Cultivating Prospects With Content
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Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Podcast, helping you navigate the social media jungle.
And now, here is your host, Michael Stelzner.
Hello, hello, hello.
Thank you so much for joining me for the Social Media Marketing Podcast, brought to you by
Social Media Examiner.
I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and this is the podcast for marketers and business
owners who want to know what works with social media.
Today, I'm going to be joined by Alex Cottoni, and we're going to explore email marketing
strategy.
If you know you need to do more with email, and you're looking for some amazing ideas
on how to really cultivate an incredible relationship with people on your email list that will lead
to sales, you're going to find this very, very fascinating.
By the way, I'm at Stelzner on Instagram and at Mike underscore Stelzner on Twitter.
And if you're new to this podcast, be sure to follow this show so you don't miss any
of our future content.
Let's transition over to this week's interview with Alex Cottoni.
Helping you to simplify your social safari.
Here is this week's expert guide.
Today, I'm very excited to be joined by Alex Cottoni.
If you don't know who Alex is, she's a marketing strategist and founder of Copypossy, a company
that helps freelancers and entrepreneurs grow their businesses with copywriting.
Her upcoming course is called Storm, an online marketing course focused on strategy.
Welcome to the show, Alex.
How are you doing today?
Hi, I'm so glad to be here.
Thanks for having me.
I'm super stoked that you're here today.
Alex and I are going to explore email marketing strategy.
And there's so much we're going to talk about.
I'm super excited about that.
But before we go there, I'd love to back up the storyline a little bit and ask you
how did you get into marketing and how did you get into copywriting and start wherever
you want to start?
Yeah, I love that question.
And I'm pretty sure that most people listening to this probably didn't know they were going
to get into marketing or copywriting or entrepreneurship when they when they got into it.
And my journey was a bit of a crooked one.
I was planning to go to law school, ended up deciding to defer that for a year because
I wanted to travel and see the world and ended up applying for a job, an internship actually
at a company called Mindvalley.
You don't know Mindvalley.
It's one of the largest publishers of personal growth information and training online.
I had no idea what personal growth was.
I had no idea what internet marketing was.
But here I was accepting this internship in Malaysia.
So sold my car, packed up my bags, moved across the world to work as a customer service
intern at this company that was like this whole new world for me.
And to say that I drank the Kool-Aid is a bit of an understatement.
I absolutely fell in love with marketing and branding and the way that Mindvalley was building
businesses online and ended up leaving that job as the creative director in 2011.
So I had quite an interesting three and a half years at Mindvalley really learning the
ropes of all things marketing, branding, copywriting, but left in 2011 and started
my consulting business where I actually was teaching marketing.
I was helping clients build funnels and get their online marketing dialed in.
And the number one question they would always ask me is, this is all great, but it really
seems like we need now someone to write it.
Do you know anyone to write it?
And I didn't really consider myself a copywriter at the time.
This was over a decade ago.
And I thought, you know what?
I'll give it a try.
I think I could probably do it.
And it ended up working out.
And it turns out I was a pretty good copywriter on top of the marketing side, which I do think
great marketing is a prerequisite to being a great copywriter.
And so the rest was history.
I ended up running a freelance copywriting and marketing business for eight years, fully
behind the scenes, working with personal development brands and writing and running marketing campaigns
and doing a ton of email marketing, by the way.
But then in 2019, real quick, before you go to 2019, when you say you were working
with personal development brands, define what that means for my audience, because they might
not know what you mean by that phrase.
Yeah.
So by personal development brands, it's a lot of online coaches, educators, speakers,
authors.
It's a lot of the people that you would learn from who teach self-help, self-improvement,
personal growth, personal development, self-growth.
There's a lot of different words for it.
So it was a lot of people need experts.
What kind of work were you doing for those folks?
Basically writing and mapping out marketing funnels.
So quite frequently, I would end up working with clients who had, say, an email marketing
list, but they were spending all of their time on paid traffic, getting that day zero
conversion.
They would build their email list and then they wouldn't do much with it.
So then they would come to me and say, hey, can you help us build out some evergreen offers
and campaigns?
And that's kind of where I live.
That was my sweet spot for a long time.
So then you were about to say in 2019, what happened in 2019?
In 2019, I basically, I think again, a lot of entrepreneurs reach this point in their
careers where you kind of question like, what am I really doing?
You know, I had built a lifestyle business.
It was incredibly fulfilling.
