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The Agency Hour
How to optimise your list for conversions
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Honey, reaching out, it's been a while. Here is a free relevant gift that answers a burning question you might have. And we spoke about this on the Facebook group before, and it was three ways to add recurring revenue to your agency. There was some content, there was some social proof to show that it actually works, and there's a soft pitch at the end.
SPEAKER_00On this episode of the agency hour, we talked to our in-house email copywriter and list owner, Jules Dan. We talk about optimising your email list for conversions by understanding who they are, where they want to go, and what's stopping them from getting there, which is mainly the bullshit stories they're hearing in their head, their bad habits, and their self-sabotaging behaviour. We talk about the importance of sending more emails about actually interesting stories that resonate with your audience and are relevant, and the two core automations that you should have set up, onboarding new clients and getting clients to book in your calendar and actually turn up. My name's Troy Dean. Stay with us. Welcome, welcome, welcome to another episode of the Agency Hour podcast. We are no longer live streaming this podcast. We are recording this podcast as a podcast using Riverside FM, which do not sponsor this podcast, although they should, because I'm plugging it. But we've moved over to RiversideFM because we want the podcast to sound like a podcast and not like a squashed MP3, which is what happens when you use live streaming software. Of course, this is the podcast for freelancers and agency owners to launch their digital marketing career or grow their agency, grow your revenues, grow your team, grow your profit so you can live more life doing the things that you love doing. My special guest today on the podcast is Jules. Dan. Hey Jules, how are you, brother? Hey, mate, you got my name right. I did.
SPEAKER_01Talking about the names here before we get into any sort of thing. So you and I have a surname. So mine is actually Danny Lack, but it's Dan publicly. And yours is Dean publicly. And I'm I remember I text you once, like, how often do people open the message being like, hey Dean?
SPEAKER_00They do. I I do get it quite a lot. Dean Dean is actually my middle name. I have a big long German last name. What's the last name? Salwald. S-A-U-E-R-W A-L-D. There you go. You've just outed me, dude. I've never noticed that before. Salwald. No, I don't. I studied German in high school for a couple of years, hated my teacher, and she hated me equally. God, she hated me. So I didn't pursue that at all. Um But Dean is my middle name. And so the story is I was a telemarketer when I first left school. When I dropped out of university, I was a telemarketer. And I was making about 80 phone calls a day. That's it. And every single phone call I'd have to spell my name. It's awful. I was selling advertising space in a magazine called the South Australian Council of the Aging. Right? So I was calling security companies selling invisible space in a magazine that went 25,000 copies of this magazine went out every three months to the aging population in South Australia. And I was selling advertising space to security door companies and mobility scooter companies. And I would making about 80 phone calls a day. And every time I'd have to leave a message with the receptionist, this is back before, you know, the internet, pretty much, and uh I'd have to spell my name. It's Troy Sowald calling from Monarch Publishing. We represent the South Australian Council of the Aging. Great. Or get someone to call you. Exactly. S-A-U-E-R-W. So then uh I picked up the phone one day and said it's Troy Dean calling. And I got off the phone. I thought she didn't ask me how to spell that. I'm just gonna adopt my middle name as my last name. And that was when I was about, I don't know, 19 years old and it's stuck. It's been that way ever since. Um so who are you, dude? And what are you doing here?
SPEAKER_01Who am I? Are we on video or we is it just you and me having a chat on Riverside?
SPEAKER_00Uh we're just having a chat on Riverside. We're not live, but we are we are filming the video and we may use some of this video to promote. Max is nodding.
SPEAKER_01Yes, we are doing that. Max is doing it. That's right. So don't pick your nose. That's the that's sort of dressed for the occasion. Who am I? Alright, so I'm the Puppet Master for Agency Mavericks when it comes to everything copy. Um so if you've read an email from Troy or a Facebook post, um I think now that I've now that I understand that Troy's comfortable with this, it's like yeah, so spoiler alert, I I'm the voice of Troy. Like the Wizard of Oz has been revealed, and um, yeah, so I'm helping I'm helping bring some entertaining emails that aren't just boring, like blog-based content to the list. So it's somewhat entertaining. Maybe you can pick up some lessons along the way, get to know Troy, and um build a relationship with us. And then if you feel like, hey, I like Troy and you want to progress onto say like a call, then um, yeah, that's my overall strategy as the list manager here. Um it's it's pretty cool. I love it.
