AskPat 71 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 71 of AskPat.

I want to give a quick shoutout and thanks to everybody who has subscribed to the show, whether on SoundCloud, Stitcher, or on iTunes or however you subscribe to the show. You listen to every single episode, and you're awesome for that, and thank you. If you are brand new to the show, welcome. I'm here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week. If you have a question you'd like to ask me, head on over to AskPat.com. It's as simple as that.

Before we get to today's question, I want to thank today's sponsor, which is AWeber: AWeber.com. This is the company and email service provider that I use and have been using for over five years now to build an email list, to collect email addresses on my different websites, and build different email lists for different purposes. I send emails out to those people for specific reasons, whether to keep in a good relationship with them over time. I also use my autoresponder to do that for me. I pre-write emails and have them sent out sequentially over time to people if I'm selling a product, or if I have some time sensitive material I want to share with people. AWeber makes it super easy to do that. Templates you can use to put on your website. It's a great company. I know a lot of people over there, and they've treated me very well for the last five years. I recommend them. Head over to AWeber.com/askpat to get access to a free trial.

Now, today's question comes from Troy, and this is about email marketing. Let's hear from Troy.

Troy: Hi, Pat. This is Troy from TroyDelaney.com. I blog about nonconformity, creating opportunity, and staying young and healthy. My question is, I notice that you had mentioned that you do not send your blog posts out to people that subscribe. By subscribing, I was under the impression that you did. I just want to know why you don't do that, and how you decide which content gets sent out as a blog and which content only gets sent to your subscribers. Also, I thought that the more posts you put on your blog, the better and more searchable that your site becomes, so I would think it would be better to post everything on the website. Just wanted some clarification. I love the podcast, and thank you for everything you do.

Pat Flynn: Troy, thank you so much for your question. It's certainly interesting, because there's different parts to it. The first part I want to talk about is the fact that I don't send my blog content to my email subscribers, if I get what you're asking me about. Because there are ways to set up your email service providers to notify all of your email subscribers that there is a new post. You can do that every time a new post comes out, or perhaps every time every three posts come out, which might be a good idea. However, I like to keep the content in my emails separate than the content on my blog posts for the most part. Sometimes if there is a really important post or something quite valuable or sometimes very time sensitive that I publish on the blog, and I want everybody to see it, then I'll send an email out. I'll send a broadcast out personally. I'll personally write that in real time and not have the automated systems publish that for me, which is one of the drawbacks of having these systems in place that are automated. You don't get the personal touch to it. Whenever I write a post like that that I want everybody to see, and of course I want everybody to see every post, and I want every post that I write to be valuable, but there are some posts that you just know that you want everybody to see. In which case, I would email out a link to those blog posts. I wouldn't talk too much about that post. I would sort of tease it a little bit. I don't know. Talk about what they would learn if they read it, or what was important about it. In which case, people would then click on that link and come over to my website, which is important. I get more traffic that way. That's how I get the biggest spikes during my days after sending an email out.

There are pieces of content that I share only if you get email that aren't published on the blog, and that's the second part of your question. I really appreciated the fact that you asked and talked about the fact that, yes, the more content you write on your site, the more chances there are to be found via search engines, which is absolutely true. The more content you publish on your site, the more opportunity there is for some of those keywords, especially the long tail keywords, for people to find you with those long tail keywords. The more content you write and publish on your site, the more opportunity there is also to share those posts. There is some drawback to publishing stuff only to people on your email list.

However, I approach it like this. I want to reward people for getting on my email list. I want to provide them even more content, and keep them on my list, and keep them wanting more. I have made the decision to take some special pieces of content that could be turned into blog posts, and put them specifically in emails. Now, the big difference between the email content only and the blog content, or the stuff that's only for blog, is that the email content typically is much shorter, oftentimes under 500 words, while my blog posts are typically over 1,000 to 2,000, sometimes up to 5,000 words. I wouldn't put 5,000 words in an email. Email-only–type content, the exclusive content that is only available to people who subscribe to your list, that's a good opportunity for you to share those small tips, those quick wins. Those quick actions that people could take that would help them becomes fans for life even quicker than if they were to just only read your blog posts. They're getting exclusive content. They're getting quick pieces of valuable, snackable content, if you will, and they're more likely to take action on it because they're getting it into their inbox.

Again, that's the reason why I do that, because … Especially with that first email list. That first email they get in their autoresponder sequence. After day one, after they subscribe, they get my best email. That's a huge tip for you if you have an autoresponder sequence, or if you're building any sort of list. You want to make that first email that they receive from you after the whole double-click confirmation and after they're on your list. That first true email that they get from you in your autoresponder sequence, you want that to be an awesome email where when people read it, they might take some sort of action or just read and be like, “Wow! This is awesome. I can't wait to read the next one.” That's the feeling you want to give off. In that first email, if you subscribe to my list, you know this. That is a great quick tip that people can use that gives them immediate instant results. That's really important, because that is something Charles Duhigg talks about in his book called The Power of Habit. He talks about the power of these small, quick wins. It reminds me of a video game that I played in college, which kind of sucked away three months of my life. That video game is called World of Warcraft. In that first level, it's so easy, but a lot of cool, amazing things happen and you level up, and you get gold, and you get all these small, quick wins, which become the start of an addiction to that game.

You want to create and start a habit of getting addicted to the content on your site, and you can do that by giving people small instant results. What are those one or two small tips that might not even be that big, but that can give people an instant result after they read that piece of content? Short enough for an email, perhaps under 500 words. That's going to help you so much, and that's something that you can do that maybe isn't really meant for your blog but is meant for that more personal touch through email. That's why I keep those things separate.

Troy, I hope that answers your question, and I hope for everybody out there that gives you some tips on how to better utilize your email list and also your autoresponder sequence. Troy, thank you for much for your question. If you have a question and you're listening to this, head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask there. Of course, Troy, you're going to get an AskPat t-shirt. For those of you listening, I give away a t-shirt for everybody who is featured here on the show.

Lastly, I want to mention our sponsor again related to this episode, which is AWeber. AWeber is the company that I use. I made the huge mistake when I first started of not starting my email list. When I finally got around to it, when I finally got my head on straight, I asked everybody, “What email service provider should I use?” Everybody said, “AWeber.” I went with what everybody said, because that's how we are as humans. We go with what the group says. Luckily, they were great. They have great customer service. Their service is easy to use. Never had any issues with it. They have payment plans based on how big your email list is. That's a win for everybody. AWeber.com/askpat to get that free trial, and also help them recognize that you came from the show. Thank you for that, AWeber.

Also, I want to end with a quote of the day, as I always do, and that quote is from Herald Geneen or Janine. Sorry. Herald Geneen. He says, “In the business world everyone is paid in two coins, cash and experience. Take the experience first. Cash will come later.” Thank you, take care, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat.