When you sit down to write an email, do you find yourself staring at a blank screen lacking inspiration? Today’s episode is meant to inspire you with tools and templates to help get out of your head and into the inboxes of your audience! In this episode, Hannah Davis joins me to talk about her preference for email marketing over social media, her process for writing newsletters, and how tools like templates and AI help her get started in content creation.
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Guest Bio:
Hannah Davis is a Showit designer for creative entrepreneurs, who want a bold & legit-looking website—instead of having to settle for social media as the only way to reach new clients.
When Hannah isn’t designing websites or sending GIF-infused email newsletters—you can find her in the PNW reading a book or watching a Disney movie.
Today’s episode is brought to you by my Content Organization Hub! If you are drowning in a sea of post its trying to keep track of all your content ideas or maybe you’re struggling to remember what you posted on which platform and when, I totally get it.
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Find it Quickly:
2:45 – The Power of Storytelling in Emails
5:37 – Email vs. Social Media
11:35 – Getting Your Email Subscribers to Respond
15:47 – Managing Your Inbox Effectively
18:22 – Hannah’s Newsletter Process
24:19 – Embracing Human Imperfection in Communication
25:15 – The Importance of Audience-Specific Communication
26:01 – Homework: Send an Email Now!
27:08 – Using AI in Email Marketing
30:04 – AI’s Limitations in Humor and Storytelling
35:44 – Growing Your Email List
37:45 – Email List Maintenance and Cold Scrubbing
40:59 – Balancing Sales and Nurture Emails
Mentioned in this Episode
Episode 044: How to Use Emails to Make Friends with Liz Wilcox
Connect with Hannah
Website: madewithboldness.com
Newsletter: madewithboldness.com/newsletter
Instagram: instagram.com/madewithboldness
Review the Transcript:
Colie: Hello. Hello. And welcome back to the business first creatives podcast. I am super excited for today’s conversation. We are going to be chatting with Hannah and she has been in my world for like one or two years now via Ashlyn Carter. You guys know, I love everything that does from her courses to her templates.
And Hannah and I both have Ashlyn’s templates, but I love getting Hannah’s weekly email because I love seeing what she has done with Ashlyn’s templates for her own business. And I will admit every once in a while when I’m not very motivated to write one, I will go read Hannah’s email and then sit down and I’m like, okay.
I can write an email today. Hannah, welcome to the podcast.
Hannah: Well, I’m just, you know, blown away by that. Like, mic drop, we can stop right
Colie: there.
Hannah: That’s awesome to hear.
Colie: it’s really interesting guys. So Hannah is going to be here today, but we’re not actually going to be talking about, like, we’re not focused on what she does as a business, but we’re certainly going to talk about it because you guys know, I love to highlight other entrepreneurs and what they do, but Hannah is an awesome website designer.
She designs Showit websites, but also her emails are awesome. And so we’re going to kind of like make our way through both of these topics today. So Hannah, how are you doing in your email marketing? Like, were you doing a good job writing emails before you joined Ashlyn’s Template Club?
Hannah: That’s a good question, actually, because I didn’t get a lot of feedback from my audience in those earlier emails, but I’m kind of a natural storyteller, like, that is a medium that’s easy for me to speak through. And so if I, a lot of times with the templates, even I’ll just get, take like a little snippet and run with it and the email looks totally different.
And so, when, um, Before I got the templates from Ashlyn, I was just kind of winging it, doing my own thing, and telling crazy stories, and it just kind of, so having the templates, you know, brained in my focus, so I wasn’t, you know,
just blabbering
as much as the earlier emails. It definitely helped, so I’d have like a flow, and okay, this leads to a sale, this, you know, makes sense, but I really think just The stories for me has been the big thing where, I’ll take, you know, any pop culture reference I can find out of my brain or weird thing that happens at Costco.
And like, you probably got that email where I talked about the guy in Costco who is sampling, uh, beef jerky and I’m vegan. And he tried to sell me on it. I’m like, dude, I am not your ideal customer. And it was like, ding, ding, ding, newsletter, you
Colie: know.
So what were you doing? Okay. So first of all, Hannah, let’s take a step back. You design awesome websites. How long have you been designing websites?
Hannah: since 2020, roughly,
started in the middle of the pandemic, like a lot
Colie: of people
Like a lot of people.
Hannah: I started out on Squarespace first, actually, and then when they changed the Fluid Engine, I had moved to show up prior to that, but the way they handled that transition, I didn’t like the, how they treated their customers through that, so that now I don’t work on that platform anymore, and I just do show it.
Colie: I mean, I’m a show it fan. I feel like we have a lot of show it fans in my audience. You know, it’s amazing. It’s easy to design, to get someone else’s template, to put your own spin, to make it completely different. Just like you said, taking an email template and doing it. But so you’ve been in business for about four years.
How long have you been consistently doing email marketing inside of your business?
