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How the heck are monetized newsletters any different than what we’ve all been doing for ages? 

And why should it matter! Well in today’s episode you’ll find out that monetized newsletters are vastly different than the run of the mill newsletters you might be sending to your audience and how to leverage them to get more clicks and boost sales. 

Monica brings her “A-game” nerdiness (which we are here for) to break down how you can start creating click-worthy newsletters that bring in bank.

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Alyson Lex 0:03
If you aren't already sending regular content to your list, stop this episode. And go back and find all the episodes where we say to send regular content to your list and then come back. Because this is like advanced stuff. This what we're going to talk about I'm so excited what we're going to talk about today because it is actually how to monetize a regular newsletter that you send out for free to your audience. And Monica Snider, she's a marketing expert. She's the founder of birdsong.co, which is her maiden name, and I love it. It's much more beautiful than mine was. She's going to tell us exactly what monetizing your newsletter looks like, how it works, and really how to get started. So Monica, thanks for being here with us.

Monica Snyder 0:53
Thank you for having me. I'm really excited because I love newsletters and email marketing.

Alyson Lex 0:59
Awesome. We could geek out and probably will geek out about email marketing. For a while, right.

Jennie Wright 1:06
With all transparency Monica and I have already geeked like severe geek, well down rabbit I

Alyson Lex 1:12
want to get in on the rabbit hole geek edge.

Jennie Wright 1:15
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Like, I actually still Monica and I had a conversation the other day, which was super awesome. And it led me down this whole thing of email. deliverability Oh, my gosh, okay. Yeah. So at some point, you know, if you're, if you're gonna write regular content that came down from this was like, if you're gonna write regular content to your list, that's great. How awesome it is for you. However, if it's not being delivered, because you're, you know, you're hit, you're in the spam, like, you know, world kind of thing. Or if you're in the spam box, how do I say this a penalty box for spam, then doesn't really matter, because nobody's actually getting it. And I was relating a story, Allison, where a previous client of ours had that chief complaint of nobody's getting my emails, remember that? And when we looked into it,

Alyson Lex 2:02
oh, yeah. And I tested the funnel, and I found them all in my spam. Yeah,

Jennie Wright 2:07
every single email from this person went into spam, simply because their list was needed some work. End of story. Okay, my again, see rabbit holing away, Monica and we're gonna, we're gonna go advanced level here, okay, we have a ton of episodes on creating regular content, we don't even need to tell our people regular content is the way to go. They're doing it if they're not go back and watch or listen to these episodes, and then come back, obviously, like Allison said, what are the different ways that we can elevate our newsletters in terms of a monetized newsletter?

Monica Snyder 2:43
Well, let's start with a definition of monetize newsletter because I don't think I think I mean, it's like I made it up so that I could differentiate I feel like that Eskimo here that's like differentiating the, you know, 8 million kinds of snow, right? They have all the words for snow because they live in it. And we you know, as marketers, we like to make up words. But monetize newsletter is where it is a free to your reader newsletter, but you are making money strategically with it. Right? You are intentional about making money with that newsletter. And then a paid newsletter is what people think of as a monetized newsletter. And I define that as somebody is paying you to get the content of the newsletter. So there's a paywall, they're giving you money for the content in the newsletter. And both work I have done both. I personally prefer the monetize newsletter, unless you have a bigger audience or a very distinct thing paid newsletters are, are kind of difficult to make succeed. So I'm all for the monetize newsletter. So to monetize your newsletter, there are a few ways you can do that. If you have your own products, courses, services, you know, obviously do that. And I say, obviously, but a lot of people do not do this in their newsletter. I had a client every Saturday, she sent out her newsletter. She never ever put a call to action that would bring her money. Like, I was like, What are you doing? Like, what are you doing?

Alyson Lex 4:04
That hurts my whole soul? Yeah, awesome. All

Jennie Wright 4:07
right. I like our we're shaking our heads every year just knowing what the actual hurts. Yeah, but there's so many people that do it, though.

Monica Snyder 4:14
Yes. So the simplest, most easy way to take your newsletter and make it monetized is to put a link to your own products or services, right? Call to Action and image. And it can be as simple as the P s like, hey, don't forget we do this, right? Because, like, I'm always shocked at how many people do not do this very basic, simple thing. So that's the first way. The second way is by selling other people's products or services. This is called affiliate marketing. You become an affiliate of there's a new workout and sometimes it's called referral marketing or partner marketing. But basically you send traffic to their site, their landing page, whatever their services and you make money when that happens. So you can set I mean, there's so many affiliate programs Send services and things out there. The best and easiest way to start with this, I think is go find the services that you are already raving about. Go to their website, go to the footer, look for affiliate program partner program, referral program, those are the key words and certainly in the footer, click that link, follow the instructions sign up, and then put that link in your email, be sure to disclose it's an affiliate link so that you don't get in trouble from you know, the law people. And you can do that with a simple, which is I do mind with, its, I italicize it and make it format a little bit different. But I do let people know affiliate links. So that's let's do that. And then there, you're selling somebody else's product. And they're you're making money in a different way with the monetize newsletter. So this is a tiny little trick

Alyson Lex 5:42
for that. By the way, if it's not in the footer, Google it. Just Google fill, just build your Google skills, Google it, you will find it if it exists.

