marketing 101 advice to help you excel Watch the video podcast on Youtube! You can get all of the show notes linked here. This show is brought to you by Good Studios. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/howtomarketyourdtcbrand/message

On this episode from the archives, email marketing strategist Val Geisler walks us through some practical emailing tips, her process for onboarding, and why she likens career progression to a spiral staircase.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, Jeremy sits down with Val Geisler, email expert and customer evangelist at Klaviyo to get her take on what the iOS 15 update means for email marketers. And it's not all bad! These changes are an opportunity to hone analytics that were never fully accurate to begin with, and to start relying on customer-focused metrics that rely on truly measuring engagement. Listen ahead for Val's tips on how to prepare for shifting your measuring tools, why getting your SMS program aligned with your email is crucial to a successful holiday season, and how to help your customers opt in to your communications. To connect with Val, follower her on twitter: https://twitter.com/lovevalgeisler To learn more about our team visit Messengermastermind.co To subscribe to our newsletter click https://bit.ly/2SY2MLy

Last month Apple announced some changes to the upcoming version of iOS 15, which removes access to data that brands are used to having. Today we're joined by our good friend Val Geisler, Customer Evangelist at Klaviyo, to break down what this means in more detail and how to shift your operations to customer-first marketing. Let's dig in!

Customer acquisition costs are more expensive than ever, so how can small brands acquire their first customers without spending big on paid traffic? Our guest today has a practical approach to that problem most brands can implement today.How can a brand get customers if they don't have a budget for ads?Why should brands invest in BFCM planning when it's so far off?What are big brands doing that small brands can replicate?Val Geisler is the Customer Evangelist at Klaviyo. Prior to joining the Klaviyo team, Val was an email marketing consultant for B2B and B2C brands. Because she's obsessed with improving how brands and customers connect, Val loves digging into the best ways to use different channels to make lasting connections. And memes. Val loves a good meme, too.Show LinksEpisode 223: Getting Customers for Life through EmailCurie DeodorantVal on Twitter: @lovevalgeislerHouse of WiseBlumKlaviyoSponsorsFree 30-day trial of Zipify OCU - (To get an unadvertised gift, email help@zipify.com and ask for the "Tech Nasty Bonus".Try Bold Product Upsell, free trialSave 20% on Turbo, a blazing fast Shopify theme - Use code KURT20 at checkoutImprove your shop's search engine ranking with Venntov SEO Meta ManagerNever miss an episodeSubscribe wherever you get your podcastsJoin Kurt's newsletterHelp the showAsk a question in The Unofficial Shopify Podcast Facebook GroupLeave a reviewSubscribe wherever you get your podcastsWhat's Kurt up to?See our recent work at EthercycleSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelApply to work with Kurt to grow your store.

Writing copy that converts has nothing to do with magically pulling the perfect words out of thin air. It’s about learning how to copy + paste. At least that’s what Val Geisler - email marketing conversion copywriter, strategist for B2C startups and Customer Evangelist at Klaviyo - has to say. Val has been a part of the eCommerce community for a long time and is a master at the art of conducting meaningful customer research that translates into copy that converts. Val joins us today to dive deep into email marketing for eCommerce brands, marketing automation, copywriting, and how you can use words to increase the perceived value of your brand. We also talk about how to improve your email flows, how you should be using SMS, and what it means to build your acquisition flywheel. If you want to learn how to set up email flows and automations, check out our Email Growth Guide and Intensive Course inside the Coalition.  Episode Highlights: 4:18 The easiest way to write copy that converts 8:27 How to conduct meaningful customer research 12:16 Val's new role at Klaviyo 21:40 The emails you absolutely need to do customer research for 26:13 Val’s approach to balancing qualitative and quantitative data 32:06 Klaviyo’s SMS product update  36:54 How do upgrade your flows with SMS 41:31 Ways you can optimize your abandoned cart 47:31 The power of marketing automation 52:00 How to design your customer acquisition flywheel 55:29 Val’s Email Marketing Hall of Fame Links and Resources: Val Geisler’s Website Klaviyo Rev.com Otter.ai Enjoy HQ The Coalition @a_brawn on Twitter Review or subscribe on iTunes

Hey everyone, this is part 2 of 3 on marketing email audits. Whether you're in-house or you're consulting and want to offer email audits as a service, our hope is that you can level up your email game.In the last episode, we covered research tips and questions you should ask yourself before the audit. In today's episode, we'll cover the actual audit and what to look for, tips and tactics. Next week, our last episode of the series will cover what email improvements to suggest and experiment with.Alright JT, let's get to it. There's three crucial things I want to make sure we cover today as part of any email audit.A theme that you'll hear throughout today's episode is timing your emails around your user's journey, and not selling too early or to users that aren't ready to buy. But let's start with the confirmation email and the welcome email. Regardless of what you're auditing, those will be part of the starting journey for all new users right?Confirmation emailDepending on the scope of your audit you need to decide if you're going to audit individual emails or more high level improvements. I prefer the former. I go email by email, not starting with the Welcome email but the confirmation email. That's really the first email touch point. We want to maximise the chances that this email reaches the inbox. To do that we want to keep it short and simple with a single CTA, confirm your email. We don't want too many images or text or links. We need this to land in the inbox and get through most spam filters.Such a balance of beautiful design and impact versus sneaking past email filters. Too much HTML gets caught.Welcome emailWe had a full episode dedicated to really making this email stand out, and that's the core goal of this email. Everyone expects it. Most companies have a huge fancy HTML template with heavy brand and a bunch of helpful resources and links to get started.The danger with overloading users too soonSomething that lives rent free in my brain when I think email onboarding is Val Geisler's dinner party strategy. When you host people over for a dinner party--be it a backyard BBQ or a fancy social event, the evening itself has many tracks.  You welcome guests,  Take their coats, introduce them to others You take their drinks order and show them to a seat there's the appetizer round,  a main course,  side dishes,  and dessert,  and then you invite them back.  If the Welcome email has 10+ links to tutorials and courses and help articles, it's almost like your guest's arrive to your house for the dinner party and before they can take their coats off you shove the main course sprinkled with dessert in their face. I like this dinner guest analogy a lot. I think it's also a lot about coordinating with product. Combined, you set the ambience. The smell of food, the setting, the dress code -- email needs to blend in to the decorum. Seeing how the productemail experience jive is a big opportunity.Instead of overwhelming users with links, Welcome emails are great starting points to train users to open the next emails. This can be done with storytelling and standing out. We should be training users to open our next email and pushing them to 1 specific moment of delight back in the product. Consider a stronger CTA to push users to finish their onboarding. They could try "Add your first subscriber" or "build your first landing page" instead of "Log in".There's an opportunity to tell the Convertkit story instead of just welcoming them to the family. Users starting an email tool are also trialing competitors. So they are getting similar emails. Selling too earlyEarly in the journey we want to nudge users to complete steps in the product that nudge them to moments of delight and getting value from the product. You don't want to turn off users and start selling to everyone, especially not users that haven't done much in the product yet. The best way to get users to upgrade to a paid plan is to let them try the product and reach success. Instead of talking about the benefits of upgrading to a paid plan right away, we should be telling users how and why Convertkit is their best choice.We want to be delighting the user and making sure they are accomplishing tasks in the product. Working on the user's timeline rather than asking them to upgrade right away. Mindlessly forcing people through a user journey is bad. The idea that you need to be everything to everyone is equally bad. Segmentation is key, behaviour based triggered emails are also key. That's actually part 3/3 of our series. We covered what to do before the audit in part 1, part 2 was the actual audit and the most important aspects of the first two emails in your sequence and part 3 next week is what you should be suggesting as part of improvements. We'll specifically be touching on segmentation and behaviour based triggered emails. Chat then.✌️--Intro music by Wowa via UnminusCover art created with help via Undraw

Val Geisler, Customer Evangelist at Klaviyo details the various ways she sees her clients using the popular new Clubhouse app to their advantage and some of the outside-the-box methods of advertising on this platform.

Have you ever gone back to visit the neighborhood you grew up in? It was different, wasn’t it? Even if it hadn’t changed in all those years, it still wasn’t *quite* how you remembered it. That’s… kinda what we’re going to explore in this week’s show. In case you’re new here, hey I’m Brendan, I love love love finding people who can teach us something new about SEO. Last week’s episode was with Gabby Miele, talking about building links without being a spammer. We explored new ways to think about SEO by talking to email marketers like Val Geisler and Chase Dimond. In this week’s show, we’re diving into a topic that’s been talked about a million (maybe a billion at this point), times before. It’s the neighborhood… most of us… grew up in. Content. Writing things online. But, for me and… maybe for you. It’s different now. And, I don’t think I realized just how different until today’s guest joined me for a conversation that would turn out to be an absolute masterclass in creating content that matters. So, let’s go take a walk through our old neighborhood, reminisce a little, and see what’s changed. Please welcome a fellow dad of 3 kids under 5, founder of Some Good Content, director of marketing at Databox and my friend, John Bonini. Outro: So as you heard John and I were about to dive deep into his search motivation framework, which is a spectacular companion to what you’ll already find in the SEO for the Rest of Us community membership area.  John’s masterclass, as well as a master class taught by EVERY SINGLE ONE of our guests is right there, inside the membership area. You can join the community and get that INSTANTLY by going to seofortherestofus.org/community OR just click open the episode details on your podcast player and click the link. Again, that’s seofortherestofus.org/community or click the link right here in the show notes in your podcast player. I love you. Thanks for giving me your most precious asset, your time. I know when I’ve gone on other people’s shows and that host’s audience reached out to say thanks, that just meant the world to me. Finally, please join John’s Some Good Content on Patreon. It’s $10/mo and is worth 10x that (I personally pay for it every month). -- I’m also excited for next week when we'll be joined by the only TWO-TIME guest ever on the podcast. Any guesses on who that’ll be? Share your guess with me on Twitter and I’ll read them at the intro to next week’s show.

