Episode 48: Email Marketing Secrets with Will Wang
Welcoming Will Wang to the podcast stage…
He’s the Founder of Growth Labz and the god of using emails to land Fortune 500 companies.
I picked his brain, so you can all benefit from his stellar strategies.
What I found in there:
- The best practices for email subject lines
- The best practices for writing cold emails
- The optimal length for an email
And, the golden ticket…
- How to build the best converting lists for email lead generation
Remember to:
Follow Will on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/willwangliveshere
Follow ‘Mellonie Francis’ on LinkedIn:
Transcript:
Mel:
Hey, everyone, welcome back to innovative mind. So, little bit of interesting information. This is my third podcast that I’m actually doing today. So three in a row. So I am still pumped as my first one. And I’m really excited by this guest who is here will Wang, I don’t know if you’ve heard about him. But he is the founder of growth labs or another marketing agency. So had some really amazing marketing agencies owners on here previously, but will is someone that has been on my radar for about two years, I would say I’ve come across, heard his name, heard how much great stuff he’s done within the marketing world, how quickly he has achieved success. And a lot of business entrepreneurs, as mentioned will to me, and I got the pleasure to actually get introduced to will last week, and we, you know, got into chatting and finding out but I still haven’t found out about his journey and how he’s, you know, got to such quick success from what other people say he might say it’s different. So I thought, you know, let’s bring him on, find out a little bit about his journey. I know, he’s kind of really, really good at emails, and he’s got some secret sauce. And I thought, Let’s get his you know, innovative mind and get all the exposure to all his secret sauce, and maybe bounce a little bit of ideas back and forward together about LinkedIn, plus email, which I think is a great formula. I’m really happy to have wil in my network to bounce those kinds of ideas with so with that, we’ll welcome to innovative minds.
Will:
It was such a good intro. Thanks, Melanie. Hope I can live up to that amazing intro there.
Mel:
I’m sure you will. So I guess well, you’ve been on my radar for for some time. And you know, you want to know like, people just always whenever they talk about you, they’re like, you know, we’ll and he’s had such quick success and great success and, and I’m like, Oh, wow, and how and he’s done it so quickly. I guess I was like, kind of whenever I heard that was like wow, what the journey and how has he done it? So can you walk me through like is a journey as like, quick as what people are looking outside and looking in? And you know, what, what’s the journey been wise people saying this?
Will:
It’s def definitely not definitely not like it’s funny when you say that? Because when I look at it from where I’m sitting, I’m like, How are we? So I still so small? How are we not double where we are. So I think I’ve been in business for about six and a bit years now come up to seven figure in business. So the NC taking a while to kind of do its thing. The first two and a half years was super rough. Like it was just we’ll just didn’t understand the right product market fit didn’t understand the right service offering pricing packaging literally had no clue what the heck I was doing. And so the first half is actually pretty bad. Like we I lifted. corporate job was paying about 130k a year to do this. And we literally went backwards on the mortgage and the savings wanted a life savings. And so at two and a half years, yeah, we’re at the point where I was thinking, Well, I’ve gone back 10 years financially, I need to go back and get another job. And so that was kind of where we were up to 24 months in right, it was just crazy. And yeah, literally, like I was sitting there, going, I think I’ve stuffed up royally stuffed up, use different words, but you know, I’ll be I’ll be PG but if you are really stuffed up, I’m gonna start looking at the jobs again, I think I put us in the ditch by and put us behind by 10 years. She says just as you do the job thing, like, I’m not going to stop you from doing that. But just give yourself a month, I just believe in yourself. Just keep pushing. And literally that month for hidden inflection point, got on stage to talk about some of the stuff that we’re doing and picked up two of our biggest clients at that point. And so to pay the bills, finally, so I think yeah, I think the reason why people might think that I’ve had a fast journey is because I linked up with one of my mentors were my business partners and coaches at the moment, James Schramko. And he came into the business at about three. And so we were kind of study at that point. And that’s when we started peeling back and talking about what we do talking about the results. And so maybe when people were listening at that point, it’s like, oh, cool, you know, Will’s been growing really, really quickly. But they missed the first two and a half years.
Mel:
Yeah. Because I was kind of curious what enticed James Schramko to get involved with you because I know that’s kind of looked at as a difficult thing, you know, and I remember when I had a business partner who I’ve since bought out he told me can you please pitch to James and James was like, I think this is the first time I also heard about you the second time maybe fixed first I was from that business partner of mine and he was like, already doing stuff with will in marketing and so you know, I already have have my hands in that domain. So I wasn’t looking for more. So how did you? That’s something I was curious about back then, like, how did you, you know, entice him to get involved with you?
Will:
I think first and foremost thing was I was just open with him I, I laid out all their dirty laundry and I said, Look, I’m really bad at this operation stuff. We have good clients, we have good results. We care about our clients, we do a really good job. And we just make sure we take care of them. But I hadn’t had the right structure in place. I didn’t have a team, I didn’t have the right operating systems, or the right SOPs. And so I think for James, that’s where his strengths are. I mean, his strengths are kind of all across the board. He’s just this phenomenal business genius. But we’re really went to him. I said, Look, I can do leads I can get leads for ourselves. But the more leads we bring in, the more clients we’ve got, the more I like this, like a business, like have more, I just want to burn it to the ground. And so I think from his perspective, he saw if I can just tweak a few things, I can really help him to grow. And because we were so open, it was just like, Well, I think we just just gave it a shot. And thankfully, it just kind of worked.
Mel:
Cool. So what really piqued my interest then was you’re really good at lead generating and that wasn’t a problem to bring in leads. I want to know, like, how did you manage to do that? Like, what were the things that you were able to because first two years you said it was like struggle street like You’re like financially going backwards. So what changed for you to all of a sudden, you know, be able to get late.