Hannah: That’s a really good question that I don’t have the answer to on the exact date, but I did just notice in ConvertKit, which is what I use for my emails, that I’ve sent almost 300 emails of now, and I know I’ve been consistent at least Since I got into Ashlyn’s world. So I’d have to think back when I joined copywriting for creatives, but it was somewhere around there.
So it easily two years at this point, but possibly prior.
Colie: I mean, that two years is a really long time. Two years is a long time for you to write emails and still be writing emails. So
Hannah: I love it. Like that’s the easiest medium for me to speak in. Like Instagram, I’m like, No, I don’t want to do that. I like I’m limited to graphic. I’m limited to a caption and Is anyone even gonna see it versus emails? I know, you know, as long as I do my due diligence on deliverability, not acting spammy and doing weird things, like it’s gonna land.
In their inbox, whether they open it or not is, you know, up to the person receiving it, but I’m not having to worry so much about, you know, is this trending or not? Like I can just talk about whatever makes sense for the moment, you know, on, you know, whether it’s an offer or if I just want to tell a crazy story like me going into Costco and being sold an item I don’t want.
So,
Colie: Yeah. I mean, the thing that I’m beginning to really love about email marketing is the availability to connect with your audience, even if they don’t communicate back like they would on Instagram. I do feel like. There’s still a bit of a disjoint between when I post a video, or let’s say, you know, some kind of graphic or a caption on Instagram, I do feel like if people see it, like if my people, if the people who have actually raised their hand or like, Colie, I want your information, if they see it, I do tend to get people that give me tactile feedback in terms of giving it a like, giving it a comment, sharing it with in their stories or with other people.
Let’s say relationship in email, I don’t quite get the same replies or the same tactile feedback from an email that I do from Instagram, even though I know from my open rates and my click rates that more people are in fact getting the information that I’m sending in an email versus something that I’m sending or that I’m posting on
Hannah: Yeah, that’s what’s interesting is I’ve had the opposite, and probably because my social media strategy admittedly could be improved, but I’ve gotten quite a few replies back with emails and being, oh, that’s so helpful. And, uh, and definitely the metrics on my analytics are definitely better on email compared to my social media.
Or to Instagram. Again, admittedly, I’m not trying very hard on Instagram just because it doesn’t resonate with me as much as a platform. having to hop on trends and worry about, you know, does the graphic look great? Like, I can just write. Like, my emails are pretty sparse on the design angle, which is kind of ironic since I
Colie: is very ironic, Hannah.
Hannah: Isn’t the irony that the designer who doesn’t like designing emails, like, I’ll just put a gif and emojis in there and be like, eh, it’s good. But that can be better for deliverability anyway to have less images so you know what It is what it is But having the freedom for me to just write and not have to worry so much about you know, does it work?
You know, in my feed or whatever, like I can just send what I’m thinking or what content I need to warm up my audience for. And you know, it just goes off to into the abyss, you know, people enjoy it whether they do or not. And I don’t, it kind of removes the pressure of, oh, this is going to live forever on Instagram unless I archive it and where I can just be like, you know, do you want this or not?
You know, great, open it, you know, reply if you want, we’re good.
Colie: But see, that’s kind of one of my fears, which I, this is a really interesting conversation because you and I seem to be on like opposite ends on a lot of
Hannah: things,
Colie: but one of the things that I love about Instagram is if I post it and it doesn’t resonate well, or maybe the content becomes outdated or maybe my opinion changes, like, Hey, I used to really bash HoneyBook and now I wish that I could archive all of the posts where I have bashed them on my Instagram.
I am actively working to do that currently, but. My point is that on Instagram, there is a way for me to like archive. There is a way for me to unshow it. The same thing with this podcast episode. Let’s say that for some reason, something that we say in this, in this interview becomes outdated or it’s something that, you know, neither one of us are no longer, um, a fan of, or just anything like that.
I can always go into my podcast editor. cut a snippet, do whatever I’m going to do and re upload that audio back into the podcast. Now, granted, anybody who’s ever downloaded it previously will still have the old version, but anybody new that comes across this, you know, in search, or if my discoverability gets higher or whatever, they will get the new version.
And same thing with a blog. Like I love to blog, but I’m also one of those people that is not afraid to publish something that I wouldn’t call it half done. But I know that there are additional things that I should add, I’ll hit publish because exactly like in a month or two when I have more time or I’ve had a chance to kind of flesh something out, I can rewrite it or add something else and then just ask console Google console to, you know, index it again.
But email to me is very permanent. Like you send that email and it goes into someone’s inbox and you have absolutely no control over doing anything to that email again, which is what I think stopped me from writing emails for so long. Cause again, it’s like that one piece of content that once I hit send, it is completely out of my hands.
