RYB 904: How Do I Write Email Subject Lines That Grab ATTENTION And Get Opened? Jam Session

By Scott Voelker •  Updated: 11/06/20 •  9 min read

Welcome to this week’s Friday Jam Session! It’s always one of the highlights of my week. I get to spend time with some incredible people and answer some really great questions. To join us, head over to takeactioncrew.com. We’d love to have you become part of our crew! It’s free to join, and you’ll be able to get some of your own questions answered. 

The Basics of Creating an Email List 

Today’s we’re going to talk about how to write effective subject lines that get people to click on your email. You have to get the open before you can get the click. If you don’t have a list yet, you should start one today. I highly recommend that you go through our email building fast track workshop. You’ll be finished within three hours and will be able to start implementing what you learned within 24 hours so you can start building your email list without waiting. It’ll be the best investment that you’ve made for your business. 

If you’re not on my email list, you really should be. Pay attention to my writing style, how I create calls to action, incorporate stories, and how I write subject lines. It’s basically a free marketing lesson and makes it easier for you to model what I’m doing. I’ve been self-employed for 19 years, so I’ve been doing this for a long time and have had a lot of experience writing emails. 

Use Curiosity to Write Captivating Subject Lines 

People are constantly getting bombarded with emails every day. The goal is to build a trusted relationship so people will click on your email when they see it in their inbox. To start, make sure that they can clearly identify who the email is from. 

From the very beginning, you need to establish a relationship with your subscribers so they know that they can trust you. Once they see who it’s from, they’re going to look at the subject line before deciding if they will click on the email, look at it later or delete it. So make sure that you make it clear where your communications are coming from, so it’s clearly listed coming from you and your brand. Your emails should always come from the face of your mind. It’s more personable than coming from your brand name. 

The subject line of your email has a lot to do with curiosity. People are curious by nature. I’m not referring to a bait and switch that will violate your trust and can work against you. However, you should pique your subscriber’s interest enough that they want to open your email to learn more. When you’re writing a subject line, keep it short. Play around with all lowercase letters to see if that works well for your audience. 

When you are writing subject lines, keep in mind that people are busy. What is going to get them to read your email? Or consider incorporating something that you’re excited about and get them excited about it too. Just make sure that your emails will help them solve a problem or provide valuable information. 

The key is it commit and get started now. In Brand Creators, it’s all about holding each other accountable and getting started today.

Coffee Talk Q&A 

Q: I’ve created my lead magnet and am getting ready to launch my first digital product. Should I wait to create an upsell or just get the digital product up first?

A: Get your digital product up on your site and available for sale as quickly as possible. Don’t wait! You can always worry about the upsell later. We all want to get everything built before we send it out to the world. However, that always holds people back, and many times they never get everything done that they wanted to.

The first thing you need to do is focus on getting your lead magnet up and start collecting emails. The goal is to get a 20%-30% conversation rate before you do anything else. You need to make sure that the lead magnet is successful before you develop products to go along with it. If you don’t have the right lead magnet, you’ll need to reevaluate what you’re offering and try something else. 

Q: Are you planning to write a book?

A: I might do something in the future where I take some of the emails I’ve written and do a whole swipe copy of those along with the stats of each one. I could definitely create a guide with all of the copy and use the emails as examples. In the near future, I’m planning to host a fast track workshop on how to write effective emails, so you build trust and sell things at the same time.

Q: Why did you change the format of how to register for Brand Creators?

A: In the past, when we did a public open, it was a lot of work, and we only opened four times a year. We’re changing up the process, so people have to apply, and we can also send out private invites to join. When someone participates in one of our workshops, we now have the ability to send them a private invite to apply to join Brand Creators. This allows us to review and filter out those who are a good fit to join. This helps us keep our community small and tight to make sure we only have people who are ready to join. 

For us, it’s making sure that we work with people who are focused on building their brand and that they are the right type of people that we’re bringing into our community. 

Q: Should I create a bonus to along with my digital product?

A: Yes, you absolutely can, but it’s not necessary if that’s holding you up from launching your product. Just make sure that the bonus adds more value to your product.

Q: How did you get better at writing subject lines?

A: By writing them and following people who I like their writing style. The best way to get better is to learn as you go. Once you have an email list you’re in the game and start testing things out and improve. The only way you’re going to get results is to get in the game. That’s why our email fast track course is so helpful. It’ll help you build your list quickly.

Q: When should I transfer from the free version of ConvertKit to the paid version? 

A: The free version should give you everything you need until you hit 1000 subscribers. However, if you do a giveaway, you’ll definitely need to purchase the paid version because chances are you’ll have more than 1000 subscribers after that. But if funds are limited, the free version is a great place to start.

Q: What can I send my audience to keep them engaged?

A: Send them tips related to the products that you sell, and don’t be afraid to check in on occasion to ask them what kind of information they would love to hear from you. 

Q: What content should I include in my lead magnet?

A: Your lead magnet needs to include one small win. It shouldn’t be too big, or it’ll overwhelm the subscriber. It doesn’t need to be perfect when you get it out there. You can always make revisions later. People won’t be overanalyzing the lead magnet. They’ll just be glad that you’re providing them with a small win. 

That’s going to wrap our jam session for this week. I hope you enjoyed it! If you want to join us next time, head over to takeactioncrew.com. We show up every Friday at 10 am eastern time. Thank you so much for listening! It’s always one of the highlights of my week. As always, I am here for you, I believe in you and am rooting for you. It’s time for you to take action and go rock your brand! 

Thanks For Tuning in!

“Remember, I'm here for you, I believe in you, and I'm rooting for you! Now it's time for you to take action and go rock your brand”!

Take-Aways From Today’s Episode

  1. The Basics of Creating an Email List (2:26)
  2. Use Curiosity to Write Captivating Subject Lines (8:12)
  3. Coffee Talk Q&A (33:46)

Quote:

“The only way you’re going to get results is to get in the game”. 

00:01 Yes, what time it is? Friday jam.

00:05 Wait. Hey. Hey, what's up everyone. Welcome to the rock, your brand podcast. I'm your host, Scott Voelker a serial entrepreneur on a mission to help you. This show is designed to teach you to inspire you, to motivate you, to take massive action and build a future-proof business. So whether you're just starting out or taking your existing business to the next level, this is your home. Now, if you're ready, I'm ready. Let's rock your brand. What's up everyone.