SPEAKER_00There's a couple of things, there's a couple of things I want to unpack here. One, uh first of all, uh I we have sent boring blog-based emails for years, and I've been telling my team for years, for God's sake, just stop doing that because it doesn't work, and I don't even read our own emails. The second thing I want to just clear up here for complete transparency is Jules is writing, well, you explain the process. It's not like I know I I know the email, the copy in the emails that's going out because they're my words, right? So you you explain the process.
SPEAKER_01Okay. I don't want to sound like um I'm tooting my own horn really hard. But I'll I I like to do things a lot more differently than say like other email copywriters. A lot of people will either just go do research and say like a Reddit group or a Facebook group and just pull out some random story or news jack, which which is like you you tap into the news of the day and then you tie into a story, um, which is very popular because it's easy to do. But one thing that my mentor taught me, Pete Godfrey, is that it's is so damn so much more powerful if you can tap into your personality and be an influential writer, and the best person to teach that is Dan Kennedy. But that those teachings are lost. It's it's in this binder folder that I've got in my room from 1999 or something like that, and you've kindly given me the DVDs to finally listen to it because I've always been reading now, I'm able to listen to it. And there's a lot of principles that go into how you be an influential writer, and it's not going into Reddit groups, or that does help for research and stuff, but it's really unpacking. Um, especially if you're writing for yourself, it's even harder because you have to have this conversation with yourself. If you're talking, if you have someone interviewing you, it's it's a lot easier because they're just prompting you. Um, but yeah, so I think we had this like two and a half hour conversation when we first started, getting to know you, you market, and then getting to know you. And since then, it's been like every week or every two weeks. Uh I've been like, okay, Troy, what's something that's inspired you this weekend? What's something that broke this weekend? What's something you learned? Um, what's a lesson you learned from, say, like music, your family, um, in the business, and then it's my job to then turn that into something that's entertaining, but then also spin it in a way so that it's it's relatable, but it also comes back to a soft pitch occasionally. Not every email has a has a pitch, um, and we're finding that works well as well. So there's sometimes we just ask what is your favorite move? Like we talked about the new Mavericks movie, and there was what's your favorite movie? and we got all these responses, and one woman gave her like life story basically, and when you know you're doing that and you're getting responses like that from people, not everyone's gonna reply, but it people are thinking that way, like Troy really cares about me, like I'm not just a number on his list, and that's the strategy I want to create with his list.
SPEAKER_00And the the reason this appeals to me is because this is I used to do this when I first started this business. When I first started emailing our list, building an email list and emailing the list back in 20, you know, 11, right? Or whatever it was, long time ago. I used to do this all myself. I used to write these emails. I used to, you know, I'm fascinated with business, I'm fascinated with building a business and uh the challenges that go along with that. And I all I see lessons in life. I see like when you know, I there's been some great lessons I've got out of reading Oscar books at night, and there's I you know, watching the kids interact with other kids at the playground and the pecking order of kids in the playground. I see things, I see business lessons all the time. The truth is I just don't at this point in my career with the company that we've got and the team that we've got and the family that I've got, I don't have time to sit down and write these emails anymore, but I have the thoughts in my head. And so I try and park them, I try and capture my thoughts whenever I can. And I must admit, I need to get better at this because the other night I was home with the kids and grandma was over helping look after the kids. My wife was out doing something, and grandma came over to visit, and Goldie and Oscar were interacting, and I was like, Oh my god, that's a great lesson. I have to write that down. And I didn't in the moment because I was making dinner, and then I sat down after the kids were in bed. I sat down in the lounge room and I was like, Oh, I've forgotten what that it was. I was like, Jules is gonna love this. Um, and so what I try and do now is park these things that come to me so that Jules can capture them, and then we have a conversation about them. Jules records the conversations either through Slack voice notes, or when he comes in, he brings in his phone and records them, and then he goes away and writes because I just don't, I can't get them written anymore just from time constraints. So full transparency, it's not like Jules has been let off the leash and is just going and writing whatever he wants. These are actual conversations that I'm having with Jules that he's then transcribing and and writing into these emails, which hopefully are helping build a relationship with the people on our email list.