I was traveling and writing, but felt like I wanted to do more.
And I was feeling a bit jaded by the industry and where it was headed.
So I'll give you a funny story.
I was at a party once in like, let's say it was 2016 or something along those lines.
And a guy asked me, oh, so what do you do?
You know, typical question.
And I said, I'm a copywriter, you know, proudly.
I'm a copywriter and I help brands with their marketing and their messaging.
And he said to me, oh, so you're the one that writes all those spam emails that I get in
my inbox.
And I was so upset by that comment because, you know, I couldn't blame him.
You know, from the outside, a lot of times copywriters were getting a bad rap because
anyone's experience with email marketing was that spammy type of stuff for a long time.
And so I kind of made it a point of going, okay, well, there's a lot that I love about
the industry and there's a lot that I don't love.
And so in 2019, I decided to start my YouTube channel talking about it and sharing my perspective
on marketing and email copywriting and how businesses can use it to improve their conversions
and build community.
And that then sort of took off.
And that's when I really started the Copypossy.
So how did YouTube help your business just out of curiosity and then also bring us up
to the present as far as what Copypossy does?
Again, like a lot of times when you start off something new, what I initially started
my YouTube channel for is very different than what it became.
So I thought I was starting my YouTube channel to get more authority and build my authority
because I had been completely behind the scenes.
I had no online presence whatsoever other than a personal Instagram account.
So I thought, you know what?
I'm going to start a YouTube channel and I'm going to get bigger name clients.
I'm going to get those big personal development, like gurus, like Deepak Chopra is going to
hear me or see me on YouTube and go, I need Alex to write my copy for me.
But then what happened was a lot of people who were just like me 10 years ago and were
looking for a way out of their nine to five, were looking for a way to start a freedom
lifestyle based business.
They were asking me, Alex, how did you start a business writing?
And I started creating some content on that.
And that's what really took off.
And so that's when the Copypossy pivoted from being just a small, really, it was a two person
agency because it was me and one other person that I had hired at that point in 2019 to
being a platform for not only entrepreneurs and marketers, but for aspiring copywriters
and freelancers to really come and learn, learn the ropes and learn copywriting.
So you've got this new thing coming up called Storm.
You want to talk about what that's all about?
Yeah.
So one of the biggest questions that I get from people is how are you able to build a
multi seven figure business in an over served and oversaturated market online marketing
right in under three years?
And I sort of broke all of the traditional rules of marketing.
I mean, I've been in that direct response marketing world.
And if anyone doesn't know what direct response is, it just means that very traditional, spend
a dollar, make more than a dollar, hopefully.
And it was all about optimizing funnels and getting affiliate traffic and buying traffic
and all of these things that I had learned and had been a part of with my clients businesses
over the last 10 years.
And with the Copypossy, I did it very differently.
I led with content and community and branding and kind of broke all of the best practices
when it comes to online conversions and was able to scale quite quickly.
And so Storm is me kind of breaking down everything that I did from a marketing perspective and
a branding perspective to build my brand and then scale it to where I have done now.
So it's a lot of strategy.
It's a lot of processes, and it's a lot of sort of the marketing principles that I believe
sort of the future of modern marketing.
Well, thank you, first of all, for sharing your story.
There are plenty of marketers listening right now who are all in in online marketing and
in social marketing, but email marketing, probably not as many of them as focused on
that.
And that's one of the reasons I want to get you on the show, because I'm trying to help
others understand some of the varying disciplines of marketing that are beyond just social marketing.
What do you want to say to those people that maybe haven't bought all into email marketing?
Why is that so important?
What do you want to say to the social marketers?
Aside from the fact that email marketing really is the number one skill that allowed me to
build a multi six figure freelance business ever long before ever starting the copy posse
and the skill that helped me do an almost six figure launch for my very first launch
to a very small list of about twenty three hundred people.
I think there's three reasons in particular why email marketing is so important in your
business.
The first is, you know, everyone's talking about how many users are on Tik Tok or how
many users are on Facebook or Instagram or YouTube, which is all great.
But there are over four billion email users and we tend to ignore that as as a marketing
channel because it feels and looks a little bit differently than, say, a social platform.
There's over four billion email users and ninety nine percent of them check their email
first thing in the morning before checking social media or even checking the weather.
So it is by far the largest marketing medium.
Also something that I talk about a lot is this idea of ownership.