Hannah: That’s an interesting way to look at it, and I hadn’t thought of it like that, and I think, I think honestly most people probably aren’t going to go back into their inboxes and look through old emails enough where you have to worry about that per se, but I’m pretty much just the type of person where I’m like, you know, it goes out, it goes out, you know, if I said something weird, whatever, but yeah, like for me, it’s Harder if I’m like doing a podcast or teaching in a group and I say something weird and I’m like, ah, it’s going on video forever.
That’s where I start freaking out. If I just said something weird in writing, like most people skim through stuff anyway, unless it’s like an actual book, you know, their emails. I don’t know if the 20 percent copy rule applies, you know, with emails, it might be a little bit more that people read, but, you know, the odds of them catching something weird, it’s like, eh, am I really that concerned?
But that’s just me. Like, I’m really comfortable with it not being perfect.
Colie: Yeah, so I don’t want to skim over the fact that you said you’re getting a lot more replies to your emails because like, I think that that’s important. So, Hannah, what do you think is the reason that people are choosing to hit reply and actually talk back to you and say, Oh, that’s helpful? Like, do you have particular call to actions?
Do you think that it’s the, Storytelling that you’re doing. Like, why do you think people are hitting reply and telling you and giving you feedback on your emails?
Hannah: Honestly, I think it is the storytelling, because I don’t usually do a call to action of please reply to this, unless is more of a sales email where I’m like, you know, if you have FAQs that are not answered here, please reply, you know, I’m available. But I usually don’t do that call to action on my regular weekly newsletter.
I should probably try that. I’ll write that down after this, but, uh, they’ve just been kind of random. So then I’m like, well, it must just be the storytelling is what I come back to. And I think a lot of people get it. discouraged with storytelling where, you know, you think it has to be some big crazy thing that happened where it can just be, you know, I, uh, these are the emotions I’m feeling today.
And, you know, segue really quickly into, you know, that made me think of X, which then leads into this content. Like the segue is your friend. Like the story can be so short. Like I’m sitting here drinking iced coffee and moving on, you know, like just some little bits. And pieces of your personality to create a connection so then people feel like, you know, you’re a friend to them and then it, they’re gonna keep reading.
That’s, I think what’s key is giving little snippets that hook people in and then they can keep re. It keeps the scroll and the reading where they’re like, oh, maybe I will click on that. Versus if you don’t catch their attention in the beginning, you know, they’re gonna skim to the bottom and be like, okay, next, moving on, I’ve got 5, 000 other emails.
Colie: Well, and I mean, good storytelling to me is what keeps me looking for your email in my inbox in order to read it the next week. I mean, I tell people this all the time, but, um, just to say it again, Every time I sign up for someone’s newsletter, I am actually using an email that is specific for newsletters.
Now it all gets dumped in the same like Google account, but it all gets filtered into a folder that’s like read later. And so when I read, you know, every once in a while, like let’s say when I’m sitting outside of my kid’s school, waiting for her to come outside, I go to that folder. And that is when I am scrolling.
And sometimes I will be, I will look at particular subject lines that like catch my eye. But a lot of the times, what I’ve started doing now is like, let’s say Ashlyn’s email or your email or anybody else’s that Brittany Herzberg, for example, like I really enjoy reading all of your emails. And so I’ve started filtering them into a different inbox in a different folder so that now I can read those.
And then if I still have time, that’s when I go to the read later, which if anyone gets like Really grossed out by huge numbers. I’m pretty sure it has 16, 000 unread emails like today. just telling you all these emails go in there. And it’s funny what you said about, you don’t think that people go back and read because here’s what I will do.
Like if you are trying, if you all of a sudden are selling something and I just now noticed. It in my inbox, like let’s say you happen to be at the top of my read later folder. When I open it and it caught my eye, I will actually sit down and search for your name in that folder and then go back through and read like 10, 15 emails that you read so that I can get a sense of you and.
Maybe your storytelling, but also the different products that you offer, the services that you offer. I will usually do that before I click on a sales page to go read your sales page. And I know there’s not a lot of I mean, I know a lot of people are not like me, Hannah, and that’s
Hannah: I’m the complete opposite. I am like, inbox zero constantly. Like, I’m deleting, I am putting it in a folder, like, I, I, I am naturally more of a messy person with other things. But my inbox, like, go away, please. I need you organized.
Well,
Colie: all my client emails, I will say all my client emails go in a different folder. So like, I don’t quite know one, anybody that’s listening to me, if I tried to say I did inbox zero on that, they would be like, you are a liar. But I will say that has much less emails, like all of those get read, all of those get archived in some, you know, when I’m going through them, but yeah, the newsletter ones, I mean, and that’s why.
