This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - 202 / Building Your Email Lists & Websites with Brittni Schroeder

Episode Date: March 27, 2024

I could spend HOURS every single day going down the rabbit hole of all the different resources, apps, and tools that are out there and somehow still not know what the best, right answer is. And even if I did figure it out, it would only be a matter of time before something new, shiny, or better came along. On this episode of This Is Woman’s Work we’re going to talk about the marketing and scaling side of being in business, in hopes that together, we can get out of that rabbit hole and move toward what matters most. We’re joined by Brittni Schroeder, business coach, social media expert, and marketing strategist. She coaches coaches and other entrepreneurs on how to automate their business, create systems, convert funnels, and scale to 6 figures and beyond.  Brittni offers all sorts of business resources for entrepreneurs from individual coaching to The Meeting Place membership, a top to bottom framework for entrepreneurs to grow and scale their business, and she’s here to help us ALL work less and make more. If you’re looking to build your email list and website, or if you’re thinking about rebranding or taking your existing list and website to the next level, this episode is for you! Connect with Brittni: Website: www.brittnischroeder.com  IG: www.instagram.com/brittni.schroeder  FB: www.facebook.com/groups/redefineyourbiz  LI: www.linkedin.com/in/brittnischroeder  P: www.pinterest.com/brittnijo  To learn more about Brittni’s business membership program, The Meeting Place, visit https://brittnischroeder.com/membership and use promo code: NICOLE for a 15% discount Like what you heard? Please rate and review  Thanks to our This Is Woman’s Work Sponsor: Your premier talent partner, Claire Myers Consulting will work with you to source, screen, interview and manage the selection process for any open role in your organization. Go to clairemyersconsulting.com/tiww to get a FREE 15 minute consultation call AND 10% off your first placement!

Every leader or business owner I've ever worked with says one of the hardest parts of running a business is finding great employees. It comes up all the time in my coaching conversations, and many, many businesses are not large enough to have a full-time recruiter that's actually good at finding and selecting talent. Claire Myers Consulting is the premier talent partner to collaborate with your growing business to find your next most qualified candidate for your open position. They source, screen, interview, and manage the selection process for any role in many, many industries. If you need to recruit a single individual or scale your team by 100, Claire Myers Consulting

is there to support you every step of the way. To find your next best team member, visit clairemyersconsulting.com forward slash T-I-W-W and mention this podcast to get a free 15-minute hiring consultation plus 10% off your first placement. I am Nicole Kalil, your host of the This Is Woman's Work podcast. And being your host is one of my most favorite things that I get to do. But it's not the only thing that I do. First and foremost, at least as it relates to my professional life, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm focused on building, growing, and scaling. I care about impact and I care about profitability.

I'm constantly and consistently thinking about vision and values, about marketing and sales, and about operations and leadership. I worry about how to find and connect with the people that I can support best. I fret about getting my message and my offerings out there. I stress about time, money, and technology. In fact, those are the things that probably cause me the most amount of stress. I wonder why some risks that I take pan out and others, well, they just don't. I've had some pretty big wins and some pretty epic failures.

I've invested for growth and I've invested and lost. I have some big opportunities and some small regrets. If I could go back and tell myself to take all the time, energy, and money that I spent on building social media and redirect it all to building my email list, I would absolutely time travel for that. I've pivoted and I've evolved a lot. And while I feel closer to knowing what I'm here to do, I still have times where I feel totally unsure about how to do it.

I vacillate from seeing the big picture to the tiniest detail between confidence and doubt, from feeling connected and helpful to feeling lonely and exhausted. There are things that are up and running that I don't have to worry about, at least not too much, like this podcast and the coaching and mastermind work that I do. And there are things that very much need a refresh like my website and some of my marketing strategies. And there are things that I'm testing for the very first time that I have no idea if they'll work like sales funnels. And there are things that I'm testing

that I have complete confidence that will be epically good like retreats. Friend, I could spend hours of every single day going down the rabbit hole of all the different resources, apps, and tools that are out there and somehow still not know what the best right answer is. And even if I did figure it out, it would only be a matter of time before something new, shiny, or better came along. So all of that to say, entrepreneurship can feel like one big mindfuck. And on this episode, we're going to talk about specifically the marketing and scaling side of being in business in hopes that together we can stop that mindfuck and move toward

