How to Build a Valuable Email List w/ Kathleen Booth

UX Marketing

Blake: [00:00:00] welcome to the micro-influencer podcast. Today we have a special guest, Kathleen Booth, who is the VP of marketing at Attila security and really excited to talk all things email today, but first off, Kathleen, how are you doing?

[00:00:15] Kathleen: [00:00:15] I'm great. Thanks, Blake. How are you doing?

[00:00:17] Blake: [00:00:17] I'm fantastic doing really well, and I'm sure the audience is going to get a lot out of this one today because many of us, myself included, are trying to build an email list.

[00:00:27] We know how important that is to keep nurturing that and building that up. So I'm excited. Personally to ask you tons of questions, but first off, I would love to get some quick context on you.

[00:00:37] And first and foremost, just curious what you think your professional super power is. Just to give an idea to the audience of who we're talking to.

[00:00:44] Kathleen: [00:00:44] Oh boy. Professional superpower. that's a really good question. you know, I'm like many marketers, I'm great at marketing other people and terrible at marketing myself. so I guess, you know, the thing that I've really. I seem to have specialized in the last few years that I'm really passionate about and that I love is coming into really early stage companies as the first head of marketing, building out a marketing team, developing the strategy, and basically putting a growth engine in place.

[00:01:13] And so that, that's what I love and that's what I seem to do over and over and over.

[00:01:18] Blake: [00:01:18] Awesome. Well that's going to be super helpful then. Cause that startup mentality is exactly who we're talking to. That's, that's the audience here. I'm curious what the story, if you could give a brief elevator story of how your career has gone so far. Basically the story of when you started to where you are now and then we'll get into a lot of the tactical

[00:01:37] Kathleen: [00:01:37] Absolutely. So I did not actually start out in marketing. I had a whole nother career for 10 years working in international development, but about halfway through that time, I started to kind of shift over to focus more on. Marketing and communications, because a lot of big international development projects have, have trouble getting off the ground because of poor communication.

[00:01:57] And so I started to shift my focus and that eventually led me back into marketing, which is what I had done my MBA and many, many years ago. I started my own agency and had that for 11 years. that after that I, I sold it to another agency. Then a couple of years, they're transitioning everything over and then left to really pursue my passion, which is working with startups.

[00:02:20] And, since that time, I've been VP of marketing and a couple of different startups, recently specializing in cybersecurity. but really I'm just, I'm all about helping entrepreneurs make their businesses successful. And I think that's because I was an entrepreneur myself for so long, and, you know, I might not have my own business now, but I still need to scratch that itch.

[00:02:37] And so I like to do it with other business owners and help them see success and maybe not make some of the mistakes that I made. I'm also a podcaster, so I have a podcast called the inbound success podcast where we talk all about, how to get more ROI from your inbound marketing efforts.

[00:02:54] Blake: [00:02:54] Fantastic. So fellow podcast or fellow entrepreneur. I think this aligns really well. so let's, let's dive into the email side of things, cause I know that's what we want to cover today for the most part. And I'm really curious, starting out, you mentioned you are an entrepreneur that's very much at the heart of who you are.

[00:03:10] I'm curious what email, email marketing, building an email list has looked like for you? What have you done in the past for yourself?

[00:03:19] Kathleen: [00:03:19] You know, this is such a fascinating topic to me and I, and I'll, you know, fly my marketing freak flag right here and say that I am, I have a major like nerdy marketing obsession with email. I do, I just, I'm not ashamed to admit it. And. I've seen it really come full circle because years and years ago when I first started doing all of this, you know, not everybody had an email newsletter and, and just by having one you could kind of get great results.

[00:03:44] And then companies like constant contact and MailChimp came onto the scene and made it super, super easy to send out, like really nicely formatted newsletters. And. In some respects that was a great thing because it made that accessible to anybody. And in some respects it was a bad thing because, because it did make it accessible to anybody.

[00:04:04] And I think a lot of people sort of took this check the box approach with email newsletters, and they would use one of those great templates from one of those providers. And you know, it was like, I'll put a picture in and the first three sentences of my blog and you know, a read more link and I'll do that.

[00:04:20] Three times and then hit send, and that's my newsletter. And as a result, newsletters became really, really, really awful and boring, a really awful and boring. And. So I think people got super tired of them and, and the results started to deteriorate. And then what happened was there, there started to be this Renaissance and, and I'm not really sure where it started, but I think some of the earliest examples of, of what I would call the email newsletter Renaissance were like, I don't know if anybody listening remembers the daily candy, which.

[00:04:52] Turned into a really big business that was acquired by bank of America, and it was a couple of women in New York who started sending out a summary of, the day's news and some other interesting things of note. And, but it was done in a really snarky tone of voice, and it was just different and it had a lot of personality and it caught on like wildfire.

[00:05:12] And that's just one example that was sort of early, but. What we've seen since then, and this is more kind of on the newsletter as a business front, is companies like the morning brew, the hustle, court's obsession, basically turning into businesses in and of themselves that are all. Based around a newsletter.

[00:05:31] So those are companies that started as email newsletters and that monetize those email newsletters and became large. But then you also have other, you know, businesses that have really leveraged their email newsletter. One that I can think of that's kind of largest Gwyneth Paltrow's goop, to really reach a huge audience.

[00:05:48] And, you know, these are all different examples and you don't have to agree with those. Those content creators are not. The reality is they're building. Huge juggernauts of businesses around email newsletters and what they all have in common is they're all written from a place of authenticity, of commitment to letting the personalities of the writers shine through.

[00:06:11] They have a very particular tone of voice and they're obsessive about. Being consistent in the delivery of that tone of voice and not being afraid to alienate some readers in the way they do it. And so those are some big examples, but there's also some maybe not as big examples that are also very well done.