00:37 Welcome to this Friday jam session, super excited. You're here. And if you haven't heard me say it before, I'm going to say it right now. This is probably one of the highlights of my week because I get to hang out with some cool people every single Friday and answer some really awesome questions. Now you might be asking Scott, how do I get my question answered? Well, all you need to do is become part of our take action crew. How do you do that? Very easy head on over to take action, crew.com. It's totally free. And we do it every single Friday and it is a blast. So what you're about to listen to is one that we did last week. So this way here, even if you can't attend, you can always show up here to the rock, your brand podcast, and listen to our live jam session.

01:25 All right, guys. So sit back, relax and let's jam. All right, guys. Welcome back to another jam session. This is one of the highlights of my week, as you guys know, and if you guys are listening to this on the podcast, well, you should come on over and hang out with us live. When we do these jam sessions, which you can do that by heading over to take action crew.com. Again, that's take action crew.com that will take you to our private Facebook group, rock your brand, and you can request to join. And then from there, you'll be able to hang out with us on these Friday jam sessions and you can get one of your questions answered if you have one or Monday, Wednesday, we're there too. I do 10:00 AM Eastern time, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. But the Friday one is dedicated to a jam session, which basically is us jamming on a topic and then drilling into any of your questions.

02:20 All right. So with that, all being said, today's topic. Today's question. And this came in, Oh, I have to think about maybe two, three days ago, I'm one of our other coffee talks and that was Scott. How do I write good subject lines that get more opens on my emails? How do you do that? You do it and also get people to click in, right, or to click into the email. So then they can click into the next thing. Cause we have to get the open before we can actually get the click. All right. Now I just talked about this before we actually started recording this and I was just on a call the other day, other day. It was actually yesterday.

03:01 Uh, the time of this, this recording and this time that I'm doing this and I had a live call with my BCA members, K brand creators Academy, for those of you that don't know. Okay. And what we ended up doing was we did a review session on some emails that one of our members had written. They wanted feedback on it. And

03:23 At first she was like cringing. She's like, Oh my gosh, I don't really want,

03:26 I want to, uh, I don't really want this feedback, but I want the feedback, but I, I, I'm kind of embarrassed that. And I said, listen, number one, you got to give yourself credit because number one, you have built an email list. Okay. I think it's like 1100 people on our email list. Okay. And she's sending emails on a regular basis.

03:45 She's getting data back. She's getting open rates at 21, 22%.

03:51 Right? She's getting feedback.

03:53 She sent out what I call the naked email,

03:55 Which we talked about on a past episode, which is basically a stripped down, uh, email that is, is really there with no links. So this way here we can get through any spam traps. We can, we can get through any filters and we can show up in their inbox and we can start getting feedback. This is a great way to, to kind of get feedback from your list. But she did all that. And I said, listen,

04:15 You should be proud of yourself for doing that because there's so many people sitting on the sidelines that are like, Ooh, I want to build a list, but I don't know what if it doesn't work? What if I don't? What if I can't figure it out? What if I can't do the tech? What if I can't do this? What if I can't do that? Right? It's what if, what if, what if, or I'm going to wait or I don't have time, right? Or it just seems too complicated. I'll do it.

04:36 And I get my website up all of these things, right? The thing is we can't help you with messaging your customers or potential

04:47 Customers. If we don't have an email list.

04:50 So Helene, who is

04:52 The lady that I'm talking about, she's actually done all that. So I said, listen, you ought to be proud of yourself because most people don't get to that point. But because you're at that point, guess what we get to play around with subject lines, we get the, we get to AB split test those. We get to write new emails and see what the response is. Like. We get to tweak our, our calls to action in there. We get to drive people over to our website. We get the drive people over to our promotions. We get to do all this fun stuff over here. But if you don't have that list, we can't do

05:22 It. Right. So this is going to be my

05:24 Little call to action to you that if you don't have a list

05:27 Yet, and you don't think that

05:29 You need one, or you don't think you're ready for one, for whatever reason, I'm here to tell you

05:33 That you are and that you should have one. And I would encourage you to go through the email list, building fast track workshop, which you can,

05:42 We can go through that right now. It's an on-demand class. You'll be through it

05:46 Within three hours and you'll be implementing it within 24 hours. It's not about

05:51 Two or three week course. It's about going through a three hour

05:54 Training, not even full three hours, about two and a half. There's some Q and a. There that's built in that. We, we recorded with a live class that you get access to. You get templates, you get a full guide of over a hundred pages of actually what to do step-by-step and everything is broken down to get your list built. Okay? So if you need help with that, then head on over

06:15 To brand creators.com forward slash

06:17 List. And you can go through that workshop.

06:20 I would encourage you to do it. It's gonna be the best investment you've ever made

06:23 And yourself when it comes to building something from scratch, like an email list.

06:27 And once you have that, guess what this here, this episode is going to,

06:31 We really, really work well for you because now you can go, Oh, I'm going to try that subject line. That sounds good. I'm going to try that. And then you're going to try it.

06:39 We're going to come back. You might even attend one of these coffee talks or these jam sessions, and then you'll report back

06:43 On some data right now. Karen, I'm going to ask you,

06:47 I actually use some of her subject lines because when she first came in,

06:51 In, uh, to the Academy and when she was starting to just write her emails, her subject lines were good enough, but they've gotten a lot better. And that's because she's always watching and learning. She might be reading my emails, which by the way, guys, I mentioned this the other day, too, on our, on our talk. If you are not on my email list, which you all probably are, but if you aren't, uh, you really should be, and you should be paying attention to my writing style, how I'm creating calls to action. How is how I'm including story, how I'm writing subject lines. It's a marketing lesson for free by you just to open my emails, right. Or go and see my subject lines and then click in. Right. It's a good way for you just to model other people. All right. And I've been doing it a long time. I think I'm coming up on my official being self-employed for over 19 years. Okay. I just pulled up that stat the other day. Cause I, I needed it for the sales page. Right. So I need to know like

07:58 How long have I been self-employed I kind of forgot.