what matters most. I've invited Brittany Schroeder, business coach, social media expert, and marketing strategist to join us. She coaches coaches and other entrepreneurs on how to automate their business, create systems, convert funnels, and scale to six figures and beyond. And she also hosts the Redefine podcast. Brittany offers all sorts of business resources for entrepreneurs from individual coaching to the meeting place membership, a top to bottom framework for entrepreneurs to grow and scale their business. And she's here to help all of us work less and make more. Brittany, thank you so much for being our guest. And I want to start our conversation by asking, if you had to encourage an entrepreneur to focus on only one marketing strategy, which I know you would never do, but let's just

say where to start, would it be their website, building an email list, social media, digital courses, anything else? What is it that you would suggest as a starting point? I think I have to mimic what you said and the email list. I agree with you that our default is social media. I think entrepreneurs, they start for a variety of reasons, but I think that social media is easy. There's instant gratification. It's visual, all the things. And we're on it anyway. And so I think people tend to just, okay, I need to be on social media. I need to grow social media.

But I think that you said it best in your intro. If you were to go back and do it again, you would focus on growing your email list. And I think that that is something that entrepreneurs really do not give enough focus and time to is growing that email list. So, I mean, the numbers, I'm an analytical person. I'm all about numbers. But if you look at the numbers, the analytics, there's a way higher conversion. There's a way higher reach. There's so many, so much, so many more opportunities with email lists than we are seeing with social media right now. So definitely I have to stand on my soapbox and scream and scream and scream, but definitely grow your email list for sure.

Well, and I would reinforce that from a place of not having listened, right? So I started down the social media rabbit hole and I think it was because of the public nature of it. It felt like a great place to build credibility. And I think there's something to that. But what I didn't understand was the opportunity to create connection via my email list and really build that community. And then I think there was a point where I'd gone so far down that rabbit hole that redirecting or pivoting felt like a big challenge, but I so wish I would have done that differently. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about an email list. What are some tips or tactics and how we can not just grow our email list, that's the first part of the question, but grow with the right

subscribers for you, right? Like, so we don't just want quantity, it's quantity and quality. Yeah. Well, I think it's, you know, first of all, you have to know your ideal audience, know who you want. Like I said, I'm big on analytics and, you know, we're going for open people who are opening our emails and that if you don't have the right people on your list, you're not going to get, you're not going to get a return on it. And so really like knowing your audience. And so how do you grow that audience if we back up and there's a number of different ways you can do it.

But the main concept is you have to have a lead magnet or a freebie. Basically, you're attracting. It's a magnet. You're attracting your ideal lead, and then you're getting their email addresses, and then you have to build that know, like, and trust factor and nurture them. But you have to have something that's going to attract them. And the days of, hey, sign up for my newsletter list are long gone. It's really hard to get people just to sign up. So you have to give them something in return for their email

address. And so you have to find something that's really valuable to your ideal client. For me, I think of like my behaviors, I'm like a sucker for a coupon code. I'm just a sucker for it. So I think of those are my spending habits are like coupon codes, right? As, as a consumer of retail products. And so I always think of Bath and Body Works. Like I go in there every single time I'm like, oh yeah, I want the coupons. I sign up. Then they like spam me a million times and then subscribe. And then it's like rinse and repeat. I keep going back and I keep going back. So you have to understand your ideal client and what are their, like, what are their habits? What, what are they looking for?

Um, so we have to create a lead magnet or a freebie. I recently just did a training on how I got my first 10,000 subscribers. And as I, you know, I think that this is really important as a, as a business coach, I try to be very transparent and very honest and real. And there isn't just one thing that I did that got me to 10,000. It was a lot of different things that I have done. And that's what marketing is, is testing and trying and failing and testing and trying and failing again.