Will:
So I think what change, it wasn’t so much the lead side because I was hustling we actually had, funnily enough the same number of clients when we’re struggling versus where we are now. Right? Yeah, I think it’s just understanding narrowing down on what we’re good at and charging the right pricing and work in the right clients. So I used to go to every single networking event I could all of our chamber of commerce’s Oliver BNI stuff. And if you go to enough networking events, talking about something like social social media marketing, it was kind of at the height when everyone’s like, I need to be on socials, I need to be on socials. So Leeds wasn’t actually an issue because everyone’s like, yeah, I’ve got 500 bucks a month. And so we were charging literally like a grand a month, or like 1500 a month and doing everything like SEO, social media posts, ads, like everything was done. So yeah, I was just getting out there and just shaking hands and hustling was how we got leads. But then when we got with a bit smarter with it, we started kind of eating our own dog food because one of actually had the marketing evolve was I was in a desperate state where I’m like, Look, let me just, I can’t cold call cuz I’m introvert. I don’t like the phone. I’m going to all these networking events, but I’m not meeting the right people. The right people, for me are probably sitting behind their computers doing what I’m doing. So let me try cold emailing. And so we actually picked up a Facebook ads client through cold emails. And he was in a really, really weird niche. So we couldn’t make the face of Facebook ads worked. But he turned around said, well, actually, most of my clients probably aren’t even on Facebook. You signed me up Vikon emails, can you do it for me? And so that was our very first Kadima client, and that one took off with cold emails. And so it’s like, well, hang on, I think there’s something here. So that’s kind of the path. And you know, we just did that and keep to keep doing it. And then kind of naturally evolved from you’re having to go to networking events, to just being really good at cold emails.
Mel:
That’s super interesting. You must have been also at the just the right channel, right client. Because I’ve had similar situations where, like, emails haven’t worked for some people, and I thought it would, and they said they had a great email list. And then there’s some people that have come off, and their first email, they landed, you know, 100k client, and they just thought were the best frickin agency ever. And I’m thinking, God, like, we got freakin lucky with that list. I just had a list waiting for it, you know? And, and yeah, the emails good, but they just had like, hungry, you know, content needs from their database that they just haven’t mind ever. And it was just sending shit too. So I think you know, when you find the right marketing channel for the right audience for the right client, and it just goes you know, it just goes berserk. And so, fast forward to this email thing really now working out so you start discovering I’m kind of got a good understanding of emails and you probably will you doing that as well as a suite of offerings? Because I mean, at the beginning of marketing, we do anything, right? It’s like yep, yep. Yeah.
Will:
Yeah, exactly. I think by I knew pretty early on that my strength in the whole marketing thing was copy. And so what I kind of realised leading up to the end of the second year was that if I focus on copy the channel and the medium doesn’t really matter. Like it doesn’t matter if we’re advertising or Facebook or writing emails. It It’s just like, can I get the copy in front of the right people. And so that was kind of when we started going towards the journey and the mortgage voice, we’ve gone straight to the copy. So taking out the element of Facebook taking up element of all this other stuff that the easier it is, or has been, for myself, my clients to get leads, because ultimately, like if a copy shines through email, they’re not getting distracted by striving for 1000 Other things, it’s literally right there and then go to make a decision, do I? Do I care enough to reply or not? So that’s kind of the natural progression, just knowing that, hey, I really liked this copy. And I’ve got to figure out for myself, so Mazal, sell it to clients as well.
Mel:
So with emails, my curiosity, I want to explore that a little bit more. Are you normal? Are you normally going for like cold list that your clients come to like that have never known about them in the past?
Will:
Exactly. So we actually build the list now, for our clients. That’s kind of what we what we do. So we build the list, we do the deep personalization. And then we write the copy. And we combine all of that with the nurturing that comes after as
Mel:
well. Cool. So how do you do that list building?
Will:
Very manually. So I’ve got a team of 12 or 13, in the Philippines. And we just literally find the right people and go deep. So for example, a client of ours recently, they were trying to target podcast podcasters, like, like you and me, we’re actually we’re targeting book authors who hadn’t had don’t have a podcast yet, or hadn’t had an active podcast. So we’d actually go and read the Amazon highlights of the book, and read a certain section and reference it in the emails, and then reference a certain topic that we think they crush it on in terms of podcasting. So like that’s the level of personalization, we go through the list that we put
Mel:
out. So how long does it take to build a really good list? And how big is a list that you would build before you would hit that list?
Will:
Yeah, so we, most of our clients, we build about 500 to 1000 contacts a month. Okay. So it’s literally a full time person sitting there, checking for the list every single every single day. So yeah, it depends on how I do it. We look at deal structuring deal size, because for some of our clients, their deal size is so big, right? They sell to government, or huge enterprise, they can’t actually sustain, like, if I had 20 leads a month, they drop off leads and actually burn the reputation. So for those clients, it’s like, Hey, can you literally just send five emails a day, so every month, we’re actually not building that many leads. But we’re getting into so much detail with each of the leads, where we know how long they’ve been at the role with the last project was that they worked on what the internal KPIs might be for, for the for the leads, and so we just go super deep. So it’s kind of like that mix the balance of how much personalised versus how much scale? And then we just judge based on that, hey, how many responses do we need to kind of get the return that our clients need to see?
Mel:
Oh, this is really super exciting. So this is this little secret is like you really need to build those lists intimately? Is the content, then then structured based on all that data that you end up collecting on each person? So they feel like it’s super personalised? Or is it written one by one for each of these people that you’re writing to? You? It’s
Will:
not one by one? That’d be that’d be absolutely nuts. Unless, of course, we get paid. So we have had clients in the past where they’ve said to us, I’ve got a list of 10 or 20? No, can you go and chase us, for us? In that case, we will actually write each one one by one shopping leads are worth so much money that it just makes sense to do that. Generally, you know, on the list of 500 800, it’s, we’ve got three or four options. We’ve merged tags and personalization. And it just takes the data from the merge tags and goes, oh, this person likes like this, since this thing with these, with these data points, essentially.
Mel:
Got it. Okay, so we have like a mutual prospect. So just for listeners listening on Will and I are, you know, talking to a mutual client that I know that they want to chase the top 500 fortune 500 companies or, you know, I think that’s what they are, yeah, top 500 or top 500 ASX companies and they’ve never actually ever been able to attach to this before. They’ve been small. So I ended up speaking to them, and then I think Will’s got a call with them tomorrow, just to see, you know, can we align? So I guess for them, right? If we maybe just, you know, walk through that deal for them. They’re here and they want to go over and pitch 500 You know, this top 500 IT companies is what I think is their sort of, you know, ideal. You would go and then you know, go find that and then what would you like, you know, granularly do like how would you go about because there’s so many decision makers within 500 company so what would your method and strategy be in tackling them to get into a deal with with yet with one of these companies?
