Transcript
Intro:
Hi, everyone. I'm Ben Wright, successful entrepreneur, corporate leader and expert sales coach to some of the most talented people our amazing planet has to offer. You're listening to the Stronger Sales Teams podcast, where we bring together and simplify the complex world of B2B sales management to help the millions of sales managers worldwide build, motivate, and keep together highly effective sales teams…teams who grow revenue and make their businesses actual profits.
Along the journey, we also provide great insights and actionable steps to managing your personal health. A happy and productive you is not only better for your teams, but everyone around you. So, if you're an ambitious Sales Leader who wants to build the highest performing and engaged teams, Stronger Sales Teams is right where you need to be.
Ben Wright:
Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams, the place where we provide real world and practical advice to help you develop super powered sales teams. Today we have a man who for the first time ever has a surname that I’m going to be shortening when we introduce. His name is Cole VanDee and I’d love to try and pronounce your full name. I think it’s Cole VanDeWoestyne. Whether or not I have that right or not, you can tell me in a minute but I like the shortened version. Right. Cole VanDee. It’s got a cool ring to it. So Cole is the founder or the co-founder of Inboxing Engine if we have to really nut that down to its prime principles. Email growth, email marketing, email sales. Right. A topic that is really topical at the moment around is it alive, is it a dead. Is there going to be a resurgence of email marketing and the equivalent. So, a great topic that we’re going to get into today but Cole’s very much for him. He’s an expert in scalable email systems. Right. That’s exactly what we want to be hearing when we’re talking email today. He’s helped brands uncover hundreds of millions of dollars or 106 million is his bio to be precise. But in found revenue and what we mean by that is new revenue, right. That you wouldn’t have necessarily got otherwise. He sent hundreds of millions of emails, 327 million emails using his proven frameworks that are repeatable and most importantly they’re built to scale. So, I love that when we start to talk about email marketing because it shows real proven and learned experience Today. Cole works mostly fast-growing businesses normally in that kind of 10 to $50 million range as we were talking about today. And his aim here is to turn underperforming email lists or a lack of email Lists into really consistent, high converting revenue streams. So, Inboxing Engine, as you can imagine from that kind of bio that the team’s focus there, it’s more about doing more with less. So, aiming to build, plug and play repeatable scalable email systems that really boost the return their ROI without getting hit in that horrible folder that we call spam. So, he’s helped lots of people. We’ve spoken about examples, but one in particular, he helped one of the founders of Full Stack Marketer take his list from nothing into a million bucks a month. Right. Not too bad from just an email outreach point of view to generate that type of return. So, Cole, welcome to the Stronger Sales Teams podcast. Lovely to have you.
Cole VanDee:
Thank you for having me. I should hire you to record a sales video for my agency. Cause that was like a great descriptor of what we do and how awesome it is. So, thank you.
Ben Wright:
Look, my pleasure. It’s fair to say I’ve done a few of these along the journey, but please tell me about Inboxing Engine and tell those listening about what Inboxing Engine do.
Cole VanDee:
Yeah, I’ve been doing email for a little over four years now, and at first it was more of kind of a rebirth of my entrepreneurial spirit. I had a copywriting agency before, didn’t love writing copy and for anyone that doesn’t know what that is, just writing words for advertising, anything that’s written for sales. And so, so I ended up diving into email and found that all the data that you get back from email, like open rates, click rates, sales and conversions, is very useful and very much a pattern to be uncovered and then used to build systems that can be repeatable, duplicatable and scalable for pretty much any company, any product, any service. And so, over the years I’ve been able to really define out what that pattern is and, and how to build duplicatable and scalable systems for companies looking to really significantly scale their revenue through a lot of different means, Mostly, paid advertising, some of them organic through going viral on Instagram or YouTube or whatever it may be. And so, yeah, we’ve, we’ve been doing that now for several years, helping people extract a ton of money out of their email list and having a lot of fun while doing it.