It's like rinse and repeat. And so, but you have to have different, you know, you can't, a lot of times people, if they understand the concept of a freebie or a lead magnet, a lot of times they create something, they slap it on their website and then they're done. And they're like, why is my email list not growing? Like, I don't understand. And it's something that you definitely have to be proactive about. You have to make it a priority, just like you are posting on social media, you should be trying to grow on your email list every single day that you are working in your business. And so trying different things and figuring out what works, you know, so that's

kind of a starting point. Outside of lead magnets, coupon codes, any other things that you've tested that have generated great results for you? Yeah. One of my favorite things is teaching. Like I love to do like live webinars. During COVID, I had a lot of growth because obviously everybody was at home in front of their computer. But I like kind of challenged myself that I'm going to do a free training every week.

And I pushed myself. I'm going to do a free training every week. And I, and I pushed myself, I'm going to offer some free trainings, but people had to register, get their email so that they could get the information. So webinars are probably the one I enjoy the most. And I think it's because it's the most interactive and I love to teach. So webinars are a good one. Free templates are a good one. You know, I have one that's performing really well. It's 50 free viral posts for people who have Facebook groups. But I think you kind of have to just test and see what's out there. But webinars are probably, especially if you're educating in any way, webinars are a great way to get people's email. And that's the other thing too, is I think we have to test, like, it's okay to have more than one.

I have a whole library of, of different freebies that, um, help entrepreneurs. And so I think we have to just kind of, we have put something out there. We test it. I always say test six months to a year, you know, see if it works. Um, if it's good, you have to change it, tweak it up a little bit. If you know that it's good and it's not selling, then it could be your hook. It could be a variety of different things, but we have to try different things and see what's working.

Don't just try one thing and be like, oh, it's not working. I'm done. Moving on back to social media. But we definitely have to try and test several things. So one of the things that's challenging about being an entrepreneur is I'm just going to call it loneliness. You don't often get the opportunity to interact with and get the truth from other entrepreneurs. I think sometimes a lot of what we hear is aversion or an inflation of the truth.

So all of that to ask, what are some good benchmarks? You mentioned open rate. If you're striving to grow an email list, is there a certain amount of subscribers that is a good goal to have or a certain open rate or conversion rate? What are some good benchmarks that we should be striving for? Well, you know, I believe and I think sometimes I agree with you that it's lonely. And you kind of touched on a point where it's, we hear from all these people and, and, you know, a lot of times, you know, especially bigger, like bigger coaches or bigger people in your industry, they're only going to give you the big, the highlight reel. Right. And so, and I think that that's why it's hard sometimes being entrepreneurs because we're

comparing ourself to somebody else's, we're comparing our beginning to somebody else's middle, or we're comparing ourself to where it's like you can't compare the two. And one of the things, like I said, I'm very analytical. One of the things, I've had clients who are making multi-six figures, close to seven figures. But when you look at what they're working with, For example, I had a client, she has 60,000 people on her email list. She launches a program and she's making 30,000 to 70,000 on her launches. Well, her percentage of conversion isn't any higher than somebody who has, say, 5,000 people on their email list. She just has bigger numbers. So she might have 5% of people purchase

and it's can equal like $75,000. But somebody who has like a smaller list, like 5,000, they're 5%. It's not going to be that much money. It might be like a $3,000 launch, even though they are converting at the same percentage. So is that the case every time? No, because you do hear stories of people who like, oh, I have a small email list and maybe their email list is just like all their ideal clients and it's really small and like they have half of their list

that they purchased from them. But that's a rarity. That really is like if we're looking at the whole picture and all entrepreneurs, it really is like a numbers game looking at the whole picture and all entrepreneurs, it really is like a numbers game. And the bigger your network, the more income that you're going to make because you're speaking to more people. A good open rate, kind of the average open rate, and it's different with every industry,

but the average open rate is about 30%. And that's what you should shoot for is 30%. If you have a really clean list and they are all your ideal clients, then yeah, you're going to see 40, 50% on your open rate. So email marketing, this is why I really push email marketing is marketing is becoming memorable and somebody might not need your product or service right this second, but when they do, you want them to remember you. And if you're not showing up and reminding them, especially in a world right now where we're like completely inundated with all

this like information, you have to keep showing up, keep showing up, keep showing up so that they remember you because they're not going to say, no, who was that one coach? Like I want them to know because I'm showing up in their inbox. So aside from the open rate being 30% or people opening, you have to think of people's habits, you know, the different things that they do. I might not open, you know, I'm on not a hand, not a ton, but I am on a fair amount of email lists. I might not open every single email that sent to me, but I'm seeing their name every week. And so I'm reminded. So even if your open rate is a little bit smaller, like keep at it because you're still like, you're still marketing, you're still becoming memorable.