Like when I’m doing services for a client and I put them in support mode. And, you know, they’re like, Oh, well, you know, I just have this quick question. No, you need to submit a support ticket because if you don’t, you are going to get caught in the 16 to 30, 000 unread emails that I have in my inbox. And if I don’t see your question and you get buried, that’s on you, not on me.
because I gave you an alternative way to get in front of my eyes by filling out a support ticket. And if you don’t do that, I am so sorry that you ended up buried in my email. It’s not until you usually send me a second email that I’m like, do you have the link to the support ticketing system? Would you like for me to send that to you again?
going to go copy your request in there and I’ll get back to you in 24 to 48 hours.
Hannah: I
Colie: mean, this is how I keep control of my inbox, Hannah.
Hannah: Yeah, hey, you have a system, admittedly. The key is to have a system, not what the system is. because admittedly, my, I don’t really have a system, except I make sure I go through all of them and delete anything and folder anything at the beginning of the day. That’s my system, because I’m not getting probably as much traffic in my inbox as you are.
Uh, I’m definitely operating on a smaller scale, but like
Colie: not something to brag about, like all of my unread emails. It’s funny, sometimes I’ll be somewhere and someone will, like, I’ll show them my phone for something, and the gasp. And then I automatically know, oh, it’s because you saw how many unread emails I have. Okay, I’m sorry. If that number bothers you, I can put it in a focus mode where you won’t see that number.
It’s all good. Well, you know what I want to talk to you about now, Hannah, I want to talk to you about like maybe your process because like the Costco thing, that’s one thing like that happened to you. You sat down, you wrote an email. But when you get like a template or you get an idea from something that someone else wrote that you saw in your inbox or whatever it is, what is your process?
And maybe how are you keeping your emails organized? Like, where do you write your emails? Like just talk, talk, talk me through how you would write your newsletter for next week.
Hannah: So, I have a, Notion board with all of Ashlyn’s templates linked, and I just sit down every Monday, I grab one of them, I write an email, and then I send it, like, I’m pretty chill, and I can do it really quickly because I have gotten into a rhythm where it becomes natural to me where I can do it last minute like that.
Or, at one point, I was doing more where I was, you know, write bulk. You know, writing them to make sure I, you know, had my calendar planned out, but now I’ve gotten to the point where me doing it at the last minute actually works better because I spend less time on it, which sounds. It’s counterproductive.
I believe it’s Liz Wilcox who said this. Something to the effect of, you know, if your newsletter takes more than 20 minutes, you know, you’re doing it
Colie: wrong.
Hannah: I’m misquoting her probably, but something like that. And that’s kind of the philosophy I’ve taken on where, yeah. Admittedly, sometimes it probably is longer than 20 minutes, but like, if I can’t get it done in a quick work section, like, I’m overanalyzing.
You know, if it’s a sales email where I want to make sure, you know, certain details are included, you know, here’s some imagery, here’s, you know, the correct links, so I don’t have to send you another email with the actual links, then I’m going to take more time. I say that like I haven’t done that before, but.
We’ve
Colie: all done that, Hannah. We’ve
Hannah: Yes, I’ve, I’m sure I’ve done it multiple times, but, uh, for just the weekly, you know, making a connection, I’m not putting a lot of, you know, stress and worry over it, you know, and I think that to an extent makes it more relatable. And if your brain works totally different than mine, which odds are, it probably does, you know, that’s, uh, You’re going to be overwhelmed by me saying that, but if you’re struggling with email marketing and you’re like, I want to get better at it, just set a timer for, you know. I don’t know, an hour, you know, takes some of the stress off the tween minutes, but if it’s taking longer than an hour, you know, you’re really being too hard on yourself.
Colie: hard on yourself. Mm hmm.
Hannah: Mm
timer for whatever chunk of time you want and just write. See what happens, you know, don’t overanalyze, you know. You might surprise yourself and, you know, if you can’t think of a story, don’t worry about it.
Start with, you know, a bullet list of, you know, what content you’re pushing to, instead, I know Ashlyn is one where she has to start with, like, you know, what is the, you know, stack of whatever content or offer and I’m the opposite where I’m like, I have to start with the hook because if I don’t get that right, you know, no one’s going to care about how great my, I, you know, list of things in the content is, but that again, everyone’s brains works differently.
So I think just finding whatever rhythm works for you, that gets you in a flow where you’re not worrying too much about it, but also worrying enough that you’re not driving yourself crazy.
Colie: Yes. It’s funny that you mentioned Liz. Liz has been on the podcast twice. I’m like, we didn’t really talk about emails either time, which is, well, actually the first time we talked about how to make friends. with your welcome series. I believe that was the first time that she was on this podcast, but you’re right.
Liz Wilcox is like a, it shouldn’t take you any more than 20 minutes. And she’s basically like, I feel like today my email that I sent my list was definitely inspired by like Liz, like it had a little, it had a little update at the top. And I had three things that I wanted to say, and then I said, okay, now I did do a call to action coming back to your, you don’t tell them to reply.