Personal branding can be a powerful way to grow your executive career AND your business, but creating content at the scale necessary to see results can be challenging. This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Influence Podium founder Marti Sanchez talks about why it's important for executives to invest in building their personal brands, and how to overcome the "but I'm too busy to create content" challenge. Marti's agency works with countless executives on content creation, and he's boiled his process down to a simple, streamlined set of steps that require minimal time from his executive clients while getting maximum results.  Check out the full episode, or read the transcript below, to learn more about Marti's process, and how you can apply to building your own personal brand. Resources from this episode: Visit InfluencePodium.com Connect with Marti on LinkedIn Follow Marti on Twitter Transcript Kathleen (00:01): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth and this week, my guest is Marti Sanchez, who is the founder and CEO of Influence Podium. Welcome to the podcast, Marti. Marti (00:21): Thank you so much for having me. Kathleen (00:23): I am super excited to have you here. You're my first guest who hails originally from Spain and particularly from parts of Spain that I've spent some time in. And so that's just an aside, but that makes me really happy. Marti (00:38): You had a big connection there. I'm very, very excited to be here. Kathleen (00:42): Before we dig into our topic, tell my audience a little bit about yourself and your story and how you came to be doing what you're doing now, and specifically what Influence Podium is. Marti (00:54): Absolutely. So long story short, I was born in Boone, North Carolina, but my parents are from Spain. So we moved back to my home country when I was about six months old. So all I got was the passport. I don't remember much else, but that passport there allowed me to come back when I was 17 to the United States to play college basketball. Since then it's been a lot of back and forth between the United States and Spain. When I was 21, I had just graduated. I was looking for a job back home in Spain, but unemployment was very high and there was no jobs available. So I kind of went back to what I knew how to do, which was writing. Back in college, I would ghost write my classmates' papers for them for $10 a page under the table, just to make some cash for, to get some groceries. Marti (01:39): So I started ghost writing online. I wrote on Quora, which is a QA platform, every day for about six months. I got two to 3 million views in that period of time. And then some people started reaching out to me if I could go straight to them. I just, people ended up being B2B CEOs. And that's where I first started learning about personal branding and inbound and content marketing without even knowing what those stamps actually meant. Eventually my career as a freelance writer went pretty well, but it was short. We started getting a few clients and it turned into an agency and that's where Influence Podium was born. Since then, we've helped over 25 B2B CEOs grow their personal brands, create content, scale, and drive inbound opportunities for their companies. And it all really started by writing papers for my classmates. Kathleen (02:25): I love it. I love sort of like necessity is the mother of invention. And I love that you just stumbled into writing and were kind of doing inbound marketing without even knowing it. Marti (02:36): Yeah, I didn't, I mean, I started business and, and I had an MBA, but I didn't really know what anything of that or that meant it didn't really get much of that. So eventually it was a lot of trial and error and I stumbled into it. It was fun. But looking back, it all circled back together. Kathleen (02:53): Yeah. Now it's interesting because B2B content is something we've talked a lot about on this podcast. We've talked a lot about personal branding and why it is so important for particularly executives to build strong personal brands. You know, that's a topic that I love talking about. I believe in it strongly, it's something I practiced for myself. And recently I've had several guests on to talk about it, but I feel like the challenge with that though, I think a lot of people get why they should do it. But I think the challenge they run into is, is the, how, like, it's sort of like saying you should exercise every day and then you're like, yes, I should. But how am I going to fit that into my schedule? How am I going to be consistent? I don't have the time, like all those same complaints I've heard, used to describe the process of creating content. And you have somehow come up with a solution that, that really solves for creating content at scale for executives in order to support personal brand building. So that's what I really want to pick apart today. Marti (04:01): Actually, it's funny that you referenced that example of working out because I find that it's very similar the challenges of somebody trying to work out and somebody trying to create content. The first challenge is I don't know how to do it, right. I don't know what exercise to workout. I don't know how to do this exercise. It's very similar to creating content, right? I don't know how to create content, so it's not for me. Maybe I'm not a great writer or maybe I don't feel very comfortable in, in camera. So that's something that actually relayed a lot. And it's one of the objections that a lot of our clients, which at the beginning when they're talking to us and because like your audience are convinced that this is the right solution for them, but they don't know how to do it. Marti (04:43): So for us, I think that main challenge is solved by one being very self-aware and really understanding what are your main skills. And if you are a naturally better writer focusing on that, if you're naturally a better speaker focusing in that maybe it's not even on camera video, maybe it's a podcast. And then using that channel of communication that comes more naturally to you and then understanding that it's not going to be perfect at the first time it's going to be perfect or better eventually. So that's one of the challenges that we face a lot with people of like, how do I do this for me personally, I was a good writer and I didn't do any video content for two years or three years. Right. I was self-conscious about my accent. And only now I'm saying to branch out into that, but I still, I stayed very focused on my core skills at the beginning. So that's one of the first times just that we see with people, right? How do I do this? And how do I work out? How do I create concentration? Kathleen (05:35): Yeah. It makes a ton of sense. And it's really funny that you just said that because I was interviewed for somebody else's podcast earlier today. And one of the questions they asked was you've been podcasting for three and a half years. Like most people don't get past episode five. How have you been so consistent? And my answer was, it starts with knowing yourself and like, I'm a pretty good writer. I can say that like, I am a pretty good writer, but it's, it's, doesn't come as easily to me. Like, it takes me more time. I, you know, it feels like work versus this format. I'm like, I can jump on zoom and talk to somebody for 45 minutes, no problem. And so honestly there's no more secret to it than that. It's just that it's easy. And I know if it's easier and I feel comfortable and it comes naturally to me that I'm going to stick with it. So I think you're spot on. Marti (06:28): We're all wired differently, right? That you have different things that come naturally to us again, for me, I was a good writer. That's what I did. So 95% of my content during the first two, three years was winning and that's fine. Right. We have to take ourselves out of the comfort zone, but not at the beginning because then it's too easy to give up. If somebody had forced me to the video content at the beginning, I would have been like, I'm not doing this. I'm like, I don't want to hear my accent. I don't want to do all this stuff now that I have the confidence that I've built up after years now. I'm okay doing that. But it's too easy to allow ourselves to expand too quickly, versus just focusing on what we do best at the beginning. And that's something that we recommend all our CEO clients, like, let's be self-aware, let's see, what is your number one skill and then optimize for that double down on it. And then we'll, we'll explain later. Kathleen (07:18): Do you have a particular process you use to figure out what their number one skill is? Or is it really just a conversation and then you can land on it? Marti (07:25): I think they're very, it's very easy for people to know, like a lot of them, once we have that initial conversation during our onboarding process, they're able to decide which version they want to go after. Right. Then if we're creating like LinkedIn content or Twitter content, and then we're like look, for us, it's fine to create through video content or written content because the process is very similar. Just tell her what, what, where do you, what side of the equation do you feel more comfortable with? And they're able to know which side is easier for them. So I think at least of the guidance that I've talked to, and obviously I guess it's the person is different, but for us there, it's very quick for them to know which side they're usually more self-aware to the point of like knowing what comes naturally to them versus the, the one who doesn't. Kathleen (08:17): So once they know what their strong suit is, then what? Marti (08:21): Yeah. I think that like the other objection that we get, and I think that's what these two objections are, what dictates the whole process is I don't have the time. Right. And just like working out, like I don't have the time to workout. I don't have the time to create content, especially if you're a marketer or you're a salesperson or you're running a company, you have a nine to five job. If you were running the company, you have a lot of fires to crowd, but every position has their own complications and their time consumption. So the key here is how do we optimize so that we can leverage your time, the better so that you don't have to create 20 LinkedIn posts by yourself, or you don't have to create 20 videos every month. Cause nobody's going to do that. Like, I don't want to do it. Marti (09:05): You probably don't want to do it. It's too much. It's too time consumption. So the key is how do we reverse engineer that time that you have, let's say it's 60 minutes per month into leveraging that into the content creation. So that the whole process for us, it looks like this and I would get tactical and cover the nitty gritty because I think your audience getting tactical. So the key here is we first start by creating a pillar piece of content. And it can be either a podcast interview where they're the host. It can be a podcast interview like me being a guest, or it can be an interview. Or we usually do two interviews of 30 minutes per month with our brand manager by that 60 minutes that they're either speaking on a podcast, hosting a podcast or speaking to a brand manager and that's recorded. Marti (09:58): And we record the video. We recorded the audio. The next step is, and this is for clients who work with us, but it can be similarly gone with other people and find out cheaper ways to do it is to create a brief. So break down that pillar piece of condom into smaller pieces of content. So for example, after these episodes, district is recorded that we're on right now. My team's going to go in and find the best one minute, two minute highlights of our conversation and create either video content or reading content. So what that does is it allows me to create content without me being present. All I had to do was show up here, talk about things that I hopefully know that my team does the rest. If you have a team that can work with us like us, then perfect. If you can hire a freelancer, that's probably cheaper way, but even if you can not hire a team, it's easier to find ways to do clips with software than have to record yourself. 20 more times. Kathleen (10:58): There's so much software out there now. Like I've, I've been in this game for awhile podcasting. And in that time I've repurposed my podcast, video and audio in different ways. And I've been really amazed in the last like six months to a year at the number of new companies that have popped up to solve for that need of like how to repurpose your video and audio assets. It's awesome. And they're very, user-friendly, Marti (11:23): It's incredible. And they threatened my business. Why I'm super focused on that. Cause I love that these things are coming out because they would save us a lot of time. And maybe that's another topic, right? AI and, and what to acquire manually. I do think there's still going to be manual in both and needed. Kathleen (11:44): 100% because like I I've, I've used some of these tools to create things like audio grams and video grams and this sort of thing. But it, you still to know how to go in and capture exactly the right piece, like sends the right message and Marti (11:59): Know what's good content for people, for an algorithm to know that. But like you said, there's ways to do that. That doesn't require a full team like us. And it sounds contrary that I talk about it, but I want to be super transparent. There's other ways to do that than hiring a team. Like it's going to allow you to create that large piece of content into smaller pieces of content that then you can distribute. Kathleen (12:24): I understand how that works. If you're talking about a podcast or a video, but are you saying you would do that also with like a written along written piece of pillar content or just with audio? Marti (12:36): Yeah. So you can do it through different ways. We just found it. It's easier when it's a conversation for 30 minutes to 60 minutes, then repurposing an article. The reason why is because when you start with the pillar being audio or video, it allows you to create it's more versatile. So you can create video content, you can create freedom content, you can do many different stuff with it. When you're repurposing from like, let's say a long form article, then you're limiting yourself to reinforce them, which is still fine, but it doesn't allow you that versatility, that audio and video gives you. So we'd recommend to start with that just because it opens the world for more types of content that you can create from there. Kathleen (13:20): That makes sense. So you're you create this original piece of longer form content. That's really a conversation then you're breaking it up into little pieces. Talk me through what those little pieces look like. Marti (13:33): Yeah. So it can be, we find three to four main different types of pieces. The first one can be winning content for LinkedIn Twitter, Quora or written oriented platforms. So if those are Tweets, you can turn the best quotes into Tweets. If you've made a point for about 60 seconds, 90 seconds, that can turn into a LinkedIn post and you can even create long form articles from the main point that you covered during the interview or the podcast. So you can create an SEO strategy, create a LinkedIn and Twitter strategy from that. Option two is to create a video call. So you will be looking for one to two minute tips not more than that and turn them into touch with a title that catches attention, subtitles time bar, and you can post that on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter, across all social platforms. Option three is if the podcast is recorded with audio only, you can turn it into audio. So audiograms is an image that is still with the sound wave for the people that are listening. And you're using that as video content, but just audio and finally something that we were assigned to do as well now is design oriented content. So we're doing carousels, Instagram decks for LinkedIn. So things that visually give it more appeal that's a fourth type of content that you can create. Kathleen (14:59): And when you say carousel, like what does that look like? Is that is that carousels with, I know what a carousel is, but is it like paint like individual images with different words on it? Or is it images? Like how, how do you put that together? Marti (15:12): Yeah, that's a good question. So basically what Instagram and LinkedIn allowed to do is turn it into like a slide deck, like a PowerPoint presentation, how that looks like usually is you have this initial slide with it, which is the main title that kind of tells you what you're going to see over the next few slides. And then slides two, two, seven, eight are usually the main piece of content. So if we're talking about how to repurpose content, so that's going to be the slides for, I talk about why then I talk about pillars and I talk about content repurposing that distribution. And usually there's a final slide. That's a call to action. So either follow for more visit our website. So I think that leads the reader, the consumer into the next steps. So you can repurpose that from LinkedIn to Instagram, we found that to work really well. And it just a different type of content that it's more time consuming because you don't need a designer and that's not something that comes naturally to me. I have no eye for design, then you have to watch source. But if something, somebody that their main skill of communication, which comes back to what we were talking about before is design. That's something that I would double down on that for now. Kathleen (16:21): And when you, so you talked about like creating all these repurposed assets and then distributing them on social, are you saying that those would be distributed via the executives, like personal social media accounts or by the company account? Where would you put that? Marti (16:35): Yeah, that's a great question and something that we get a lot. So I started the company because I believe people trust people and people want to work with people. So we think that the content performs better and resonates more when it comes from the point of view of the CEO or leadership or a person doesn't matter, they don't have to be an executive or a founder. Each person has their own personal brand. So my opinion is always, the posts should be posted from the company, from the personal profile, from the individual that said, if you want to maximize the value that you're getting for your content, I always agree that you should, reshared it from your company standpoint as well. So if your CEO talks about XYZ, then you can re share that on the LinkedIn page or the Twitter page or whatever that looks like the company profile to reach a different audience that you built. And say, this is our founder talking about XYZ, and this is why we think matters. So you're getting two for one, but I always recommend that the first wave of posting comes from the, the person from the CEO. We just found from our data to be usually over 300% better reach men, 2.5 more inbound leads coming in through when it supports the personal profile. So our numbers back back that idea. Kathleen (17:59): Yeah. That makes sense. And then once that initial piece of content is created, do you then kind of establish a rhythm for future content pieces? How do you handle that? Marti (18:10): Yeah, so we usually work on a monthly basis, so we have a monthly deliverables. So if we're talking LinkedIn, if we're talking Twitter, if we're talking long form content, and then we have one or two pillar pieces of content every month, so it's either one podcast or two podcasts whatever that looks like. And then from there we create the content for the whole month, from that one pillar piece or two pillar pieces, and then we can do it again next month. And then the next month we funded results combined over time. So usually we work in long-term partnerships because it's something that I was you'd probably say that you to see the same thing. You're not going to get results today. It's more of a longterm play, what brand played and you really need to believe in long-term for it to be successful. So it's something that we look for long-term partnerships, even though, I mean, I don't need to get into this because contractually we work month to month, et cetera, but it's when I'm watching a renewal. Kathleen (19:10): How often do you personally think somebody should be sharing content in order to get traction? Marti (19:18): Yeah I think the more, the better, as long as it's sustainable. So there's a point where if you try to do more, you eventually give up because you were not, but the more content you can create the better, because you're only one piece of content away from that. Inbounded, you're one piece of content away from that. Ask to get an, a podcast, your one piece of content away from whatever you're looking for, that book deal. So you, you know, all your professional life or your company's life can change from one piece of content that reaches the right person at the right time. Kathleen (19:53): Is there a frequency under which you think it's like, why bother? Marti (19:59): It's a good question. I don't think at the beginning. So I encourage people to start, even if it's with one post per week or whatever that looks like and then scale up, right? Because if you start to see traction, even if you're special, so engagement where you start to enjoy the process, which is what I eventually, that's the turning point, and you really enjoy the process of creating content. Then you start seeing results, but even if you start small start that that's my whole thing. I don't think that you need to create as much content as possible, even though as much content as possible is the best thing for me personally, I'm posting about five to six times on LinkedIn just to give some references three or four times sweeter. And then we have a couple of episodes every month, at least. So that's sustainable for might be different for somebody else. Kathleen (20:49): And what I mean, what a, what a good results look like. Cause you do this for a lot of different people. I'm curious if you can share some stories of what impacts. Marti (20:59): Yeah, absolutely. So obviously it depends on like length of sales cycles and depends of like average deal size. Usually we work with a lot of agency owners who have monthly retainers as similar or larger than what they pay us. And we're starting to see people get ROI by the month four or five. So at more than four or five, they usually have break. And even for the year, which allows the fall with the rest of the year to be for profit obviously that depends and we cannot go into results. Any content migrated can guarantee leads and revenue is probably a line, but we that's what we're seeing in terms of traction. Some kinds are getting more, some kinds are getting less, but from an art standpoint, that's where we're, that's where we're at right now, which is pretty good in my opinion. Kathleen (21:49): Yeah. I would say I want to talk about like what good content looks like, because we've talked about why you should do it. We've talked about the overall framework for kind of scaling up content creation, but there's in my experience, there's good content and there's some really, really bad content out there. So what, how do you counsel your clients on what makes for good content? Marti (22:13): Yeah, so, so we tried to find the balance between content and content that educates in content that empty to entertains without leaning too far on either side. So I think content that only educates is that physios from college that nobody wants to read because it's boring and sure it's plenty of good info, but it's not never going to get structured. And it's never going to resonate with the audience. There's nobody wants to read 45 pages of that, but then content only entertains. You're just posting cat videos at that point shortly, they get a lot of beers and other oppressions, but it's never going to get any actual results. So for us, we try to find a balance of content that really drives the conversation forward. And I hit calling it thought leadership because everybody calls the leadership, everything. But for me, the real thought leadership is ideas that drive the industry forward. That's actually I add value and that people can utilize because they're technical enough for them to be used on a day to day life. And then Kathleen (23:20): What's that look like in practice? Like give me some examples. Cause it's one thing to say it's content that entertains and educates, but like I'm sure people have said so. Okay. So like what is, tell me what that means. Marti (23:33): Yeah. So for me, content that entertains it's content that is actually enjoyable to consume. So content that has good spacing that is used, at an English level that is easy to understand and that it allows for that flow consumption of that content. It's hard to explain. I think you can tell, you can tell when they don't have and then content that educates for me, it's about getting as tactical as possible. So if you can share actual best practices, if you can share the themes that only you would know because you've been doing it for so long, those are the contents that people appreciate. So if you're creating content for HR and professionals, right, and you're looking for things about what are the best platforms and what are the threats within those best platforms to go to Upwork this and never use this key terms. Marti (24:26): So whatever that looks like for your industry, and if everybody can put that content out, it's probably not create content. And so if you actually want to drive the conversation forward, it's about saying those things that only we experienced can tell. So that's why we also vet our clients very hard. And because we don't want to work with people that sell the courses or people that are like new to the industry, you want to work with people who have proven expertise and have done that themselves. So we can actually create content. That means something, otherwise we're just adding to that loud noise that will use the internet sometimes. Yeah. Kathleen (25:07): And, and I guess the other thing I would wonder is from your standpoint, you know, obviously at some point I'm assuming your clients are looking for this to turn into business for them. And so how do you advise them about converting, right? Like you don't want to be too salesy in your content, but at some point it probably makes sense to have some kind of a call to action. How do you strike that balance? Marti (25:32): Yeah. So we usually try to do call to actions. We do call to actions in almost all our content, especially on LinkedIn, but those call to actions are never caught, not always call to actions that are meant to drive new business. So sometimes they're call to actions to engage. So questions at the end of the post, those types of things that are going to help engage, have more conversation with your ideal prospects. So we ask questions that if your ideal prospect is like we said, an HR manager, it's helping them as I get answers from them. And then two out of 10 times we do that, what seven to eight times out of 10 and then the rest, which is really one or two times for every time posts, we do a call to action to the next step in the file. So if it's, they have a free resource, if it's go to the website, if it's a free consultation, whatever that looks like that, tell me what, 15 to 20% of the time on the content that we create something that's important. Marti (26:32): And I encourage our clients to look at the full audit of their funnel and see if the handoff steps are clear. So if it's easy to go from one step from content consumption to the next step, so is the call to action clear if it's about scheduling a call, do we have a Calendly link? If do they know where to go to the next step? So making sure that straightforward and as direct as possible it's something that helps the conversion because you can lose a lot of people in those handoffs. So being that base rate for is important. Kathleen (27:08): And do you do you generally have your clients create any sort of like purpose-built landing page for the stuff you're doing with them, Marti (27:19): Which might create something with them? That's a middle point between content and a set score. So something that can help do that in between process. And so if it's a free consultation, but an actual free consultation, not a theme with this guy sales scope, like actually helping people, then we can do that. If it's a free resource via email, and then they go into like a seed email sequence, we can also do that. So something that's in between that's free and that's actually valuable. So something that people would pay for, but you're giving it for free. It's something that has really helped us. And then that also allows for better tracking and better attribution if they don't have it and we cannot create it, we do have some clients that go straight to sales scope, which is fine. But something in between is usually very helpful. Kathleen (28:12): You raised tracking, which was going to be my next question. So how are you tracking results? What is your preferred way to do that? Marti (28:18): Yeah, so I think there's a lot of platforms and SaaS software that kind of have improved trackability and attribution with content marketing. I still don't think we're there yet. And I don't know if we'll ever be, have a clear way to fully attribute content marketing and personal branding So I personally, and I know a lot of marketers disagree with me. I really believe in qualitative data. So if somebody comes to a sales call and her said and says, I read your LinkedIn post and that made me reach out, or, Oh, I remember you mentioned that on the podcast, those are the data points that I look for because it's really hard to track higher data just because I called it the dark attribution, which is things that we can just not track. I like me telling somebody that, Oh, that agency did really good job. Marti (29:12): Or I read that look, you should read that blog post that they wrote and sending it via email or whatever that looks like. You're just not going to be able to track that. So we can go crazy and track everything, track leading indicators, like impressions, engagement. We can track all of that. Sure. But what really matters. And the North star for a lot of our clients is inbound revenue generated. No, it's not even about inbound leads. Cause if they want to get a load of fleets, there's other ways to do that for when you're doing content in personal branding, get less leads, but they're higher quality, which means that they close more and they close faster. So we're just looking for this qualitative data points that show that we're doing our work. Kathleen (29:52): And have you, have you seen your clients have like ancillary benefits beyond revenue? Marti (29:58): Yeah. So one of the main benefits that I think is very underrated is the ability to attract new talent. So something that when you're growing your brand as a company or as a CEO, you're also going to get, if you're doing your job, right, you're going to get a lot of people interested in the company that are not clients, but will want to work for you. They don't want to work for the company. They want to work for you. So that's something that we've also seen. And I think sometimes it's even more valuable to attract new people to work with that are great. Then new clients for me in my company right now, we're looking for people we're not looking for clients. So that's something that's, I think it's one of the secondary benefits that are really important for companies that are fundraising and trying to raise money, you've also seen that they can get better traction from investors. So we've gotten people that I've gotten investors for the condom. So that's when it just rambling, like good things happen. You're breathing your brand, use those leads faster, you close more, and then you have all these secondary benefits that are also support how your goals. Kathleen (31:04): Yeah. That makes sense. So what advice do you have if somebody is listening and they're thinking, I, you know, I know I need to be creating content, so maybe it's time for me to get serious about it. Marti (31:17): Yeah. The first thing I'd say is you actually have to believe in it. If you don't fully believe in it, if it's maybe then don't do it because you're going to give up too early, it's one of the things that you have to commit and you have to commit for a longer, long time. So that's what the one thing that I would say at the very beginning, like if you're not fully sure that this is for you, don't even do it. Second is your personal brand is your reputation and your reputation follows you everywhere forever. So it's a long-term investment that you're building and yourself, your personal bank will follow you everywhere. You've got for companies as an employee to then a founder, whatever you go that for some Brown follow-ups here. And then third, try to do it in a sustainable matter. Marti (31:58): Like we created this process right, where you get one pillar piece of content and then you repurpose it and do it at the pace that works for you and works for you, your resources right now, both time and money, and then scale, right. Maybe start with one platform and then eventually go to two, may start with two pieces of content a week, then go to four. So don't burn yourself out doing that and, and just try to enjoy the process because when you do that, then the whole thing is easier and you're going to be committed for a longer time, which is when you were serious. Kathleen (32:29): Yeah. That makes sense. All right. We're going to shift gears and I'm going to ask you the two questions that I always ask my guests. The first one is, we talk a lot about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a particular company or individual that you would say is really setting the example for what it means to be a great inbound marketing person or company? Marti (32:49): Other than ourselves? I mean, there's this big companies. I think we've all seen them. Like Refine Labs, like Gong and Drift, that they're doing amazing stuff. I want to give a shout out to this small agency out of Europe called Funky Marketing. The founder is a good friend of mine and we actually ran a book test together and they were one of those companies who get it. I like they understand inbound marketing, they understand content creation and branding, and they don't have the resources of these huge companies, but they're building a community at first in Europe and now they're moving it to the United States. So if you go follow them, they're called Funky Marketing on LinkedIn. You're going to see how people with not that big of resources can actually do very practical stuff and start seeing results. So highly recommend seeing what they're doing. Kathleen (33:42): I love the company name. Marti (33:44): Yeah. The guy loves funk and rock and roll, the founder. So it's, it's a good, it's a good company to work with. It's a good company to see what they're doing for sure. Kathleen (33:54): Very cool. Alright. Second question. Most of the marketers I talk to say that one of their biggest pain points is just trying to keep up with everything in digital marketing, because it changes so quickly. So how do you personally keep yourself educated and stay up to date? Marti (34:07): Yeah. Twitter is my go-to platform for myself to get educated and to hear conversations. I think if you follow the right people, your feed is basically an education platform straight from the minds of great marketers and great founders. So Twitter is my go-to because then you can engage with them, which I think is the key, right. We can consume a lot of content, but if you can engage with people that created that, it makes it even better. So for myself is Twitter and then talking to people I'm more of like a conversational person to learn. I need to ask questions, followups. So for me, if I can get people on a podcast or have 20 minutes with them, that's how I try to educate myself, just talking to them, having those conversations and honestly just going there and listening because I know they know more than I do. So, so that's how I approach my education. Kathleen (35:02): Amen. I mean, that's, for me, it's hosting this podcast and talking to people. That's how I learn everything. Marti (35:07): Yeah, yeah. Probably the best way to pick their brain, like face to face. And you can ask selfish questions. I a hundred percent agree that having a podcast is probably the best way to educate yourself. Kathleen (35:19): Yeah, I actually had one guest that I interviewed and I'll mention, so it's, Val Geisler, who's this incredible email marketing copywriter. And she now recently has been hired by Klaviyo to be like a customer evangelist. And I love her and she came on and I was asking her all these really detailed questions. And she just sort of like half jokingly said, is this, is this a free consultation? And I was like, absolutely. Marti (35:45): What's a better way. Right? Yeah, absolutely. Kathleen (35:50): Well, if somebody is listening and they want to learn more about Influence Podium or they want to connect with you and ask a question, what's the best way for them to find you online? Marti (35:58): Yeah, I think LinkedIn's probably the easiest way. I'm at Marti Sanchez on LinkedIn. Also same on Twitter and via email at marti@influencepodium.com, probably the easiest and most straight forward way to reach out. Kathleen (36:13): Fantastic. And I'll put those links in the show notes for anybody. Who's curious. And if you're listening and you enjoyed this episode, please consider heading to Apple podcasts and leaving the podcast to review. And of course, if you know someone else doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at @workmommywork because I would love to make them my next guest. Thank you so much for joining me. Marti (36:34): It was a pleasure. Thank you so much for so much fun. Thank you.

