the bossbabe podcast - 264. BBS: How To Use Email Marketing To Grow Your Business with Chanti Zak

Episode Date: December 13, 2022

You want to use email marketing in your business – but how do you get started? Join us for this week's episode of bossbabe business school where marketing expert, Chanti Zak, is giving you her exact tips for building an email list that actually makes your business money.   Chanti helped grow Jenna Kutcher's email list by 100K subscribers in a year – she’s got the insight to help you launch, customize and grow a lead-magnet list with highly-engaged subscribers. She also joined The Société for an in-depth training on this very subject. Sign up below to get started on dialing in your own high-efficiency email marketing channel. Highlights: 3 things you can do TODAY to make $$ sending emails. The secret to growing your email list – even if you’re starting from zero. How to create a high-converting lead generator to support your email list and your business. Links: The Société — Join our private, online community of female entrepreneurs where you can connect, build and grow. Try the Interact quiz tool for FREE for 14 days — tryinteract.com/thebossbabepodcast Check out Chanti’s other services — chantizak.com Follow: Instagram: @chantizak Facebook: Chanti Zak bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Danielle Canty: @daniellecanty

A Boss Babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Shanti, welcome to the Boss Babe podcast. You are our guest expert within the society this month, and it's just such an honor to have you here because you've built a business teaching people how to strategically move through an email cycle from joining and purchasing at the very end. And so I want to start this conversation by first of all, just talking to you about why from your perspective, is it imperative that every business has an email list?

Yeah, this is such a great question. And I think in our modern times where we have so many social platforms and so many ways of communicating with our audience, email almost feels old school, redundant. Like do people still use email? There's a lot of questions that online business owners have around, is it really worth my time? And my answer to that is, well, do you use email? Like Danielle, do you use email? Every day. Every day. And who do you let into your inbox? Oh my goodness. I have either my team, people I know, or some of my favorite newsletters that I open to, or a favorite, some home decor brands for sure they creep in there right yes totally our favorite brands the people we trust there's a much higher level of intimacy in an

inbox simply because of that compared to you know Instagram like who do you follow on Instagram? There's usually a much lower barrier to entry. So think about the psychology behind that. If you can make it into someone's inbox, have a certain level of trust where they're happy to have you there in consistent communication with them, when you go to launch your offer, they're going to be way more likely to number one, see it in the first place, because there's no algorithm. So if they're used to opening your emails, and they dig what you're putting out there, they're going to open that email, they're going to see the offer. And then number two, they're going to be way more likely to actually buy from you. Because of the intimate nature of what happens in an inbox, compared to what happens in uber distracting platforms, where we often get into just analysis paralysis. And it's so easy to, you know, maybe see something, resonate with it, click like, but not take any action because you don't want to leave the app because it's engineered to be addicting and to hold your attention.

Email, totally different vibe. Yes, completely. And I think even as people think about this, they can just reflect on how many people they actually follow versus how many people who actually have their email address. So I know I follow over a thousand people, a thousand companies don't actually have my email address. And so I think that's a really good point for first of all, everyone to put themselves in their own shoes and think as a consumer, how you are interacting and the difference between social media and the difference between email. So let's stay on that subject a little longer because what we always talk about is I like to think about social media as a primary platform, but it's one that is rented. So it's one that most people are

going to find you via. It's not like you are discoverable, there's explore pages, et cetera, which is not the case necessarily for email. So I think this rented primary platform being your social media is a great place, but I want to make sure everyone understands the difference between what's rented and what is owned. Because just like a house, you rent your social media platform and it can be taken away from you at any point. We always hope, and I'm sure that won't necessarily happen, but you are a little bit at the mercy of an algorithm. Whereas email, let's talk about it being owned. The fact that you own that house, you rent your social, you own your email addresses. So let's talk about why that is

important to recognize and therefore also is considered a really strong asset when building a business. Yeah, that's a great point too. You own your email list. It doesn't matter if you change email service providers, you get to take that list of names who've given you consent to email them with you wherever you go for however long your business exists. And I love the rent versus own analogy because I also think of owning land and property in real life and owning an email list, both as long-term assets that hopefully appreciate and get better with time and pay dividends over time. The more you consistently grow your email list, the more money you're going to make,