You don't own your social media platforms and we all have experienced, you know, a lot
of frustration if you're a creator on social media or you're running marketing campaigns
for your company or you're you're using Instagram.
I know you have noticed a dip in reach and the changing of the algorithm and why, even
though someone's following you, why aren't they seeing your stuff with your email list?
You completely own it and have full control over who sees your stuff, how often you communicate.
And it's 100 percent you.
And then the last reason, which is probably my most favorite, is free money.
So if someone's on your email list, you've already paid for that lead, whether it's because
you've spent a dollar or ten dollars or one hundred dollars on an ad or you've put in
the time and effort and energy to then convince that person to opt into your email list.
Whatever that looks like you've put in the time.
Now they're on your email list.
Any conversion you make after the fact is free money.
And so, you know, there was a study done, I think it was by Litmus, who said it is the
number one most profitable marketing channel with an average of thirty six dollars made
for every one dollar spent.
And so to me, I mean, I could keep going, but those are what I think are the three biggest
reasons why email marketing is the most important.
Well, and here's a statistic for everyone listening.
Recently Metta released their Q4 most widely viewed content on Facebook report.
They released it in February of 2023 and they revealed that only six point eight percent
of content seen in the feed is from a Facebook page.
Put it another way, ninety three percent of all content seen in the feed, ninety two
to ninety three percent is not from a Facebook page.
Right.
So you could run the math on this and say, well, that probably means ninety three percent
of your followers on Facebook, which is the largest platform in the world, three billion
monthly actives.
It's never going to be seen when you send an email.
I'm here to tell you it's a lot more than six point eight percent.
You know, it gets to everybody's inbox, whether they open it and read it as a different story.
But you're not going to find a delivery channel that has a higher likelihood of getting to
the recipient than you will with email.
And that alone is a reason for marketers to pay attention.
The other thing is you can send as many messages as you want.
They might unsubscribe because they don't like it, but you can't do that on the social
platforms.
So for social media examiner, email is the main way that we do all of our marketing.
And this is why I'm excited to talk to you, Alex, because there's so much we're going
to unpack here.
Let's start with onboarding people into email, you know, getting people from wherever onto
our email list.
What is your strategy for that?
Well, in terms of actually building my list, it's really, you know, I love social media
for what it is great for, which is conversations and building community.
And so basically every time I'm posting content on social media, I am constantly then giving
them a reason to come join my email list, whether it's to get a free guide or a free
resource that's applicable to whatever the content is that I'm posting, or even just
asking them to join my email list.
I know that that's sort of anti-marketing of like, no, you have to give them something
valuable, but I like to position my list as something valuable in and of itself.
That when you're on my list, you're getting content that doesn't exist anywhere else.
You're getting kind of inside information as, as being part of my community, which nobody
else is going to receive.
And so, you know, I have like the slow and steady, I make sure I'm constantly putting
out content, but then I'm constantly driving all of those eyeballs and viewers back to
my list in one way or another.
And that is our number one content marketing strategy is not just getting views, but how
do we get people onto our email list?
Well, and talk to me about this aim framework concept.
Yeah.
So when someone joins our email list, and this is really common, right?
You purchase something, you join an email list, you receive a series of automated emails.
We all know they're automated, but I think it's really important to have a welcome sequence
when someone joins your list and it doesn't have to be long.
Okay.
I've worked with clients in the past where I have literally written a six month autoresponder
sequence, but I don't think that is at all, at all necessary, especially because at the
end of the day, real time emails will always outperform anything that is automated and
evergreen.
Although I do love automated and evergreen messaging and promotions.
What I want to talk about is the first three emails that you send your list.
Having a welcome sequence is not only important to acknowledge that they have in fact joined
your email list, but it is to set the tone and the cadence for what they can expect from
you moving forward.
And so I have a framework called AIM, A-I-M, which is our indoctrination or onboarding
or welcome sequence.
All of those names are used interchangeably and it's three emails that follow this A-I-M
formula.
The first email is to acknowledge, and this is really, really important because a lot
of times when people are emailing their list for the first time after someone signs up,
they're making it all about them.
They're like, we're amazing.
We do all this stuff.
Check us out.
Aren't we great?
Aren't we cool?
Look at how many followers or products we have.
The first thing you need to do is you need to meet your subscriber where they are at
and you need to make them feel like they are in the right place.
And the way to do that is to acknowledge them.
Now depending on what kind of product, service or offer you have, there's going to be a different
way to acknowledge them.