Will:
Yeah, we’ve actually had a bunch of clients targeting the ASX, we that’s probably one area that we’re really good in, we just know how to get into ASICs, companies. So one of the things we look at first is breaking down two elements, one being the offer for the right person. So for example, we had another client and we targeted 400 companies, and ASX targeting CEOs and CFOs. Now reply rate from these, you know, top of the food chain, top executives, our top companies spend 42% reply rate, which is just which is nuts, we made a millions of dollars. And so we looked at, you know, for a CEO, or a CFO, what do they care about, because it’s actually very different, like they see you as care about share price. So you guys care about investment mentality CFOs care about controlling costs, and making sure that there’s cash flow through different things as well, but obviously, very different. So then we write the offer for the roles differently, and each of them get a different email, plus a reference point for the company in a way that we think our services will be relevant. So the offers kind of not off as like, what are we selling, but offers as in like, what’s going to get them onto the sales call. So we map out the entire process, I get a point one, it’s a qualification course. So we need to offer this to get the qualification call. So after it’s happens, you know, step two is a longer sales call. But we need to have this offer from qualification call to Salesforce. So we map out the entire process. And then we go and build the personalization. And then we go send a batch of emails to test look at how many CEOs or CFOs come back and say, yep, let’s do a phone call. And then we iterate and improve in just improving every single time.
Mel:
How long does this process then take, too, you know, from engagement, then and testing so that we can get a realistic timeframe.
Will:
So the campaigns typically take us three to four weeks to set up. There’s a lot of tech in the backend, a lot less building initially. But once it gets rolling, and just continues rolling on, the first leads generally come through in week one after we send the emails out. So it’s pretty, like we’ll know pretty quickly, hey, this campaign has to be changed, or hey, I think there’s going to work really well.
Mel:
Okay, so it’s not about multiple touch points, you’re saying you’re saying that the first email that they receive in their inbox should do the trick.
Will:
So we sent probably six females or as part of that email sequence, and if they don’t reply to any of them, they keep getting an email. So there are multiple touchpoints? Definitely. But for some of them, if the message is crafted correctly, not the first email will be like, Hey, this is actually kind of interesting. I’m happy to have a conversation. So our best emails are probably in us two, three and four in terms of the sequence, but you will also get leads coming in from the first one.
Mel:
Cool. So going back to this ASX example. So they want top 100 ASX and they might not even be ready, right, they’re thinking this is gonna take a long time. So that would be another challenge as well for the business to be if they want to work with you. It’s like you better be, you know, ready to have that offer. So what happens if they come to you, and they don’t have the offer that’s going to appeal to that company? How do you how do you go about that, then?
Will:
Yeah, so we’ve got actually a package now that we’ve only just rolled out into, like, it’s pretty successful so far, we actually do the offer bit with them. So we do offer do we do the messaging bit. And so what happens is for some of our clients who potentially don’t even want to engage us full time, because not full time as in full 12 months, we actually were done with you service, we can help them with all this kind of stuff. Now hire a virtual assistant based in the Philippines to run the system for them. So that’s generally something that’s you know, quite good because they’ve got that offer, right? If they don’t need that many leads, it’s pretty economical to just get it set and then just have someone run it for them. And some visuals on visual systems is like 1000 bucks, Australian a month, that’s full time running your leads for you.
Mel:
Got it, got it. So if we now have this person that’s researching and data mining for you consistently adding to it, they’ve got like, they know how the flow will be the six emails of written which they will go through. Now if we have this let’s go back to this examples. We’ve got this company who sell marketing as well like a marketing service to help Lunch and Learns with these IT companies like you know events and so forth, that’s their specialty, they have package for IT companies to do their or their marketing collateral or whatever. So how would you go about the positioning to the decision like say they think the decision maker is this Yeah, they could be completely wrong in that, but say that they think this and then come to you. And they said, This is the decision making, what’s the secret then in how you would say mark them? And what would be the first email and the subject line? And we’re like best practices going through your mind, as I’m asking you this, you would be putting it putting in?
Will:
Yeah, that’s interesting. So they run Lunch and Learns for their clients. Is that kind of?
Mel:
That’s one of their Yeah, I think they are like a marketing provider for it. Companies.
Will:
Gotcha. So in that kind of case, and my, my thinking on emails is like, a lot of people think that emails are used to press or to transfer a whole bunch of people. Email for me is actually a good disqualifier. So sometimes, I’ll even start an email or the first time I might be like, are you doing? Is this something that you’re thinking about? Are you doing this? Is this something you want to do? If not completely fine, if you let me know, I won’t actually send you another email. That’s actually a pretty powerful opener, because it sets you apart from everyone else saying, here’s what we do with your lunch and learns with them. Because they might not even be in a position where they care. Like they might not just module loans may not be or even lead generation might not even be the number one thing for these companies. So if you set a qualifiers at first, I was asked a question, is this even top of mine, or in the back of your mind, that’s a pretty good place to start. And then you can always go and offer, you know, hey, here’s a case study, or here’s some information, here’s what I think could be good for you. But just come back to me and let me know if I’m on the right track.
Mel:
Got it? Is there any, like best practices for like the subject line in emails when you’re first going cold?
Will:
I mean, there’s a few that have worked historically, things like ask them a question. But it’s getting a bit tacky. Now with too many people using it. So it’s not as effective. We write all the emails from scratch. So I like to make the emails relevant to what the people were doing. And depending on the company, I also put some humour into the subject lines as well. Like, if you can open with a question, or some kind of female drives the curiosity, one of the things I don’t like doing is having a subject line that’s got nothing to do with the body copy. Because even if you get into an email, they’re like, this is crappy, you’re wasting my time You tricked me into clicking. So it has to be relevant to what your actual messages, but also have enough curiosity on there, whether your name dropping competitors, whether you’re talking about a result they want, whether you’re giving them some kind of value, it’s just going to have a bit of Valley a bit of curiosity, and bit of humour, if you can fit it all in.