We talked previously in episode 66 with Val Geisler about winning at SEO by better onboarding people to your product, primarily through email.  And, in our last episode, we talked with Jay Clouse about community and again the overlap was with email. If SEO is the best way to build traffic, EMAIL is the flywheel that helps you grow that engine with deeper relationships. EMAIL is what builds LOYALTY. So I reached out to a new friend to talk more about email and how to become somebody’s favorite AFTER they opt in. SEO traffic is cool, but conversions and purchases are way cooler. Today’s co-host has driven $50+ million in email revenue for clients. Partner at a 7 figure Ecommerce Email Marketing Agency. He’s a ton of fun to follow on twitter.  Please welcome my friend, Chase Dimond! --- If you’re a longtime listener, I have a surprise for you so sit tight for just a second. If you’re new here, every single guest joins us inside the SEO for the Rest of Us community for a bonus masterclass on what they’ve talked about in that episode. I want to give you an invitation. Join Chase and myself inside the SEO for the Rest of Us community, for a brief masterclass on how to tactically implement the very thing we’ve talked about all episode: Winning at SEO with email.  Chase walked us through his framework for doing that, including: Convert subscribers that churn Tag VIPs + sell them more products by sending them relevant content. A successful and interesting way we're cross-selling/upselling customers. Plus 5-6 other things. Jump into the community to get Chase’s masterclass on how SEO and email go together like lamb and tuna fish (or spaghetti and meatballs if that makes more sense for you). Also, want to go deeper than Chase's Masterclass? Check out HIS course on email marketing at seofortherestofus.org/chase Now, for my OG listeners, we’re doing something new. Today, you can join the community for just $1. Enjoy Chase’s masterclass and everything else inside the community for 30 days for just a buck. SEOfortherestofus.org/chase and sign up for just one dollar.