This is airing in February, but Hannah and I did record this in November. And so I sent an email out that was like, I really don’t think I’m going to do Black Friday this year. But if you were hoping that I was going to have a Black Friday sale, hit reply and tell me what it was that you wanted. And I will say I got quite a few replies today, um, just off me telling them, Hey, hit reply.
And it was funny because I didn’t think about the 16, 000 unread emails in my inbox when I did this. I was like, why did I not just give them a form for them to just type it? And then I could have looked at it outside of my inbox. That was my mistake. I take full responsibility. But when, when Liz tells you how to write a newsletter, she basically just wants you to stop, start with an update on your life.
an update on your business, whichever one it is, one to two sentences. And then she says, just tell them what they need to know. If you don’t have the energy to do anything more than that, that is what you should be doing on a weekly basis. And so I will say for myself, I think I do like a balance of like what I would call like a really good storytelling Ashlyn template.
And then a Liz Wilcox email where
Hannah: That’s somewhere where I’ve landed in the middle merging the two of them and I definitely go heavy handed on the story aspect because like I love Disney like I’m borrowing a story from them, you know, weird stuff happens in Costco. Boom, you know. You know, I, I’m in a hurry, like I have no time today, you know, that’s my story.
That happened once where I’m like, I do not have time to write this email, you know, here’s your content.
Colie: You’re Hey, I’m going to use my real life in order to get this newsletter out, you know, and hit send. Cause a lot of it is, like you said, if it’s taking you a long time, you’re probably working too hard. You’re probably stressing over the wrong thing. You just need to get it done and hit send. And then like, basically move on.
Like, don’t worry about what you should have put in there. And the only time that you should actually go back is if it was a sales email and you told them that you were going to give them a link. And then you realize none of your links work or that you put the wrong links. And then you immediately send your audience, oops, I made a mistake.
Here’s the real links in this email. Please click on one of them. If you are interested, please. And thank you.
Hannah: I think I actually have had to do that with a newsletter, admittedly, you know, I’m thinking about like, oops, but it, that is, can actually be good because it proves that you’re like, so much is everything is automated, and then we have AI coming in with the robots. Like, I think now more than ever, we need to prove we’re human to people. And if that means making a mistake to do that, uh, I’m all for it. Like, that, you know, have a typo over here, you know.
You know, you want to be professional still, but little, you know, nitpicky things. It’s like Don’t worry about it. Like, I, I think it makes you appear more real and, you know, less polished and then people can relate to that and be like, oh, I just did that in my email too, you know, or, oh, that, you know, whatever it is in the story that you’re telling, they might resonate with it, you know.
Some of this is going to depend on your audience, too. If you are more in more of a professional sphere, if you’re a lawyer, you know, you probably want to take a little more time to polish things so that people don’t wonder, you know, are there typos in all of your templates?
Colie: But,
like you’re a lawyer, should I really be having you write my contract if your email has this many typos? Maybe not.
Hannah: so if you’re a lawyer listening to this, please ignore half of what I’m saying and more polished. But if you’re in the creative space, which I’m sure most of you are, because this is the, you know. We’re on Colie’s podcast. You know, you’re creatives. Most of you, allow yourself to be creative.
That’s what you are. That is what your business is, is based on creativity. So just. See what happens and write your email like go send one right now. See what happens
Colie: I mean, immediately Hannah and I are giving you homework. When you are done with this podcast, we expect for you to send an email within 24 hours, please. And thank you. getting the whole, you know, you have to send an email, have you dabbled in ai? And I’m gonna tell you the last thing that I did with AI that I was really proud of myself, and I actually admitted it to my audience.
Um, there was an Ashlyn template. And it was three. I don’t know. There’s three pillars. I think there were three pillars of something and I fed that thing in a JAT GPT and I said, this is an email template. These are the 3 pillars that I want to cover and I think I even maybe fed it in like 1 more email so that it would know my typical voice.
And I said, can you rewrite this email template? Girl, it rewrote that email template and I spent literally 60 seconds fixing three sentences that I thought didn’t sound enough like me and then I hit send and when I put it into kit at the bottom, I had a little disclaimer and I said, by the way, this is an Ashlyn Carter template that I fed into JAT GPT and gave it a little direction and prompts.
And when it spit it out. I changed it a tiny bit and I sent it to you. How did I do? Now, I only got like two people that gave me a thumbs up and both of them are copywriters, I will say. Both of them also actively respond to my emails whether I ask them to reply or not. But I mean, that was just a moment of vulnerability for me.
I’m like, Hey, I really needed to send you this email. I have absolutely no brain space to write anything good right now. So I took a template, I told it what it needed to say and I told it to do its magic. And guess what? It did. Would I do that for every single one of my emails? No, but it was good in that moment.
So Hannah, what have you used AI for in terms of your email marketing?