08:01 It's been 19 years, 19 years crazy. All right. So let's talk about subject lines. Why are they important? Well, if you are showing up in someone's inbox, which is crowded and it's noisy, and they're getting, people are getting bombarded with email after email, after email. Well, number one, we need to immediately start to build a know like and trust. Right? We need to build that.

08:24 I and trust because they've got a whole bunch of other emails that they're going,

08:27 Going to be scanning through. Why are they going to click on yours? Well, number one,

08:33 Uh, see who it's from. So if it's from you, if it's from Scott, they're gonna be like, okay, I know that person because they gave me something for free

08:40 Or they, they gave me a great product or whatever. Right. And they've already followed up with me and they were following up to me with me to make sure that everything was cool. Right. So we've built that relationship right from day one. Okay. Hey, I noticed that you downloaded, uh, you know, the checklist. I just wanted to make sure you got it. If you have any problems, let me know any questions. Let me know that too. I'm here to help talk to you later, Scott, like that's the email, right? We're we're building that relationship. It's not like, by the next thing, it's not like written, like it's from a business it's written from you. Who's making that connection. So that's step number one. We have to make sure that we do that because that's, that's one huge factor. Cause I guarantee if you're looking through your thing and you see my name, you're going to immediately know who I am.

09:24 You're going to immediately know if you want to open it or not. You're going to know like, and trust me. Right. And so then the next piece of that is the subject line. What's going to get me to go from the, the actual name over to the subject line. Cause that's how we're scanning. Right? Where like name, subject line, or maybe it's subject line. A lot of times, for me, it's like seeing who it's from. And I immediately know I'm like, no, click it archive or click it delete. Right. So you immediately know that. Think about your own behavior and how that works. So what I'm going to do is now I want to look at the subject line. The subject line is going to let me know. Do I want to click in here to see what this is about? Or will I look at it later?

10:03 Or eh, I don't, I'm not really interested in that. Right? So a lot of times the subject line has a lot to do with curiosity. Curiosity is a huge trigger for us as humans. We're curious. We just want to know, right? If you kind of open a loop and you don't close it, we want it to be closed. Right? So on a subject line now I'm not saying bait and switch either. I'm not saying like, come up with something and then go ha fooled ya. And then you tell them something else. That's not good. Cause that's going to violate your trust and that's going to get them to not want to open your emails so that can work against you do not do that. Right. Um, so again, I want to, I want to share, I'm going to actually share my screen here in a minute, but I literally sent, I'm going to go back to a few that I sent here recently.

10:55 Okay. So this one here do this and you'll get results brackets, no matter what. Now I read that email actually in my last coffee talk. So again, if you have not listened or bend any of these coffee talks, this is why you should be here because I do stuff like that. I opened up one of my emails that I sent and I read it and I talked all through like the psychology of it. Not that I put a lot of psychology in it. It's just almost like second nature now, but there are pieces in there. Um, but basically that subject line was all lowercase and it just said, do this and you'll get results brackets, no matter what. Right. So you want to know, okay, what, what kind of results am I going to get? And what do I have to do? And no matter what makes it sound like there's, it's like foolproof, like in a work for anything. Right? So even if you were in the bass fishing and people know that Scott is sending emails about how to catch more bass, I don't have to put bass fishing in all of my subject lines. I still have to anymore. Right.

11:56 What's from Scott. They know Scott's about bass fishing. This over here now is going to tell them

12:00 If they want to click in or not. Right. So

12:03 Again, I'm not always putting it in there. Now. There are times that I'll

12:05 Put like in there too to really exclude people and repel people on my list that aren't interested in that. Right. And only getting the people that I, that I want to be able to attract. So one would be like, um, starting an email list from scratch question, Mark. Uh, do this right now. If you already have an email list, you might not open it. Now you might open it just because you're

12:28 Curious like, Oh, I wonder what Scott's doing or wonder what

12:30 Scott's up to. Right. That might be, but for the most part, it's only going to target people that don't have a list yet. Right. So

12:37 Again, you always want to be thinking along those lines.

12:40 Um, the other, uh, subject line that I used that worked really well was, um, stop waiting dot, dot, dot, or you'll be left behind again. You want to know what stop waiting for what? Right. And again,

12:54 You know, it's about bass fishing or, you know, in this case it's about building your email list or building your brand, right?

12:59 No, it's from Scott. So that's another one. Uh, I'm going to go to another one here real quick. Uh, let's see. Okay.

13:08 So here, here was it, here was one that I specifically

13:11 Called out that it did well too. Uh, so it was a do over brackets, email list, building fast track workshop. So now some people that are,

13:23 Are interested in an email list building are interested in the workshop, right?

13:26 Nothing. They're not going to click on that, but the people that are

13:29 You're going to see do over, what, what does Scott mean? He's doing it over. Why? Why is he doing it over? Right. So I put, do over email list, building fast track workshop,

13:37 Right? That's a,

13:38 That's one that did well. And now this was during my

13:41 Promotion, by the way, um, in, in the promotion, I'm doing stuff like workshop, deadline, right? Registration ending soon, or last chance, email, fast track workshop starting soon. Right? So I'm giving people the lead up because we're running out of time. That's when you start to put a little bit of the scarcity on the deadline, right? Uh, let me go to another one here real quick. Cause that was all through the promotion. Uh, here was one your questions in brackets, upcoming workshop. So basically I was letting people know, Hey, you got any questions or there are questions in here that I answer. You might want to check it out cause you want to know what they are. And then here's one that did, that did really well too, was what's holding you back. Question Mark, all lower case. What's holding you back. Um, another subject line that works really good is good news and bad news, but more good. Right? So it was good news, all caps and lowercase, bad news, all caps and then brackets, but more good news or more good. So, you know, like there's some bad, I kinda want to know what that is, but there's good news. I want to know that too. And there's more of that. Cool. Right. So again,

14:47 Just playing around with that stuff, you notice the older, not really that long. Right?

14:52 Um, and let's see here. I'm going to try to do one more. Oh, here was a good one. Because again, it was a story I'm sharing the story of what happened. Now, if you're in bass fishing, it would be a story of what just happened to you last weekend. When you were fishing with your buddies or you're fishing with your son, right. It'd be something like that. Uh, this one here was my e-commerce brand is gone all caps in the gone and then brackets big news. Right? So you want to know if you've been following Scott for any amount of time, you want to know about this e-commerce brand and how it's gone, what happened? And so from there talked about how I sold it and all that stuff. And inside of that, I started talking about how important email was to that brand. And because we had a great email list, it also helped us sell the brand.