SPEAKER_01It's seeming like that, and um, yeah, I appreciate it's it's good that you're on the same page about this because some clients are like, I don't want to do this, it's too time expensive, you know, just like economics, economics, economics, profit. Um, and then like half a year later the list isn't responding, and they're like, Oh, you're copy shit. And it's like, no, like it's the picture, it's like you're not investing emotionally into the list before you're withdrawing. Um, that's the key thing. So you have to keep giving, giving, giving, and then building that goodwill.
SPEAKER_00And it's funny because I said to you, I think I said to you the other recently, I think of this as like when I was a kid, I had a pen pal who lived on the other side of the world. I can't remember her name. I uh it could have been my mum writing letters back to me as far as I know. Like I I'm assuming that I had a pen pal on the other side of the world. But anyway, it was a thing when I was a kid, like you would get someone in the maybe it was the local school or the library or something. They had this program where you could sign up, you put your name, address down, and they'd put you into a thing, and then all of a sudden you'd get a letter from someone in the Netherlands, right? And uh, you know, hi it's Jane from the Netherlands, and I'm seven years old too, and I go to primary school and here's a bit about her story. And I was like, wow, this is fascinating. And then you'd write a letter back and send it off, and you'd have to wait like three months to get the letter back because this was pre-computers, right? Back in the dark ages. Uh, and I think of email these the way I'm thinking about email these days is that I have, you know, I don't know however many I I have no idea how many people we have in LS, but say 30,000 or 35,000 pen powers that I'm writing to. And sometimes they write back, not all the time, but sometimes people write back and they tell you amazing things about their journey and their their struggles and their successes and their life story and what it is they're trying to achieve. And it's very rewarding to read those responses. And so I val I see not just the economic value in having an email list, right? But I see long-term just like I said to my wife recently, when I die, there'll be like five people at my funeral in Melbourne and a hundred thousand people watching the live stream. Because most of my friends that I know that would turn up to my funeral, live overseas, and I'm connected to them via email and through social media. So anyway, I totally get the value in it. Um the what how do you I mean coming back to the business case for it though, is that the mu the reason most people have an email list is to get people on the email list to eventually buy something right that they're putting out. So, how do you optimize or what can you do with your list to make sure you're not just a community service and telling great stories, but you've actually got some potential to convert some of that list into paying customers.
SPEAKER_01It's not a charity, it's a business at the end of the day. We have to make money. But it's it goes back to there's three things hopefully we can cover today. I wrote, um, but let's start with the first one, it's marketing matter one marketing one-on-one, understanding who you're talking to, and the the way I like to do this is uh understand who they are, where do they want to go, and then what is stopping them from getting there. And I've got three B's that are normally stopping them from getting there. It's bullshit stories, so shit that's been conditioned in the past, not just from school and everything else, but like maybe traumatic client incidences or anything like that. Um, bad habits that they've accumulated. Um, so that might be like constantly distracted on TikTok, or like maybe they have a bad habit of starting something new every time they they hit a roadblock because um that's how they cope with stress. I don't know. Um, and another one might be behaviors that cause them to self-sabotage without realizing it. Kind of similar to bad habits, but like a behavior. I don't know. How would you differ? I mean, you're you're you're married to a psychologist. So how would you differ how you differentiate between a bad habit and a behavior?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think a I think a bad habit is just a a constant manifestation of that behavior that's not serving you, right? But I think it all but I actually think it all comes down to the the belief, like the another thing, which is what you talk about, the bullshit stories, like the belief. By the way, have you been hanging out in the office watching me? Because I have bullshit stories, I have really bad habits, and I have behaviors that don't serve me very well at all, and that's how I cope with stress. And I d I am I am terrible at starting new things when things get stressful. You've c you've called me out on this several times and said, dude, please do not open a TikTok account. We are not doing TikTok, stay focused. And, you know, we have this hundred thousand dollar content studio now here in Melbourne, and I look at it and go, wow, this is great, and it's a lot of fun. None of this is necessary whatsoever. In fact, the only thing you need to get to a million dollars a year in revenue is a great offer, right? If you have a great offer, you'll build a list of people who want to follow you and you'll build enough customers to get to that milestone. So um, yes, I think but I think behaviors are just manifestations of bad habits, and that all comes back to the beliefs that you've got that are you know sabotaging your success.