 All right. I want to talk about email newsletters. I don't know if you're already sending them. If not, you may want to start. Even if you just start with, you know, 25 email subscribers, it's a good idea to do so because when people receive emails, the difference with seeing it on social media is that email is for most of us a requirement to process. Right. And let me adjust my camera a little bit here. Working with a new camera. Let me know what you think. So when we surf social media, it's optional. We, you know, you don't have to go through an X number of Facebook posts or YouTube videos or whatever. When it comes to email, though, you get emails from you got pay the bills or you got you got friends who ask you or invite you to something. You've got family members. You've got clients. You've got potential clients. So email is much more of a required way to process our information. And so therefore, when you send email newsletters, it goes. Most of the time into the same place or an adjacent place to where they are doing the required process. Now, the thing about email newsletters I've noticed is that most of the people I've worked with my students and my clients, maybe some of you watching this are working way too hard on your email newsletters. Now, what do I say that because it seems intuitive that your email newsletter should be exclusive content. Like written as to a group of friends. Right. Like that's the mainstream training out there about how to do a good email newsletter. Notice the way I do it. If you're on my email list, you'll notice it. I can actually show you on the screen how I do it. Let me go ahead and share my screen with you now. In fact, okay, here it is. My website. Sorry, let me go ahead and zoom out a little bit. There you go. That's more how it usually looks. And my email newsletter, I'll show you the examples. When you go to my website and you click on next to newsletter, you click on the dropdown, you click archive, you'll be able to see the examples, the actual monthly newsletters that I sent. And you can see that they are stupidly simple, you might say, it's basically the title of a recent, you know, video or article. You know, and then just a few words about it basically copy pasting from the summary or from the introduction to that video or article and then the link to go and watch it or to read it same thing. Just that's one piece, the next piece, same thing, title, introduction or summary, and then the links to read it, the link to watch it, and, you know, title, link to go and check it out. And then I have an offer, basically what I'm selling at the moment is at the bottom of the newsletter. And that's this, that's the same format. Let me go ahead and show you the previous month. Okay, same format. The title, the introduction to what they would be reading on there because I just copied pasted. Okay, and then the video format if I have something like that title post title, and then the link to the video and then what I'm selling at the moment. That's it. And my newsletter has double the open rate of my industry average. It's been working people and not just like suddenly it's been like that for ever since I've been using this format. It takes me 10 to 15 minutes. Just to put together and send this newsletter. How long does it take you for most people they're like, Oh, I got to write some love letter to my subscribers and then they work so and I'm like, if you're going to work so hard on putting it up and putting so much heart and soul into it. Why don't you make it available to all of your social media audience and followers. Why are you doing it exclusively just to your newsletter subscribers. Well, George it's obvious if I do exclusive content then don't more likely subscribe to my newsletter and open it. Really. Okay, let's let's think this through here. That thing you spent so an hour I don't know how long it takes you to write your love letter or letter to friends or whatever. That thing you spent so why wouldn't that thing. Why wouldn't you let that thing be of benefit to more people with George that's it I wanted to benefit a lot of people that's why I want them to subscribe. Well, but the people who didn't subscribe won't see it won't ever get to see it. See what I mean like I don't understand the logic here. No, no, no, George you don't understand. This is why they're going to hear about how great my newsletter is and then subscribe. But that the piece of content you've created will have a limited lifespan of only those who were subscribed at the time, and not an ongoing lifespan of reaching more and more people. Have you noticed that one of the most popular tools these days it's gotten a lot of popularity in recent years. Substack. Do you notice how Substack works. Substack is a newsletter sending software and a newsletter publishing community. Okay, because people can refer and recommend each other's newsletters. Notice how it works. The newsletters are for most substack publishers, the newsletters are publicly accessible. That's what I'm talking about. I, before I've been doing this model before Substack became popular, and I'm still doing the same model. It's like, basically whatever you're going to create, don't do it exclusively for just the subscribers who were there at the moment. Make it available to all future subscribers. And the way that I think is most efficient at doing that, and most effective, is to put your content that you work hard