15:35 Right. So do you want to take the email list, building fast track workshop? You should because it'll add another asset to your business. See, we just intertwine that with that story. Um, so again, those are just, uh, subject lines. Oh, here was another good one. If you already sent an email, another email that could go two days later would be something like, did you see this question, Mark? And then again, I had email list building workshop coming soon. So again, you want to know, I didn't see it right. Or, yeah, I did see it, but what about it? Right. So it gets you to click in, all right, I'm going to pull up Karen's emails now. And if you guys are listening to this on the podcast, you will not be able to see this, but I will try to describe these as best as possible. Let me go back over here. Let's see. Okay. Let me go ahead and share my screen and I want to make sure that you guys can see it. Okay. And let's see here. And uh, here we go. I think I hope let's see here. Yeah. That's gotta be it. Let's see. All right. If you guys are listening, bear with me, bear with me. All right. Here we go. Let's see.

16:54 And we'll share it. Yep. There it is. Cool. All right. Let me know if you guys can see that and if you guys are listening, you can't see that. So you can't let me know, but you don't need to because I'm going to read this, uh, through. Um, but again, I think, uh, Karen's on a really, really good job, uh, on her email. She's gotten a lot better and I think it's really important to highlight that, uh, now Karen is in the, uh, school kind of teaching or preschool kindergarten type market. Uh, and so again, this'll give this a little bit of context, uh, for you guys. Um, but let me know if you guys can see that real quick before I start reading through these and we'll go from there and uh, let's see. I'm sorry. I just took a sip of coffee. All right. Um,

17:50 It looks like we got a delay, but I think we have a yes in there. Uh, okay. Let me go ahead and start reading these. All right. So again, Karen is in the teaching kids market. Okay. More or less preschool kindergartners, things like that. Okay. So right away we know it's from Karen, right? Karen's name is Ray here. Now some people ask me, Scott, should I have it, my business name? I would personally

18:20 Say, use your own name or use whoever

18:23 Is the face of the brand. Because when you say

18:25 I see a name versus a brand name, you think of it more, you think of it, less

18:32 Of a sales message. Right. So I would encourage you to have the name yourself or whoever is writing as the brand. Okay. Um, so just kind of scrolling through these, I kind of just searched her name for all of them. I'm on her list because I love seeing what my students are doing. Um, and I'll go through here and thumb through them, but I'm just going to kind of go down here. Let's go right to here. Okay. Uh, let's see. Okay. So like this one here, love these worksheets. Okay. That doesn't give me a clear thing of why I would want to click in there. So that's not one of the stronger ones I believe. And I don't know how it did Karen, if you are on, if you can give us, maybe I don't know if you're in your, uh, in your convert kit account, if you can give us that, but that would be good if you can give us like the open rate on that, but love these workshops or these worksheets or people have people love these worksheets or moms love these worksheets.

19:25 Right. But love these worksheets. Like not even a question, Mark just love these worksheets. Um, so I think it would be more, it would, it would be more attractive if you would say, moms are loving these worksheets, right. Um, or teachers are loving these worksheets, right. Critical for young kids. I love that because I want to know what is critical. So that's a good one. It's short again, if you're targeting, uh, again, the, the lead magnet attracted, you know, teachers or parents that are teaching at home. And if you have a kid and you're teaching and you see critical for young kids, that's good. Or it could be critical learning for young kids that might be a little stronger or whatever it is you're trying to, um, you know, trying to convey, um, what are your kids struggling with question Mark. I love that. I love that because we're asking you a question.

20:17 Anytime we turn it into a question you immediately, as the reader want to answer that question, right? So immediately I'd be like, what are your, what are your kids struggling with? Even if my kid isn't five years old, I might be thinking what's Kayla struggling with right now, she's struggling with her braces. You know, she just had her braces tightened up and her mouth was sore as heck this morning. Um, so again, I would immediately be like, Oh, my daughter's struck. She just, this morning, she was struggling with, uh, you know, with a racist. Uh, but again, if I'm in that market of young kids be thinking about,

20:48 You know, something along the lines of what they're struggling with school. So it might be like, what are your kids struggling with in school or learning? What are your kids struggling with learning, right? That might be stronger. Um, easy ways to make learning math. Fun. I love that. What would be a little stronger is three easy or three ways to make learning math fun, three easy ways to make math learning fun, right? Something like that. Uh, new ideas for your kids to learn math. I love that three new ideas for your kids to learn new math. People love three, five, something of a, of a number that seems specific. People like lists. They like numbers, right? The other cool thing is, is when you're writing the email, then you can go inside of the email and you can say in the PS, number two is one of my favorites, uh, because it can be done in a matter of minutes and kids, they seem to really pick it up fast, right?

21:41 So immediately in the PS, I'm bringing attention back to the email of what I'm trying to get people to click in, but that's, once we get an email, the other thing you can do on a subject line is if you do have a number of lists, you can say, number three is my favorite. And then that will get people curious about what is number three. Okay. Uh, worry, no more for your preschooler. I like that. Because again, we're saying worry, we don't want to worry. Um, so how do I worry? No more? Like, what is the solution? What is the fix? Um, kids will have fun while learning. I liked that, but again, it's kind of not directly. So it's something better would be, um, how kids are having fun while learning something like that. Um, this year was a promotion, I believe weekend only all caps in brackets.

22:27 Get this now, before it's gone. I like that. It could be like, get the worksheets before they're gone. Uh, get the planner before it's gone or something, whatever it is, you might want to throw that in there. Um, but it's still good weekend. Only get this now, before it's gone. Benefits of play plus downloads. Um, that's short and sweet. I do like that because you have downloads in there. People love that, uh, benefits of play. Uh, I think it's fine. Uh, might want to put in there again, anytime you can put in there, three benefits of play or five benefits of play or, um, the simple benefits of play. I don't know. It's still pretty good. Um, your child's development, uh, it could be better if it was like, is your child's development in jeopardy? You know what I mean? Question Mark. That might be stronger.