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So back to how you actually optimise for the list, how's that relevant? Well, if you understand those three B's and you know what's going on in their head, then you can wrap around lessons and stories that intertwine this. So, for example, Troy said he's a sucker for new things, he loves new. And I bring this up quite a lot on the list because I know a lot of other agency owners fall into the trap of shiny object syndrome of starting something, getting results, and then seeing something that someone else is doing, and then thinking, oh, the grass is green on the other side. Um, but what I would do is that Troy's a few levels ahead of these agency owners, so I'd be like, so he would so the lesson in that story would be like I went down this rabbit hole, yadda yadda yada. Um, but the thing, the reason why I can get away with it is because I've built a team, and the team um helps me create the vision, and I also have people on my team to pull me out of that rabbit hole when they see I'm I'm leading them away from our vision. But chances are maybe it's just you and a few other people, you don't have those resources to help someone to help you pull you back in line or something like that. And like, and that just takes time. So, you know, how do you how do you prevent that from happening? Well, you'd be exposed to like a group of people who are on the same vision as you. Um, that's something we do with our Mavericks. If you like more information, here's here's the link. I've just verbalized an email, basically.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, perfect. It's like and and and I and you know, I mean, we're not sending if you just sent, you know, it's one thing just to send value-based emails, but if you're not it's got to be relevant to them. And people know the reason we send emails is because we know we can help them. We have products and programs that can help them, right? So people feed on the free food, like your content, your Facebook group, your email list, your podcast, whatever, for years. In fact, 97% of our audience will never become customers, right? They just feed on the free food, which is totally fine. Like that's what I love producing content and that's what it's there for. But if you don't, you know, it's I think it's weird if you don't tie the email back to, well, if you want it doesn't have to be a hard call to action on every email. Exactly. But I think it's weird if you don't, if you don't at some point say, hey, if you want more information about this, if you want to help setting this up in your business, hit reply, get in touch, and we'll, you know, we'll let you know how we can help. Because I think people expect that, and if you don't do it, I think people are a bit suspicious, like, why are you just emailing me this useful content all the time? Like, you know, it's a bit weird. Like, I know you want to go out on a date, why don't you just ask me your weirdo, you know? Exactly.
SPEAKER_01I always love dating in business, great analogies. Great. All the time.
SPEAKER_00All the time. So so uh the the problem is that most people send most people don't send emails to their list, or if they do, it's usually all about them, right? It's like, look at this thing I designed last month for this other client that you've never met.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, which is which is kind of paradoxical because I was just talking about a lot of emails are about you, um and it's all about your life. The thing is though, we're making it relatable so the story of Troy is relatable. Not it's not like bragging in every email how great you are. It's always spinning it back to the per to the reader. Um, and I always say, like, maybe I always have like little lines like maybe you can relate question mark, or like, has this happen has this ever happened to you? Or um, I can imagine you've been through something like this similar before, right? Just like involving the reader. But like you just said, if it's so common problem that I see when I've come into a list is that they do a testimonial email or like a case study email, and like John made 50 th $50,000 in less than 60 days with our agency. Like, okay, cool. So that's that's like a sexy hook, okay. Then you go into it, and there's just no soul, there's no connection with that email. It says like headline, problem, and then it talks about the problem solution. Here's what we did. Results, um, here's how happy they are. Now there's no real connection, there's no real like what's in it for me for the person reading it. Um, it is it is just sort of just toting your own horn and not really empathizing with the reader. I think that's that's the key thing. That's like that would be, I would say, like a semi-sophisticated image. Like some people don't even get to that point, Troy, where it's like problem solution results. Some people will just be like, uh, I created this blog, I found it interesting. Here, or like you said, here's here's our here's a list of websites that we create. I haven't seen that before, but like here's a list of websites that we've created for clients.