Hannah: Okay.
like I’ve used it for blog posts cuz that’s where I find I need to like reign in my brain and be a little more Organized because you know, it’s ranking on Google like there needs That’s where I need to rein my brain in and have a robot tell me, you know, a little bit to be like, you know, have you included a headline?
It’s like, no, thank you. But with emails, I actually have haven’t used any, which I hadn’t realized until just now. I’ve actually don’t use a ton of AI. I probably should use more of it, debatably. But with blogging, I have a, just cause that helps me stay more organized. But with emails, I have not.
Colie: Okay. You know what I think would be interesting is feeding it one of your emails and saying, write me a blog post. Or at least write me an outline of a blog post. I think that would be really interesting for some of your emails. And granted, I know you’re thinking,
Now
Hannah: I have homework.
Colie: I mean, I like to give people
Hannah: I’m curious now.
Mm
have fed it in to like try and see what it would do if I changed it to like a specific holiday, like see what kind of Corky humor it would put in like I took in it when I had sent randomly and said, you know, make this Halloween, make this Christmas.
And I’m like, this is nothing like me because one thing with AI, when I did that test, I’ve noticed if you have something really story driven and then ask it to change it, it’s going to. come out with some weird stuff that doesn’t even make sense. But if you have something more, that is a little more informational, doesn’t have a ton of story, you know, more of the quick, you know, I have this piece of content, go look at the content, you know, here’s a quick bullet, listed the content, call to action.
That’s, was more interesting to see what it did, where it, If you try and ask it to be funny at all, or add any story that where AI fails. Like, that is something that AI cannot replicate, is any sort of, like, aside or humor. They might be able to point you in the right direction where you can come up with something better, but that’s where I’ve found, you know, that just doesn’t happen with robots.
Like, they’re, the humor and the The realness in the stories, them producing it doesn’t work, you can prompt it to then prompt an idea in your head of a story, but to have it write a story for you doesn’t work.
Colie: Yeah, I don’t, I don’t know that I’ve ever tried to use AI like that. Like I’m giving it the story that, but I’m giving it the story in like a, I’m not really paying any attention to my structure, my grammar, like nothing. I’m like, Hey, you know, these things happen. This is a little aside. This is kind of what I want this to say.
Give me, you know, give me my draft. And then when it gives it to me. It wasn’t until I interviewed a few AI people on here that I realized that I really needed to treat it like an intern. I mean, so many people like Sarah Gillis and a couple of others said that on this podcast, but really when it gave it to me, I would be like, Oh no, I don’t like that word.
What are, what are 10 alternative words that I can use? And then if it gives it to me, I’m like, Hmm, okay, well, can you try to use this word? But also I wouldn’t use this word. Can you rewrite it? I mean, I probably spend a good 10 to 15 minutes. with additional prompts for like any writing piece that I’m trying to get it to do.
But I have realized that what it ends up producing in the end is still something that I can edit easier than I could if I sat down with a blank screen and tried to actually write like the structure. Because the structure is what normally gets me. Unless I’m doing like my short Liz Wilcox. Hey, here’s my update.
Here’s the shit you need to know. Please and thank you goodbye. Like, I can do, I can just churn those out. But, I mean, I find those to be rather boring to read if that’s all I’m sending on a weekly basis. So I really do want to, you know, throw in some little better emails. And usually I’m good at reading someone’s template, whether it’s Ashlyn’s or someone else’s template, and then getting an idea of what to write.
But that particular time I was like, it really needs to be this email. But like, I just do not have the brain to like, try and redo it. And I don’t know, for the listening audience. If you’re thinking to yourself, Ooh, I really want to try this. I don’t know if what it gave me from a template and then me feeding it a couple of pieces of information.
I don’t know if that would have been as good as what I’ve got because if I had left out the step of giving it a, Hey, I recently wrote this email, this is my tone. So you know, training the AI to like read your, you know, blog posts or your emails and kind of figure out how you talk and how you write. I do think that that’s a really big piece of trying get it to produce anything, whether it’s funny and it still sucks at being funny, or whether you’re just trying to get it to turn something out.
I think the training part cannot be overlooked enough when you’re trying to get it to give you content that is even remotely feasible at the end.
Hannah: Yeah, I agree that even in general what you’re prompting it with because you have to kind of yell at it sometimes. Like when I’m doing blog posts where I’ll be like, no, that is incorrect. Try again. You know, like you need to boss it around. It’s like, not like an intern, but like something, like something that you’re slightly irritated at.
Like, no.
Colie: Oh, like my husband. Okay. I’m sorry. Continue.
Hannah: You said it, I didn’t,
Colie: but
mean,
Hannah: yeah, you need to be a little bit bossy and be like, no, please take out that line. I told you that, you know, five chats ago that I didn’t want that in there. Order it and be very firm with, you know, I want it done, you know, this way, and I’m going to give you this information in this order.