23:21 Um, then we have one here. It has arrived. Um, which is all lower case. I like that could be something like I'm super excited. It has arrived, right? Something like that. Again, I'm not critiquing on, on these to the point where mine would do better. That's just how I think is I'm always trying to think. How do I add that little bit of curiosity to it? Um, even though I'm not going to put something in there that isn't accurate. Right. Um, so like it has arrived. That sounds good. But I think something better would be like, I am so excited. It has finally arrived or something like that. You want to know what that is. Um, this one here help. We need your help. Uh, I don't think we need help in there twice. Um, again, it's, I'm just doing these small little tweaks. Something like help in all caps, or I need your help.

24:20 And then, um, your feedback, um, or five seconds, five seconds. I just did one. And it said something like five seconds to answer this question or something like that, or help or help help me help you. Like, that's another good one. Uh, but help. And then just brackets. We need your help or, um, can you give us, um, can you give us some feedback, something like that. Uh, next one, we need your help for the kids. Okay. I like that one better. We need your help for the kids. I liked that one better. I do like that one better. That was a, um, send to the unopens because that email is identical and that was when you were sending it to the unopeneds. I liked that. Um, let's see here, free fun with kids. Uh, free fun with kids, all capitalized. We need to be careful with free the word free and you capitalize that, which makes it even more spammy to the filters.

25:18 So always be careful use it sparingly. You can use it, just use it sparingly. Um, so free. Anytime you use that free, uh, it's going to be one of those words that gets triggered, um, free fun with kids. Uh, I don't know what it is. Uh, let's see. And again, I'm just reading in here on the, on the first line. Cause here's what, here's the other thing that I want people to understand when I'm in my inbox, I'm seeing the name, I'm seeing the subject line. And then I see like a really small snippet of like the first part of the email. That's another place that people don't think about because they just feel like, well, people have to click in to see it. They don't, I can scan this. So I have this one here says, um, hi, Scott, let's have some fun this week.

26:07 I was able to spend some and that's it. That's not bad because it's like, let's have some fun. Uh, the other one was, uh, okay, so this one here is we need your help for the kids. Hi, it's ms. Karen and I wanted to get your feedback. That's not bad. Uh, let's see. So, okay, so let's just move on. I'm going to scroll up here. We've got a few more to do here. Um, make time to play. Okay. That one, there might even be like important all brackets, make time to play. Okay. Um, science for kids, I think that's straightforward. Uh, but you could do something this month will be to science. So something like, um, uh, news science for kids, something like that because it's news for you and your business, right. You're, you're making something, an announcement in a sense, uh, awesome facts for bat month plus gift.

26:58 I like the plus gift that always does good, awesome facts for bat month. Uh, okay. Now again, what's the awesome facts for bat month going to do? I don't know. Maybe it's part of a series that you're running. I don't know that. Um, I'm just trying to think, like what would make, if I don't care about that month or facts about bats? Uh, why would I want to click in there? I guess October usually welcomes cooler temperatures, pumpkin spice. That's the first part of that. Um, so yeah, I don't know. Bats and Halloween, uh, is, is the, the last one. I'm curious how those performed Karen. Um, if you can drop that in the comments while we're still on here and I can share those. Um, but out of all of those, I would, I love to know like which one did the best and I have an idea, but I would like to know.

27:50 So again, when we're writing subject lines, we always want to be thinking about, you know, people are busy and what is going to get them to want to read my email and how can we make it a little bit curiosity based, right. Or something again that you like your super excited about gets them to want to know what you're super excited about. Right. Um, but you do want it to come back to how's it going to help them. All right. All right. Cool. So, uh, let's see, let me go ahead and remove that, get back and let's see what we got in the comments. So guys, that's pretty much subject lines. So again, if you're on the podcast right now, when you're writing a subject line, you always want to keep it somewhat short, play around with, uh, brackets, play around with lowercase. Only as if you were to write a friend.

28:41 I know English teachers would like frowned upon that. But again, if you're writing to a friend and you're writing them quick texting or whatever, it's lowercase, right. A lot of times. Um, and, uh, again, try to think what is going to grab their attention. That's going to get them to want to click in, to read the email, because if they don't click in to the email to read it, we can't get them to actually click a link on the inside right. Of the email. So first step your name. Do they know like, and trust you? Okay. That has to be established like day one. Okay. And we talk about that in the email list, building fast track workshop. That first email that you send is really about building rapport immediately, but then also delivering on your promise is really important. And then just a simple, let me know if you need anything, email me back and I'll get back to you as soon as I can take care. Right. That's it, that's the email. You got to establish that trust, right? And then you want to start being known as the trusted resource for them okay. In, in your market.

29:42 So the name subject line, and then they're going to click into the email. Right. And a little bit of the first part of the email will show up as a truncated, a shortened line there that people will also be able to scan. All right. So that's your subject lines. Get out there and play right. Play with those subject lines, have fun with them and look at your data. Look at your open rates, see how well they did. Right. See one did better than the other right. Test. The two side-by-side inside a convert kit, you can do AB split testing, super simple, but I would not overuse it either by the way. Uh, but yeah, that's what I would do. And then this way here, you're able to kind of test things as you move forward. Uh, and again, if you're listening to this or watching this and you have not built your list yet, then I'm going to give you a little shameless plug here, head on over to, uh, brand creators.com forward slash list.

30:33 Again, that's brand creators.com forward slash list. And you can go through the workshop. You can go through our three to 500 method, which we'll teach you in three steps, how to build a list of up to 500 subscribers in 30 days or less. And from there, you'll learn that process that you can take those 500 to a thousand to 5,000 to 10,000 and beyond. Okay. But you got to learn that first part. Okay. So, all right, let's go ahead and answer some questions. Uh, let's see here. Uh, Karen says I'm excited about growing the product side of my business. I am too. And yesterday on our call, Karen, I think we laid out a perfect plan. You keep adding those products to your website, do product reviews on your website, on Facebook, driving people to you, your website, email your list about those, those products that you are reviewing.

31:21 The ones that you're mentioning and just repeat that cycle. And now that we're approaching fourth quarter, we're somewhat in it, but we are going to be heavily in it. That's when people are going to be visiting from your emails and every time you get someone there, you have another chance for someone to buy a product. Even your, if it's not your product and affiliate products and then load up their car in Amazon and any other products, and then you get paid on that, on that purchase or on their cart value at the time of them closing out their account or their, their cart. Um, so again, that's the, that's the plan for you, but yes, you've got other things we're going to be doing later, right? The other side of the digital products stuff, which I think is going to be great, but this right here for you, that is the main focus Salma.