In this podcast, we talk about customer retention through post-purchase, ways to make your post-purchase campaign more effective, how subscriptions can help Ecommerce, and more.  Val Geisler’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/lovevalgeisler Val Geisler’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lovevalgeisler Fix My Churn Website: https://fixmychurn.com/ Val Geisler’s Website: https://www.valgeisler.com/ Honest Ecommerce is a weekly podcast, community & educational resource providing online store owners with honest, actionable advice to increase their sales and grow their business. If you like our podcast, consider subscribing & joining our FREE Facebook group http://honestecommerce.co/

Val is the founder and Chief Email Optimizer at Fix My Churn. AND an email obsessive. Val's been obsessed with helping eCommerce businesses improve their email marketing performance for over a decade. In this episode she shares her 'Dinner Party Strategy' an easy to follow template for structuring the perfect 6-part Email Welcome Campaign. It's possible to build and put live within just 24 hours of learning about it - so if you've been struggling to create a Welcome Campaign that turns your email sign ups into buyers - you really need to listen to this one! Get all the links and resources we mention at https://keepoptimising.com/?utm_source=captivate&utm_medium=episodenotes (KeepOptimising.com) Between recording and releasing this episode Val's become a Customer Evangelist at Klaviyo - how cool is that!? Episode sponsored by https://www.klaviyo.com/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=masterplan (Klaviyo) This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

On the show today is Val Geisler. Val is now the Customer Evangelist for Klaviyo and was previously the Chief Email Officer of Fix My Churn. She's worked with many SaaS and e-commerce companies to improve their email marketing and retention.I wanted to bring Val on because she is one of the go-to's for all things email marketing. She eats, breaths, and lives email.You'll hear about how her background as a stage and event manager helped her build out her consulting practice and collaborate on email marketing, how you can level up your transactional emails to build your brand, upsell, and drive loyalty, and her flagship Dinner Party Strategy for setting up onboarding emails.More on Val: @lovevalgeisler on Twitter The Dinner Party Strategy Sponsored by SparkLoop — the referral tool for newsletters. Hundreds of smart newsletter creators use SparkLoop to get more, high-quality email subscribers on autopilot. Get started in 5 minutes and start a free 30-day trial → sparkloop.app/eim

Onboarding. Not that exciting. Right? Wrong. Think about the last party you went to. (Remember parties?) How'd the host greet you at the door? Did they show you around? Introduce you to other people? SEO isn’t just about getting clicks from Google. You need clicks that drive your business and also contribute to a customer lifecycle, not just a funnel. We need those cold visitors to convert, to subscribe to our ideas and worldview, and then want to become evangelists. BUT, you can also use an online element to make every single person who comes to your site from Google and subscribes or buys, into a RAVING FAN. Our guest today has experience working in marketing for nonprofits, big tech companies. she’s IN-credible. Matt Hall, the founder of Common People, says “Have you ever seen a movie that changes how you see the world? And suddenly the world feels a little different, a little more exciting? Her training was one of those moments for me in business.” She’s been called an email geek, a copywriter, a marketer, and a real game changer. You can just call her Val.

In this episode, we talk to Val Geisler, an email marketing expert and founder of Fix My Churn.Val is known for being the go-to resource for "all things email marketing," but we give special attention to two areas in this episode: The must-have campaigns and automations to reach "good enough"  Intermediate strategies for converting and retaining more of your subscription customers In other words, we share how to check the box for the 20% of email marketing strategies that will get you 80% of the financial results.We also included a little surprise for our loyal listeners – a live email campaign teardown. Val walks us through her real-life purchasing experience with a brand in the personal care space and shares her thoughts on what they get right as well as where they can improve.So, if you're looking for a playbook for leveling up your email marketing, or if you want to learn from the actual experiments and campaigns being run by an active brand, this is the episode for you.BONUS Resource:Make sure to check out Val's Dinner Party Strategy. It's a collection of resources to help you build an email welcome series that will create an army of loyal customers.Want to be a guest on our show? Have feedback or ideas for how we can improve? Send your thoughts over to podcast@thegood.com. We'll be keeping an eye on that inbox. :)The Ecommerce Insights Show is brought to you by The Good, a Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) consultancy specializing in helping ecommerce businesses accelerate their growth through better research, testing, and design. Learn more about our team, our work, and our services at www.thegood.com.

Business systems guru, Val Geiser is joining us today to talk about setting up & creating systems for your creative business, finding project management tools to create a smoother business & client experience, and creating automations within your business to eliminate time sucks and focus on the work you want to do.Get full show notes for this episode here >>---Listen to brand new episodes of Being Boss on the main feed >>---Listen to more Being Boss shows on our website, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.Follow Being Boss on Instagram: @beingbossclubJoin the Being Boss Community: beingboss.club/community

Episode Notes In this episode I'm chatting with Val Geisler, an email marketing black-belt and a founder of Fix My Churn. She shares her experience of building a freelance career around email. Key talking points: why storytelling is a great strategic move in email campaigns importance of specializing and saying no as a freelancer how to build a team where everyone works less and enjoys it Mentions: Connect with Val through Linkedin and Twitter. Check out Fix My Churn’s website Before you take off...Say HI to me on Linkedin.