Ben Wright:
Okay, great. So today we’re going to zero into one of those topics that you just spoke about, which is email marketing. And look, I really like talking about email marketing because certainly for me it’s the only channel that I can think of where you can get something out to your audience or to your followers or to those people that you know with a guaranteed delivery. Right. When we talk about social media, sure, you might have 50,000 followers, but you’re going to have a percentage of those that are going to see the campaign that you do. If you have a podcast, if you have a YouTube channel, you’re reliant on them tuning into whatever form of media or content that you put out, right? But emails is one where you can craft your copy, craft your beautiful messaging, send it out and it’s guaranteed to land. Yes, it might land in the spam folder, but it’s certainly guaranteed to get to them.
So, for me, I’ve always had a special spot for email marketing as one of the multi channels that you focus on. I have never ever focused heavily on email as your sole outreach channel because I think there’s significant flaws there. But the question I have for you today is do we need to hold a burial ceremony here for email marketing? Or on the other hand, should we be celebrating a rebirth, right, or a return to vogue of email marketing? What do you think, Cole?
Cole VanDee:
Yeah, I mean, it really depends on what you really want to do with your business at the end of the day, what you want to do with your company, what you want to do with your career. You know, certainly there are many companies that are very successful without email and I think they’re probably working a little harder than they need to. Email, the way that I look at it isn’t the silver bullet, it’s not the magic trick that you pull out of your hat, but what it is is it’s a buffer and it’s guaranteed margin. And if you use it consistently and properly and effectively, what you’re going to find is extra money. And anyone in sales knows the money is in the follow up. And there’s no better way to be consistent and to follow up than something that you can write up and send out pretty much automated into the future to make sure you’re getting that extra touch point just so you can build that know like and trust factor. So, is email dead in 2025, 2026, 2027? No. And is AI going to destroy it? No, it may change it, but it will be here for a very long time.
Ben Wright:
Yeah. Okay, great. I’m glad you said that because I’m wearing white, not black today. I don’t think I’m prepared for a burial or a remembrance ceremony. But okay, so email is well and truly still alive. I like the piece around how AI is going to ascend great programs. Personally, I don’t think it’s going to take over. In fact, for me, I think AI is changing so rapidly that whatever we’re talking about today is going to be different in a few months’ time anyway. But what I’d love to talk about is some of the basics around getting email marketing right, but in particular how you build out scalable systems.
So, if you’re looking to build out, let’s start with the assumption that you have an email list. Sure. So, if you’re looking to build out a scalable process with an email list that you already have, how would you go about doing that?
Cole VanDee:
It’s incredibly simple at the end of the day. Like the executable stuff I do for clients that are doing 20 million a year or 100 million a year is the same. So, if you have an email list already, you want to be communicating with them as much value and demonstrating that you can help them by actually helping them as you possibly can. And I’m talking 70 to 80% of the time it should be just that. And then that following 20 to 30% of the time that’s left over. That’s when you may be asking for them to show up to a seminar or an event or to purchase something or to get on a sales call or to book a demo or whatever that process may be for you. But yeah, reaching out with value as much as you can, as consistently as you can, as frequently as you can, builds a centre and source of truth for your audience for them to go to to get help, information, guidance. So that way they’re not going and finding your competitors on search or on YouTube or on podcasts. It gives you that upper hand.
Ben Wright:
Okay, great. Is there a format to how you go about doing that? It’s very clear. Create value, ask for something later. Right. Value 2/3 of the time. Ask for value one third or less. Sorry, Ask for something one third or less. Is there a great format that you’ve seen work really repeatedly here?
Cole VanDee:
When you say format, I assume you mean by like maybe a cadence or like ascending structure. Is that what you’re.
Ben Wright:
Yeah, yeah. Cadence, structure. How you format those emails? The type of, is it visual, is it video, is it written? Right. Those type of things? Yeah, yeah.