Mel:
Yeah, I got murdered for using one of those techy subject lines when I was experimenting, because I was like, I’m just wanting to experiment. And I don’t know, I think it was something like I, you know, I don’t know, I think I said something really quiet out there. Like, I give up or you know, and then or, it really important to open this or something, and people just wrote back going, I’m just not going to do business with someone that gets me to open. So I think being relevant, which, which I was like, you know, but I also got a few leads as well from it, but most people got pissed off. So there’s, and then I was realising later that if you can be relevant to the email, you’re gonna get a lot more people on your side than, you know, trick them because people don’t want to get tricked. And you get them all hyped up that used to work, I think, once upon a time, but it just ended up being like shunned away. And so that was a big get big learn for me in my email, but it was be really relevant. So I’m really glad you shared that. I also feel like best practice for subject lines. Whenever I do two to four words, I get a lot more. I don’t know if that’s a mobile thing. I don’t know if you’ve found that. But when I use less word, sometimes I seem to get a higher open rate. Is that true?
Will:
Not really, in the data that that I can see. I also don’t put a lot of value in open rates to I mean, I do talk about it, hey, our sequences get 80 90% open rates, blah, blah, blah. But really, the main metric I care about is how many positive leads or how many phone calls have we got from the sequence. So for example, if my open rate is only 30%, but my positive reply rate is for the roof, and I’ve got a whole bunch of phone calls. Probably not going to change that much. Because we know that in opener tracking is kind of weird these days, too, because Apple blocks it. So many different systems might actually block the open reporting. So don’t put a lot of weight behind. You know how good the sequence is. I mean, if the sequence isn’t working Sure, I’ll go back and look at reply rates, open rates and figure out is it that no one’s opening emails, they’re not replying Is it some deliverability issue, but generally, if we’re getting really good leads coming back of it. I don’t worry too much about those numbers.
Mel:
Yeah. It’s good to like quite the vanity metrics, I guess, at the beginning, but if you can, you know, sometimes not. Sometimes it’s like, even me, I’m like looking at impressions going, Wow, I got so many impressions. But it’s not really about that on LinkedIn. It’s like, how many people actually came through going, I want to do business with you. Where were you? Okay, so you, but initially, because when I do emails is still, I think open rate I look at as an initial thing, just to understand like, okay, at least I got open rate, like, I got a tick the box because sometimes conversion isn’t right there to be able to measure on the first go, it just, they’re just not in that mindset, that list. Because I don’t really go for cold lists myself, I only go for like list of clients that are already engaged with this audience. So that’s why I’m more curious about in cold, I had do sometimes get really compelling emails, and I’m like, that was really good. Like, you’ve really got me in and you’ve got me hooked. But you know, what I feel with some of those, like, it comes from like a Gmail, or it doesn’t come from a person that I can really like, click on their LinkedIn or really feel so sometimes I just kind of go, Oh, it’s just gonna be another one of those things that are gonna pull me in. And then I, even though it’s written really well even take a photo of it for God’s sakes. And but that’s a really, I don’t know where it goes somewhere in my phone. But I’m like, that’s a really good. That’s a really good pitch. So who do you like, then end up sending the email from? You know, when you do it? Do you choose a persona from like, babies ASX company? Like, would you? Would you choose a persona for them to send it from?
Will:
Not really? I mean, it’s so easy nowadays to find, you know, do LinkedIn search, like this person, even real? When it’s not, it’s just like, I don’t like the trickery side of things. And I think a lot of marketers who have done this in the past have been very trickery based. Yes, not really the vibe, like we worked with so many corporate clients, and branding, so important to them, right? We generally sent it from someone from the sales team, like with the council name on it. We’ve also maintained stuff on it, we’ve ordered, you know, company website, so they’re wanting to research who these people are, it’s actually real people. Yeah. So that’s how we how we typically do it.
Mel:
Got it. Got it? And what about like, using, like, say, for example, this company that we’re both talking to, they were thinking, like coming from the CEO, because they’re targeting these bigger company, and they want to feel like they’re putting that top voice, you know, to another CEO in this. Is that like, you know, a strategy that you’ve pursued? Does that yield any better results from coming from? You know, that level?
Will:
Yes, and no. When you get to C suite on a CX, it’s more about how relevant the messages and is it something that the CEO actually cares about. So I mean, we help you and one of our biggest clients, we’ve got about 85, sales team members now. So if we’re prospecting to CEOs, it’s hard to say that the emails coming from the CEO when he runs this $250 million a year company. So it’s all about how the relevancy of message, I haven’t found a massive issue. Like, obviously, you don’t want to have sales, you know, I’m trying to put your stuff on title. But other titles like client success manager, Solutions Manager that’s worked well in the past, too. But you have, so it’s not really about the positioning, it’s about the value that you provide. But in some cases, it can be it just depends, like, I’ll give you a solid example. If you’re inviting CEOs to an event, it doesn’t have to come from another CEO. Yes. But if not even for a one to one coffee chat, maybe it will be advantageous to come from CEO, but depends on the company size, right? If you’re a one man band, like it doesn’t really matter. Whereas if you’ve got 200 employees, and they’ve a 200 employees, and you’re just like, meeting of CO CEOs, like you know, that kind of makes more more sense. But generally, I think that’s probably the last thing we optimise for.
Mel:
Got it. What about the body? How long is like optimal for the email? Like short, long, like, what are you trying different messages to read that six sequence?
Will:
Definitely different messages. So we’ve got long emails, short emails, they’ve all worked in the past. I think it’s one of those things where I forgot who said the quote, but the quote was something like, you know, I didn’t have time to write you a shorter letter or I have probably should I credit so often, but I didn’t know who said it. But it’s one of those things where some products and services, you do need a few more lines to explain relevancy to the audience. And some you just don’t. So for example, we’ve had a client that does fundraising or cap raising for big, big companies. And so our pitch to them is like, Do you need more funding or do you need more capital? If you don’t need to really go into too much details, like do you need it or not? If, if so we can help you get it. So that one’s a short email. But then we’ve got other clients who, you know, the business consultants, but they’ve got this special spin. And it’s kind of unique what they do, but they’re also titled business consultants, so they kind of fit into the masses. So for those clients, we’ve got to go into a little bit more in terms of, here’s who we work with, here’s our unique take on the market. Here’s what we different from that million in 20, other business consultants. So it depends on like, who’s sending it and the offer, and also the message.