Val Geisler is a highly successful email marketer, copywriter, and self-proclaimed email geek that is on a mission to help marketers honor the human experience through email messaging. In this episode, she talks about concepts she applies to both client B2B, B2C and her own business emails. Plus she shares some of the best email examples she keeps in her personal swipe file for inspiration. Key Points From This Episode: B2B emails are similar to B2C emails because a human being will be the one reading these emails. These email lists also have a need to be segmented depending upon the role of who is reading the email.Email is the nucleus of the customer experience and is needed to maintain the relationship between the customer and the brand.Val's own email list is comprised of different segments and she implements lots of different ways to teach for free to her email list and engage with them so that they can continue to learn. People learn in different ways, so it is important to present emails in a variety of formats. Creating balance with types of emails and when you send them can play an integral part in your email marketing strategy.While building a larger list is important, developing a relationship for those that have chosen to be on your list is vital.Val Geisler's message is an important one regarding the responsibility we all have in sending human-centric, email messages. Tweetables:"Who said that you don't get to talk to people like they're people, because as a business, when you send an email, you're not sending that email to another business, the person who signed up on behalf of the business is receiving the email and they're human." @LoveValGeisler (02:04)"We as brands can't exist without our customers. We have to go to them, we have to say hi, we see you, we want to talk to you. Email to me has always been a way to have a conversation.." @LoveValGeisler (07:38)"I think there's a real missed opportunity in saying let's put all of our eggs in the acquisition basket, and none of them in what we do to retain those customers once they're either on our list or even better, once they've purchased from us... we need to keep them in our ecosystem. " @LoveValGeisler (18:14)"I like to think that there is a world where we as email marketers are honoring what a consumer goes through on a daily basis with email, and that we're able to send emails that they want when they want them and that we're delivering value beyond those asks. " @LoveValGeisler (19:36)Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:Val Geisler Val Geisler on Linked InVal Geisler on TwitterFix My ChurnSaneBox

Email is one of the very few direct channels of communication that you have with your customer. When done right, emails can help you to stand out in a mountain of spam while also making you money. Val Geisler joins Katelyn Bourgoin to explain: How to pull customers towards your brand How to write emails that your customers are going to love opening The difference between Features and Benefits (and which is more important to your customer) And so much more Val Geisler is the Co-Founder and Chief Email Optimizer at Fix My Churn. Follow Val on Twitter Follow Katelyn on Twitter Get your Free Customer Ranking Calculator

In this episode I interview Val Geisler and we talk about the impact of customer churn on your SaaS business. Val Geisler is the founder and CEO (that's Chief Email Officer for the rest of you nerds out there) of Fix My Churn. With an obsession for customer communication, Val spent over a decade inside companies from non-profits to 7-figure businesses to tech startups. She brings her background in content creation, CX, and digital strategy to her clients every day. We discuss: - How to start analyzing SaaS customer churn metrics - The generally acceptable annual churn rate for SaaS companies - How the dinner party strategy can help you onboard customers - How to use successfully use videos in your welcome email Resources: – Connect with Natalie on Facebook – Join SaaS Boss Facebook Community

Bigfoot. Nessie. The Squonk. Some myths persist because they’re too compelling to let go. Other myths, on the other hand, are dumb and should vanish completely (like any concrete evidence of those first three.) It’s time to debunk three email marketing myths.  In this episode, semi-pro myth busters Priscilla McKinney and Ashley Le Blanc tackle three persistent yet misguided beliefs about email marketing. Preview time! Email marketing is dying Email is still one of the most trusted forms of communication, and one of the strongest performing media buys. Open rate is the most important metric While open rates are a valuable metric, they are not the only defining factor of an email’s success.  Unsubscribes are a cause for concern Unsubscribes in mass quantities might warrant further investigation, but generally having a user unsubscribe has saved you time in list cleaning - which you should be doing! Listen to the full episode to get facts, stats, and way more information about these common email misperceptions. What else? Oh yeah, Ashley needs a podcasting nickname. It needs to be bird themed. It can’t be Little Bird (taken), Momma Bird (taken) or Big Bird (not taken, but seriously wtf.) Anything else is up for consideration. Hit her up on Twitter @ashleyleblancc Also check out Val Geisler's Twitter feed for some amazing email wizardry! Val will be a speaker at Insights Marketing Day 2020. Also also check out Little Bird's 9 Reasons People are Ignoring your Emails! SPONSORS Insights Marketing Day is back! This 1-day virtual event features must-have marketing expertise for market research companies. Get tips and tools from industry leaders, and leave informed and inspired! Visit insights-marketing.org and use the code PERCH for 20% off your ticket price.  Looking for a research partner to handle the details of your next project? In person, or virtual, Fieldwork has been a leader in world-class marketing research services and facilities since 1980. As market research has expanded from the standard focus group to incorporate other methodologies and technologies, Fieldwork has expanded right along with it. With 15 facilities nationwide, and sophisticated global recruitment services, their detail-oriented staff partners with you to achieve great insights. Focus on the research. Fieldwork will do the rest.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Everyone wants the formula, the recipe, the framework that says how to make the magic happen. Well here you have it. With The Dinner Party Strategy you can now confidently create an email onboarding strategy for your trial customers. In less time than it takes a hipster bartender to make your locally sourced craft cocktail, you'll get the simple 6-part framework that builds connection, adds value, and drives revenue for your brand. https://microconf.com MicroConf Growth 2017 #microconf #microconfgrowth2017 #microconf2017 MicroConf Connect → http://microconfconnect.com Twitter → https://twitter.com/MicroConf E-mail → support@microconf.com MicroConf 2020 Headline Partners ► Stripe https://stripe.com Twitter → https://twitter.com/Stripe ► Basecamp https://basecamp.com Twitter → https://twitter.com/Basecamp

Everyone wants the formula, the recipe, the framework that says how to make the magic happen. Well here you have it. With The Dinner Party Strategy you can now confidently create an email onboarding strategy for your trial customers. In less time than it takes a hipster bartender to make your locally sourced craft cocktail, you'll get the simple 6-part framework that builds connection, adds value, and drives revenue for your brand. https://microconf.com MicroConf Growth 2017 #microconf #microconfgrowth2017 #microconf2017 MicroConf Connect → http://microconfconnect.com Twitter → https://twitter.com/MicroConf E-mail → support@microconf.com MicroConf 2020 Headline Partners ► Stripe https://stripe.com Twitter → https://twitter.com/Stripe ► Basecamp https://basecamp.com Twitter → https://twitter.com/Basecamp

Jane Portman of Userlist joins Julia and Adam to share her expertise with onboarding. Why guided tours don't work, the legacy of Clippy, and drip campaigns that are more personal and considerate. @MuseAppHQ hello@museapp.com Show notes Jane Portman @uibreakfast User Onboarding: The Ultimate Guide for SaaS Founders Userlist Benedikt Deicke Intercom lifecycle messaging Claire Suellentrop, Forget The Funnel UI Breakfast podcast tooltips Inspire, Not Instruct aha moment Clue out-of-box-experience (OOBE) Samuel Hulick, UserOnboard, podcast interview Clippy call to action Val Geisler drip campaign tech touch A/B test or split test Max Seelemann

The Ecommerce Marketing Handbook drops in just 5 days. So get ready. But on today's episode Ben shares some of his favorite copywriting tips from the book. And if you guessed we tapped Val Geisler, copywriting extraordinaire, to help out with this one, you'd be right. Here's why copywriting is SO important for your Shopify store (and easy tips you can implement today to get better instantly).

Val was all about real-life experiences, so here's where you can find out more about her work and process: Val's website Val's LinkedIn Val on Twitter Jay Acunzo - Break the Wheel: Question Best Practices, Hone Your Intuition, and Do Your Best Work

Val Geisler and I had a 30m coaching session on raising prices.  We talk about: 1. Risk of raising prices 2. How to do it with out scaring off clients 3. Niche service idea for her to be able to charge more  Enjoy!

Val Geisler is a game-changer in the email marketing world. She is an email marketing conversion copywriter and strategist who brings massive value to her clients' businesses with her background in content development, digital strategy, and customer experience. With over a decade of experience working with 7-figure companies, non-profit organizations, and startups, Val has bridged the gap between customers and conversions that enabled her to work with renowned companies such as Beacon, AccessAlly, Women In Digital, and ConvertKit.   Val joins me today to share some of the most significant changes that has happened in her business and the turning point that made her realize she didn't want to work full-time. She explains why she focuses her efforts on business-to-consumer (B2C) companies as well as why she believes in value-based pricing. She also discusses why not everyone should specialize in email marketing, when to hire a specialist, and how her specialization affected how she prices her services and filters potential clients.   “I'm not saying everyone should specialize in email, because I don't think everyone should unless you care about it. But specializing has opened up so many opportunities for me that wouldn't otherwise exist.” - Val Geisler     This Week on the Get Paid Podcast:   Why Val “left” her business in 2016 to work full-time with a small company and why she eventually decided to quit her full-time job to continue building her business. The difference between horizontal and vertical specialization. Why Val added a vertical specialization element to her business to help clients with onboarding and retention. What customer churn is and what your goal as a business should be concerning your churn. The steps she took to build her brand and name in email onboarding in less than a year. Val's current rates, expenses, and the services she offers. Why she always starts with an ‘email marketing audit' when working with new clients and how she vets new clients. Why Val decided to host a paid email marketing workshop specifically for copywriters, how it led her to create the Email Marketing Masters incubator program and the benefits of each level of the program. How specializing her products and services gave her the confidence to charge higher prices and the ability to sell out a $5k program. Val's projected total revenue for 2019.   Resource Mentioned:   You Made it Weird Podcast with Pete Holmes Episode 29: Pivoting, Rebranding, and “Leaving” Your Business (GPP29) Philip Morgan User On Board Website Freckle Time Tracker The Future is {F}emailShirt by Logan Sandrock Shirts on Amazon Joanna Wiebe – The 10x Freelance Copywriter   Connect with Val Geisler:   Val Geisler Website Val Geisler on Twitter Val Geisler on Medium Free PDF! How to Build Your On Boarding Sequences     This episode is sponsored by… MemberVault   MemberVault is an online membership software and hosting tool dedicated to helping passionate and creative entrepreneurs disrupt the ways of relationship marketing - and make more money doing it. More than just an online course hosting platform, you get real insight into how people respond to your content, who your hottest leads are, and who would be the best fit for your higher-end products and services.   So stop wondering where to host your online products. Explode your sales and engagement and gain a better understanding of your ROI.   Get paid more - and more often! Start your 1-month FREE TRIAL of MemberVault today.   Visit clairepells.com/membervault to start your first month absolutely FREE.   Now it's time to GET PAID   Thanks for tuning into the Get Paid Podcast! If you enjoyed today's episode, head over to Apple Podcasts to subscribe, rate, and leave your honest review. Connect with me on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram, visit my website for even more detailed strategies, and be sure to share your favorite episodes on social media.   Now, it's time to go get yourself paid.

The tables have turned and now I'm in the Get Paid Hotseat! My friend Val Geisler interviews me about the evolution of my business since May 2014, getting fired from a well-known online business, and why I only “took home” $4,000 in July after making nearly $10,000 in revenue.

Val Geisler has spent the last six years highly involved in customer experience and research and is largely skilled in using better email sequences to generate more revenue for your business. Val adds a creative flare with a dose of wisdom to the topic of human behavior and communication. In a world run by computers, intimacy and relationship can all too often be lost in translation. Val shares the knowledge she has gained through years of experience that accurately defines what it means to bring humanity back to digital communication.To find out more about Val Geisler, visit www.valgeisler.comFollow Val on twitter @lovevalgeisler   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Become a member at https://plus.acast.com/s/the-unmistakable-creative-podcast.

