 We're all set up for Karen. Sorry? No, that clock is not working. It's only a quarter to ten, so that's not true. We're frozen in time here. Well, next speaker here is Karen Fu. Did I pronounce it right? Good. She's a corporate marketeer. She's a copywriter. It's written for online marketers and their product launches without overhyping. Really important. She helps them come up with who readers can care about and generate leads and convert these leads into sales. Today you're going to talk about your... When you have an email list, what are you going to do with it? So give her a warm applause, please. Thank you. Can everyone hear me, Karen? Yes? At the back, yes. You can hear me? Yeah. Good. Let's start my talk with the story. The mask. A few years ago, I was living in the Philippines and I was very excited about the trip. I had problems with my old mask, so I thought, why not buy a new one? So I did get excited, brought my new mask, fancy new case, brought it with me for the Philippines. Something weird happened there because instead of using my new mask, I started to my old one, which was flooding. Anyone here, scuba dive? No? Yes. What's one of the most common problems when you scuba dive? You get water and a mask. Exactly. Your mask floods. And when that happens, you tend to, and by you, I mean I, tend to panic underwater and it's easy for accidents to happen. So I think now you understand why I'm really hesitant to switch to my new mask, right? Stick with the old one. I know how it floods. I know the velocity. Okay, so I met a more experienced diver when I was there. He heard about the situation and he said to me something really profound. He said, Karen, your new mask is useless sitting in your case, in your hotel room. Use it. So on the next dive, I used my new mask. Can you guess what happened? Nothing happened. It worked well. Why did I tell you this story and what the hell has it got to do with emails? Here is something really interesting I noticed. I'm personally subscribed to 700-plus email lists. I also create email sequences and sales funnels for different businesses. And I noticed something. Just like me leaving my new mask in his case in my hotel room untouched, many business owners collect emails and they do nothing with it. They leave their email list untouched. Yeah, I think some of you are. Yeah, that's me. No, I won't say who you are, but yeah, that's me. Okay, so why are you here today? You are here today because you are a business owner or you are a marketeer. And you know that having an email list is a major asset to your business. So you built one. Now you have an email list, but you are doing nothing with it. You would like to build trust with your subscribers. You would like to turn your list into customers. You know you should email your list, but that's kind of like priority number 100 in your top 100 list. So you're not really doing anything with that. So today, I'm going to share with you a framework for connecting with your subscribers when they first sign up for your list. This framework follows a very famous copywriting formula. I think some of you might be familiar with it already. It's called the PAS copywriting formula where P stands for problem, A stands for agitation, and S stands for solution. I would suggest sending all these emails waving the first week of someone signing up. And that's because that's when their interest level in you is the highest. And email zero, the welcome email should be sent immediately once people give you their email address and the next email to be sent out a day or two later after the previous one. Once email three, the solution email is sent, you can then go back to your regular newsletters. Now let's look at email zero, the welcome email. Here's where you thank the subscriber for giving you her email address. You welcome her to your list. And if you promise a freebie for people giving you their email address, here's where you should include that freebie too. I also find this email a great place to ask questions of your subscribers. Questions like, what made you decide to sign up for my list and what were you hoping to get out of it? Two benefits to this. First benefit, you get to understand your subscriber better. So it means you can create better products for your customers in future. Second benefit, a bit sneaky, but it works. You'll get your email address white listed in your inbox. So you can be sure that your email shows up in your inbox the next time you send an email. Email one, problem. What you talk about here is the problem that your subscriber has. You try to tell a story around it. I think most of us here are not natural born talents at writing. So one way to help you think about it is think about one of your clients and tell a story about that client. People buy your product or service because they have a problem. So think about what problem you are solving for them. Let's apply it in real life. Assuming we are not, but assuming we are a tax accountant. How will we write this email? First, let's think about why people hire tax accountants. It's because they cannot figure out the taxes on their own, like me. They don't know if they are doing things correctly. They don't know if they are overpaying or underpaying the velocity things. Very important. Okay. Then this in mind. Here's how an example email could look like. My brother-in-law started his own renovation and construction business last year. He's very good at what he does, but up until now he's always been an employee. So he never needed to handle his own taxes and his own bookkeeping. His company handled it all. And as an employee, following his income taxes was very straightforward, easy. Now that he's become a business owner, all this changed. Then we move on to email number two, agitation. Agitation is where you talk about the stupid things that people do to make their existing problem even worse than before. So I've been there. I know what it feels like you