In my case, I like to talk about what core challenges they might be experiencing in their
business to say, Hey, if you are experiencing any of these sort of things, then, Hey, you
are in the right place.
I might use a bit of storytelling to build rapport and tell them how I know they're in
the right place or how I know what they're going through because I've been there too.
The first email is really just to highlight and remind them of why they're there and make
them feel like they made a really great decision.
So I like to acknowledge them and say, first of all, you made a really great decision joining
this list.
I have a feeling I know why you're here.
You're experiencing any of these things.
If that's true, I feel you.
I've been there too.
Here's my story and I'm really excited that you're part of the coffee posse community and
you know, here's what you can expect from me moving forward.
So I might include a CTA to, to an offer or a product, but it is subtle.
The point of that first email is just to make them feel really, really great and to make
them feel seen and understood.
The second email that I send is I, which is to include.
So this is where you get the opportunity to reinforce that they made a great decision
by getting to talk about yourself a little bit, right?
You're not going to make it all about you, but you are going to share what you're all
about, what your mission is and what your brand promises and your brand promises, essentially
how you can help your customers and the unique way in which you do that.
So again, it's, it's acknowledging, but in a way that's including them on your mission
and making them feel like they're a part of something exclusive, awesome, high value
insider.
You know, they're getting access to wisdom that they might not get elsewhere and that
you are in fact the person who can guide them.
And then the third email M is what I call mobilize.
And this is the, the time where you present them with an opportunity.
So if acknowledge is to say, Hey, I see you, I feel you make them feel seen and understood.
The eyes to include them, make them feel like they're part of something bigger, make them
feel safe in that community that again, they've made the right decision.
M is where you can say, now here's the next best step for you.
Here's how I can help you overcome that challenge, achieve that benefit, get to that dream that
you're hoping for and the way that I can do it.
And this is where you can start weaving in a bit of social proof, talking a little bit
more of why you're uniquely qualified to help them because of say your credibility or authority
in, in whatever industry you're in.
And in this email, I present a little bit more of a stronger offer and you can do, you
know, a special first time welcome to my email list type of offer if you wanted, and then
segue into maybe a couple more emails where you're following up on that offer.
That is the first three emails that I, that I use, that I teach and that I think every
business should have for their new subscribers joining their email list.
Okay.
So what I'm hearing you say is email one is about acknowledging, Hey, you're in the right
place.
Email two is about including, which is a little bit more about like, Hey, this is what our
mission is and what our brand promises and what your peers are achieving from the resources
we're providing something along those lines.
So acknowledge, include, and then mobilize the M in aim is where you get a chance to
offer them an opportunity by providing them, Hey, here's who has found success.
Here's reasons why they found success from us because here's a couple of social proof
mechanisms or awards or whatever.
And if you want to go deeper now and you don't want to wait, here's an offer, something along
those lines.
Is that what I'm hearing you say?
Exactly.
Yep.
So what do you do when you're typically spreading out these three messages?
So I send those three emails three days.
So they get it immediately when they sign up, the next one's the next day.
And the next one is the next day.
And I think it's, it, it doesn't have to necessarily be that frequent.
Here's my advice.
Send the emails no less frequently than you actually would be emailing your list.
Because if you're like, I'm going to send out these welcome emails one a week, but you
actually email your list three times a week on an ongoing basis, it might be a little
bit jarring, not only to the experience of the user, but you want to use these three
emails as a way to set expectations.
I email my list three times a week.
And so they only get those emails once they've gone through those first three welcome emails.
And so I like to set the cadence and then back up a little bit so that if I am in a
promotion period where I am actually emailing every day, like, like right now, for example,
I'm emailing my list every day.
They're used to getting emails from me on that, on that cadence.
And it's not this jarring, like, why are all of a sudden they promoting something when
they don't usually email this frequently?
So I think it's important that way.
Alex has brought up a really important point.
What we do at Social Media Examiner is when we get a new subscriber, we tag them as a
new subscriber.
And then two weeks later, we remove the tag.
And when they have a tag as a new subscriber, and if we're doing a promotion, we omit all
new subscribers from the promotion sequence.
So if we're actively promoting, for example, social media marketing world or the social
media marketing society, they will not receive those promotions during the first two weeks
of the campaign because we don't want them to feel like we're overly promoting them.
But we do, in our case, have newsletters that go out three days a week, which are educational.
And typically what we do is we have things that we push on the weekends, we don't normally
publish on the weekends.