Cole VanDee:
For a majority of the companies that we work with, it’s going to be text-based emails. And we may link them to video, we may link them to a blog, we may link them to an audio source of some sort, maybe a podcast for the most part. But yeah, text-based works really well. And with the new AI Summaries that are in inboxes, which we talked about. It could be different by the time people are listening to this, but right now they’re even summarizing those up for people that don’t like to read long stuff. So you’re going to be able to still communicate with both audiences, which is great.
Ben Wright:
Great. Okay, got it. And the approach differs if you’re looking to build an email list versus if you had an existing email list?
Cole VanDee:
I would say probably a little bit. And the biggest differentiator I would think, if you’re just starting out, don’t have an email list and you’re building one, the easiest way to build an email list is to build like a newsletter that becomes that source of truth, of just pure value. Tips, tricks, trainings, how to’s, hacks, insights into an industry or a specific problem or whatever it may be. So, I would almost lean way more into value for quite a while as I’m building up that list. And then as I have a, you know, a strong enough audience, maybe a hundred or a thousand emails in there, then maybe I’ll make an offer that’s especially for them of some sort. Maybe it’s booking a call again or a demonstration or depending on what your business is, will really dictate what that offer ends up being. But I would even want to offer more value. It’s kind of like building your own social media platform that you own and control the algorithm of. So, it’s a great way to build up an audience.
Ben Wright:
Yeah, yeah. And look, I subscribe to probably 8 or 10 email newsletters. I probably read 1 in 10 of those new newsletters that come out. But I’m on that list and occasionally I see something of value, right. And I jump in and away I go. So, you can certainly see the value in there. Okay, and so how would you go about building a new email list? If you’re a business that’s wanting to grow, how would you do that?
Cole VanDee:
Well, the way that I’ve done it, I’m in the mainly in the direct response marketing industry. So, we typically would run ads that would have somebody download some sort of free guide. Maybe it’s a how to ebook or a PDF checklist or a cheat sheet or I’ve even seen a lot of people do, you know, they want to acquire agencies or work with agencies. So, then they have like P&L sheets that you can download for agencies. Alex Hermosi gives away sops and stuff like that to build his email list. So, giving something away for free maybe It’s a free webinar. A free training of some sort outside of that could easily just build an actual newsletter. Just got connected with a guy who runs a automotive industry newsletter itself. And it’s just innovative insights into the automotive world and what’s happening in the world of tech when it comes to automotive. And people want to sign up because they want that information.
Ben Wright:
Yeah. Cool. Okay, so we’ve spoken a little bit around how you structure an email campaign. For those not listening, Cole’s just had a sip of his brain drink that we were talking about beforehand that is loaded with all sorts of goodness. What’s the name of the brand?
Cole VanDee:
It is Neutonic.
Ben Wright:
Neutonic. There you go. I had no idea. This is for a guy that doesn’t drink coffee and flies through the day on water with a little bit of salt added into it, a little bit of electrolytes every now and then. Right. Neutonic how I’m behind on the world of high-performance drinks. Sorry to digress everyone, but so we come back. So, we’re talking about structure, right? So how we structure our repeatable email communication flows, right. Whether it’s an existing list or a new list. Right. Very much focusing on value as the prime mover, the prime driver of the structure with an ask that comes certainly less than kind of 30% of the time is what we’re talking about here. Right. So, creating value first and then an ask coming once you’ve created that value. Right. How about systemizing that so it becomes really repeatable if you’re a business that is in that 10 to $100 million range and you have an email list or you’re building that email list, Right. How would you go about systemizing that structure that you’ve spoken about?