keep digging yourself into a hole and you don't want to get out of it. In other words, even though it's painful, you really want to twist the knife into the wounds. Yeah, you heard me, right? I did say that, twist the knife into the wounds. Continuing with the previous story, here's how I will continue. My brother in law decided to do it all himself in order to save money. But he doesn't know if it's making all the right declarations for his company. He doesn't know if he's making all the deductions that he could and he doesn't know if he's overpaying or underpaying the tax office. To make matters even worse, he created an Excel file but he didn't want to open the file for his bookkeeping purposes. Okay, so that sounds like a pretty shitty situation, right? Then you move on to email three, solution. Solution is where you can talk about how someone else tackled the same problem. And very important, this is where you transition to a pitch for your own service or product. I know most of us here don't want to be pushy when it comes to sales and I think people who are here in work camp naturally they are not really silky screaming internet marketeers type. That's a breach that you can use to transition and that breach is by offering a tip for a quick win, by answering some frequently asked questions or by suggesting some popular tools or resources. Here's how I'll write email number three. Meet Sandra, my ex-colleague. After being a corporate drone for 10 years, she decided to strike it out on her own and build her own freelancing business. However, she hated spreadsheets, she hated bookkeeping, she hated numbers. So right from the beginning she decided to hire a professional tax accountant to handle all her accounting and taxes and bookkeeping. Now, when I look at her she hardly needs to lift her finger. She just forwards all her receipts, dumps all her invoices to this guy, poor thing. And she sleeps easy at night knowing that everything is filed correctly at the tax office. If you're not ready to hire someone now, I suggest you start with an online accounting software like Waves Apps. This is one of the best resources I've found for small business owners. But if you want to be like Sandra, call me for a no obligations meeting where we can go over your books together and check if you've been following your taxes correctly. So your last email here ends with a call to action for them to call you. And that's your pitch. And it's kind of soft and not too much in your face. Okay, here's the most painful part of today's talk. We've looked at the email sustains and I want to share with you some lessons I learned the hard way from this project in the past years. And I really hope that you won't have to experience this for yourself. First lesson, number one, look for an email service provider with 24 hour customer service. If any one of you here are in time sensitive deals, e-commerce stores, you want to look out for this. And that's because most email service providers operate out of the American time zone, but we are here in Europe. So that's pretty useless for us. Another thing, when you google online for comparison and reviews, many of them don't take this into account. So do your own deal diligence when you select one. Just email them first to us if they provide 24 hour customer service. Black Friday is coming up soon. I remember about 2 years ago, I nearly chew off my own fingers because there was an urgent change we needed to make right before Black Friday and I couldn't get anyone because they are not open for business. Lesson number two, when you just start your email list, don't start with something overly complex like Infusionsoft. I've heard horror stories of business owners needing to hire a specialist to make changes to their emails and I don't think you want to be caught in such a situation. Also, when you just start you don't really get that many bells and whistles. Personally, I've seen the background of Infusionsoft. I think it's more like a CRM software than an email platform. So if you're not looking for a CRM, I think you don't need to start with this. Lesson number three, don't migrate too often from one email service provider to another. That's because each time you migrate, your delivery rates will drop no matter what the new platform promises you. We fell into this trap. There was a website I worked with where we had 80,000 plus subscribers. There was a new function that we wanted so we switched providers. Waving a few days, we went back to the original one because our delivery rates dropped so much that the new function could not make it worthwhile. So be aware of that and don't hop too often between different email service providers. To recap, we've looked at the first four emails to send subscribers when they sign up using the PAS Copywriting Framework. What does P stand for? Yes? Agitation of S? Solution. Great, you've been listening. Not sleeping. Thank you. We've looked at how to send the first four emails. When to send them the PAS Copywriting Framework, I've shared with you three pitfalls to avoid when you choose an email service provider. What's next? I see some of you taking notes. So you're going to go home today and a week or two later, you open up your notes, look at them and this is the point where SouthDog starts to creep in. I know because I've been there. When that happens, I want you to think about my story at the beginning of today's presentation. Yeah, the mask story. Just like how the more experienced diver helped me to overcome my fear and encouraged me to take the new mask out of his case and use it, I'd like to encourage you to blow the dust off your email list and send an email to your subscribers. I'll leave you with these thoughts. The best mask is the one you'll use. The best plan is the one you'll follow and the best email marketing strategy is the one that you actually execute. I wish everyone here an email list that results in lots and lots of sales. Thank you.