as long as you are consistent in actually connecting with those people and emailing them. But for the most part, the trajectory when you start growing is that your revenue grows too. There is definitely a direct correlation there. So if people are starting out in their business, I always say like, first thing, get your social, get your branding, do all these pieces, know what your offer is. But once they have that, getting people onto their email list is going to be a crucial point. So let's get into like the nitty gritty side of that. How do people persuade people to give them their email address? Let's discuss some of those aspects. Yeah, right. So there's challenges that come with a higher barrier to entry too, right? You have to build trust and connection and create a sense of intimacy kind of right off the bat in order for someone to say like, sure, yeah, you're welcome into my inbox. Come on over so how you do that I mean there's so many different ways but my jam is using

quizzes as a tool to build trust create connection have conversations at scale connect with the human on the other side of the screen there's there's a lot of like, like logical magic happening with a quiz because everyone's favorite topic is themselves. So doing all of those things, and then also being able to through a quiz through asking questions, understand who's on your email list, like to be able to tag them with like, this person is an amateur photographer, and this person is a professional. And let's say you teach photography, you're going to talk differently to an amateur versus a professional, right? So it allows you to capture that information, and then market and communicate more effectively too. And on the side of the quiz taker, you have talked to them like they're a real human being given them specific insight that meets them

where they're at, that doesn't feel like it's one size fits all. You know, there's just this fun aspect to. So ideally, after that experience, they'll be so happy to give you their email and to see, well, if this was my first interaction with this brand, what's next? I also think the power of quizzes and, you know, just to give everyone a little bit of context, what most people do is when they're like, okay, I need to build an email address. They're like just grabbing email addresses and really not knowing the demographics of the customer, who they are, what they like, what they do, what their problems are, what level they're at. And I think what is really important to make sure people understand is the

power of a quiz. And when you are starting this growth or you are realigning your goals of where you want to take your existing email list, I think it's so powerful to know the resource that creating a list actually does. Because what you're saying is, like you say, you learn so much. It's a great experience for the consumer because they're like, wait, hang on a minute. I'm actually getting something out of it. So let's give some examples to ground this of quizzes that people might take to get onto an email list, because then people can understand what we're trying to say with how you're gathering information and what that looks like on the back end, but also what it looks like on the front end as a potential customer

slash consumer yeah for sure so we could even continue with this photographer example I have a client she has a digital course teaching photographers the business side of photography. How do you actually build clientele and refine your brand and your own style and all that? So her quiz is what's your photography superpower? And then photographers take that quiz and in their results, they get some insights into where their strengths are, what their challenges might be. It's an external reflection of what they likely already know, right? But it's this external factor that has such a strong influence on their confidence in moving forward. So for Nicole, it's her name, for her to tell them, you are whimsical and romantic, and you love use of light. And here are some other photographers who are super uber famous, who have a similar style. Here are some visuals that you might feel drawn to here's what

you need to work on if you want to build a successful photography business as this being your superpower and here's what happens next so that sort of onboards them into her universe gives them so much value and then from there they start getting emails that deepen that relationship let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform kajabi you know i've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity which i love not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our

mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business you know. Get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash Boss Babe. I think that's so powerful as well because what people, human behavior loves is being, we actually really

crave giving labels sometimes. I mean, I don't know, you know, if a lot of people have noticed that Natalie and I are a little bit obsessed with the zodiac sign, Virgos and Capricorns. We know our Enneagrams. And there's a lot of comfort that comes when you identify as a label sometimes. And I think that's what the power of quizzes are. When people feel seen and heard and that reflected back to them like, oh, you're this type of personality. This is what you love.

This is what you get to work on. And here are some resources. It actually is what you love. This is what you get to work on. And here are some resources. It actually is such a value. And I always think about email too, as a currency. So just like you think sometimes, oh yeah, I'm not asking for money. Why is it a hard decision? But if you think and put yourself back in your own shoes for a second, I'm super careful who I give my email to. Like I see that as like a gift to somebody if I'm trusting them with my email address. It is a form of currency. So I think the power of a quiz

is that it gives so much upfront value. There's a promise and there's a delivery at the end, which as we know for people to buy, they have to go through a know, like, and trust process. I think quizzes are really powerful at speeding that up, that know they're hearing about you, so they're doing the quiz. They like you as they're going through the quiz. And then because you're fulfilling what you promised and you're giving them the value, they're starting to trust