SPEAKER_00Um I'm asleep. Um the the you said this, we were here talking, you were asking me questions once. I love talking about myself, and you uh asked me a question once on the couch, and I was just off on a rant, high on my own supply, thinking I was the you know, the cat's guts. And you kind of interrupted me at one point and you were like, So, Troy, how's this how's this relate to the the agencies? And I'm like, Oh, well, I don't know. I was having fun talking about myself just then, but now you want me to make it relate to the agencies. I think it's really easy. I mean, for people who aren't as enamored with themselves as I am, I think it's really easy for most people to get carried away talking about themselves, right? Yeah, and uh the reality is that nobody cares, right, until they know how it can help them. Yeah. Because otherwise it's just hot air.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And like just to recap, in case you didn't hear it, the way I relate back to the reader is that I I ask them a question, like, do you is this has this happened to you before? Like maybe this happen like maybe you can relate. Um always bring bring them back into the story.
SPEAKER_00Which I'm not good at, to be honest, because I'm I I'm my background is performance, right? So it's all about me on the stage. I mean, I'm just being fully transparent here, right? It's like I'm on the stage, look at me, look at me, look at me, I'm gonna entertain you. And Jules is like, no, no, you've got to engage, you've got to get you've got to interact, you get people involved. I'm like, well, that's your job, dude. It's like I don't I don't have the attention span for that. Um but I'm glad you're here. Uh so had so like give us an example of like if someone wants to start sending more emails, what are the what are people generally don't do that because they're worried that they're going to annoy people or be or come off as spammy.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes, okay. So why do they give you the email in the first place?
SPEAKER_00Well, maybe they um well, there's a couple of reasons. Maybe like one, they're a past customer. Or two, they've just signed up for some kind of freebie thing and you know and they've trusted you enough to download a free checklist or something like that.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. So they've trusted you enough to give you their email. So they're kind of saying, look, if you have something that can help me, I would like to hear it. That doesn't mean be a spammy salesperson that that just gives you permission to just pitch and be just like disgusting in every email. It's just um no one wants to read that. But people gave you their email because they want to hear more. So why not email them?
SPEAKER_00And um I we'll I want to talk about uh automations in a second, but before we get there, like what's the what's the rhythm you reckon? Like if someone's like, all right, I've got this little bit of a list and I've never really emailed them, I don't know what to do with it. What's like the baseline? How many times how many times a week should you be emailing your list?
SPEAKER_01So if you've never emailed them at all, or are we just like reactivating the list and then wanting to send more regular emails?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, let's say we've let's say we're reactivating a a list that we haven't emailed for a while.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so so this is what I did with you guys. So it was um, hey, reaching out, it's been a while, here is a free relevant gift that answers a burning question you might have. And we spoke about this on the Facebook group before, and it was three ways to add recurring revenue to your agency. Um there was some content, there was some social proof to show that it actually works, and there's a soft pitch at the end. The next couple of days after that, you'd be like, Oh, we were talking about recurring revenue. Um I pulled up this old video that might be really helpful for you and answers another core problem, like scaling your team, something like that, or hiring the specifics for agencies. And then you might have a third email that might be helping solve a specific big problem. Or sometimes you might know what it is and you want to know what the feedback is. Like, look, um, I think I know what you guys want, but I'd be interested to hear your feedback and reply what your biggest number question is about. Blank. And that's like so you got some content ideas. So we've done three emails to reactivate the list. Um I would then maybe resend the last one and just cut everyone who is not who hasn't opened or interact with it. Maybe not completely delete them, but just like remove them from that contacting list. Right. So that you're telling your your email service provider, ESP, yeah, that you're not just a spammer, like you're actually talking to engaged contacts. And sometimes that can feel really scary because you might have a list of a thousand people and now you've got a hundred. It's like, oh my god. It's terrifying. Yeah, it's terrifying.
SPEAKER_00I go through this all the time. I panic all the time. Like I don't want to I don't want to take these 8,000 people who never open my emails and never read them and never engage. I don't want to stop emailing them. Yeah. You idiot. Like they're not listening anyway.