Cause sometimes there’ll be like, I’ll tell it, you know, I’m going to give you five things. And then it starts writing the blog post after I’ve given it one. And I’m like, no, I told you I was going to give you five
I’m
Colie: not done yet.
Hannah: I’m not done yet. You gotta be bossy and more like, you know, no. Okay. I am not gonna put up with anything, like, you need to behave, you know, you are a robot, you have no emotions, you know, I’m going to be forceful.
Colie: Okay. I get it. And I actually totally agree. I mean, then I was going to make a toddler joke or maybe it’s like my 14 year old when she keeps screaming at me that she’s an adult and I’m like, no, you’re not like, yeah, this, this is where I’m going when you’re telling me these things. Yeah. want to take a kind of side pivot because this is not really what we discussed that we were going to discuss, but I’m just curious in general because email.
marketing is your jam. Like you really don’t like the social media. You, you know, you write blog posts cause you have to, but you seem to really enjoy email marketing more than the other things. And so when it comes to your email marketing, how are you growing your list? Like, are there particular ways that you love to grow your list?
Are you doing freebies? Are you just asking people to join your email list? Like how are you growing your list?
Hannah: Okay.
posts, and I’ve been blogging actually, for a while. Well, I say I’ve been blogging, I’ve taken a break from that, doing it regularly, but I was doing it quite consistent before the emails, so I have like a backlog of blogs and so I think that’s what helps with the newsletters too, is that like, I have a, you know, vault of content that I can just pick from and send and so that makes it smoother with the newsletters, because I don’t have to think of, oh, I need a blog first and then I can write my newsletter.
It’s already ready there for me. But, um, yeah, So I’m getting subscribers through the blog posts that have been up there for a while. Pinterest I have not seen as much success as I would like, which I’ve been trying to figure that out for a while and haven’t quite hit the, the golden ticket on there.
And I do think that is an untapped resource for most people. I’ve just not figured out how it works for me. And then, Instagram, I’ve gotten some, I’ve gotten quite a few through, ConvertKits, or I guess they’re Kit now, their creator network is where I’ve gotten quite a few subscribers.
I will say those leads tend to be less valuable
Colie: because
Hannah: when they’re signing up, there’s like less of an awareness of who, who you are, they haven’t seen your content before, like, those are the ones I tend to have to clean off my list because a lot of times they’ll never open an email at all and why did you sign up for this?
Like, at least open the first one. If you filter off, like, you know, life happens, but like, you signed up for this and then it completely escaped your mind.
Colie: not even opening my emails. Like, come on, dude. You know, I pay for you to be on my email list, right? You’re right. Like when I go through and you know, a lot of different email marketers have a lot of different opinions on how you should scrub an email list. I don’t bother running people through a cold scrub, um, Automation.
Like if I look, and first of all, if it’s not your real professional email in that it’s some googlyglop at gmail. com, no, you’re the first to go because there’s no way that you’re actually using that email like on a daily basis. So those are usually the first people that I clean off, especially if they came from the creator network.
Cause again, like you said, less awareness, but I mean, you know, there’s always a couple of people that you get from the Creator Network that really are your people and you may not have, you may not have come into their world if they hadn’t discovered you through the Creator Network or, you know, someone else who’s recommending you on the Creator Network.
So I do think that that was like a really cool feature that Kit came out with.
Hannah: Yeah, I really
Colie: like
year? Has it even been out for a year?
Hannah: You know, honestly, I don’t think it has. I, because I remember I, well, for me personally, it might have been a year, because I remember I got in when they call it a beta. Like, I jumped in really early. So, but I, so that might have been a year ago, but I think to the general public it’s been less It’s funny you bring up the, cold scrubbing, where I can do somewhere in the middle on that, where I clean once a month, usually, rather than waiting quarterly, just because that’s easier for me to get in a rhythm of doing it the first of every month and then know that it’s done. I don’t like automating it.
For various reasons that just maybe my personal preference because I do Usually it’s not very many people who have gone cold So I kind of want to look at and analyze it before I have them go away Because there’ll be some where I’m like, you know I know that person and they’ve kind of been opening some of them and they’ve been on a really long time like I might give them another month because I am doing it more often and it’s usually only like Maybe five people or something like I want to think through the psychology of it a little bit.
If you have a bigger list and you have, you know, 100 people dropping off, don’t bother with any of that. That’s just my own weird thing that I want to do. But, I, I send two emails for. I want to give a little bit of an opportunity. I have had some people click through and say, you know, I want to stay. So I think for me, it has been worth it to, but I don’t want to do this long drawn out, you know, I’m sending you seven emails.
Like I’ve sent you seven other emails and you haven’t opened them. You’re not suddenly going
Colie: to magically
Hannah: open any of these because I am doing it consistently. If you’re someone who hasn’t emailed consistently, then it might be worth, you know, doing a series of people. Remember you and be like, Oh, suddenly, you know, this person’s in my inbox, you know, maybe I should pay attention versus mine are so regular.