So 30% is like what to shoot for. Your open rate is really, it's dependent on a few things, but the main thing that it's dependent on is your subject line. Is your subject line enticing enough for them to open? So is it hooking them? Is it interesting? Is there your subject line. Is your subject line enticing enough for them to open? So is it hooking them? Is it interesting? Is there a shock factor? Is there something that's making them want to read on? And there's a website that I tell my clients to use, especially while you're learning the strategies, but subjectline.com. You can go in, you can put in your subject line and it will analyze it for you. And it will give you suggestions. You'll learn what entices people. You'll, you'll kind of start to learn the longer you do it, what is going to get people to open up your emails. So that is

one, that's one benchmark to use is your open rate. The next one is like your click rate. And that is every email should have a call to action. And that is walking, you think of it as like I'm walking them through the next step. And so the call to action can be schedule a consult. It can be buy a product. It could be listen to my podcast. It could be check out my blog.

Whatever your call to action is, if people click on that, that is your click rate. It's called your click rate. And you want that to be five to 10%. So we have our open rate, 30%. Then click rate is five to 10%. Again, it varies. So when you start sending emails and you are looking at your analytics, those are the two things that you really want to look at is your open rate and your click rate. So great stuff there. Let me ask a little bit about

best practices as far as cadence, format, focusing on giving versus focusing on selling. You know, I too, I don't subscribe to a lot of email lists, but the ones that I do, I stick with it if I feel like I'm getting some sort of value or lift when I read, but if I feel like I'm being bombarded with emails multiple times a day, trying to convince me to sign up for their next, like I just get annoyed and I want nothing to do. So where's the, and I know it varies, but where is maybe the best practice place to start? I kind of go by the 80-20 rule. So I always say, give them 80% what they want and 20% what they need. And so 80% is like valuable content, resources, and the 20% is you're selling to them. And that's kind of like my rule with them. I think

it's okay to have in an email, like in the footer, like, Hey, here's ways to work with me. And so I believe that in, in social media, email marketing, everything. It's like you give, give, give, give value. And then 20% you sell, which, which is so interesting because I do think this is like, uh, like a, a woman mindset. Like, I don't want to bug people. I don't want, you know? And it's like, if you've ever like signed up for any mail coach, it's like, they are bugging the crap out. You know what I mean? Like I unsubscribe so fast because it's just like, oh my gosh, this is so salesy all the time. Go, go, go. And that works too. You know, I think you need to stay true to your brand. Um, kind of a good rule of thumb that

I go by is about 200 words is a good newsletter list. I like short and sweet. Again, depends on your niche, but I like something that's like really short and right to the point. Um, so I go with about 200 and then if it's like a blog or podcast, then I refer them, Hey, if you want to learn more, check out this podcast or check out this blog. But 200 words is a good amount, but that's kind of my rule of thumb.

Okay. I don't know a single person who's gone into business who hasn't almost immediately focused on building an effective website. Let's shift our focus to talk about our website. Are there any things that you think must be included or considered to have a website that works for you? Yeah. So I think, you know, we kind of mentioned like that people default to social media and in your networking and your marketing, you need to have two different types of platforms. You need to have a social platform and a searchable platform, right? So your social platforms are like Instagram, Facebook, X, whatever, anything that's like a social, right? Threads. Your searchable are Pinterest, YouTube, and your website. Those are all searchable platforms, meaning people can Google

and people still are Googling. We Google every single day. We still are Googling what are solutions to our problems, right? And so is blogging dead? No, it is not dead. And that's a searchable platform is your website. And you can still people are still searching out different answers to things. And so we need to make sure that we are like leveraging that in our business. As far as your your website, things you need to have on every website is you have on your website, it's called the first fold. And that is when you go to a website,

that part of your website before somebody scrolls, that's called your first fold. So if I go to a website and it pops up before I scroll, that's called your first fold. And you need to have on there keywords that people are searching for to find you. So a lot of times we might have like a fancy picture or something and there's nothing about what we do. And that's important for SEO that we have, hey, this is what I do. Another thing to note about that is a lot of times people try to use these fancy words like to describe their self.