Mel:
Got it. So with the body, it can be short or long, it’s just about maybe the first one could be short, the next one could be longer. What about like the amount of links and stuff you put into it? Like, do you measure for like, you know that they clicked on this and then clicked on that, so they’ll then go into another sequence?
Will:
Not really. And we tried to minimise links in images as much as possible. So if you’re sending a mass email, and you don’t have the personalization on it, and you’ve got a lot of links, images, you’ll probably end up in over the promotions, tab, or you end up in spam filter. So we try and minimise all of that stuff as much as we can. So for example, we will have just a single link, and it’s either to the company website or to the LinkedIn profile will have probably, we reduced the signatures. If it’s like a massive block of graphics, we actually reduce it down. We do use gifts sometimes, but not in first email. Yeah, but we can just minimise all of that.
Mel:
It is the problem. It is it really makes you question how you live, you always want to live in materialistic life, because of what you see in front of you constantly in social media that you’re listening feel like you don’t have enough?
Will:
Not really. And we tried to minimise links in images as much as possible. So if you’re sending a mass email, and you don’t have the personalization on it, and you’ve got a lot of links, images, you’ll probably end up in over the promotions, tab, or you end up in spam filter. So we try and minimise all of that stuff as much as we can. So for example, we will have just a single link, and it’s either to the company website or to the LinkedIn profile will have probably, we reduced the signatures. If it’s like a massive block of graphics, we actually reduce it down. We do use gifts sometimes, but not in first email. Yeah, but we can just minimise all of that.
Mel:
Okay, okay. So much more like, friendly, just like as if someone’s texting or writing on the go kind of style. Just, you know, not like, you know, templated or anything, just getting it from that moment is what you, I believe in that same concept as well. And, yeah, okay, not too many links at the works could go in spam. Big. Okay. But that’s a big one. So what happens after I go through the cycle of the six? And I didn’t respond?
Will:
Yeah, that’s a good question. So it depends on the cells capacity, right, because I’ve got clients again, you know, with multiple salespeople, and they can pick up the phone and call them. Or we can send them a postcard, or we can send them something in the mail, or connect with them on LinkedIn. In other cases, where the teams are literally small, it’s just like, well, six emails, they haven’t replied, but they’ve opened the emails, we’ll just assume that they’re interested. And we can come up with another campaign lead, and the track will just mark him as not interested for the next six months. Got it?
Mel:
Got it. Okay. And so then will will you just continue to find new audiences to continue to market to because earlier on, you kind of said, like, when they engage with you, or company engages with you, they’re really looking in for 12 months? of it. So what is it like, you know, that if, for example, if they’re saying I’m targeting fortune 500 company, and you’ve already cycled through the 500, CEOs and the 500, CEOs and the 503, like, you know, other people within three months, then what, what’s left after that to do with you if they don’t have any other lists?
Will:
So generally, there’s a few things we can do. The first option is as simple as just let’s just pause for a little bit, that’s completely fine, right? And we’ll kind of know at the very beginning, Hey, what’s up we size, who are we targeting? And then we can always estimate like, Well, I think we’re gonna get through this pretty quickly. Other times have switched to a different strategy. So for example, we’ve been able to pull data from the LinkedIn ads, and use that to actually prospect out from some kind of inbound traffic. So data from LinkedIn posts, for example, which I know you’re amazing at, and using that to build email lists or LinkedIn ads, that can be another source. We’ve done, we’re going to drop the clients expand internationally. So if they’re done with Australian companies, we can take them overseas when the markets 2030 times bigger, but the principles still work the same in terms of email. So we’ve actually helped a few clients expand internationally, which is kind of cool. You know, there’s there’s a publisher options, but there does come a time where we might have actually gone after everyone in the market. And so that point is like, what do you want to stop or do you want to talk when you market?
Mel:
Got it? Do you think that list building is the most strategical part of it, like if they can get the list? Building, right, like if they really know who their offer appeals to, that they’re going to have the biggest success or is it the messaging?
Will:
I think they work so closely in Hungary, whichever, which is whether you don’t the reason why we do both. We have to do both really well. We bought lists in the past from lists brokers, I’ve probably spent about 20k On my own money on testing that list brokers. And it’s been crap, like the copies worked on the list rebuilt. But then when you plug into bad lists, and it hasn’t worked, yeah, we’ve also built really good list. But the offer wasn’t strong in that spawned as well. So I think it’s probably like a combination of the two just so like, relevant, less relevant message, you know, deliver in the right way. That’s kind of been the key formula. I wish it wasn’t so because I can shortcut some of our own processes. But it just so happens that every time we’ve tried to shortcut shortcut, one or the other, like, it’s always not been the best.
Mel:
So have you use LinkedIn, LinkedIn to build lists from the sales Neff?
Will:
Yeah, that’s probably one of my favourite data sources is actually sales nav, right? Because it gives us so much data about the people, right, you know, who they are, what the title leaves the company? How long have you been at the company for like, so much good data?
Mel:
Yeah. So if you, I guess my curiosity in this conversation goes to, there’s obviously outreach that you can do it through LinkedIn. And you can, there is products like LEM list, for example, that help you go and you know, connect, I believe over in LinkedIn, and then it then bounces an email. Right after so that you’re kind of like feeling like, Oh, I just saw you on LinkedIn. And now that now I’ve got an email from you. So you’re feeling a little bit more trust? Because you just remembered? Have you? What do you think about those kinds of mechanisms of operating on like, a two touch point platform? And have you done that?
Will:
Yeah, I really liked that with someone we’re trying to at the moment and trying to figure out how to get efficiency in doing. So we used to actually do a lot on LinkedIn. But as from outreach, and you know, connection, requests, all that kind of stuff. We’ve never been that great in terms of doing content for clients, which is, I think, you know, a message to the power that you’ve gotten. I know that at the moment, LinkedIn, and content and the stuff that you’re doing is actually what’s moving the needle. The way that we use LinkedIn, and connecting it to emails at the moment is literally just, for example, if one of our clients post something up on LinkedIn, we’re going and scrape that post for data about who interacted, you know, who it might also be relevant to? So that’s kind of how we’re using at the moment. And yeah, we do use tools when they bounce between the two. We were pretty careful with linking. They’re pretty strict nowadays, in terms of how many contacts how many connection requests, all that kind of stuff?
