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In today’s Q&A, we are helping Tanya decide if she should use personalization in her email autoresponder or if it just feels fake.
Special guest Michael O’Neal of solopreneurhour.com brings his perspective into the conversation and offers some great advice about how to write better emails for your audience.
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Resources Mentioned in this Episode
- Today’s expert is Michael O’Neal from solopreneurhour.com
- Today’s question is from Tanya Grant at craftymummy.com
- Aweber – Email Marketing Software
- Check out Michael on twitter @solohour
Let’s dive into this week’s question!
JOCELYN: Hey y’all! You’re listening to an expert Q and A with S and J. Today’s expert is Michael O’Neal of the Solopreneur Hour Podcast in solopreneurhour.com
SHANE: Welcome to the Flipped Lifestyle podcast where life always comes before work. We’re your hosts, Shane and Jocelyn Sams. Join us each week as we teach you how to flip your lifestyle upside-down by selling stuff online. Are you ready for something different? All right, let’s get started.
SHANE: What’s going on guys? Welcome back to the Flipped Lifestyle Podcast. This is another Q and A with S and J. We got a special one for you today. We have another expert Q and A. super excited to invite this guy on for the first time to our expert Q and A podcast. Today we have Michael O’Neal from the Solo Hour and Solopreneur podcast at solohour.com. Michael welcome to the show man,
MICHAEL: What’s up you guys? Good morning for me and afternoon for you.
JOCELYN: Absolutely.
SHANE: That’s right. We got lunch cooking you got some breakfast cooking I think.
MICHAEL: I smell it. I just had a protein shake so that counted as breakfast.
SHANE: That’s right. That’s all you need brother. That’s all you need.
MICHAEL: That’s right.
JOCELYN: Alright. Well we have a great question for you today. This is from Tanya Grant of the craftymummy.com. I assume she is in the UK somewhere. Nope, just kidding, it’s Australia. It says, “I am in sunny Queensland Australia and you guys keep me company when I am cooking dinner. That’s when I listen to your podcast of course I am curious whether you use personalization in your emails and how important you think this is. I often see emails which inserts the reader’s first name in the greeting and the subject and I have tried this in my own email newsletter but I am not sure how effective it is. It seems fake, doesn’t everyone already know that is a form letter? What do you think?”
SHANE: This is a good question. We have experimented a lot with this and I know you do a lot of marketing yourself so I am very interested on what you think about this Michael. Do you think it’s good to add personalization? Or do you think that I something that most people kind of see through or does it even matter?
MICHAEL: I think that it’s funny. I don’t know that everybody sees through it. When I do an email to my list and I say hey I’d love to hear—guest suggestions for instance. People are writing me back. Oh man thanks for writing me.
SHANE: Right we get those too.
MICHAEL: So you don’t realize that it is sort of response from an auto responder if it will. Also I don’t know if everybody feels like it is not personalized even though all the current modern software allows you to basically when you compose the email—this is just for your listeners—you can compose the email and there is just a little chunk of code that you can put in that will say, “Hey [blank]” and then that blank is first name. Depending on what you captured form them originally, typically it’s name and email now but sometimes you can get more than that, first name, last name, you can get hey what’s your dog’s name and customize your email to that. But I think it make sense to customize it. I love it when it is customized in the subject. That one is kind of cool.
SHANE: Yeah. I think that improves your open rates big time when you put someone’s name in the subject.
MICHAEL: Yeah. Hey Michael what are you doing tomorrow at 3o’clock and that for whatever reason makes me go oh I have to at least look at this email for sure.
JOCELYN: Definitely yeah. I always used names in mine. I mean I haven’t done a lot of testing with them without but I just sort of prefer it. It seems more personal to me even though it is a big email broadcast or an auto responder or whatever you are using but to me it seems like it’s more personal when you are talking to your customer.
SHANE: I think that’s to as a lot of can’t see the force for the trees in this question because I think it depends on the niche, you know like you said a lot of people may not realize it because we are in this we know when we are getting a form letter. Like when someone sends me a letter my name is in it and I am like yeah this person didn’t really email me this. But because we do this and we see this and we know about this schools but like in our education products that Jocelyn and I sold a lot to teachers that’s the ones I get emails back, like hey thanks for reaching out for me. For football coaches I’ll send them stuff for playbooks and stuff and they are like hey Shane thanks for emailing me because they really believe it’s personal. They don’t know that it is not a form letter. So on a user level, I think they felt good about themselves that someone cared enough to know about my name to put it in an email.