on, whatever content you've created, put it on social media and whatever platform you want to engage with. That way, your social media followers have a chance to engage with it. And when they engage, they like it, they comment on it, they share it, it goes to more people. And then you reference those pieces in your email newsletter. I see the email newsletter as a free service of convenience to my audience, to people who say, George, I know I'm not going to catch much of what you post on social media just because of the algorithms and that's how it works. And nobody scrolls forever until they see everything, of course, they only scroll a few things and then they go on with their day or whatever. George, I'm not going to see all the so I'm glad I can subscribe to your newsletter to see the best of your content that you sure you may have posted it elsewhere but I, you know, because again, email inboxes are required for information processing these days compared to social media it's required so therefore I understand people say oh email email so email lists are so important because that's really that's a reliable way of communicating with your audience. I wouldn't say it's reliable because even with email, if you don't send newsletters that people want to open, they will stop opening them over time. Okay, that's one. And second, I've noticed that I don't tend to open newsletters for that's for me I noticed that's true for all of you who subscribed to my thing too. I don't tend to open newsletters that have a long thing to read. Some of you do and that's wonderful that's great. But I like newsletters that I open it and I get a choice of what what I want to keep reading or keep watching or something like that. Okay, guess what it seems like you you if you're subscribed to a newsletter you're telling me that you like that too. Because my open rate is like I said double my industry average my open rates about 55%. My industry average is about 22%. The main meaning my peers and based on statistics you know what trapped by newsletter software companies 22%. I'm getting 55% open rate on average on average some of them sometimes 50%, sometimes 60% on average for for a fairly large. Yeah, I mean not large but it's probably bigger than most of you my my subscriber, my email list right now is about 5500 5500 so it's probably larger than most of yours. As you, well you might not know this but as your email newsletter grows towards, you know, larger and larger into the thousands, your open rate tends to go down. So right now if your open rate 60%, I'm going to guess it's smaller than my list. Okay, your open rate, you know, as you get to 345,000 maybe you'll get go down to 4030 20%. Okay, and then onwards from there. So for this for a side of the list of my size, my open rates will be high. What I'm trying to say is that whatever I'm doing is working. It's working for a lot of heart based people. A lot of people who are in my audience, people who have prioritized their values of heart and spiritual growth personal growth. And they also tend to be they love learning. They love, you know, gathering knowledge applying to their lives, etc. I'm guessing that that probably describes pretty common with what your audience that you're trying to reach as well. Right. So please work more lightly that's all I'm saying work more lightly on your newsletter. Because, well, I know I'm just one data point but you might want to give it a try over three months and see if it works. Maybe even better for you as well because remember the content that you work on deserves to benefit more people instead of locked into your existing subscribers I don't understand why that's a good idea. And your existing subscribers when they they get a choice in your newsletter your monthly newsletter for they get a choice of what they want to click on instead of being forced to read whatever love letter. You set them they might not care. Right. They might not care about your personal updates or whatever but if you give them several choices, they get to choose and then when they choose, they then get to engage with that piece of content on social media if they're logged in if they even they're not logged in they should still be able to see it because you'll notice in my newsletter. Everything goes to a public piece of content that they can engage with even if they're not logged in. But if they are logged in right like you because some of you might say well George you know my one of my followers don't don't use Facebook or don't use Instagram or don't use you to LinkedIn or whatever YouTube is public you know it's always public. But there are public formats of those posts on LinkedIn Facebook Instagram you'll see it in my newsletter, it's all public. So even if you're not logged in you can still at least watch it or read it or whatever. And then people who are logged in who have an account they can engage with it and their engagement further expands the visibility of that content that I that I worked on. Why not. Again, please describe below why you're still doing it, you know, the inefficient way. Okay, your newsletters again, people. Okay, okay, so, so one more block that people have well George I don't know why people would subscribe to my email newsletter if all my contents already on social media. All right. The more the simple word is convenience. People pay a lot of money for convenient things. Right. I mean, a lot of the products and services you