Mel:
Yeah, exactly. I want to bounce a couple of things off you. So one of the things that obviously, my agency does is yeah, we produce the content, and then we’re putting it out. And what it does is it creates influx of different data sets. Okay. So one data set it does. And I think it’s actually a secret that Richard Moore, who came on large influencer, revealed, was he doesn’t even do connections, like, he’s just like, he gets so much profile views from the content. And that is such a strong data source, in his opinion, like someone’s viewed my profile, it gives you the right to say, in his opinion, hi, you viewed my profile? What piqued your interest, I think he says, this is his, like, you know, like, this is number one line. And then he actually revealed exactly what he says after that, and he was like, yeah, that whatever they, you know, respond, then he goes in, and he, you know, questions them, like, are you having this problem, like, pretty directly? Like, is that? What is it that you know, but problem you’re facing? Whatever it was? Do you kind of, you know, see that, at some point, like, you know, with that kind of, could we take that profile view and start pretty much engaging via email? Right, from there? And would we leave? How would we do it like, would we let them know, we are going to engage with them on email, so that they know that, you know, that’s what that we will be communicating?
Will:
You know, I actually love taking people off LinkedIn onto email, just because we control the medium so much more. So that is definitely a strategy that’s worked really well in the past. So the idea of, you know, creating posts with nobody connecting, giving people the viewer profile, reaching out to them on LinkedIn, and jumping off and taking the conversation through email. So for example, if we talk about LEM list, you know, I actually know GE, who fell in love with it quite well. So from that, I would definitely message people who have seen the profile and you’re completely right to say, hey, you know, just so you still I make a joke out of it personally. I isn’t like, Hey, you just saw us talking my profile on LinkedIn? What’s going on? You know why? What’s the reason? What got you interested, I think is a great line. They’re just having a natural conversation via email.
Mel:
Yeah, yep, got it. So you would take them straight away off. And so we can actually see open, which we can’t get on LinkedIn messages, we can see it at a much more bulk view rather than inbox, which is very confusing, I guess, on LinkedIn to manage. That is quite difficult.
Will:
Because you can’t just go million messages on LinkedIn every single day as well. So moving blocks already helps you stand out against everyone else trying to pitch them something.
Mel:
Yeah. Okay. another data point, that is super interesting is, once you post content, you get all these new connection requests that you get built every single day or month over in a bit, you accept it. So naturally, people start this list called follow, so people can follow you. So most of my clients get this follow list. And then they actually request to connect with you. So they become your new connections of recent. And I think that’s again, another, they could have also, you know, viewed your profile as well to connect with UC probably going to pick them up on that profile view. But there is, you know, people that I think you get the overlap there, but that’s where I was like, oh, okay, there’s another opportunity to do something similar. But now we’re connected. That’s an opportunity to open conversation as well.
Will:
Yeah, exactly. I mean, there’s so many ways to do it. And my thinking at the moment, and the way that I’m taking my business is using all the functionality out there as a way to build like a newsletter and also a community. So yeah, rather than going directly for the sale, it’s like, Hey, have you seen some content from me? If you’ve viewed my profile, chances are you like the content that I put out? Do you want more of it? Can I add to my email list? Especially if you don’t need leads right now, and you’re building for the future. That’s a restaurant play to have.
Mel:
Yeah, like to give you an example, will, the girl that you know that we are, you’re going to talk to her tomorrow, she said that she almost forgot about me, even though she introduced me to one of my best clients that I have, because she mentioned me. And she said, because she just follows me, I’ve never connected with her. Before she goes, I just follow your content. But I was on the hunt for marketing agencies. And I forgot that, you know, I had already heard good things, and I’d already seen and I was like, oh my god, like if I had done that tact of making sure all my followers that are not connected to me, are actually going and going thank you so much for following me, I really appreciate this, I’m gonna actually add you to my newsletter, I’m going to add you to my community, we’re actually just share insights to keep you in the loop. And then I stay consistent. She wouldn’t have forgotten about me, because she almost signed a marketing agency that day that I spoke to her and she goes, Okay, I better not sign. And I’m going to talk to this, you know, opportunity. So can you imagine, like, the loss that we might be having, and these people have been following for months, and they are doing business, but you’re completely forgotten about. So that follow button when someone follows you and hits that it’s so important to I think, you know, create this email or some other touch point because there’s just no guarantee that if on it on LinkedIn that they haven’t hopped on, or they didn’t get to see you because algorithm didn’t perform for you. It’s it’s really risky.
Will:
Yeah, it really is. And I mean, like, nowadays, leads are worth so much more. Right. It’s so much more competitive. Yeah. So for me, like the ability to take someone off LinkedIn into your email list that is just like, I think that’s people sleep on it. But yeah, imagining how quickly you can build an amazing email list by just going to your LinkedIn followers or, you know, people who have engaged with you just ask them, Hey, do you want more of this kind of good stuff? Yeah. And that’s the opportunities. That’s, you know, the email is I do most of my selling via email, if it was not direct referral, it’s people on my email list. Probably about twice a year I’ll make an offer to our list. Every other week, it’s just like content in value entertainment. variably if we ever need clients we sell out just by going to the email list. The true power is that engagement right by just keeping keeping top of mind and then when people are ready for it, they’ll have a conversation with you.