I’m like, they’ve got other emails. They’re getting two Macs and then they’re getting the boot. You know,
There
Colie: you go. All right, Hannah, last question that I think I’m going to ask you, and it’s just really out of curiosity. What do you think about the cadence of your email? So let’s not consider when you’re actually launching something, like when you’re going through like a full fledged sales sequence. I’m talking about for like your weekly emails.
What is the cadence of emails that you send that are specific to like? Have a CTA to buy something versus an email that you’re just sending to like connect with your audience slash nurture them. Like if there’s four emails in a month, how many sales, how many nurture on average?
Hannah: Yes.
a sales one, I usually do it to an affiliate where I like specifically want someone to go to Ashlyn or the legal page or something where I like, I know they’re having a sale and I don’t want to do 50 million emails and do like a launch with that something fancy where I like, want people to know that, you know, this is happening or.
There’s this webinar that I know is going to get them, you know, on my affiliate link, you know, and let them, the other people take care of sending more emails that, uh, but for my own products, I’ve found that for my own brain doing an actual sequence and sitting down and thinking it through it works better versus just sending the one off email.
I haven’t found works for me, but But, I mean, again, this is the beauty of email. You can decide your own cadence. You don’t have to worry about whatever’s trending on Instagram, whether you got dance, or whether we’re pointing, or whether we’re doing carousels, or whatever the latest thing by the time people listen to this in February is going on, who knows what will be happening.
Maybe, you know, IGTV will come back. Who knows?
Colie: It probably won’t. like,
not coming back, Hannah, but that’s a good one. Yes.
like,
Hannah: seriously, who knows? Like It could be everyone’s decided that, you know, we’re only going to show our pets on Instagram. You’re like, you know, I have, you have zero control over it. And I’ve had my account taken down temporarily twice from doing absolutely nothing except existing on the platform.
So that’s part of why I haven’t put, as much focus on because I don’t own it versus, you know, the email. If I do my due diligence, it’s showing up in the inbox. I’m the only one to blame if something happens where, you know, if I don’t give my sales as I wanted, you know, maybe it’s because I didn’t grow my list.
Like, it’s on me, which I’d rather take that responsibility and run with it and see what I can do with it than worry about pleasing Mark Zuckerberg.
Colie: I agree. Hannah, I mean, thank you so much for coming on the podcast to just talk about email marketing in a way of what you just do with your business, because I find it so fascinating. Um, if the listening audience wants to connect with you and more importantly, get on your email list, where can they find you?
Hannah: So my website is madewithboldness. com. If you do backslash newsletters, I’ll take you to the landing page. You can sign up for just a newsletter. You don’t even, if you want a freebie, you can find that link on my website at backslash pre dash launch, and that’ll give you a checklist with 26 things your website should say yes to if you want it to convert.
But if you want it just to breeze by to the newsletter, that’s backslash. So
Colie: And just so that you guys know, I was planning to ask her about her gifts and I forgot, but in every single one of her newsletters, she has gifts. And I think she picks, like, if you guys think my gift game is on point, Hannah actually, like, knocks my socks off. And there are so many Princess Diary gifts.
Gifs, which I love. Um, I mean, some of you guys listening might not be old enough to have seen Princess Diaries. I don’t know. I’m feeling older by the day.
Hannah: I’m probably I’m definitely younger than you and because I don’t have a 14 year old I can do that math, but
This is where bright my brain is right now you said you were tired I’m even worse but And I totally just lost my train of thought this is another reason why I Find email because I can edit it versus I randomly I said something on another training I was doing where I randomly said the word platypus at an overhand. I’m like, what am I even, what am I even doing?
Colie: Hannah? Okay.
Hannah: This is why I need to be writing, because like, I will say random stuff talking, like, half of your listeners have probably like worried about me at this point because said
Colie: have not, Hannah.
Hannah: Mm
but like who knows what’s coming out of my mouth when speaking but when writing I can edit it and you know make sure that you know I’m not saying something totally weird and
hmm.
and and I can For me, it gives me freedom having that ability to be more in control of it and owning it versus having to please someone else’s platform, you know, where someone comes on my list, you know, you know, they want my content or they don’t and I can, you know, if they resonate with that, you know, so be it, but whichever way it goes, but I don’t have to worry about someone else.
you know, dictating what my content’s gonna be, you know, as long as I know that my audience resonates with it, you know, that’s what matters at the end of the day.
Colie: Yes, ma’am. Hannah, It was so good to see you on the computer. And you know, guys, I always talk about my systems. So I was in squad cast when this started and she was in Riverside. Tiny Cal, my calendar system, sent us each to a different place, but it’s okay. We got together. We got to record this episode and I am excited now that you guys have gotten to hear it.
Thank you so much for listening and thank you so much for joining me, Hannah and everyone. That’s it for this episode. See you next time.
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