[00:06:27]so that all kind of leads me to. You know what, what really got me interested in this topic was a few of jobs ago, I was with a company called impact, and they had not had an email newsletter for a few years. This was an agency they had. They had stopped when email newsletters. Got to be that kind of terrible, boring, templated format.

[00:06:46] And we decided we wanted to get back into it, but we wanted to do it right. And so I did a ton of research into, you know, in, in the year, at this point it was 2018. What makes a really great email newsletter that people actually want to read. And what I learned is in, this is going to sound like a big duh, but it's all about building a habit amongst your readers, you know?

[00:07:10] And that's the premise of newsletters. I don't care what your newsletter is like. It's about a habit. And the best newsletters are delivered at a certain, you know, interval, whether it's weekly, monthly, daily, what have you, but they're predictable. People know what time of day they're going to come. They look forward to them, you know?

[00:07:26] And it's everything from getting your CNN five things newsletter in the morning and knowing that the news is coming to getting, you know, the morning brew or the hustle or some other, you know, some other update newsletter that you get on a regular basis. And so. T when you talk about building a habit, you're really talking about the reader, inviting you into their life on a regular basis.

[00:07:49] And when people are so, you know, strained for time and overwhelmed with content and tired of marketing messages that you have to do something to really stand out in order to get them to want to invite you in regularly. So that's kind of the, the basic. Premise of what makes a great newsletter today. I mean, I'll stop talking for a second cause I could go on for an hour, but I want to give you a chance to ask any questions if you have them.

[00:08:13] Otherwise I can keep going.

[00:08:15] Blake: [00:08:15] I have thousands of. First and foremost, my, my big question is with the advent of text messaging as a platform, it seems like a lot of people like, you know, there's Gary V and now even smaller influencers than him are starting to really be a proponent of, Hey, text me. Instead of doing a lot of emails, they still do emails, but I think there's a perception out there that because texting is becoming a business effort.

[00:08:36] That email is kind of dying, but it sounds like you're saying there's actually a huge opportunity out there. So I'm curious. First off, are you confirming the email is not a dying medium? And then second, where is it going in the future?

[00:08:49] Kathleen: [00:08:49] I mean, I as a rule think it is completely absurd when any. Anybody talks about any marketing channel dying, these channels don't die. They just get used poorly or abused. And so if you know how to use a channel correctly and you respect it and you respect the time and attention of the person on the other end.

[00:09:12] There's no such thing. And I mean, I could, I mean, unless it's a platform we're talking about, but channels, there's no, there's a dying channel. Email is not dead. It's not even close to dead. If anything, it's, it's like the coolest kid on the block right now. It's just that people haven't realized it yet. so I, I totally take issue with that, but what I will say when it comes to things like text and, you know, I'll be the first to admit, like, I don't actually want to get anything by text from any business.

[00:09:37] It annoys me so much. But I know a lot of people who feel very differently. And so the way I have always looked at this is in a perfect world, you would give your audience, you know, an array of choices for how they want to hear from you and let them decide. So I love email newsletters. That's why I'm passionate about them.

[00:09:56] I like to get them, I like to read them. But if you have somebody, if, and if you know your audience is comprised of a lot of people that would rather have texts, then either do this by text and apply the same rules. Then I'm going to talk about in terms of what makes for good content or do both, you know, give people a choice, ask them, would you rather get this information by text or would you rather get it via email or would you rather get it via podcast or, you know, so on and so on and so on.

[00:10:20] I think choice is really, really the best thing and what's at the heart of being audience centric.

[00:10:27] Blake: [00:10:27] And thankfully there are, I mean, there are things like GDPR and things like that that are making it more necessary to give options, which is great. It's, it's kind of terrible for marketers sometimes who are go, you know, being pushed against quotas. But for the most part, I think it's, it's good to. Give the options like that.

[00:10:45] But moving on to the copy side of things, cause I know that you're eager to talk about this as somebody that's a connoisseur of newsletters, I'm sure you receive your fair share and read them and really digest them. I'm curious what the patterns are that you see that go into good copy that the audience can actually take and implement into their own writing.

[00:11:05] Kathleen: [00:11:05] Oh boy, I have so much I would say about this. We probably don't have enough time for me to say it all, but

[00:11:10] Blake: [00:11:10] Just talk really fast .

[00:11:11] Kathleen: [00:11:11] right. The first thing is stop writing like a marketer. so many marketers are guilty of this. We are, we're all human beings, right? We're all human beings. But for some reason we go to work and we put our marketing hats on and we turn into these marketing robots that speak and write in ways we would never.

[00:11:29] Do in our real lives. And you know, I mean, number one, the biggest thing is just tap into your humanity. And when you write the, the trick I use, and I'm actually, it's funny, as I got onto record this with you, I was in the middle of writing an email, and I'm using this trick, and the trick that I use is, I.

[00:11:50] Pretend like I'm writing this to one particular person, and I think of a friend of mine who's not a business acquaintance, who's an actual friend, and it could be the same person every time, or it could be a different person, but I think of that very specific person. In this case, let's use my friend Abigail, and I think, okay, if I was writing this to Abigail.

[00:12:09] How would I do it? You know, I, I wouldn't use business jargon. I wouldn't be overly formal. So I'm going to write this email to Abigail and then I can go back afterwards and just make sure there's nothing, you know, inappropriate or nonsensical or what have you, but I really want the person on the other end to feel like.

[00:12:26] Like they're hearing from a friend. And that's tough for people because I think we've all been kind of taught and, and bred to treat business contacts in a, in a different way than we...