So we'll normally have little extra things on the weekends, like maybe the first week
and we'll mention, hey, did you know we have a podcast, you know, if you want to go deeper
because they came in through the blog.
But I really like what you're doing in your particular case, because you are sending these
three messages.
Now, one of the big things that a lot of people are wondering is how long are these messages?
Because it seems like the attention span of people is more towards shorter messages.
But I see people writing novels as well.
So what's your thoughts about how long these things ought to be?
Because my guess is most people are reading them on their phone, right?
So I have a little bit of an opinion on, you know, this whole idea of people's attention
spans are getting shorter.
So what my thoughts are on this, and this is not scientific, this is purely my opinion.
But people say attention spans have gotten shorter.
But when's the last time you literally spent seven hours binge watching something on Netflix?
Like, have our attention spans actually gotten shorter?
What I actually think has changed is not our attention spans, but the accessibility
of high quality content.
So literally, with the swipe of your finger, if you're reading a boring email, you can
be on TikTok in two seconds watching something that's far more entertaining.
Or read the other 10 emails in your inbox, right?
Exactly.
And so I am of the mind that there's no such thing as an email that's too long.
There's only such thing as an email that's too boring.
And that's why I think and caution anyone who is being lazy and let's say using something
like AI to write an email from scratch without adding in a single aorta of personality or
anything that pulls attention forward, because there is no shortage of crappy content on
the internet.
And so my welcome emails, as are my sales emails, as are my content emails, they're
all pretty darn long.
I still love a good short email.
And I'll use a short email if I'm trying to do like a re-engagement campaign, for example,
because I know the shorter the email, oftentimes the more clicks you get.
But that doesn't mean the more qualified clicks you get.
And so on a sales email, I might write a long sales email and get less clicks.
But I know those people are far more engaged and likely to convert than what I call a click
magnet email, which is a short little, hey, have you seen this?
Go check it out kind of email, which is to really get the click, which can be great for
re-engagement.
And so I don't pay attention to email length.
I just say what I need to say in as few punchy, powerful sentences as possible.
And sometimes that includes images.
Sometimes it doesn't.
It's more of just like, what am I trying to say and how would I say this in a way that's
compelling?
There are plenty of people listening right now who know that they have potentially a
lot of things they could talk about, but they don't know what to write about.
And I would love to explore ideas with you.
I know you have a cool little system, if you will, that will help people come up with ideas
so that they have, you know, because a lot of people freak out when it comes to writing.
They have no idea what to write about in their email.
So how do I know what to write about?
Let's answer that question.
Yeah, great question.
And so I'll answer this question, you know, coming from my perspective as a personality
based brand, but this can apply to any type of business, whether you're writing for a
law firm or an eCommerce brand that has no face at the end of the day.
And this is really, really important.
And I actually learned this from my friend, Ryan Madgen, who does incredible short form
video content is he, he says, people want to know what you do, but they also want to
know who you are.
And I think we undervalue that second part because we think people don't want to know
who I am.
It's boring.
People want to know tips, strategies, and they want value.
Well, newsflash value doesn't just have to be tips and strategies and tips.
Value can be inspiration, entertainment, or education, but most people tend to go to this
education component.
And so when you really sit down and think about what, what can I talk about that shows
people not only what I do, but who I am?
I think that's a really important question to ask yourself.
And it's something that I resisted at first.
When I first started creating content and emails, I thought every single thing I had
to write had to be a nugget of wisdom about marketing, copywriting, and branding.
And if it didn't fall in those categories, then it was irrelevant and silly and I shouldn't
have emailed or posted about it.
But what I now teach is what I call my five by five by five content multiplier strategy,
which should help you come up with really 125 ideas rather quickly.
Now, do you need to use all of these 125 ideas?
No, but it can get you out of that place of, oh my God.
And this works for social media too.
Oh my gosh, I have to post today.
Oh my God, I need to write an email today.
What am I going to say?
I'm like running out of things to say.
And sometimes you don't have content that you can pull from or repurpose, and you're
just trying to connect with your audience.
And so what I would do is I would get out a notepad or a tablet or something like that.
And I want you to write your name or your brand name in a circle in the middle of the
page.
And then I want you to draw five spokes coming out of that middle circle.
Okay.
Now on each of these five spokes, you're going to put another circle.
And these are your content pillars or content categories.