Lianna Patch is funny. Not everyone can stand up in front of 150 entrepreneurs and make them laugh, respect her, and want to hire her all at the same time. Yet – that's exactly what she did when I attended the Blue Ribbon Mastermind event in Denver last month (August 2018). When Lianna shares her passion, which is writing copy infused with humor that converts, people make more money. How? Their customers stay on page, get engaged in, and actually read what you write. Oh, and then they buy your product, write reviews and spread the word about your brand. Humor makes people like you. So why not write copy infused with humor? Because you are not funny. Me neither, at least that's what my kids tell me (what do they know…). It is a skill we don't all have, clearly. Episode Highlights: What Lianna does to help clients who come to her with the need for something new. How her techniques to boost add-to-cart conversions as well as purchase conversions. Why it is important to message-match across the board, through the entire purchase and follow-up process. The importance of building the relationship so that if the product is a one-off perhaps that client will be swayed to purchase other items. Lianna shares the biggest mistakes people make when writing online copy. Steps business owners should take to improve copy and what should be first on the list. What makes certain checkouts places that people want to revisit again and again. The importance of grammar and how intentionally not using perfect grammar can work if done the right way. Why Lianna thinks being buttoned up is a thing of e-commerce past. How to grab people's attention with web copy content. Transcription: Mark: Joe you spent a lot of years in the direct response world specifically within the agency world and buying radio ads right? Joe: Yeah. Yes, I did brought a lot of copy. Mark: Brought a lot of copy and this is an area that we're going to talk about today, writing copy. I find for myself when I have to actually write copy it's a completely different mindset from pretty much everything else and it can be difficult to do. Lianna Patch and she is a professional copywriter for specifically conversions right? Joe: Yes Lianna Patch did a presentation at the Blue Ribbon Mastermind in front of 150 entrepreneurs and she writes copy that conversion … calls herself a conversion copywriter which I think is brilliant. I'm sure it's a phrase that lots of people have heard but for some reason, it is brand new to me. Although that's what I did, that's what my contractors did back in my radio days and my online days. But what she did was she infused comedy into her presentation and she infuses comedy into her clients' websites, their emails, their … all of their different campaigns and Mark it works. I'm telling you the presentation was fantastic she gave some examples of what the before and after copy was like and it just made me want to read it. When you go to her website it just makes you want to stay on the website and poke around and look at different things. And throughout the whole podcast, I keep going back to her website and giving examples that I think are just hilarious and make me want to keep reading. And I don't think enough of us e-commerce entrepreneur or SaaS entrepreneurs whatever you want to call yourself infuse the human factor and a little bit of comedy into your content so that people realize you're not just some big corporation that's sending your standard email. It makes a big difference I think. Mark: Absolutely, any time you can get somebody to laugh that's going to loosen them up and also to disarm them a little bit from that and accessible as well. That's fantastic. You need to make sure you send me her website so I can take a look and enjoy some of the copy as well. Joe: Yeah there's some great ideas there you can get right from her website. But this is important stuff, right? Our first line of engagement with our customer is content. There's going to be some visual stuff but there's usually some content as well. So anyone listening that has any online presence or hopes to buy one and do better than the previous owner I would strongly recommend they listen to this entire podcast. Mark: All right, well let's get to it. Joe: Hey folks it's Joe Valley at the Quiet Light Podcast. Thanks for joining us today. Today I have a very special guest, her name is Lianna Patch. Lianna, welcome. Lianna: Thank you so much for having me. Joe: You are apparently funny, you're from Punchline Copy. I saw you … I know you're funny because I saw you at the Blue Ribbon Mastermind. There's no question about being apparently funny. Lianna: Okay. Joe: You said some pretty vulgar sayings in front of a big crowd of entrepreneurs and you could have fallen flat on your face or they all could have laughed out loud. And you did it within like the first 60 seconds and I- Lianna: I did. Joe: We all laughed out loud so thank you. Lianna: I'm so glad. Joe: It made us very comfortable being audacious ourselves so thank you for that. And I've looked at your website and I want you to tell folks about yourself but then I'm going to just like comment on a few things as well. So the for the folks listening instead of me doing that introduction, that fancy thing, why don't you tell us who you are, what you do, and what you're all about? Lianna: Sure. So I'm a conversion copyrighter which basically means I don't just make stuff up I base my copy on customer research and what people need to actually hear. And on top of that, I use humor as a tool to help mostly e-commerce stores and bootstrap software businesses connect better with their customers and retain customers longer. Joe: Conversion copywriter, wow. Lianna: Yeah. Joe: I love that. Did you make that up? Lianna: I did not. Joe: Somebody else coined that phrase? Lianna: I believe we can attribute it to the great Joanna Wiebe. She is a fabulous copywriter. I'm pretty sure she came up with the term conversion copywriting. She's the most well-known one. Joe: Okay. Lianna: And I met her in her first copywriter mastermind. Joe: And we will attribute it to Joanna Wiebe. But conversion copywriter really stands out and tells people exactly what you do. It's pretty quick and pretty direct to the point. Lianna: Yeah. Joe: And you infuse it with humor so I just want for people that are not watching this video on the home page of your website … where is it, it says… oh, I've got to scroll down a little bit, where is it. All right there's something that says something along the lines of … oh my God it's gone I'm on the wrong page. Really. Anyway, it says something along the lines of blank blank blank AF and it's right there in your face funny as AF. And for those that don't have teenagers and don't understand … I'm sorry for those that don't understand what that means ask your teenager because they do. You have a knock knock joke on your website as well and it says "Knock knock who's there and the answer is a shitload of money." It's all good. It's all funny and it converts. So tell us about some of the experiences you've had with people that have terrible copy and how you fixed it and what kind of impact it has on their end mind revenue which is what folks are really looking for. Lianna: Yeah. My favorite type of client to work with is someone that comes to me and says okay we did the thing where we hired a professional copywriter and we come off like really cool and corporate and solid and we hate it and it's not working and we need to be more personal and funny please help because they already know the value. They already know that humor is going to help them connect better. So one example that I have been talking about a lot lately because it's exciting … and it's an e-commerce brand that sells wedding rings, it's called Manly Bands. And I came in and worked on some of their product descriptions. And they already have a super fun brand. They were already using humor throughout. I like to think of them as like the Dollar Shave Club of wedding rings but their product descriptions were very short. And they were kind of funny but they weren't really converting. So I went in, wrote longer descriptions, which is funny for some people because they think oh short copy is better. People don't like to read, people will read if you give them a reason to. And we made them funny and we made them personable and kind of weird and they boosted conversions almost across the board; both add to cart conversions and purchase conversions. So that was a really great test result to just be able to point to and say "hey look it works". Joe: That's great it's a … you know I'm old school direct response, I used to sell stuff on radio. We'd write a 60 second spot ad that had to convert with someone actually calling the 800 number. I started in 1997 as I said before but you have to write copy that converts and get an action. So I love the conversion copy and it's measurable. You also talked about not just on the website where people are looking at the product description, not necessarily in the cart things of that nature. But you really if you have a client and can touch every aspect of their branding campaign do you hone in on the and if yes what kind of things do you do? Lianna: I do try to so I work more on the … I work closer to the purchase and post purchase for attention. That's kind of my jam. So I do a lot of emails. And I really feel like emails are one place we can use humor the most because it's the ability to build that one on one connection. You can be so personal, you can be so weird and funny in email and people will … you know even if it's coming from a brand they'll be like I like this. It feels like a real person in my inbox. Of course, it's top of funnel, sometimes you can scare people away with humor if you go about it the wrong way. It just depends on your brand and how willing you are to test those kinds of things. But if I can I'll address all of those touch points because they should be cohesive. There's got to be a message match between the ad, the landing page, the follow up emails, you know the eventual sale or whatever it is that you guide people to. Joe: I think the instinct of an entrepreneur that's building a brand is to give the impression to the end customer. The first impression is to that hey we're a real company, we're doing things in a very professional manner; which kind of may be boring. I just had a business that won on a contract fairly quickly with multiple offers and his customer service emails and responses were "hey thanks for helping the little guy we're here just taking care of my son join us and really … really appreciate it" that kind of thing. Lianna: Yeah. Joe: I think that does resonate. I think using the word feel, it feels like a real person behind the email. Lianna: Yeah. Joe: And really reaches out and helps them quite a bit. So you will touch all aspects of it from … if you can. From the website to … I mean from the email to conversion, would you do follow up emails after the sale as well and work out as well all aspects of it there? Lianna: Yeah. That's actually one of my favorite things to work on. I was just talking to my friend Val Geisler, she's an awesome email strategist about this and we were talking about especially with e-commerce businesses so many people are neglecting the long term post purchase follow up sequence. So someone has bought once and then they just get thrown back into this regular newsletter or sales email cycle. And there's no like follow up and say like hey do you want this product that sort of corresponds to what you bought. You get the review ask emails every now and then or take a survey but there's like two to three emails max after the purchase and then you just get lumped into existing customers. There's no specific long term nurture track to get you back for that second purchase. So that seems like a huge opportunity for most e-commerce stores and for humor because again they've already bought from you once. Now is the time to build the relationship more. Joe: And it's not just spamming them with emails if you're writing good content that's funny and enjoyable and they like reading them. They're probably not going to unsubscribe. Lianna: Right. Joe: Perhaps. Lianna: Right and you can test your sending limits like if you start to see a higher rate of unsubscribes back off; that's not rocket science. Joe: So I did a podcast early in the week with a guy named John Warrilow and he's written several books and he has something called the Value Builder System. And it's all about creating recurring and repeat revenue in your business and I would think that what you're doing is helping build the relationship with the customer so that if they sell a one off product … you said earlier you know hey maybe you might be interested in this too, that follow up email sequence keeps them engaged and maybe perhaps will help them become a repeat customer and buy an additional product along the way. Lianna: Yeah. Joe: [inaudible 00:10:58.9] Lianna: Yes and even if it's something that they might not need to of … I hear this a lot from mattress companies, I've worked with a few mattress companies you know A. they have other product lines. They have bedding and pillows and things like that accessories. But B. even if you move into a different business completely, if you've built those crazy rabid fans they'll follow you to whatever you do next. Joe: So you've mentioned Man Rings was the first one or something like that. Lianna: Manly Bands. Joe: Manly Bands, I love it. Lianna: It's great. Joe: And a mattress company, so I mean very very diverse product categories here. What other kind of physical product companies do you work with? So that people listening can say oh yeah okay she can help. Lianna: Oh yeah, clothing … I like to work with clothing. Honestly, any consumer product I think is really fun. I have to obviously believe that there's a benefit to it. I've had people come to me. Especially in the supplement world, I'm a little skeptical sometimes of actual benefits. So I like to try the product first and say can I get behind this? And if I can then I'll happily write a copy for it not that I can't but I will. Joe: You know I wish we met …. what is it a decade ago now right? I sold my company in 2010 and boy you would had fun with that. I sold a colon cleansing product. Lianna: Oh great. Joe: We started selling colon cleansing on radio back in 2002 and a TV infomercial in 2003. It went 100% online in 2005 and ultimately built a digestive wellness center around it. Lianna: Okay. Joe: But boy you would have had some fun ones. Lianna: Is that like colon cleansing from the outside in or from the inside out? Joe: Well that's from the inside out. Lianna: Okay. Joe: No it wasn't [inaudible 00:12:39.2]. Lianna: That's easier to sell. Yeah, okay. Joe: And it was … you know for those listening I mean you can't … you think what's fun about my product? You can't … you have to be serious about it something like that. We try to be serious about it and I think it was okay. We got lots and lots of testimonials and people would actually love to be … strangest thing ever people, when we produced a TV infomercial we had a producer travel around the country following up people to give testimonials and they'll actually get on camera and talk about their bowel movements and it's just crazy. And you would have had a great deal of fun with it and we could have made more fun of it and made it more enjoyable for all I guess. But I mean you can … from what I've seen [inaudible 00:13:21.0] for your presentation you kind of make every little aspect of it fun so that the entire feeling of the company is joyful and fun. For instance, the 404 redirect that you put up on the screen at Blue Ribbon Mastermind, can you describe that for the people? Lianna: Yeah so that's one of my favorite places where people aren't expecting humor, to just give them a joke or something weird. And this is … what was it called? I think it was eventcenter.uk or something. The site's not there anymore but it's oh no you hit the wrong link this isn't here choose one of our developers to fire. And it's four guys and if you click one of them he puts his head down in his hands and the rest of them looks relieved and then it says oh no he's only been working here for six months. He was just an intern like you're so horrible. And then it redirects you back to the homepage. Joe: Keeps people on the site versus you hit a 404 redirect … oh my god, this guy is terrible and you leave. Lianna: There's so many great ones, NPR has one too that's oh there's nothing here but here's a bunch of other articles about missing things. And there's an article about like lost luggage, Jimmy Hoffa … you know our retirement, things like that. [inaudible 00:14:28.0] for them like. Joe: That's fantastic. What would you say from your experience and the clients that you've worked with, what would you say are some of the biggest mistakes that they make when writing copy? Lianna: One of the biggest mistakes no matter what industry you're in is making the copy all about you. One of the easiest ways to fix that is to go through it and say how many times do we say we or I versus you the reader because they should always know what's in it for them while they're reading. Joe: Ok so back on the focus of the customer, what kind of things have you seen happen when people … if they want to take one, two, or three steps and try to improve their own copy? Is that step number one? What are the things should they do to try to make a big change and what areas should they focus on first? Is it the tagline on their website? Is it the email? Is it something in the cart? What do you focus on first? Lianna: I'd like to focus on whatever is closest to the actual purchase. So that's going to have the biggest effect on revenue if you can improve your checkout, not just copy but UX. If you're using something that's not an out of the box thing like Shopify you might have some serious UX issues in your checkout that you don't know about. What else- Joe: You're infusing humor in the copy in the checkout? Lianna: If I can. Joe: If you can. Lianna: I was just talking about this this morning. It's interesting how things connect. I think it's Shopify doesn't really let you change the form instructions or form auto-fill like the placeholder text in the checkout but that can be hugely persuasive. And it's a great place to run tests because you can just change something like email address to your email address or your favorite email address and that can have a huge impact on conversions. And obviously