Cole VanDee:
Yeah. So, it comes down to either possibly having you can have an actual human being writing the emails and sending the emails and all that fun stuff, or you could easily build automations that handle this for you. And those automations would basically trigger based off of engagement. So ,someone opens an email on Monday about baseball, then on Tuesday they would get another email about baseball. And then if they open that one, they would get another one about baseball. And if they don’t, they might get one about maybe football. And so you can build lots of different types of systems again depending on your business, your audience, a software, you know, someone that sells enterprise level software to Fortune 100 companies, you’re going have a significantly different audience than someone that sells teapots to grandmas in Asia. Right. It’s all going to be really dependent on your business, but at the end of the day it’s going to be value based. And how you end up doing that from an execution standpoint will depend on one the importance of email for your business and going forward. So, having an actual person do it for you or if you want to automate that, what does that automation need to look like and what are the kinds of topics that your audience would want to learn about and read about.
Ben Wright:
Yeah, great. First time I’ve had someone reference as an example, selling teapots to grandmas in Asia. So if you’re in that business, make sure you look up coal. Right. Because that is about as specific or niche as you’re ever going to get. Okay, so I really like the piece around systems, particularly around a personalized system. Right. You get an email about baseball, you open it, you get another one about baseball. In your experience, is this manageable through your CRMs like, like HubSpot, go high level, Salesforce, Power drive, all those type of programs or do you need to be looking at a very specific nurturing or email campaign type of SaaS?
Cole VanDee:
No, no. Most email softwares, HubSpot, GHL in different CRMs and different email platforms, they have these capabilities built in. They would be action or trigger-based automations or flows or whatever it may be called, anything that’s something that’s automated in the system. And yeah, it would be based off of if someone opens this, then this action happens and if they don’t open this, then this action happens. And that action would be send them this email or send them that email. You could, you know, I like to do even more intent based. So, if they clicked a link in this email then I want to send them this. You go really deep with that. But most email systems are going to allow for that. It may require a little bit of learning and you could obviously ask the support, you know, chat bot that’s on any of these sites when you’re logged into your dashboard for the article on exactly how to do it.
Ben Wright:
Yeah. Cool. Okay, so the messaging here is get your structure set up. So that is how you’re going to add value to your customers or your potential customers. Get the modality, modality of that. Right, right. Sounds like text emails is the ones that really leaning into at the moment. Systemize it so that you are leaning into what people are interested in rather than just a generic email campaign. Right. That for me is probably the aha moment here. Particularly for sales leaders listening that work closely with your marketing teams. Right. You’re going to need to get Some support from them to be able to have a number of campaigns running here rather than just one. Right. And all this is time. It’s a day or a half day to set this up.
Okay, great. So, few little fast questions to fire at you getting stuck in the spam folder. Right. Based on your subject line myth or really possible?
Cole VanDee:
Right, yeah, very much possible.
Ben Wright:
Yeah, yeah. Do you need to pay much attention to your subject line from a spam point of view, or would you focus more around engagement?
Cole VanDee:
That’s a great question. The subject line will carry more weight in whether or not you will get filtered into the spam. So, if you use spam words in the subject line or have something that would trigger spam, like all capital letters or a bunch of emojis or something like that, then you will be more likely to hit spam if it goes into a filtering decision Mode with the ISPs like Gmail, Yahoo, and our outlook. So, it does get weighted.
Ben Wright:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. All right, so I need to avoid spammy words there. I listened to a podcast recently and it said subject lines. Three things that are really trending is have a number, have the word new, write in brackets or have something in brackets at the start, and then have one word in capitals. Do you. Well, a. I mean, do you. Do you agree with those? Or more importantly, do you have any subject line recommendation that you’re rolling out now?
Cole VanDee:
Yeah, sure. That’s great advice that’s been around for a very long time. Subject lines are just like headlines, and so they. They’re going to operate that way. The psychology is very similar. You want to be able to capture their attention and get them interested. And people are more likely to consume three new tips for X or the two or the five hacks for this or the seven ways to this kind of thing. So, yeah, that stuff does work well. I think more important than the sub line is the sender name, the reputation in which you hold with the audience that’s receiving the mail. As time goes on and you build that relationship with your list, your name will hold more weight than the subject line. If you’ve shown enough value, if you’ve shown enough goodwill, if you’ve demonstrated you can help them by helping them, then you are 10 times more likely to get somebody to open than if you have a clever subject line. And I’ve tested this at scale in a lot of different industries with a lot of different brands, and. And every single time it can use a really bad subject line that does not work, and you pair it with really great reputation. Put it in the middle of an awesome value series and it will still get great open rates.