Now my advice to you is as you're coming up with these content categories, pick three
that are squarely in the what you do category or what you teach or what you offer.
So if in my case, copywriting, branding, and marketing, right?
Those are three content categories, very squarely in my realm of expertise.
But then in the other two, write down two categories of content ideas that might not
be directly related to what you do.
And that could be more about, you know, who you are or what you're passionate about.
It could be travel.
I know for me, travel and lifestyle is a huge thing of what I talk about.
And I didn't think it was relevant for the longest time.
And then I realized, oh my gosh, everybody loves my travel and lifestyle content because
it shows you the behind the scenes of entrepreneurship.
And then the other thing that I talk about is mindset.
As you know, from my background at Mindvalley, self-help, personal growth has always been
a big part of my journey since I started in this world.
And so I talk a lot about personal development.
I have students that literally post content about gardening and they're like, how could
this be relevant?
But people want to work and buy from brands and businesses they know, like, and trust.
So you as a brand business entrepreneur have to give your audience a way to get to know,
like, and trust you.
And it's not always just leading with the, you know, here are five tips to help you do
X, Y, Z that's squarely related to what you do or what you offer.
Okay.
So I want to play with this on the fly with you a little bit.
If I take my company, Social Media Examiner, obviously we've got social marketing, we've
got content marketing, and let's say social strategy, okay, which is kind of the overarching
thing.
There's two other categories there.
One of them could be entrepreneurship because I'm a serial entrepreneur and I could talk
about my background as a serial entrepreneur to bring a little something personal to it.
And another one might be web three, because I'm exploring the future of social marketing,
right?
So that's an example of identifying some categories of things that I could talk about, even though
we almost always focus on social marketing, content marketing, and strategy.
These other two are things that we could bring some variations to the table.
Is that kind of an example of just me doing it on the fly with you?
Absolutely.
And I think too, and I got this question the first time I taught this is someone was like,
wait a second, how personal do we need to get here?
And at the end of the day, it's entirely up to you.
And you're the only one that really knows what's going to fit and what isn't.
Yeah, because I don't go very personal, but entrepreneurship, I could talk about all day
long.
I'm not going to talk about my family, but I will talk about the struggles of being a
business owner, founder, serial entrepreneur, just because I know there's some of those
people in my audience, right?
And even if you're not one of those people, it's a fascinating story for some people.
They want to know how you built what you got.
You know what I'm saying?
Absolutely.
And I think that that completely works for your brand.
Whereas you mentioned talking about your family, I know other entrepreneurs who are, let's
say moms who are building their business while also raising a family and being a mom is a
huge part of what they talk about.
And so if that feels aligned for you, and that would be interesting and inspiring to
your audience, go for it.
Obviously, you know, it's a spectrum of whatever you feel comfortable with.
I have other students and people in my programs who are writers, but they're really passionate
about being vegan and plant based.
And so you're like, wait, that has nothing to do with writing.
But they're like, no, this is something we feel really strongly about.
And so we're going to start posting content about being plant powered.
And because of that, they're actually finding new clients and new opportunities from businesses
and NGOs and organizations who also have the same value.
So sometimes it can feel unrelated.
But you realize that when people want to buy from brands and businesses that share the
same values as them, that that's like really when the magic happens.
Okay, so we've got this circle in the middle, you slash your company, the five topics.
Now how do we get to the other five and the other five beyond that?
Right.
So under each one of those five categories, or I call them pillars, like the way I think
about it is pretend we're building a bridge, right?
So in order to build the bridge, you first need to put the pillars down in the water
and on land and make sure they're really sturdy, right?
And they hold up the bridge.
And so those are your five content pillars.
Around each one of these pillars, you want to map out five what I call keystones or subtopics.
And this is just going a bit more granular.
So in my case, let's say one of the categories is branding, I might talk about how to build
a brand voice, I might talk about visual branding, I might talk about the power of visual branding,
I might talk about the power of storytelling, I might talk about how to build a personal
brand.
And I might talk about how to, you know, crystallize your values and your mission and your brand
promise, let's say.
So it's categories or subcategories.
And to give another example, like if under social marketing, I could have the platforms
Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, right?
100%.
Or in a content marketing, I could have short form video, long form video, podcasting, live
audio and the written word, right?
So those are examples of how you could do something like that, just to give people a
variety of examples.
Okay.
Yeah, that's actually a great twist on that, because I was thinking of like sub topics,
but it also works with like exactly you're saying different formats, different mediums,
different platforms, depending on what your business is.