SPEAKER_01They're not listening. But you just park them right and then you can send them a different spin on a reactivation, and then a small fraction of that will come on later. And that's just that's just the way it is, unfortunately. Um, because if you have if you've neglected them, it's like back to dating as well. Like, would you expect some girl or guy to talk to you if you haven't had any conversations with them for months?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Remember that one date we had three and a half years ago? Well, guess what? I'm single again. Wanna go out? Exactly. That's exactly it. That's that's my modus operando right there, ladies and gentlemen. Um before we get into automation land, do you have like do you have a do you program do you have like a set cadence for time between emails, or do you just kind of feel organic and go, it's been a few days, I think it's okay to email them again?
SPEAKER_01So I have a bit of structure when it comes to your list.
SPEAKER_00Well, that's good to know.
SPEAKER_01Uh so the we we started off just doing a few emails, just like um story-based emails. I think it was like three or four. Um and then we needed to do some content emails. So it really just depends like how big is your marketing machine. Like Troy has some content he wants to put out, like um a podcast or an anticipation uh email to get people to show up for the live stream. So we've got that. And then we've also got the slice of life stories, which I send out on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, sometimes on a Saturday as well. The cadence is you could do it every day, or you could do it once a week. I would recommend at least three. Three is like a bare minimum. But the hardest part, right, if if it's just you, is the the habit of writing every single day. So even I struggle with this as well. Um, but if you can get in the habit of writing seven bad emails in a week and you pick the best three, rather than waiting for the best idea to come up and then writing it as it comes. It's like you give yourself permission to be bad for four emails and you just pick the best three. Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, totally. Now I have to talk about an elephant in the room before we get into automations, which is I know a lot of people listening to this going, oh great, I'm really fired up about email again, and I'm gonna email my list, but I'm not a very good copywriter, so I'm just gonna go to Jasper.
SPEAKER_01Oh, the AI one.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. And and and have a robot write my emails, right? Yeah. And uh I'm gonna say that's not a good idea. No.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00So I'll just that's just the sound of me opening a can of worms these.
SPEAKER_01I know. So basically, the ultimate marketing pitch is you press a button and then money falls down from the ceiling.
SPEAKER_00100%, 100%. I'm still looking for it, dude. Like, if you find that button, let me know and I'll just give you lots of money.
SPEAKER_01So every marketer is trying to exploit that human desire where you press a button and money falls from the ceiling. Uh-huh. I think that AI copywriting falls into that, and it's easy to take a testimonial and put it in the right context, being like, I use this campaign to make X amount of money, and it's absolutely awesome. It's like, okay, first we've got to figure out what's the relationship with this person's list. Like, is this like a rabid following? And they just did like where they would buy anything that would say basically. Um, how complex was the pitch? Um, just all these different things. On top of that, one thing I don't think AI is gonna come uh come over and take over any for a while is brainstorming the big idea, like a hook or or like a theme of what you're talking about, especially if it's around events. We talked about events on the other live stream, like you got like a Halloween or a Christmas or Thanksgiving. I'm just listing off all these things that have been around, or maybe a birthday, like how do you tie in some reason why someone might might want to purchase? And I don't think I'm sure that AI will come up with templates of that someday. But then these also have the strategy, like okay, we've got a launch. How do we strategize? Like, what email needs to cover each specific objection and then tie around a customer story which helps make people feel like they're not alone and that it answers that objection. I don't think AI is gonna help write the strategy, uh, come up with the copy and then um talk to the customers and then translate that back into the copy. It it's gonna be a while before that happens, I would say.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, totally. And I think I I I also think I can spot AI generated copy a mile away because there's no character in it, there's no personality, there's nothing unique in an AI written, in AI written copy, and so therefore it just you're just adding to the white noise. I do not like it. I understand that it might serve a particular purpose from an SEO point of view, but I get really annoyed when I land on a blog post that I can tell has just been written for search, right? It's like I landed on a blog post the other day about how to change your hosts file on a Mac. I was moving a website to a new server and I had to check to see if the DNS was pointing to the old server or the new server. And so I changed one line in the footer, which would tell me where the website was currently being viewed. And so I changed I had to change my hosts file on the computer, and I discovered this blog post. It's a five-second job to access your hosts file on a Mac, right? It's one command line you type into terminal, right? So I land on this blog post, it's got the table of contents. A table of contents for a thing that is a paragraph, right? It's like, why is your host file important?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Why would you want to access it? What is your host file? I'm like, for God's sake. I it was like seven minutes of reading before I got to the bit of syntax that I wanted to copy and paste. Right? Ridiculous. I found the the same answer on an So that was on the Kinstar blog. Anyone from Kinsting Company listening, it's annoying. Then I went to SetApp, which is this cool little software app I use on my Mac, which is basically a collection of little apps that I use, and it's housed in this little interface called SetApp. The Set App blog post, about the same thing, is like four lines of text. I'm like, thank you, that's helpful. I'll go back there in the future. I'm not going to go to Kinst again because you're wasting my time pimping out this content for search and providing a poor user experience. At least put the thing that I need to know at the top of the blog post so I don't have to read all your guff before I get to the actual bit, you know.