you. And in my opinion, quizzes are amazing for email campaigns and email marketing because they do fast track that than if it was just like, oh, here's a free PDF, because you're actually even learning more about your customer and then actually able to segment. So I don't want to get too complicated. But let's also talk a little bit about email segmentation and what that means. Maybe if we start like platforms, where you host email addresses, let's kind of cover a few of those our favorites, and then let's go into why it's really powerful to segment. Yeah. I mean, I'm curious what you use. I'm a big fan of Active Campaign. Yes, us too. That's what I use. I use Active Campaign. Right. Yeah. And Active Campaign has so much functionality when it comes to segmentation and tagging and things like that but convert kit I think is pretty good too we started I remember on MailChimp when we like first like I was trying

to get my head around it MailChimp was a really good like starter one but if I feel if anyone's like ambitious and they know they want to be like really growing this thing I will always recommend like starting an active campaign because moving email addresses is never the funnest thing to do yeah I recommend the same thing like choose the platform that you can grow into because it is such a headache to have to migrate if you get to a point where MailChimp or Flowdesk like doesn't cut it anymore and I would say segmentation is one of the bigger features that as your business grows as your offer suite becomes more dynamic and you serve more than one primary audience it's so important to know okay who's in what? Who's a fit for what product or offer? And I don't know if anyone listening is in like,

say e-commerce where you're selling products. Again, having a segmentation available to you is so useful if you have more than one product. So let's talk about segmentations. Give some examples of segmentations for those listening who might not understand this just yet. Yeah. So it sounds complicated and intimidating, but really all it is, is if you were to look at sort of the big picture of your business, you know, do you only serve one type of person? Do you only have one offer? If it's a yes,

you probably don't need to worry about segmentation just yet. But if say, let's just give an easy example here. Let's say you are a business coach, and you work with total beginners, and you help them to figure out how to get started. And maybe you have a really affordable course for that. And then on the other side, perhaps you work one-on-one with business owners who are a little bit more advanced. Maybe they're working toward hitting their first six figures or something. So those are super different audiences, you would have different offers for those audiences, and you would market differently to them. So segmentation, if you had a question in your quiz, and you can do this without a quiz,

like you can just in an email, say, click this link, if you're a beginner, click this link if you're a beginner click this link if you're working on hitting your first six figures but if you can segment the beginners and those who are more advanced then you can when you're doing promotion for your course only send to the people the segment that you know it's actually going to be useful for. Because what happens when you start sending emails for total beginners to a more advanced business owner, they'll unsubscribe. They're not going to feel like they're in the right place and they will leave. So all it is, is getting just a little bit more granular and specific and understanding who's who so that you can meet them where they're at I love that I think that's so true and I think that's the

game of marketing always is to like meet your customers and consumers where they're at because if you're just like sell sell sell like this is like this is my product, buy this is my product, buy this is my product versus, hey, do you have this problem? I have the solution for that. It happens to be one of my products. It's such a different energetic shift for so many. And I think that when you dial in email segmentation, that is one of the key things that mean, like you say, you can send stuff that's actually of value. There's a saying that selling is service. And it really is if the person has the problem and needs that problem servicing. But if it's not, it really is just selling and it's annoying and people unsubscribe. And so I think there's just like this, you know, real understanding that's like

when you are actually giving something to somebody or offering something to somebody that you know their need, it's very different and they're more likely to buy than, like I said, if you're just like, oh, I'm going to throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. And whilst I think when you're a first entrepreneur, like you have to be scrappy and you have to throw spaghetti at the wall, like I never want anyone to feel super, super polished. I do think it's just starting to understand your offer and your audience, dialing in quizzes and segmentation with an email is such, such a game changer. So Shanti, we have known about you in our space for so long. You have the most incredible

reputation. You've worked with people like Jenna Kutcher, Amy Porterfield, helped them grow their businesses by like 100,000 on their email list, etc. And I really want you to share a little bit about what you've been teaching this month inside the society as our guest expert and why you feel those things are really important for new business owners to understand. Yeah. Oh my gosh. It was so much fun to create these lessons. Just keeping in mind who your audience is. So many online business owners haven't really gotten into this email marketing universe yet or understand how to create a quiz. So I really dig into that and go through it step by step. Where do you start? How do you come up with an idea? What do you work on first? The results, the questions. How do you

ask really compelling, engaging questions? And then what goes into those results how do you create a memorable first impression how do you create connection how do you speak to someone's personality traits in relation to what it is you offer because you know maybe you sell like herbal teas and you're how does personality connect to that? So we talk a bit about that and really go into the nitty gritty of how to actually get it done without, you know, getting stuck halfway. Cause there's a lot of moving pieces with creating a quiz, certainly more than most other types of lead magnets where like, you know, creating a free guide or checklist or even a webinar can feel a lot more straightforward. So we go through all those steps and hopefully by the end,