MICHAEL: I mean what is the alternative when it’s totally generic. It’s like hey fella, what are you doing—you know?
SHANE: How’s everybody doing today?
JOCELYN: Hi friend.
MICHAEL: Yeah hey guys.
SHANE: It’s funny because we wrestled with this when we started Flipped Lifestyle. You know because we were like do we really want to personalize everything this, that and the other? And I’ll tell you how ours is involved. We have kind of a catch phrase “hey y’all” in our show. You know how Jocelyn starts every show, hey y’all just because we are southern and just kind of embraces what we want to portray in our brand. But like we actually start a lot of emails with hey y’all but when we really want to ramp up engagement we save that personalization. So I guess our emails you can watch this now. Basically when we say hey Shane check this out. If it’s really important like we have got a value bond that we don’t want you to miss or we got something that it is ultra-important, we save that personalization that way they don’t become numb to it. So we kind of do a little bit of both like maybe we use the hey y’all when we were just kind of hey we got a podcast; a new podcast is out, a new blogpost, ne whatever but when it is like we are going to be in San Diego, California for a live event and we really want to make sure that you know we are going to be there so you have a chance to come hang out with us then we will break out the personalization. Do you do anything like that or do you just personalize everything?
MICHAEL: I would say I personalize everything. I would say there is a difference between writing a sort of generic auto responder email and sitting down and writing your list. Like today I am going to write an email and I am going to send it as a broadcast. I think that’s different because it not only feels more personal but it is more personal. Like I talk about what is going on the show. Like who we had on the show on Monday, who we’re having on the show or who we have on a Wednesday—keep people up to date on some stuff but I just sit and write that like that’s a really now.
SHANE: It’s real time too, you know.
MICHAEL: It’s real time, yeah. And so I think that it is not going to be like one of those narrow test like columns that they do in an email marketing, I don’t do any of that stuff. And maybe I should do more but it is not really my thing. I
SHANE: I think that’s a huge takeaway you know.
MICHAEL: I am ultimately a podcaster. I like branding a lot. I am not a huge marketing guru. I like talking into a microphone.
SHANE: I think that is one of my favorite points I have ever heard on one of our Q and A is that like you just have to evaluate what your content is trying to accomplish. You auto responder is trying to take people through a sequence to tell them everything you can about what you want them to do something. But when you do sit down and write that email, hey here is who in my podcast this week. I mean if I was the only person in your audience you’re going to address that to Shane so it makes total sense that you need to address that first name to your audience because that is a personal email whereas the other ones is hey these are the things I offer. These are not as personal but these are.
MICHAEL: Yeah. It comes across like that. Hey Shane how is it going, check it out, I don’t know if you got to chance on Monday’s show but we did this and this, here is a great little point and then here is what Wednesday show was. So it does I think feel more personal that way. So I suppose the overall message of this is are you going to personalize your auto responder or personalize your kind of broadcast emails? I say yes.
SHANE: Perfect.
JOCELYN: Alright, I love it. Thank you so much for that insightful answer. I know that people are really going to benefit from hearing that because it was beneficial for me too. Alright Michael tell people where they can find you on the internet or if you have somewhere that you want them to contact to.
MICHAEL: I was in the cover Time Magazine last week.
SHANE: There you go.
MICHAEL: The show is called the Solopreneur Hour. So iTunes is where you can find but on the web because no one can spell ‘preneur’ I have shorten everything to Solo Hour so solohour.com, solohour on Twitter. That’s HOUR. Facebook, Instagram, the whole bit. So solo hour is what you can find.
SHANE: Perfect, Alright guys that wraps up our Q and A today. Thank you so much Michael for you coming over on the show, gave a great answer, awesome tip there to really evaluate communication and see what should be personal and what shouldn’t be personal and act accordingly. Until next time guys get out there and take action and flip your life. We will see you next time.
JOCELYN: Bye.
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