And you don't't wanna do that. You want to dumb it down to like, what are people Googling that they might find you? How to automate my business? How to scale my business? Whatever your niche is, those are the words you need to use as your keywords and you need to use them for sure in your first fold

and then throughout your website. So I would say that would be the first one. I think a lot of people make that mistake of not putting in like the keywords in the right places and knowing what people are searching for and using words that people are actually like searching for in on your website. So you mentioned SEO and I'm sure everybody knows this, but just in case search engine optimization for anybody who isn't spending all day thinking about that. Any other SEO hacks that are important, whether it's website or otherwise, if you're going to be doing it, what are some things to do right?

Yeah. So some things that kind of like a few things to do is, you know, we talked about email lists earlier. Use a pop-up. Pop-ups are great with your freebie. That that's a big one. I had a client and she was a wedding planner in Iceland and she religiously blogged for years and years and years. And she had great website traffic, no email list. And so that was one of the very first things that we implemented is I've got,

we got to put a pop-up in there. And at first she was like, Oh, I don't want to bug people. And I'm like, girl, like that is how you make money. You have to like, you have to get people in your funnels. And so a pop-up is great. Um, calls to action. You can have more than one freebie on your website. So that's another one. As far as SEO, make sure that when you people search by images as well. So make sure that when you are uploading any image to your, your blog post or your website, that in the alt text, you are putting in those keywords. That's another hack in there. Um, I have recently started, you know, I started blogging again. I've been podcasting. Podcasting is a great alternative to blogging. Make sure that you put those show notes

on there. Those are keywords people are searching for those things. So whether you blog or podcast, make sure that you put that on your website. If you are on social media and you are talking about your podcast and you're trying to tell your audience, hey, check out this podcast, don't link them to iTunes or Spotify. Link them to your website and then have links that take them to different platforms because that's going to help your SEO. It's going to help people discover your website more. So that's another hack. Another one you can do is we as business owners in our social media, we can only have one URL. And so people do Linktree or there's another one, Milkshake. I can't remember. There's a few different ones out there that are links and then you can add multiple links. If you know how to do your website

or pay somebody to do it, make them, have them create or you create a page that's like a Linktree that's on your website. Because again, if people say, hey, click the link in my profile and they're taking them to Linktree and then Linktree is taking them somewhere else, you're kind of cutting yourself short on the SEO that you can get. So how SEO works is the more traffic, the more time people are on your website, all those factor into your SEO. So then if people are spending a lot of time and a lot of people are visiting, when somebody goes to Google, like business coach or something, you're more likely to come up higher in the search because people are on your website and it's telling Google, hey, this is relevant. This is important.

Lots of people like this website. So you want to get them on your website as long as possible and as often as possible. So that leads me to my next question. I think a lot of us, I'll speak for myself. I built a website six years ago based on an idea of what I was creating, a hope, a vision. And now six years later, I've learned a lot and I've experienced a lot and I've evolved a lot and I still get a lot of compliments about my website, but it doesn't fit me anymore. And so we're rebranding. But then my question is, how do you know when it's time to rebrand or rebuild and any insight into keeping our website alive so that it's not something that was created X amount of years ago and doesn't stay fresh and current? My advice that I give, especially new business owners, is I do say don't invest a ton in the beginning because you are going to evolve and you're going to change and your business is not going to look the same one year

from now, five years from now, 10 years from now. And so I think be open to pivoting. And I think building a new website is an investment if you're paying somebody to do it. But I think you need to stay relevant. I mean, when I first began and, you know, I was like, oh, I want to do female entrepreneurs. And so my website was pink and greens and whatever. And then I got a few male clients and then I was like, okay, this does not attract my ideal client because it's very feminine. And I went in and I changed it to a more masculine, more like neutral colors. And so I think you have to just kind of stay on top of it. I do recommend investing in a branding photo shoot every single year. You can get great branding images. I mean, there's tons single year. You can get great branding images.