buy your own life are due to convenience so this I'm paying for this because it's more convenient. Well, your newsletter is maybe maybe you pay charge for it. I don't charge for mine. It's a free service of convenience for my followers and they love it. I've already told you that my numbers. So here's the thing. When people like your content, they they're the right fit for your content. They can't wait to see they want to make sure they keep up with the best of your content. Okay, that is the value proposition of your newsletter. If you want the best of my content, you can get it through email instead of hunting for it on social media. Because that's what it is. If they if they want to see like there are some followers. I'm like, oh, I can't wait to see their stuff. But then I have to like, make sure I find their stuff on social media. It's not convenient. I but then when they have a newsletter, I'm like, Oh, great, I can just wait until it comes in. But I can click on the ones that I want. You see. So, and then another common blog is what if they see it more than once they saw it on social media and then now they get it through the newsletter as one of the great. They probably didn't even read it or watch it when they saw it on social media. They just go, Oh, that's a good one. I'm going to save that post. Or I'm, Oh, yeah, I'm going to, you know, gotta make sure and look at that later. And then now when they can see it on on email, they're like, Oh, that's right. It's a good reminder or they enjoyed it before. They're like, Oh, great, I get to see it again. People are have so much information in their lives that they don't mind being reminded of something that they enjoy that that was valuable to them. They either see it again, or Oh, I'm so glad I'm reminded to go and check it out finally because I didn't do it last time when I saw it. Please work more likely because this way, if you work more lightly on your newsletter, you'll more likely sustain the consistency of your email sending. And I have been consistent with my email newsletter since, well, gosh, I don't know when, at least for 10 years. Last 10 years, I've been consistent with sending email newsletters and it's not a surprise that my open rates have just gone up over the I'm grateful that my open rates have gone up over the years because they can trust me to keep showing up every month. And so I wish the same for you. Do not break the chain of sending your email, even if it's a 25 people. It's 25 people for now. But once they engage with your content on social media, how does your audience grow? How does your email newsletter grow? And I'll say this for two minutes before we end this video. I don't use lead magnets. I have a separate video for that that I invite you to go watch. You can search my YouTube or George Cow lead magnet and you'll find my article and YouTube video about that. The way I grow my email list is by providing authentic, relevant content. I have authentic, relevant content on a consistent basis. I have another video about that called the arc of content creation, ARC, authentic, relevant, consistent. I do it on, you know, that's what I do. And then people enjoy my content. They come to my website. They see that there's a newsletter. They join intentionally. No wonder my open rate so high and no wonder my, my list keeps growing over the years. They joined intentionally. They enjoy it. They engage with the content on social media, which then further spreads it to more people, which then come to my website and say, gosh, I really like what this guy is saying. Let me go ahead and subscribe. I don't have an opt-in page. I don't, I'm sorry. I have an opt-in page, but I don't have a pop up. I don't have an opt-in thing on my homepage. No, it's a very intentional joining process. And therefore it's a true intention to continue reading and engaging with the content. That's how you grow a real email list that actually pay attention to you and actually spread your stuff and often buy your stuff over the years. So please work more lightly so you can work sustainably. It takes me 10 to 15 minutes every time I create and send a newsletter. I hope it takes you around that amount of time. So it's like, oh, it's so easy. Time to send my email newsletter. It's a very pleasant process. I don't have to create anything new because whatever I create new, it's going to go and have that, the life stand span can be long for that piece of thing that I create. The last thing I'll say is don't use your newsletter to test content. Your newsletter should be the best of your stuff. I mean, just model what I do, you know, it's what I do is obviously working for me. I really enjoy it. I teach it all my, model what I do. Your newsletter should be the best. Not, not test, not test. You should be testing content on social media. That's what social media is good for. It's for testing content. The algorithm is very, very much very helpful for that. If it's good content, they'll still show it to more people. If it's not so good content, they'll bury it. Not very many people see it. Let the algorithm help you on social media. And then you'll notice the best of you put it into your newsletter. It's very simple. So I hope this is helpful. I hope this allows you to send your newsletters regularly going forward and lightly and therefore grow your authentic business over months and over years like I've continued to do. I wish that for you. Thank you for watching.