32:04 I'm excited about creating my lead magnet and start building my tribe. Okay, well, Salma let's do it. When are you going to do it? When are you going to commit that you're going to have your lead magnet up your, your, a landing page up and you're going to start driving traffic, put it in the comments right now. I want you to commit to this. This is what we do in brand creators Academy, by the way, guys, it's all about holding each other accountable. It's all about checking in. It's all about, you know, listen, like let's not just think about it. Let's do it. Okay. So again, Sam, I'm going to put you on the spot, put in the comments. When are you going to have that lead magnet done the landing page live? And when are you going to be able to start driving traffic? Go ahead, drop it in the comments,

32:40 Derek, I'm excited about creating my digital product. I'm excited that you're excited about creating your digital product. I really, really am. I think it's going to be amazing. Uh, let's see. Okay. Karen says 17.4% open 1.1%. Click is that overall, is that collectively? Is that like ope or the, uh, the first send and then we sent to the unopens. Is that, is that across the board? And I think you said your list is about 1800 at the time. Um, which 17.4 isn't bad. Um, I would like to see you get it up to 20% and then we would build off of that. Uh, so again, but that's not bad. That's not bad. Uh, uh, on the love, these workshops. Oh, on the, on the, I love these worksheets. Okay. That's the email that you're talking about. Okay. And that subject line was, uh, let me see here. Oh, love where it was that love these worksheets. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Love these worksheets. Okay. Uh, so that was the subject line. Okay. All right.

33:46 So I would be curious to see what that would do if we change that up. Uh, okay. Uh, Derek, I created my lead magnet and now updating a digital product ebook. Do you, do you think I should create an upsell or just get this stuff out first while building my list? Yes. That part, don't worry about the upsell. Don't worry about the upsell rate. Now don't do it right. Don't worry about that. We can plug that stuff in later. I want to go back to this. We all want to get everything built before we actually send it out there to the world right before we make it live. Okay. That holds a lot of people back. Cause then we never get that all done. And then we feel like we can never make it live. Right. The very first thing that you need to do is create a lead magnet, get it on a landing page and drive traffic to the, to the, uh, to the lead magnet.

34:33 That's the very first thing we need to do because once we get that converting at around 20 to 30% on the front end, we can start bolting stuff on the backend. Right. But that's the first part. If we don't have that done yet. And we can't test that offer because if we put that together and then we build an upsell and then we build a, you know, another promotional sequence in our email autoresponder, and we do all that work. And then we find out that the front end only converts at 10%, we might have the wrong lead magnet. Right. So the lead magnet to get tested as soon as possible is very critical. Once we get that in place, we have enough data to tell us if it's, if it's going to be a successful lead magnet or not, then we bolt on the back.

35:15 Right. So a perfect example, this think about the email list, building fast track workshop. Okay. I did not build the sales page. I did not build a fancy checkout page. I didn't even build the product. I sold the product. Then I showed up on a live workshop and taught it. And then I edited the videos and put them up in a membership later, after they were sold. So I didn't do work for nothing. And then we built the sales page and now we're starting to drive traffic to it. Right. But it didn't happen. I didn't, if I would have sat there and I got to do the sales page, I gotta do the bump. I gotta do the upsell. I gotta do the followup sequence. I've gotta do all that stuff. I wouldn't even have did the workshop yet. It'd be still being built. Right.

35:58 Do not get hung up in the, I got to build everything out before I actually turned this thing loose. Okay. All right. Uh, Phil, when are you going to write a book about email copywriting? I'd buy it. You must have enough content to create it now. Yeah. I might do something in the future where I just take a whole bunch of the emails I've written guys. I don't know. I should probably add it up, but I've written a lot of emails in my day, a lot of emails. Um, and yeah, I could just do a whole swipe copy of all the emails and all of the stats of what they've done. Uh, I mean, even as far as inside of brand creators, uh, you know, for writing for those emails, I've got a lot of emails and you're a hundred percent, right. I could create just a guide with all of the, all of the copy in there and then, you know, use those and then probably put it into some type of swipe area where, uh, you know, you could model it, but that it is something we're going to probably do a fast track workshop, spoiler alert.

36:59 And it's going to be on email writing, right. How to write effective emails, uh, so you can build trust, but also sell stuff at the same time. Um, so that's going to be coming. Um, but the next one I think is going to be the digital product creation. Cause I think that's the one that everyone kind of wants the most, but, um, but yeah, Phil totally. Um, I'm, I'm on board with that, man. Uh, why, why did you decide to change the app in private invite route with brand creators Academy instead of launching four times a year? It's a great question. Well, number one is when you do a public open, uh, it's a lot of work. Number one, number two, you only can open four times a year, right? I would rather get more people, uh, to come in our filters, which are our workshops.

37:50 That's going to be our filters, right? So the only way that you're going to be able to get a private invite is two different ways. One, you're going to go through one of these workshops right now. There's just the email list building workshop, but there's going to be a digital product, fast track. There's going to be a, uh, email writing, uh, fast track workshop. There will probably be a content creation workshop, how to write your blog posts and get them done like super fast. Like that'll probably be one. Um, so these are all mechanisms to meet people where they are or where they're stuck and to solve that one specific problem that gets them a little bit closer. Once they go through that, now we have them come into the brand and self filter themselves. Once they come through now they can get an invite.

38:39 Okay. Um, now if we have people that are just, instead of it going public, we're just going to be like, okay, you guys can go to, you know, brand creators Academy. You can go there and you can basically click the application button. Okay. You click on the application button, you're going to fill out this short little form, take you probably five or 10 minutes. And then from there you're going to submit it. And then what we'll do is we'll probably once a week or once every two weeks we'll review them and then we'll send out the ones that qualify and then probably send out the ones that don't. And just say, sorry, at this time we don't think that you're the best fit because of X work on this. And you know, you'll become, you know, qualified kind of thing. So that's the main reason, um, is because we do want to be able to let more people in throughout the year, not a ton, again, we're not making this thing.