anyone who watches will have a really clear vision of how they can implement the quiz in their own business. 100%. And I think that's what's really amazing by what you created. You're so used to working with entrepreneurs at these levels too and really help. Even if some of the entrepreneurs might be doing more revenue, building a quiz and segmenting their email list can actually be something new for them too. And I think the way that you've explained it, like step-by-step is really powerful so that even if you're a beginner to email, or if you're coming with some email knowledge, there's something to completely take away from it. And just like with anything, I think it's like being able to pull out of it for a second and go, what is the objective of building this email list?

Because again, I always say like when you're raising in businesses, like money isn't equal, like a dollar from one person is want that dollar, but from another person, that's like the equivalent to $3 because you know that they're going to add value and they're going to bring other things to your business. And I think the same with quizzes, like just because you have an email list, you can have an email list. I know people have email lists of just 500,000, but they are so dialed in that they have a $40 million business because of that email. They know so much about those people on email lists. It's easy for them to speak to them and to sell them. And then they know other people who have like 700,000 email address who just don't have businesses as big as that because the game, they don't have that insight

of who am I speaking to, et cetera. So I think the key thing is don't be intimidated by those numbers. I know those numbers I just shared are really high, but like, if you can start with these good foundations, like I felt like the masterclass that you created Shanti, it was kind of a little bit like, you know, when you're first like starting out and you don't really have any money but if you understand like the principles of money you set yourself up for success as you start bringing in you know that okay I'm going to save here for my tax I'm going to save here for my savings I'm going to invest this versus waiting till you create that and then having to back step going oops what should I have actually done and it's like the compound interest of making these decisions really early on is super,

super powerful. What do you think are some of the key things that key tricks that you're like, I just wish that more people knew this? Yeah, I would say the biggest one is starting with the end in mind. So a lot of business owners create a quiz because it sounds fun. They heard this works really well. So they get a fun idea and they run with it and it actually works. Like, you know, for the most part part you can put any quiz out there and it'll work people just generally love taking quizzes they convert like ten times higher than lead magnets like we see all the time like free guides and stuff so you can see that it works and you build your email list and then you go to actually sell and it's like crickets. So that's really common when you don't consider what it is that you're actually selling and to

who when you come up with the idea for the quiz. Ideally, you want there to be a through line and a really clear path from quiz to what you're offering. And when that's disjointed, you might be building an email list, you might add thousands of subscribers, but they're not necessarily going to be a fit for what you actually sell. So true. Just taking that step back and thinking about, I think this is such a lesson we teach a lot in influencer school as well about the vanity metrics of followers versus are those followers dialed in to purchase? And it's the same with email. Like it doesn't matter if you have 100,000 people that you don't or 10,000 people or 1,000 people if they're not the right people. And so being strategic right from the get-go and understanding what the end result is,

so, so smart. Well, Shanti, thank you so, so much. And just like creating, first of all, the best masterclass ever, but also just coming on here and just sharing a little bit of that wisdom because I honestly feel like if I'm not a person to have regrets at all, I think things happen for you, not to you. And if I was to go back and do one thing again, differently in my business, it would be 100% learning and emphasizing more on email than I did in those initial stages. I was very much in the operations and I think back and I, Oh, I really should have lent in and learned more here earlier on versus trying to play catch up as I got deeper into my career. So I think it's just a great starting point for any entrepreneur because there is like we started off on saying

on this podcast, there's a direct correlation between email and your business's revenue. So if you're going to spend your time doing anything, need to know about email and how to get people on your email list is just crucial. So thank you. Thank you so much, Shanti. I want to put some links of your website. I'm sure you have a quiz too. We'll put some links to our quizzes and all the things and where people can find you in the society if they want to listen to that masterclass. So do you want to share your social handles and your website? And then I'll drop those in the description notes as well. Yeah, for sure. You can find me at shantyzack.com and if you want to take my very meta quiz on what type of quiz to create for your business you can go to shantyzack.com and you can find me on instagram on most social media outlets at shantyzack

yay I love that thank you so much Shanti and Act. Yay, I love that. Thank you so much, Shanti. And thank you so much again. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. And if you enjoyed this episode on the Boss Babe podcast, then I'd absolutely love it if you leave us a review. As a thank you,

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