SPEAKER_01So here's some good news. Here's a silver lining about this all Troy. Everyone loves the idea of pressing a button making money. So there's gonna be a lot of people who who just do a substandard job and don't learn from their mistakes, which is what we need to do in business, is learn, don't do the shit that doesn't work. So people will keep doing the things that don't work because it's easy. Whereas the people who don't mind working a bit harder to get good copy out or pay a bit extra and not pay for someone either who can't really speak English well or um or like it like we've just talked about AI, those smart people will realize the quality of good cop like what good copy actually does, and like you said, add some personality to it, actually add user experience. So um there's opportunity for people who who don't mind pulling up investing time and effort.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. The problem with the rest of them, of course, though, is they're giving email and marketing a bad rap, right? So stop, come on, people, lift your game.
SPEAKER_01Um then it also makes us look really good because they're like, oh, this is refreshing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yes, that is true. That is true. Um we're almost out of time, and I'd I'll just explain this for a second. I know this is called the agency hour, but what we've realized, feedback from our audience and also feedback from lots of internal navel gazing and brainstorming and reflection is that a podcast is really the sweet spot's around about 25 to 35 minutes for a podcast episode, right? So what we've decided to do is the agency hour will still be called the agency hour, but we're gonna give you about half an hour worth of content, and then we're gonna give you half hour off just to reflect and think and not work. So it's still the agency hour. We still want your attention away from the business for an hour. We're gonna give you half an hour worth of content, maybe put 15 minutes at the front of it just to get yourself into the right frame of mind, listen to the podcast, and then take 15 minutes the other side to make some notes and do some reflection before you go back to work. All right, so there you go. Uh talk to me about automations. Okay. We got because again, this this ties into like wanting to push the button and automate everything and just have it happen on autopilot, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, okay. So there's a few things that absolutely wreck businesses, and that's not showing up to sales calls. Like you book it, you've you spend all this money to acquire a customer and they don't show up. What a kick in the pants, right? Um, onboarding them correctly or not onboarding them correctly also cost you customers. Um, those are two core, two core automations. If you don't so if you close people on the phone, you need them to show up a hundred percent. There needs to be an automation that makes them feel good before the shop on the sales call. I'll give an example like I've done with Troy and agency Mavericks before it was just like this irritating reminder, nagging, like get on the call, get on the call. I'm like, okay, then and then I got on the phone with Damien, your top closer. And I said, Damien, why aren't people what are the what's your shop rate? He said 40%. I'm like, fuck, that is not good. So can you tell me about why people don't want to do business with you? He he came down to trust. I'm like, okay, so it's trust. It's not everyone can say they've got the best results, they've got the best program, the best this. It's like, how do I believe you? Even if you show me results, how do I believe you? So I went a different angle and I'm like, Agency Averics doesn't have the best anything. We've just got a really good community. Here's what we do with our community. And I know after COVID, so many people value community a lot more, they see the value in that more. So I would just show them photos of like different retreats that you've had in Thailand, in the US, in London, like wine tasting, like and really use community as the angle, like, look, if you want to continue to work with us, yeah, we've got great results. But the thing that we really uh uh enjoy with our family is yeah, like the sense of community, and we get to do all this fun stuff. So, like if you're down for it, like that's what's on the other side. There's no like we're with no posturing or anything like that. It's just showing them like pulling back the curtain a bit, like here's what's on the other side, like friends and community. Um, and that's since I last checked, it was like a few months ago, but went from 40 to 67% show-up rate. So um, yeah, little nice little plug for I I'm still really disappointed.