39:27 So it's thousands of people. Um, we're trying to keep it small and tight and that's what our community wants as well. Um, so we're also doing it to protect our community. Okay. So we're not just letting anyone in, uh, should I create a bonus to go with the digital product? Uh, you can, uh, anytime you have like, okay, so for example, if you go through the email list, building fast track workshop, um, currently right now it's $37, okay. To basically join and get that, uh, that workshop, which is about two and a half hours of training. And then I think it's another hour of a QA there's actually going to be another Q and a that's added that we haven't added in there that was already done, but we haven't pulled it from our second workshop that we did. We did two of those workshops live, so we could get two sets of Q and a, and we can take the best cuts.

40:13 Okay. Um, but we added a bonus on there that we kind of already had. We built a, a, an email list up to 9,000. It was 9,000, I think 300 and something. It was 9,000 plus subscribers. We built that in 30 days as a case study inside a brain creators Academy. And we did that over 30 days. We showed exactly how we did it. I think there's 12 or 13 videos of us checking in like us brainstorming the lead magnet, then creating the lead magnet and then setting everything up and then driving the traffic and then following up with people to let them know that there's a certain amount of days left. So we actually documented that entire process. That's a bonus. It lives inside a brand creators Academy. So if you're already a member, you get access to that. But we just pulled that, that really nice solid bonus.

41:02 And we plugged it in as a bonus to the email list, building fast track workshop to make it a crazy no-brainer deal, like who would not want that. Right. Who would not want to watch us build a list of 9,000 people using a giveaway, like who wouldn't want to see that? Um, so again, yes, anytime you can add a bonus, do it right. As long as it adds more value to it, not overwhelm value. Okay. Uh, Selma, what helped you get better? Creating subject lines, writing them, writing them and following people that I, I liked the way that they, they, that they write, but also the, um, I guess just the way that they operate. Right. A good friend of mine, Ryan Lee, I love Ryan. Lee's writing style really short and punchy. Um, but also really like in your face, like he writes even a little bit more aggressive than I do.

41:59 Um, like I'll go on these little rants every now and then, but sometimes he'll just call you out on it and be like, listen, you know, you don't want to, if you don't want to be on my list and just go ahead and just get the hell out of here kind of thing. Right. And he does that because he's repelling and attracting. Um, we do that as well, but, um, sometimes we just don't want to be a little too harsh. Uh Ryan's awesome. Love the guy. Um, but yeah, so just learning from the years and also learning by doing like learning. Oh, wow. That did pretty good. Oh, that didn't do so good. I think I'll do more of that. Right. But again, if you have the list you get to play, you get to you're in the game. Now you're not on the sidelines.

42:35 Like if you don't have a list right now, you're sitting on the sidelines and you're listening to us talk about opens and clicks and subject lines. And you're like, wow. It seems really cool. I wish I could do that. Huh. Oh, I want to do it. But I'm a little afraid I don't want to get in the game. Cause if I get in the game, I might get beat or I might get in the game and I might get hurt. I might get in the game and I might look foolish. Right. So we're all afraid to get in the game. The only way you're going to get a result, the only way you're going to score is if you get in the game, you got to get in the game. Okay. So when you get in the game, you get to learn, but we can sit here and go through books and learn and theory and all this stuff.

43:10 But until we actually apply it, we're not going to learn. Right. That's why the fast track workshop is designed to get you taught in under three hours. And then have you implementing in 24 hours? That's the goal? Uh, Karen free fun with kids did the best 57% open rates, 7% click through rate. I sent to 269 subscribers. Now was that early on Karen? Was that early on in your email list? And the reason why I'm asking that is because always when you have a smaller list like that, and it's more targeted, you will get higher open rates as your list grows, it will decline. And that's just normal, but I'm always, my marker is no matter how big my list is, I want to get between an 18 and a 22, 23% open rate, then I know I'm still doing okay. Um, so yeah, but those are killer numbers. By the way, there are, what date are you going to start? The digital product creation workshop. Haven't settled on that yet, but I'm going to guess it's going to be in November, stay tuned. I'll let you know. Uh, it's going to pro I'm going to guess it'll probably be mid November, but I haven't decided yet.

44:20 Uh, great samples D says what's up. D uh, when would you transition from the free version of convert kit? Or should I get it from the beginning while building my list? Uh, I think the free version is going to do

44:32 Everything that you need it to do right now. We taught that in the workshop.

44:34 You were, uh, one of our, one of our students during that. I thank you for that. And I think you got a really, uh, a great plan in place and I, I know what you're doing. So I think it's great. Um, but I don't, I mean, if you, if it was me, I'm probably going with the pro version, just because I don't want to, I don't want to be limited on what I can do, but with that being said, if funds are tight and you want to wait until you approach the thousand Mark, cause you can only have a thousand people on your email list, then you're going to want to do that. If you're going to run a giveaway, you're almost going to need more than a thousand. Like I have not ever seen a giveaway get less than a thousand, right. I've I mean, we did one that did over 9,000.

45:18 Uh, we've done a bunch that have done five to 6,000. We've got students of ours that have done anywhere from three to 6,000 even. Well, gosh, I think Ty Linda did over 11,000, um, at least 10,000. Uh, so the giveaways get you a lot more, they're a little less expensive, but they're also a little bit lower quality. Um, so it's just a little bit of a trade-off, but I think that's, it's dependent on your, you know, your budget is really what it is, uh, next week. Oh, cool. Awesome. Salma says she's going to have it done next week. What day? Next week. See how I'm see I'm doing that. I'm really cornering you to get you a specific date next week. Next week

45:55 Could be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

45:58 What day is it going to be done? By what time? See how we just got specific there. A D

46:06 Afraid that if I do emails, I will have nothing to sell them. I constantly sell out. Uh, but now I need to keep them in

46:12 My warm market. Well, D

46:15 Ever you can send them as far as to keep them warmed up would be as simple as just

46:21 Checking in with them or even just

46:25 Sending them something. I know your market. I'm not going to say what it is, but it would just be something