I mean, there's tons of photographers. You don't even have to spend like a ton of money. So I think stay on your branding and be open to pivoting and changing. I'm a big believer, and I know everybody doesn't have the time or the resources or the brain power to do this, but I'm a big believer in learning as much as you can about your business so that you're not dependent on other people. I think it's important to learn, you know, learn as much as you can about building a website.

And then if you still don't want to do it, then outsource it or delegate it. But you don't want to be at people's mercy every time you want to make a change or tweak something. And they're making websites now that are just so easy and user-friendly that you can change those. But with that being said, the caveat is some people just don't really have the visual eye for it. And finding somebody that you like and doing that, there is a lot of good that can come out of paying somebody that is really good at it. But I think just being open to pivot. But I do think it's something that you need to every

few years, like you need to reassess. And I teach business all the time. So I'm constantly, if I have to refer or reference something of my own, I'm always, I'm always reminded, oh, I need to update this. I can't teach this when it contradicts what I'm teaching. So, but I do think you want to stay up on it and stay relevant and stay up to date. Yeah, agreed. Okay, my last question is around, I'm just going to put it under the trend category. It seems like things are changing so fast you can hardly keep up. And for somebody who's not tech savvy like me, it feels like there are a bazillion different

resources. Like when I want to host a webinar, there are 17 different platforms I can use, or, you know, I get 18 emails a day about sales funnels and there's just so much out there. Any insight into upcoming trends or resources? You mentioned earlier blogs. There are things like Substack or whether or not Instagram Lives are the way to go or websites or which, you know, there's X and threads. Like, does it matter that we're on all the social media platforms?

What are your thoughts about all the stuff that's out there? Yeah. I mean, I think it can get really overwhelming and we don't really have, a lot of us don't have the capacity to do everything and be everywhere. I kind of, kind of my, what I, what I teach in my membership and my clients is to create SOP standard operating procedures and get, get good at one or two platforms and then repurpose, then, then outsource, hire a VA to repurpose your content. I think that we can't get too comfortable.

There isn't, right now anyway, from my personal experience, there isn't one place where I'm getting all of my business. It's a bunch of different places. I had recently moved from Texas to Utah and I was feeling frustrated with the social media, my reach, you know, and I have a pretty big network. And I remember having a conversation with a colleague and we were kind of joking, like, we're smart. Like, come on, we can figure this out. Like, where do you spend your time?

Where do you put your energy? And one of the things that I kind of have gone back to is, you know, when you're a business owner and something doesn't work, be willing to pivot and try something new. And I was like, you know what, I'm going to go back to old school in-person networking. And I, you know, I put on my social media, I put on my, in my newsletter, like, Hey, who are my locals? Let's get together. And once a month and, you know, let's get together and just network and just have dinner and just talk. And you talked about being lonely. And so it was like one of those things

where it was like a given, like, let's just do this. And so I think, you know, is there trends? Yes, there is lots of stuff that's going out that you can try. But I think it really is a collective effort of just doing a bunch of little things. Okay. If you are listening and want to learn more about Brittany and her work, you can go to her website, BrittanySchroeder.com. I would also encourage you to check out her business membership, also on her website, BrittanySchroeder.com forward slash membership. And she's offering for our listeners a 15% discount if you use the promo code NICOLE,

N-I-C-O-L-E. Brittany, thank you so much for being here today and for keeping it real about all the challenges and all the fun stuff of growing a business. Thanks for having me. All right. Whether you have a side hustle or a corporation, whether you're just getting started or are established and growing, entrepreneurship will always have its challenges and it's not the right fit for everyone. The best analogy I've heard that resonated with me the most is it's a lot like jumping out of a plane

and building your parachute on the way down. Yes, it's scary as shit and it's exhilarating. Yes, it's risky and it's also rewarding. Yes, it can be lonely and it can also offer independence and ownership. There are always two sides to every coin. Sometimes the best advice for all of us is to flip that coin and see what happens. Because it's when the coin is in the air that you'll find out which side you're actually hoping for. I call heads because knowing what you really want, well, that is woman's work.