SPEAKER_00I'm still really disappointed that you wouldn't let me rent a Lamborghini for that photo shoot, dude. I was really looking forward to that, but uh wasn't wasn't to be. Um, and uh and of course the other one you mentioned is onboarding, which is you know a combination of automation and human touch, right? Like even you know, how does how does email automation how do you see it working in an onboarding scenario? What's its what's its job?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, we're actually still in the process of developing you a solid onboarding sequence because it's gone through it's one of the it's arguably one of the most important pieces of copy because once someone's handed you a substantial amount of money, they need to feel good about that investment. And if you and it's like you just said, if you just automate this with email, there might not be that human touch. If you don't have anything, not saying anything is a real big disconnect. Um, so right now we're uh I'm discussing, I've gone on a phone call with Simon, who's your onboarding coach. So for people listening, Troy has someone who actually calls people straight away and helps guide them through what they're gonna get. Sometimes they might not have the call for a few days. So I am basically a digital version, that first email of telling them, reminding them of the value they're gonna get, telling them that there are results that they can expect, and um maybe some quick wins that they should probably focus on first because you don't want to drink from a fire hose. Like if you want rapid results like these clients, sprinkle a few results. Um, I would suggest following maybe just one, two, and three things the next 14 days.
SPEAKER_00Love it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and like you said, with video, I mentioned like I was looking through the feedback and some I think Emily was saying maybe we should include Troy in some of these videos, uh like as a video to help guide them more so it's not just old text. I'm like, yeah, it's actually probably a good idea. So we'll be talking about that later later um to come up. Hopefully that wasn't too much for people, but um or I'll I'll just like recap what an onboarding automation should look like. You need to remind them of why they invested and why it's a really good idea. You need to sort of future pace what they can expect results-wise and be specific with those results. So if it's like um stop talking to shitty clients or um be able to close packages ten thousand dollars and up, um, like get specific with what they're gonna achieve in the next X amount of days um and it how they can get help. So getting it getting them onto a call straight away if they haven't. Um, so that that's my framework for an onboarding sequence.
SPEAKER_00Love it. Um, I think you know, set kind of setting expectations from the start and future pacing is super important, but then also that quick win is like if you can get someone a quick win within 14 days of them working with you, they'll just think you're a magician and they'll do whatever you tell them to. Like similar to how you got us a quick win before you even before we even hired you. You were like, hey man, you should just do this with your emails. You sent us a lumpy mail parcel and and said, Hey, you should do this with your emails, and we went, okay, and we did, and we booked a bunch of calls and made a bunch of money, and we're like, hey dude, we should hire you. And you were like, Well, that was the plan. Results in advance, right?
SPEAKER_01Results in advance, exactly.
SPEAKER_00Love it. Hey, dude, this has been super fun. Thank you so much for doing this. I know that people listening uh are gonna get a lot out of this and hopefully have made a lot of notes. And from my calculation, you've got 22 minutes left, ladies and gentlemen, in the agency hour where you can sit and make some notes and reflect and ask yourself how you're gonna take action on this. Please, if you're listening to this as a podcast, which you should be right now, otherwise you wouldn't be hearing it because we're not broadcasting it anywhere else. Subscribe and do the like-share thing wherever, whatever platform you're on. And please share it with someone who you think might benefit from this. Uh, you never know, it might just change their life. We've had so many people come through our programs and then say, I discovered you through the podcast, and it's been a game changer for me. So if you know anyone who would benefit from this, please share it with them. You never know the impact it's going to have. Uh, Jules, thanks for hanging out. Max, thank you for producing. This is the Agency Hour brought to you by Agency Mavericks. My name is Troy Dean. You can follow us at all the usual places. YouTube and Facebook is where we are most uh active. And of course, we have our Digital Mavericks Facebook group. So just go to Facebook and search for the Digital Mavericks group and come and join that group and hang out and be a part of the conversation. I'll see you and speak to you all again next week on the Agency Hour. Until then, I'm Troy Dean. Bye for now.