Yeah, because we teach all that kind of stuff.
Okay, so you do that for each of those.
And all of a sudden, you've got the first five by five, right?
Yeah.
Now, where's the second, you know, this like, it's matrix almost, right?
Because now we're about to multiply what how does that next one work?
Exactly.
Yeah.
And so this is where you might not want to do it on a notebook, because it could get
a little messy.
So this is where I put it into a spreadsheet.
I call it my story inventory.
And my team has access to it.
And we're constantly building it out.
So it's not like a one and done, set it and forget it got 125 ideas, boom, we're done.
It's Hey, we did this, you know, for an hour, we came up with like, almost 125 ideas, some
of them are okay, some of them are really strong, but we'll continue adding to it.
And so you what you're going to do is now that you have each one of these subcategories
or content keystones, you're now going to come up with the story bricks.
And again, going back to the bridge analogy, these are the little pieces that build up
this full bridge that you're making, that's going to take your customer from point A to
point B and get them to really understand who you are and what you're about.
And so I have five categories of stories that you can source for each one of these subtopics.
And this is where it gets fun.
And this is where, you know, it'll take you the longest to come up with these.
But the five categories are and I have them in my notes here.
So I don't mess them up.
The first one is your life.
So this is a personal I'm putting personal in air quotes, because again, it's really
up to you how personal you get.
But it's a it's a story from your own experience.
So in your case, Mike, if you're talking about entrepreneurship, I'm sure you have a ton of
different stories from your own experience, of course, that you can pull in about one
of these subcategories.
The second one is your community or your customers or your audience.
Right.
So this is where you can tell the story, a beautiful case study of someone who is in
your network or who you learn from or a mentor or a lesson you learned when you were at a
mastermind or, you know, a testimonial you got from a customer that you can turn into
a really cool story.
The third category is the authority category.
So this is the one that people tend to think about.
It's the tips.
It's the strategies.
It's the tactics.
It's the do this and get this type of of email, which is highly valuable in the form of, you
know, educating your your audience.
And so it's something that's going to help them move the needle, but also gives you more
authority as an expert or leader in your industry.
Now, the fourth piece of content is I call it the world.
And this is where you reference real life events.
So I'll give you a perfect example of this.
I my team and I were writing an email about the power of a subject line and why writing
a really, really good subject line is imperative to email marketing.
I picked this story because I knew we were talking about email marketing today.
So we could have written an authority based story saying, here are five reasons why a
subject line is important or five tips to get your emails open.
And that would have done great.
But instead, we were like, what if we could tell a world story about this?
I don't know.
Does that can we?
It's a subject line.
It's so mundane.
So my writer, one of my writers on my team, Googled, has an email ever saved a life or
something along those lines?
She found an incredible story on USA Today about a subject line that saved a man's life.
The story is something along the lines of a rogue email went out to a database of subscribers
on this mattress companies list that they should never have gotten this email.
And the subject line was actually quite good.
And this woman had just received terrible, terrible news that her husband was diagnosed
with cancer.
And she got this email out of the blue.
And she's like, what is this and opens it up.
And it happened to be that that email was talking about how this mattress company is
supporting a foundation that does research about the type of cancer that her husband
had.
And it led her down this rabbit hole of finding this doctor and getting this treatment.
And ultimately, her husband made a full recovery.
And so we were like, whoo, I just got goosebumps telling the story like that is an interesting
story.
And so instead of writing an authority based email, where we're like, here are five reasons
why your subject line should be whatever, you know, we told a story of a subject line
that's actually saved a life.
And it's fun.
It takes a little bit more effort, you got to put on your Google hat, you know, and sometimes
you'll find something sometimes you won't.
I have a lot of fun with with that category.
So anytime there's like real life events, like I just did a video where I talked about
what I learned from Rihanna at the Super Bowl, perfect example of a marketing email that
was more world based about what's happening in the world.
It's relevant.
People find that way more interesting than the last category.
And this one's the trickiest, but I call it imagination.
So this is where you can reference hypothetical situations.
You can say, imagine you wake up one morning and you have a million dollars in your bank
account because this amazing business that you just launched after working so hard for
10 years has finally paid off.
Right.
I mean, it's hypothetical.
I'm telling you a story, but people always ask me that they're like, well, do I have
to tell a real story?
Well, no, but I'm of the mind that you should always be honest.