Ben Wright:
Okay. All right, great. So, it’s about sticking to the mantra of creating value. And in time, the name carries more weight than the subject line. Cool. Any other tips for increasing engagement or open rates?
Cole VanDee:
I’m scared to share this, mostly because if everyone does this, I’m not sure how much longer it’ll work. But more people are starting to become aware of this. So, if you have the opportunity to send your email, let’s call it 7:00am, you and everyone else is sending that email at 7:00am and so there’s two options here. You could send it at 6:55am and get there first, and you might get lucky and someone opens their inbox and they see your email before the flood of emails. That’s possible. And then the second option is to send your email at 7:05 or 7:10. And once everyone else’s emails hit, then yours hits at the top. And so, when someone opens their email at 7:30, all the 7:00am emails are at the bottom. And the top one would be yours at 7:05 or 7:10am and so that can help tremendously with getting people to open because if they get 30 emails a day or 50 emails a day, they’re not reading all of those. And they’re probably not like really intentionally skimming the subject lines to see which one’s the most exciting. They’re one searching for the sender name of do I know this person? And if not, then they’re going to start at the top, the bottom, and then they’re going to kind of filter through the middle is what I have found. So that’s a great tip to increase opens is to just delay your sending by a few minutes and see if that helps.
Ben Wright:
Yeah. Cool. Okay. So, avoid peak hour. I like it. Okay, last question for you, Cole. You are a sales leader and right now wanting to turn on the growth engine for the next 12 months. Where would you start?
Cole VanDee:
I’m the sales leader of the business and I want to turn on the growth engine for the business.
Ben Wright:
Yeah.
Cole VanDee:
All of my classical training and consulting companies that are doing a million to 100 million a year tells me to find the one thing that is working extremely well and to do that at full scale and do as much of it as I possibly can and scale that one thing and get as many people doing that one thing as I can. And that has proven time and time again, regardless of the business, regardless of the sales cycle. Time, the sales price, the industry that works and it’s worked every single time. And so that’s what I would come in and do.
Ben Wright:
Cool. I like it. Acknowledge what you’re good at. Double down. In the words of some of my friends up here, go full noise. Right on making that happen. All right, excellent. Thank you. Cole VanDee. Where else can people find you if they’d like to spend a little bit more time with you after today?
Cole VanDee:
Yeah, all of the social media platforms at Cole VanDee V A N D E E or and if you are interested in what we’re doing at Inboxing Engine or want to grab some free resources and stuff like that, they can do that at inboxingengine.com
Ben Wright:
Excellent. Thank you very much, Cole. Been terrific to have you today.
For everyone listening, we’re in a series here of updates on the Road to Cairns. Cole, I’m doing a triathlon Ironman. Well, I was doing a triathlon ironman in about five weeks’ time, so I have ramped my training significantly. And for everyone listening, the update for this week is ramped training too fast, torn calf. And the first thing that most of my friends have said to me is, you’re over 40 now, Ben, welcome to the old man’s injury. And I’ve responded generally with a few choice words to those pieces of feedback. But yes, training has slowed somewhat the last couple of weeks as we’re recording this. So, so I’m going to keep my update on it really short and sharp. I’m hopeful that next week the update from me says Road to Cairns is back on track and I’m away racing. But certainly, I’ve learned a lesson that being a shooting star is no good. Now, I was never a star but I was certainly flying as fast as I could in terms of increasing my training load and I probably went a little bit too quick. So, pacing yourself, no matter what you do in life, is very, very important. But that’s it for me today. Thank you, Cole. Thank you everyone. Keep living in a world of possibility and you’ll be amazing by what you can achieve. Bye for now.
Increasing Email Open Rates, With Cole VanDee