changing copy on the buy button can have a big impact too. But all of those things come standard or you can't tweak them unless you're a custom coder. And I think even then it's hard to get that stuff developed so I don't know that's been like a pet peeve of mine with certain checkouts. Joe: You want to be able to touch everything and change it and make it better. Lianna: Yeah because there are … I've been through some check outs that are just delightful and it makes you want to keep going even if it's a multiple screen checkout. There's a … do you know Cards Against Humanity? I've mentioned that at the talk. They have actually a fortune cookie company. Joe: Oh they do? Lianna: It's called OK Cookie and the fortunes are horrific. I have one over there that says you will die at an Arby's in Columbus, Ohio. That's the kind of fortune you get from them. But their check out process is just written the same way that all their other copy is which is very informal. Like pop, your email address in here hit this button to whatever and it can be as simple as a verb change to make people think oh a real person touched this. This isn't just a robot that's going to take my money and maybe not send me these cookies that will make me sad. Joe: Again going back to how the end customer feels in the process. Love it. You talked about grammar and that it's not always best practices to have proper grammar. I think … you know I was in the remedial English class in high school. I didn't have Mrs. Henderson I had Mrs. Lane and she was a step down so my grammar is always kind of poor. We were at a friend's house, I've got 14 and 16 year old boys and the neighbor was copied on an email because … it has something to do with the kids, the kids who are here and she asked my son if he'd already sent that. And he said yes, she goes oh there was a grammatical error and blah blah blah. And it's still read very well, it felt good and it was like from a teenage boy. And you can tell it was from a teenage boy. And the intent was good and I never would have corrected it. And she tried to after the fact you intentionally will misspell things and misspeak or misspoke whatever the case might be from what I can hear and what I've seen is that correct? Lianna: Yeah. Joe: Can you talk about that? Lianna: Yes and if it's a weird thing to say because I spent so long as first a copy editor and then a content editor. So I've been like in the nitty gritty line level proofing and the overall structural editing for so long and I was such a stickler for such a long time. And then eventually I had to let go because my heart rate was getting nuts. It just wasn't … that was great for me physically. But I think it's important to do it intentionally so that it doesn't come across as an oversight. So for instance, if you're going to put in a misspelling like I just said gonna, I didn't say going to. Technically you know that's an allusion it's mashing two words together, cutting off the end of a word, that's intentional. It comes across as intentional. Misspelling a word in a subject line can be intentional done the right way. The example that I gave was spelling M-O-R-E more as M-O-A-R because that's kind of internet speak. That's obviously intentional. Even when subject lines do go out with actual unintentional typos they tend to get higher open rates. I just saw one from Wistia they're having an online conference called CouchCon. And there's a subject line with "its" and there should have been an apostrophe in "its" and I marked that unread in my inbox for days because I was like I want to know if they did that on purpose. I don't think they did. Joe: I don't think- Lianna: They got a bunch of replies. Joe: I don't think I would have known if it was proper or not but did I just hear you say that subject lines that have misspellings or grammatical errors actually have a higher open rate? Lianna: Sometimes I mean every … like if you're talking to any conversion copywriter they're going to be like it depends no matter what you ask them. So I have to just give that disclaimer right now; it depends. But I personally have seen it. Lower case subject lines often get a higher open rate because that's the kind of email we receive from our friends and family. We don't bother capitalizing subject lines, especially not title casing each word which I think that's officially dead now in the email marketing world. I haven't seen a ton of emails in my actual inbox so definitely in my spam folder. Joe: You've never inquired on a Quiet Light listing because I know that with my follow up drip campaigns I will capitalize the first letter of each word in the subject line. I need to stop that is what you're saying? Lianna: [inaudible 00:20:21.1] test for you just … yeah start running an alternative version of each of those emails with A. more [inaudible 00:20:26.2] well, if you were to do a true test you would just uncapitalize the rest of the sentence but you can try more conversational subject line. Then I could do a whole thing on subject lines so I like them a lot but yeah making- Joe: So it's the first point of contact- Lianna: Yeah. Joe: And it never occurred to me to chill out a little bit and be more casual even though you know we were … and hopefully anybody listening will take this and apply it to their own business but we are online business brokers. We're selling businesses for a million dollars or whatever the case might be and sometimes we think we've got to be buttoned up and serious. We're working with entrepreneurs. We all work remotely, around the country, around the world in Brian's case and we try to be professional and serious but we can be professional and casual and funny at the same time. Lianna: Yeah. Joe: [inaudible 00:21:09.9] on our subject lines. Lianna: There's a scale I think you don't have to go- Joe: Are you telling me to loosen up? Lianna: A little bit. I mean you … do you have that top button undone? Is that a- Joe: I do. Yeah. Lianna: See we're great, yeah, no tie. Joe: It's hot. Lianna: I don't think [inaudible 00:21:22.6] video so I just look like garbage so you know. Joe: I'm in North Carolina, Lianna is in New Orleans did I say that right? Lianna: No. I'm going to … no. Joe: Say it, give it to me. Go ahead. Lianna: New Orleans born and raised. Joe: You actually have to enunciate it? Lianna: Not New Orleans. New Orleans. Joe: New Orleans not New Orleans. Lianna: [inaudible 00:21:42.3] people say New Orleans. Joe: All right it's New Orleans. Lianna: Never New Orleans unfortunately. Joe: Okay all right. Well, we're both hot and you know figuratively anyway. And that's why I have my top button undone. What other things can people focus on besides of the subject line, some of the stuff in the first point of contact with customers, what other little weird places do you think that they could focus on and try to be a little bit funny or a little more personal that the average person wouldn't look at that you've seen? Lianna: One of my favorite places to look at is copy surrounding a call to action. So any time you're going to ask somebody to do something you should probably be addressing their objections and previewing what's going to come next. And it's really nice to see a human and funny touch around the ask. So I can't member if I mentioned this when you saw me speak but I wrote a call to action to start a free trial for a software product. And normally underneath you would see small text that says no sign up required or credit card required or whatever your information is safe with us that kind of standard objection reducing stuff. We wrote … oh I wrote a copy there that said we do ask for your credit card but it's just because we love online shopping. It's just a little reward for someone reading to feel like okay all right we're good. And obviously, that person has to have a sense of humor because if they take it seriously then they're not going to sign up but who is your target customer is that a person without a sense of humor? No. Joe: Again personalize it, make it feel better. I'm looking at your site now and I must have moved my mouse off the screen and something popped up and it says I'd love to email you and there's three O's in the word love. Lianna: Yes. Joe: Now what is down below there, it says subscribe now and then nah, fam. Lianna: Nah, fam? Joe: What does that mean? Lianna: It's a no thanks, it's another way to say no thanks. So you can just … it's good to know that it's not coming across entirely clear to everyone. Joe: Well. Lianna: It's like you can sign up or no, fam. Joe: But I can tell like a human wrote this which is again exactly what is supposed to happen. And for those again listening and not watching so this … all of you have this exit intent … exit pop ups on websites. This one is personal and funny and I'm actually reading it. Normally I just X out, but now I'm reading it because you spelled the word love wrong, no fam; I don't know what that is. And I believe it's you in the image. Are you drinking coffee out of a box? Is that what's happening there? Lianna: Drinking box wine. Joe: Yeah. So there's a picture of Lianna sitting at her desk, her laptop is open and she's got a box wine up above her head and she's boozing it up. It's very very entertaining and it made me stop and look at it where I go to all of your websites whenever I'm doing work with you and if there's a pop up I generally just quick X as quickly as I can. So very cool just one other- Lianna: Yeah that's a great place the exit intent pop up is so hard to get people's attention and people often think like you know I have only two sentences or I have to cut my offer just $20 off and it has to be no longer than that. But I worked with a client we … this is for my other business SNAP Copy so it's me and my business partner James Turner, we optimized his opt in offer to get people on his list for free planning. He runs a productivity website and the headline that we ended up going with was hey don't leave without your goodie bag. And it was boosted opt-ins by 129% and there was some additional copy and it was a pretty long paragraph of what they were going to get when they signed up. But people read it and signed up a lot more than they did when it said get free planners. Joe: Hey don't leave without your goodie bag and it was an online thing just to get people to sign up and was there like I [inaudible 00:25:19.8] a goodie bag as a swag bag when you go to an event like Blue Ribbon Mastermind. What kind of goodie bag was it? Was it just something you could get electronically? Lianna: Yeah it was a digital goodie bag. It was like free weekly agenda or a free monthly planner. He has a lot of free resources like that. Joe: But he didn't say free gift it said hey don't leave without your goodie bag? Lianna: Yeah. Joe: Simple. You think it's simple but it's- Lianna: Yeah. Joe: People get too buttoned up I think. Lianna: Finding new ways to say also the things that people are already accustomed to because we've seen free gifts so much, we've seen claim my deal a lot. I feel like that's kind of … it's still working because it's very clear but if you can find another way to say something that doesn't obscure the meaning of the copy then it'll get people's attention. And they're like oh I haven't seen that before. Joe: Okay. So pretty simple stuff but not something I think everybody can do. You have a special skill. You're funny, you actually do stand-up comedy as well right? Lianna: I do. Joe: You do. Are you funny? Of course, you are right? Lianna: People … you know I feel like I want to write a bit about that but it might be to hack because there have been better comedians writing bits about that. But someone did that to me the other day she was like so I don't get it you do stand-up but like you're not funny right now. And I was like maybe I'm not inspired. Joe: Ah. Lianna: You're not a good audience, I don't know. Joe: I'm glad I didn't say that. I think what you do is fantastic. You know back to my radio direct response days I would write 60 second ad copy and we would be able to get direct responses; how many people called in when we gave out that phone number after 60 seconds. And so we knew exactly how well the copy worked. You're a conversion copywriter so you found a way to do the same thing and boost conversion when somebody visits a website or open emails and things of that nature. Do you find your clients doing split testing with your copy against with the original copy or things of that nature or did they just say this is really good it's funny let's go ahead and just put that in place and then they see how it works for a week or do they do an actual split test? Lianna: If … so this is like this is where the cobbler has no shoes because I should be making sure that they do that but sometimes my clients are in that stage between small and medium business where they don't really have the team to split test appropriately or like they don't want to learn how to use Google Optimize, Optimizely, or any other split testing tool. So usually it's we see how the control over the original copy was doing then we implement the new copy and it sort of functions as the test and we see what the lift is; the uplift or downlift usually. Usually up. Joe: Usually up, okay. Well, I had an experience many many years ago where we had … when we take the phone calls and someone didn't want to buy the product we would get their name and address and would send them out this simple little trifle brochure. Really simple, black and white or I think there was blue and white and you could tell that it was somebody stuffed the envelope and we hand wrote it and it went out. It was from that person that you talked to on the phone. We had a consultant come in and say oh that's not very professional, we need to step it up, we need to get a multi unfold brochure, colors and charts and graphs and all this stuff and of course we have to print out the addresses and make a professional. And conversion dropped by at least 50% and it was a real eye opener because it was in that personal touch and feel. Lianna: Yeah. Joe: And so I think everything that you said up on the stage at Blue Ribbon Mastermind made me want to have you here because I've seen it firsthand and I know how much a word here and there and a feeling here and there converts. And it's really tough online, it's getting easier and you know hopefully some of your work is being tracked with before or split tested and so your clients know. But I think that all I know is when I go to a site like yours I want to stay on it and I want to look. Lianna: Good. Joe: As opposed to a pop up like I know you got a rubber chicken being cut in half and blood spurting, it's cute and funny so I love it. I think what you do is fantastic. How exactly would people reach out to you? Is it simply punchlinecopy.com? Lianna: Yeah. Joe: Can they get a sort of assessment? How do you work with your clients? Lianna: Yeah so I have different product test services on my site. Sometimes people just need … they want to use me as like an ad hoc email copywriter for instance. They'll come in and like buy one or two emails and they'll say rewrite my abandoned cart email because again it's close to purchase. Or rewrite my welcome email so I get fewer unsubscribes when I add someone to my list. So I have one off emails, I have something called upper cuts which is where I do an audit of your landing page from my heuristic perspective. So I'll take any customer research data that the clients have for these kinds of audits; the more the better. But I'll just look at it and say like this UX is garbage like this photo doesn't open, I can't zoom around the product, the call to action isn't visible enough from far away. And then I'll rewrite the copy line by line. And then I also do custom projects and I've got an intake form there. Yeah, there's a lot of ways to work with me. Joe: Can you be funny in a sponsored ad or a Google ad? Do you work with anybody in those regards? Lianna: I don't do a lot of top of funnel acquisitions. Joe: It's a little tricky. Lianna: I've tried … I mean I've done it. I haven't run ads for my own business in forever. I probably should but I'm the first result for funny copywriter so who needs to? Am I right? Joe: So one other simple clean example is again … and people could just go to your website and go oh that's cool, that's cool, that's cool, and get some ideas. Again punchlinecopy.com but you know folks you probably have a chat now talk to us little thing down in the lower right hand corner of your website so somebody can chat with you. Lianna's has a picture of her. Lianna: It's a bit [inaudible 00:30:59.5]. Joe: A caricature of you and it says you there and it has you looking up over the little pop up bubble as opposed to the standard stuff which is great. Again it's personal and makes it me want to click it just to see if you are there. Lianna: Awesome. I'm not because I'm doing this but I just- Joe: Everybody go to Punchline Copy and click you there and see what happens. Lianna: Or send me an email. Most of the stuff on my site that I think people like the most is just stuff that makes me laugh because I thought it was hilarious to have that little thing pop up in the corner. Joe: I like it. I like it all. Well, I think it would be great if some folks can use your sevices. Lianna: Yeah. Joe: And we have people on that I think can help more than anything else whether that's somebody that is in the process of trying to grow their business and make it more valuable or some of that's going to buy one and tweak it and make more valuable than what they bought it for. And I think copy is so essential because if it converts you are a … again conversion copywriter that just gets them more value for the money that they spent on advertising. Lianna: Yeah. Joe: So it is fantastic, we will put your details in the bottom of the show notes so people can reach out to you and any last minute thoughts on copy that people should think about [inaudible 00:32:18.1] got here? Lianna: I mean I always want to challenge people to just try a joke somewhere. Like take your most boring email in any of your series and go in and add a joke or add an aside, you know add a PS that's kind of weird and see what happens. Joe: Just to see what happens add a PS; I like it. Lianna: Yeah. Joe: Well PS folks thank you for listening to the Quiet Light Podcast, I appreciate it. Lianna, thank you so much for your time. You are awesome. Lianna: Thank you. And so are you. Joe: Well I appreciate that thank you. Links: PunchlineCopy.com Punchline's Facebook Page Lianna on LinkedIn