Well, and that's why if you say imagine, then, you know, it's just a fantasy, right?
I mean, exactly.
Without saying one of my customers, if it's not true, another way you can use fantasy
and this is really fun.
And again, it depends on your niche or your market.
But because I wrote in the personal growth arena for almost a decade or over a decade,
if you include my time at Mindvalley, there's not a lot of science to back up, you know,
meditation or numerology or astrology.
So instead I would look up like ancient legends or myths about this mathematician that was
murdered because he discovered prime numbers.
And I'm like, ooh, that's interesting.
How do I turn that into a story?
And so it's fun to use your imagination and come up with different ways of looking at
a similar topic and coming at it from those five different angles.
And so when you do the five pillars with the five keystones with the five story bricks
for each one, what do you get?
125 story ideas.
Well, and this is fascinating because with all these different ideas, I would imagine
there's a reason now for you.
There's a reason why you email your audience three times a week.
My guess is you're using some of these 125 ideas and just varying them.
Is that correct?
Definitely.
Yeah.
And I would say, so we email our list three times a week.
The first email that we send out, the easiest one I'll talk about first is the authority
email.
So every week I publish a YouTube video, a tutorial about something.
And so we'll send out an email that's just like, Hey, you're going to learn this, right?
This is going to help you get from A to B. So we send out an authority email on Wednesdays.
On Sundays we send out what we call the Sunday celebration email.
So fun and celebration are, that's one of my core values at the Coffee Posse.
And when you really think about what your values mean in your company, it's not just
about how you show up as the founder, the leader, or the executive team or whatever
position you're in.
It's not just how your team responds to things internally or treats things internally, but
how are you reflecting those values in your marketing?
And so we have a celebration Slack channel and we celebrate so much internally.
And I thought we need to be celebrating with our community more often.
And going back to the making someone feel acknowledged and included, I went, okay, great.
We want to celebrate the wins of our community.
And so we have really curated a culture of celebration where people email us their wins,
they post in the group their wins, and every single week we send out a little story and
we try to make it as story-based as possible rather than just look at these wins today.
We'll try to really tell a story of one or two of our community members just to acknowledge
them and, you know, oftentimes there's a lesson or a tip or, or a takeaway that someone can
read and go, wow, that's really inspirational.
And so we share that on Sundays.
And then the third email we send is a story-based email that is usually either a personal story
or we use one of the methods that I talked about earlier.
And that'll often, you know, link back to the YouTube video, but we're just taking a
different approach with it.
The point of that email isn't necessarily to get people to go watch the YouTube video.
It's just to be in their inbox and share a more personal, relatable story.
Hey, I've got some exciting news for you.
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Again, be sure to check out the Marketing Agency Show.
Alex, I can assure you right now, there are people's minds who are exploding as a result
of this conversation.
And they're saying, holy cow, this opens up an entirely new model for me to write emails
for the business that I work for or for my own business in a way that seems approachable.
And I know we've just scratched the surface of what's inside that brain of yours.
So if you want people to discover more about you, first of all, do you have a preferred
social platform?
I see you have at copy posse up on the screen on the YouTube channel here.
Which social platform is that?
Yeah.
So Instagram is where I love to connect.
So that is the best place to follow and DM me.
I love Instagram for that reason.
And so that's, yeah, that's my preferred Instagram.
And if you want them to go somewhere else to learn more about all the great stuff you've
got going on, where do you want to send them?
Because we're talking about email marketing today, I thought, oh my gosh, I have a special
gift for everyone listening to this in your entire community.
I have something called my ultimate email marketing cheat sheet, which includes the
seven type of emails that you should be sending to build a relationship with your list as
well as monetize your list because we didn't even get into the sales part of email marketing.
And you can go to copy posse.com forward slash S M E for social media examiner to grab a
copy of that.
Alex Katoni, thank you so much for filling our brains with wonderful awesomeness.
We appreciate your time today.
Thank you.
This was so much fun.
Hey, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over at socialmediaexaminer.com
slash five 59.
And if you're new to this show, be sure to follow us.
And if you've been a long time listener, would you let your friends know about this show?
I'm at Stelzner on Instagram and at Mike underscore Stelzner on Twitter.
This brings us to the end of yet another episode of the social media marketing podcast.
I'm your host, Michael Stelzner.
I'll be back with you next week.
I hope you make the best out of your day and may social media continue to change your world.
The social media marketing podcast is a production of social media examiner.