46:29 Like, uh, if you were in, uh, I don't know, let's just say it was, um, the bass fishing market. Right. And you had a whole bunch of stuff that you sold, but you didn't want, you, you could just say like, uh, you know, um, really cool, uh, new way to catch bass, right? And then you would link to a YouTube video or, um, uh, crazy fish pick, uh, you know, seven pound bass. Right? And then you can just go find something, post it up on your Facebook fan page and direct people there. Right. You could do that. You could write something on your Facebook fan page and send an email and go, Hey, I would love your feedback on this. Or Hey, post your number one pick from last week's fishing outing or last month fishing outing, and then start a Facebook fan page thread, and then just direct people to that page and then have them submit a picture, right? That's it. Um, or another one would be, if you do have product, it'd be like, Hey, take a picture of you with the, uh, you know, X 5,000 fishing reel, um, and, uh, post it on our Facebook fan page. And you'll automatically be entered to win a t-shirt or something like that. Right. That's how you would do that. Kate working on content within my lead magnet, I'm struggling with this working on content within my lead magnet. So I guess, building out the lead magnet. Well, the one thing

47:52 I would say about the lead magnet to Kate do not make

47:54 It too big, right? The lead magnet does not have to be this massive thing. It needs to be one small thing. And you know that you went through the workshop, one small win. The lead magnet needs to be one small win. Okay. Uh, let's see.

48:10 Karen's back with us that month. First one had 29.2% open rate, 3.4%. Click your rate in 75 clicks, second email, 16.5% open rate, 2.6% and

48:20 50 clicks. That's awesome. By the way. So

48:23 That that's a send to the list and then send it

48:26 Unopens, that's a fantastic, um, numbers right there, by the way. But again, guys, just call, I'm just calling it out here again, the reason why we can

48:33 Do this with Karen is because Karen's got an email list,

48:36 Right? So if you don't have an email list, build an email list, whether you go through our workshop or not build an email list. Okay. Uh, let's see here using

48:46 Facebook ads would be fast this way to test lead magnet.

48:49 Yes, it would. It absolutely would. Uh, Salomon would, uh, what would disqualify

48:56 Someone from joining BCA via app?

48:59 Uh, well, there's, there's just different criteria, you know? I mean, I, again, I'm not going to go into all of this stuff that like, are, is our, is our benchmarks, but it's really about for us, it's really making sure that you're, that you're focused on building your brand, that you you're, uh, you know, I guess your out outlook on life. I mean, we even asked like small little questions like that, just to make sure that they're the right type of people for who we are

49:26 Bringing into the community. It's like, I look at it as like, we have this tribe of like amazing people. It's kind of like, if you had a tribe,

49:32 Amazing people, you're not just going to be like, Oh, come on over here. And then everyone's like, why did you invite them? Right. They're always Downing. Are there always a downer? They're always, you know, negative or they're, they're like, we wouldn't want that. Now. You can't always control that. We've been very fortunate that we don't run into that. Um, but if we did, we would, we would address it. What

49:52 Do you think about putting emojis in your emails? I see that

49:54 A lot in, in my inbox. No, I don't like it. And the reason is, is because anytime you put something in there like that, most of the time, it's going to also signal a flag to the spam traps. So I, I don't use them. Uh, Karen, no, it's because we have a sequence that we follow. Oh, okay, cool.

50:12 Yes. That sounds awesome. I need to save this. Cool. Thanks. Yeah. Awesome. D yeah, do that, Kate. Um, I said I would finish my lead magnet my Tuesday this past week. And I didn't hear it is Friday already

50:23 Making this difficult. I know, but I feel like this lead magnet is a representation of I am and what

50:28 My brand represents, and I need to do a good job. I toggle between each side of the bridge. Just get it out there or do a good job. You're still going to do a good job. It just doesn't have to be perfect. Right. So right now, if you had that thing out on Tuesday, we could be talking about your conversion numbers. Right. But we don't have that. Okay. So let's just say that there's 50 people that download it and it's not you, uh, you know, your perfect, like, does it really matter? Right. But you could put that thing out there and 50 people are, are getting it. And they're all thankful that you were able to give this to them. Right. You always can refine it. Right. If I thought to myself, well, someone can go through the email, uh, fast track workshop and they can think, well, why didn't Scott do this, man?

51:10 I really, I don't like Scott. Right? Like, no, we just, we don't have to think about that stuff. It's hard, but I would encourage you MVP, minimum viable product. You guys know? I say that a lot because it's what we need to do. All right. Last thing here. Uh, Oh, Keisha says working on getting past this. All right. Well, here's a little encouragement. Do it, like get that lead mag, set yourself a date and think about it as if you were working for a company. And they said, I need that done by Tuesday, or you're fired. You're going to get it done. Right. Just get it done. Get it out there. And you can always refine it. Okay. All right, guys. So that is going to wrap up this coffee. Talk this jam session. If you are listening to this on the podcast and you want to be part of our live jam sessions on Friday, head on over to take action, crew.com.

52:00 If you want to go through the email list, building fast track workshop, I would encourage you to, by the way, if you don't have an email list yet go over to brand creators.com forward slash list. And you'll be able to go through it over there. You'll be up and running in no time. And you'll be on your way to building that email list. And we can start doing some fun stuff like we're doing right here. All right. So that's going to wrap up this jam session. I want to thank you guys for being here and until next time, take care. Take action. And I'll talk to you soon. All right. Well, I hope that you enjoyed that Friday jam session. And like I said, in the beginning, if you want to attend one of our live Friday jam sessions, all you need to do is head on over to take action crew.com.

52:44 That is where we show up every Friday, 10:00 AM, Eastern time, and you can join us. You can ask a question and then, uh, I can answer it and we can go ahead and also publish it here on the podcast. So once again, I just want to say, thank you so much for listening. This is always one of the highlights of my week. And until next time I'm here for you. I believe in you and I am rooting for you, but you have to, you have to come on, say it with me, say it loud, say it. Proud. Take action. Have an awesome, amazing day. And I'll see you right back here on the next episode. Now go rock your brand.

Scott Voelker

Over the years I’ve helped thousands of people TAKE ACTION to UNLOCK their true potential on building their ultimate freedom business, by developing the skills to make them resilient, confident and FUTURE PROOF. I’ve clocked my 10,000 hours over the years working in the trenches myself and helping others build and grow their brands. I know the power in TAKING ACTION better than anyone and I’ve seen people lives changed as a result of it...including my OWN!