Crushin' It vs Being Crushed   Val is a yogi, mom, military wife, and avid podcast fan. She is ridiculously obsessed with sharing and creating content that actually makes a difference in the world, connecting with her fellow bloggers, and doing more with less effort. Val is based in Columbus, Ohio and can often be found oversharing on Instagram at @lovevalgeisler.   Everyone's truth is different, some of the tips we've covered may never work for you, but it is your responsibility to figure out what IS your truth. This is not race, so slow down and decide how you want to really live and do business.    You can find Val over at valgeisler.com and sharing content over at convertkit.com.   And don't miss out on all the happenings during the Crushin' It vs. Being Crushed movement -- stay up to date here.   

Season 2 went by super fast, didn't it? I know it has for me and my awesome co-host, Val Geisler. In today's episode, Val and I created a little game – I call it “The Claire & Val Newly-Wed Game.” We talk a little about some of the other apps, tools and websites that we use on a daily basis and try to guess why we love them – some aren't necessarily “business related.” These are fun apps that we use to help us with personal development, focus and concentration, motivation, or just to add a little color and style to our daily routine! I'm sure you will love them as much as we do, so let's dive right in, shall we?

Welcome back to The Get Paid Podcast! In this episode, my good friend Val Geisler and I talk about using Google Analytics to help you grow your business. I know, Google Analytics can take a little time to learn how to set up and what metrics are most helpful. So, today, Val and I talk about which metrics we use in our own business, explain what each of these metrics are and what they show you, as well as provide a brief walkthrough on how to set up or evaluate a couple of these metrics.

We're back with my good friend and co-host, Val Geisler and today we're talking about launching your product. Many new and experienced entrepreneurs find launching a new product to be overwhelming, stressful, and confusing. Today, Val and I will break through your worries and fears about launching a new product, answer some of your questions, and explain some of the things that we have used to launch our own products.

I'm back with my good friend Val Geisler and today we're talking about marketing. What is marketing? Is it the same as advertising? Does marketing consist of one thing, or is it more of a blanket term to describe multiple ways to market your products and services? Are there any free or inexpensive marketing techniques that a new entrepreneur could use and gain loads of success? Let's find out!

Welcome to Season 2 of the Get Paid Podcast! For the next 10 episodes, I'll be joined by my lovely co-host, Val Geisler, so we can dive deeper into some of the topics that my guests and I touched on in Season 1. In this episode, Val and I discuss the myth (or is it a myth) of the 6-figure business, and what it actually takes to get there. In this episode you'll hear: The importance of knowing your target audience. Why understanding the basics of owning an online business is important to your success. How being an entrepreneur can help you find and hone your innate talent and how fear can affect the success of your business. Why having a solid business foundation is essential to creating successful Facebook ad campaigns. Lessons we have learned from other successful entrepreneurs that have helped our own What strategies we have used and found success from in the early years of our businesses. Why becoming an expert in a specific niche is more lucrative and sustainable than diversifying your business. How “serving yourself” can help you better serve your clients. Why sharing your expert tips with others, for free, can lead to better conversion rates. Why it's important to let your personality shine through the online content you create.

The post Episode 52: How To Grow Your Business With Facebook Groups with Val Geisler appeared first on Evolve Your Wedding Business - Wedding Business Marketing & Strategy.

It may feel like in order to be a successful entrepreneur, you need to be really busy.  However, most of the time we're making it way harder on ourselves than it needs to be.   Val Geisler of Aspire & Grow came by to talk about some great free tools to make your life just a little easier when it comes to being an entrepeneur.  She also gives some great tips on how to get the most use out of them!

I sat down with business systems expert Val Geisler to see if we could find a new way to look at systems and maybe make the topic a little more appealing--especially to those of who are artists underneath it all. We get into a whole bunch of topics including: Why even though Val is a huge fan of beautiful things...she lets functional win when necessary. 85% of Val's decision making surrounds this one thing when choosing a tool in her business What the “5 love languages” has to do with building systems and Val's business The main reason why you should you focus on your systems before you launch. Val's everyday system setup - the tools she goes back to again and again. A sweet google mail hack that I should have known but did not! The systems that usually need the most help for the majority of entrepreneurs. Questions you need to keep asking yourself as your business evolves… A surprising huge mistake that many new business owners are making - this one was shocking to me! Thoughts on straddling two email service providers - why you'd do it, what are the challenges, and what are some other reasons you might do it! Her secret to feeling more confident in her business...it's a person we both know and love. our shared mantra and tweetable...about following blueprints and making systems. For complete show notes and additional episodes, visit: http://www.annesamoilov.com/show