Mel:
And I love how you said you know, you only have an ask twice a year you know, and I really think that you’re operating like Justin Welsh of LinkedIn like you know, banking, the time when it’s time to ask not asking every frickin sign off. But giving giving giving so when you ask you really are getting the influx of leads I find but if you ask every time it doesn’t work
Will:
I’m glad you said that because I literally just bought his course today. So I’ve been in has the same mentality for Yeah, yeah,
Mel:
yeah, he does he does he thinks you should like literally wait and do not, you know, wait, if you’ve just offered something, give, give give. So yeah, but exactly it’s mentality. What about, like, there is like, when I look at LinkedIn myself, and I just feel so overwhelmed again by another data point, like, okay, there’s all these people that liked my comments as all these like likes, and all these people that commented, you know, but not just mine, I can now start, I can scrape other people’s as well. So I can just go over and see who liked will Wang’s post and I can just, you know, scrape that and go, Oh, hey, I think that, you know, will does emails and, you know, I just thought connect with you. He’s my friend, and I’m really into LinkedIn, like, the opportunity is like, so big to scrape at the moment that it almost, I felt overwhelmed by the data points that are available over there that I was like, oh, you know, you can you can go and say that’s my friend. That’s why we share the same second degree, like, you know, you can you can go so deep to build lists. But still, I think, but in my mind, I’m like, you know, what is the best way? Like, do you kind of just go the easy route and just go like that, let’s go to Sales Navigator, let’s go ICP, let’s just do it, because you find it so overwhelming as to where to go and look and scrape and it’s scraping allowed?
Will:
So I think it depends on the context like for ourselves. And I speak for it because I’ve had clients kind of who all have this question in terms of simple to very complicated and difficult. But for ourselves as an agency, the way I look at it is there’s no end to the opportunities and how we can leverage the data. But if we keep getting stuck in the like, hey, we could do this, we could do everything. But what’s the one thing so I think it’s the consistency over like new shiny objects. So for example, for ourselves, our big play at the moment is launched content. So I’m going to take a play out of your book, I’m going to follow what you say, do a lot of content, look at my followers and look at who’s liking my content, I’m not going to go outside of the bounds and look at other people’s content. Because there’s so much opportunity, I almost get lost in the noise. It’s like what is my one strategy that we’re executing, day in, day out? And we’ll review that strategy in three or six months time, once you’ve gotten the volume through following have I reached 10,000 people, while my results 10,000 People without the data set, it’s I can try everything and it might work it might not. So consistency for extended period of time is really, really good. And I think it’s undervalued. Actually,
Mel:
yeah. Yeah, it’s, that’s where when I was create, because I guess I’ve been creating content for like, three years. And I was like, I can’t deal like profile views like 4000 every seven days, you know, like, frickin like all the content reactions. So much. So it became so overwhelming for my little small team that we just didn’t do anything at all. Like, it’s just like, oh, we could do this, we could do that we could do this. And it’s like, not we just need to focus on operationalizing the business we can’t even take any more at this point until we operationalize it. So it’s really super interesting to ya hear that? Sometimes, you know, I wish I like simpler is like demo, like I actually wished my brain was like demo. I don’t have to think about so many things. Like it just was like there’s only profile views. That’s all I could think.
Will:
I think that’s a problem with people who run marketing teams, because naturally, we’ve got to keep on the forefront of marketing, right? It’s just a continuing learning curve. So we get used to like learning, executing and doing really fast things. But you know, as my evolved as an entrepreneur, and as my business has grown, I’m starting to hang out with bigger and bigger business owners and some of them run $100 million a year businesses, you sit down to think, actually, they’re no smarter than you and I they’re just, they’ve just been, I’ve done it for a longer period of time and just stuck in their lane and not the shiny object syndrome. Well, they’ve just got to the point where they’re like, No, we just do this one thing, we just do direct mail. And that’s it. Yeah, just done it over and over and over again, to the point where they’ve just perfected or close to perfected the one thing that they’re doing. Whereas I think for me, like me, personally, I’m just like, oh, we can do this now. Tomorrow. I’m gonna be on LinkedIn. Now. Next, I’m gonna be on YouTube, like there’s just a little bit too much. So I think that’s what it is. It’s like, I think it’s a whole mosey, quote, simple skills and complex fails. I love that quote, like I you know, it’s it makes so much sense to me.
Mel:
I agree with you. Like there’s so many times I was like, Oh, we’re going to publish all the LinkedIn thought leadership into YouTube and we’re going to put it into Tik Tok and it’s going to be amazing. And then I was like, at least smart enough to be like, let’s try and do it myself. And I realised I’m like, I’m just creating a havoc. I just like they don’t. For my team. Like now I need to get access to four different platforms. You have to be in Extra on all for your right, like, just keep it simple. This is what it is, this is going to feed you for a really long time if you do this well, and keep it like, you know, like do one thing really well, before you get into the second thing really well. I think with LinkedIn, the best thing that I have seen is to LinkedIn plus email is sensational, you know, like, you’re just moving one traffic here, right there, there’s usually emails that can be right bought or claimed, you know, using hunter or something like that, like, you’re, it’s just such a close market, and it’s B to B, it’s such a strong b2b of how corporates want to operate, how they what they look at every day, it’s the most complimentary way I found, you know, in order to operate.
Will:
I mean, our strategy going forward, and we had this goal of, we actually change the goal since the beginning of the of doubling the agency, because I spent the past 18 months working on operational and awesome delivery stuff, and team and hiring. So we’ve got the capacity to double. So I was like, yes, double it. So our entire strategy behind doubling was literally working on a daily, weekly, monthly. So every single day, we sent 20 cold emails out to leads, every single day we’re spending $100 or more on ads. And that was it right daily. That’s it, if we do those two things, sweet, done, weekly, it’s like one piece of long form content on YouTube, whether that’s I’m on someone else’s podcast, I start my own podcast, I just do videos on YouTube, whatever that is, that then gets split into daily content pieces on LinkedIn. Now it’s content but didn’t used to be now we’ve got a content team. And one last thing is, you know, one big webinar a month, or one big event, I’m speaking at a month, so that we forecasted out was more than enough to actually triple like our business. And since then we’ve changed like, I don’t know, if I want this massive agency, we’re pretty good where we are now. There’s other businesses or buy businesses and kind of usual jazz. But yes, like just small things consistently done, would get you so much further than new shiny object stuff every single every single time.
Mel:
I agree. I agree. I remember when I first started my email newsletter, and I was like, so consistent for like, literally 12 months, right? Like, I was like, losing my shit. By eight months, I was like, I’m giving all these people so much things, and I was getting good vibes, like, you know, and love your email, love this. Love that. And I was like, God, like, why isn’t this converting, and I was learning, you know, I was just learning the flow. But I was building my brand to this list of people. And I was really, really early on. But then when I actually made an offer at 12 months later, it came and there was like, no leads. And I had, I didn’t have a great list. I had like a list of small entrepreneurs, meeting entrepreneurs, I just scraped my LinkedIn people and had pushed them through and thought that’s it. I mean, you can do it so much better. But I just think, you know, at the beginning, when you start any channel, like you’re just learning, and you can’t expect that it’s just going to be like, Oh, perfect, because you don’t even know who your market is. You also don’t know the messaging you are figuring shit out. And like you said, you know, but once you get really honed down, you can just do one marketing channel, and do it really, really well. Two things and it will do wonders, you just gotta be consistent and do it well, and make sure that it’s actually, you know, being listened to and people are getting it on simplicity of that. I’ve seen people go massive, just doing podcasts. And then they just chop it up and put it on LinkedIn. That’s all they do.
Will:
Exactly. I mean, I had a mentor, who co founded a tech company, which went public about a couple years ago, right and COVID. So he became a billionaire stop in touring. Not only did this have a full refund, but he he built his business, his business at the moment does about 200 million a year us well, he brought it up to 30 or 40 million before he stepped out of the day to day CEO role. He his whole strategy of growing was cold emailing, like that was it. So one channel to build a 50 mil a year before they even turn on a single dime of advertising. So that was nuts. And just like just really good focus, just keep testing to find what works and just tripling down on what’s what works and what scales. And I think, you know, as marketers, especially I’m very guilty of this i i look at new channels every single day that that’s why I’ve got people in my corner that like hey, no, you haven’t maximised cold emails. While we’re looking at, you know, programmatic advertising on tick tock like,
Mel:
yeah. Do you spend a lot on mentors? Is that or do you try and get mentors that are willing to just give you time like, how do you think about mentorships
Will:
I love the idea of using money to buy time. So I spend I know I spend more than six figures on a single mentor and I’ve got a few masterminds and programmes and mentors that I’ve got so my education bill every year is about probably multiple six figures. But 250k, there abouts just network of people to learn all that because it shortcuts my time. So I don’t particularly, I think most of stuff that you get from for free from mentors doesn’t come with the right context. So the reason why I pay for mentors is because they learn about me in month one, and they carried it notion month two. And so by the time we’ve worked together for a few months, they’ve got a really good and deep understanding of my contextual issues about all my challenges. Whereas if you try and go for free, and you just bounce around, the information they give out, may not actually be relevant for where you are in your business or your life. The best example of that is someone for example, like I’ve had James, my corner for about three years now. And now I want to talk to James, he goes, normally I’d say this, but for you do it this way, because I know how you think you’re gonna go off on a tangent, do this rocks and do it this way. Cool. So that’ll save me years of testing and making so much money that down the track. Whereas for example, if I just go and listen to someone like Alex or Mozi, who I love listening to, yeah, but some of the stuff he says, My companies aren’t big enough to actually do, right. So some of the ideas are like, Hey, you can’t replace yourself with one person, you’re going to make five hires, I don’t have the budget to make five hires. So I need to put different context onto it. So that’s why I actually really like paying for one to one mentoring. For me, you know, group programmes haven’t really ever worked for me. I just need that one to one interaction,
Mel:
especially maybe as well, if you’re busy if you don’t have a business partner, right. So after bounce off, this is your business partners. And so there, that’s what you need to bounce. So how many mentors is like too many though, that in your opinion, because you’ve got all these people like giving you all this advice? Like you might be getting, you know, kind of lost in it all?
Will:
Yeah, I’ve got about to set ones that I regularly check in with. And then I’ve got a couple of algos too, for specific issues. So James is kind of my my everything mentor. It’s like, Hey, James, I’m thinking about doing this, what do you think and he’ll commit, he will come at it from a lifestyle perspective as well, which I think sometimes a lot of mentors can miss right? He’ll say, surely you can go and build your agency to 10 mil a year. But what are you doing about time with the kids? Like, how much of that are you willing to sacrifice? And I’m like, none, so I don’t want to do that. Then I’ve got people who like like DK, who introduced us, he’s an amazing mentor for me as well. He’ll come at it from a different angle, and he’ll understand like structurally, Hey, have you thought about doing doing this way for cash flow and taxes and all that kind of stuff. So DK is amazing as well. And then I’ve got other people who like for a marketing problem, I’ll go to one of our friends or mentors, or treat him as a mentor, but he’s friends. I say, Hey, I’m really struggling with my own marketing in doing this. What do you reckon? They’ll have ideas. So I think to regular mentors for me, and then I can mastermind group where I can go and target specific problems with the right context. That’s kind of my formula.
Mel:
Cool. And how much time would you spend with the mentors per month? Or is it just add as you need? Or is it already like scheduled in
Will:
so it’s pretty scheduled in so I’m now a business partner James’s, which is how we started working together. So he obviously has ownership in part of my business. So we’ve just got regular check ins because it works that way. You’re someone like DK, for example, he’s my captain as well. So I tend to get regular check ins with him from a numbers perspective. And that kind of just pivot into into other things. And then masterminds I’ve got a couple of masterminds where it’s, we meet once a quarter, we just go on trips. We do that. And that’s been good. So it’s kind of like sporadic and depends on how busy we are, how and what the context is. There is another group I’m looking at joining, but I just don’t know if I’ve got the time to do it. So that one, yeah, I should then meet monthly or they do a really epic event quarterly, but then meet monthly. I just don’t know if I’ve got enough time between all the other mentors. I’ve got.
Mel:
Yeah, awesome. Okay, well, well, I’ve really enjoyed the chat and you’ve been really candid and open, I think, you know, with with your journey and the hacks and how you think about emails and how to get what well how to get emails that convert which was really exciting to hear how you can actually get it on the first you know, hit so I’m super super excited. You know, when you hear stuff like that going well, like leads are not the problem guys. It’s like delivery. So if you can get a great marketing partner, you know, it’s whether you can handle the lead flow and whether you’ve actually got a business that can you know, deliver and retain would be your biggest problem if you can have someone good on your, on your team like well, to work with you. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing I’m really looking forward to staying in touch and partnering and working together.
Will:
Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me on amazing questions. It’s been such a fun chat. So you did amazing work as well. I know what the content and I love the other episode so it’s been so fun to be on here.
Mel:
Thank you. Bye you all listening to innovative minds