Monica Snyder 5:53
Yes, the name of the company plus affiliate program will get you what you're looking for a partner program. Some of the bigger companies like a lot of software companies, say partner program instead of affiliate program. So depends on what they call it.

Alyson Lex 6:08
Are those the only two ways that you recommend monetizing a newsletter? Are there more?

Monica Snyder 6:14
Those are the two streams just? Yeah, it was going? Yeah. So you can also monetize with sponsorships. You can you know, just like people pay Google ads to be like in somebody's blog, right, you can do that with your newsletter. So this one is a little bit more advanced, because you have to kind of set up your own system. And most people who want to advertise in that they, they they know it exists, but there's no like centralized place for like finding newsletters, at least not one that is consistent and good that I've found. So you kind of have to know where they're at, but they are out there. So you can you can do that for your own newsletter, you can sell sponsorships, people who are in your newsletter will know about that. And so they may want to be in your newsletter as a promotion. So you can sell like, you know, classic ad space. But that, again, is a little more advanced. So,

Jennie Wright 7:07
but that's okay, we're going for advanced, what other advanced methods might you have for people to monetize?

Monica Snyder 7:12
Um, well, those are really the three. So past that, you can? Well, there's one other way, but I won't talk about this one a whole lot. If you it's exclusive content. Well, if you also manage to get your people's mailing address, you can, like sell their mailing addresses, which is not the same as selling their email addresses, which is wrong and illegal. But if you've got a mailing address list, there are marketers who will pay for that.

Jennie Wright 7:44
Interesting. I think Alison and I are on the same page of going. It's pretty.

Monica Snyder 7:52
So I guess that I don't talk about it a lot. But

Jennie Wright 7:56
like I said, but yeah, I got it. It

Monica Snyder 7:59
is you can and so like if you you know if I had somebody has my mailing address, and I get snail mail from them. Now, just to be clear, I don't do this. I have been the recipient of this. So yeah. And so but I actually don't mind getting physical mail. Like for some reason that doesn't bother me. But it is like do not sell the email address. That is that is not okay. But you can, you can definitely if you have mailing physical snail mail addresses.

Jennie Wright 8:29
Yeah. And it makes me think of GDPR, though.

Alyson Lex 8:33
So GDPR. I mean, so there are mailing list brokers for physical addresses. And I could talk about direct mail, like you think you can geek out about email, I can geek out about direct mail like crazy mailing lists, brokers, and that's pretty much where they're like the CO leaders have that kind of information. It's a little less highly, highly regulated than email, because, and I don't, you know, I'm not, I'm not a lawyer, I'm not your lawyer, always look into stuff. But the way that I feel about the selling of information is, you know, one that's done to us all the time. And so if your relationship is built on that kind of trust, that we always love and recommend, you really want to build a fence and, you know, around your people and protect, protect that. Yeah. So it's not for me, but I do understand that it is a way to monetize your list. So thank you for including it, and allowing us to have this conversation. Yeah.

Monica Snyder 9:33
So I mean, again, that may not be for you, maybe for you, but and then sort of not email right so we can stick to the main three which are, ya know, using your own links easiest, getting an affiliate link for somebody else? Second, easiest and then third is actually spelling, spelling, selling sponsorship spaces in your email.

Alyson Lex 9:55
Okay, so I want to back up really quick because we're talking about news flutter. And I remember, like back in the heyday of the internet, you would get these formatted newsletters and it would be like company news. And here's what's going on. And here's where I am. And this that, and then there was this trend toward, quote unquote, real looking emails where it was just text and that kind of thing. And that's still kind of where I like to play because of my relationship with my list. Our newsletters coming back, are they a thing? Like, how do we, what do they look like now?

Monica Snyder 10:32
Okay, so there are, there are companies who, whose entire business model is email first. And I'm specifically talking about newsletters, like the skim morning brew, hustle, these companies started as email first companies. And what they do is a monetized newsletter. So if you guys get any of these, it's basically it's a highly formatted kind of newspaper ish style. And it's got headers, it's got sections, and that kind of stuff. These are all done with sponsorships. So they, you know, people pay money to advertise in these newsletters, because they have huge readership. And so that style is coming back. And, you know, with the, like, substack came around, like, I feel like the the newsletter email channel is making a revival. And personally, I think it's because a lot of journalists and a lot of writers needed an outlet to voice what they wanted to say versus what their editors wanted to do, what their editors wanted them to say. And so newsletter was like the perfect format. And these are people who had audiences already, and just kind of brought them into the newsletter world. And then software's like substack made it super simple for them to do that.

Jennie Wright 11:46
So in some stack, is also like a paid newsletter. No.

Monica Snyder 11:51
Yes. So substack is either paid or free. And their revenue model is that they take money from the paid, but you can do a free newsletter, which is also how a monetized newsletter works.

Jennie Wright 12:03
Got it? Okay, I got it. So we're gonna sell our stuff, what other content do we need to include to make sure these things are value driven, that people actually want to open these up and read them? Sure. So

Monica Snyder 12:14
if you have valuable stuff, like your newsletter, it needs to first make people want to open it. And to do that, you have to know who your audience is. And like, I kind of consider these the basics, I'm gonna skim over them, but know who your audience is, and write stuff that they find interesting. And so you can curate this though. So you can do, you know, curating is where you get other people's content and share it. I do that a lot in my newsletter. And what I like to do is I have four sections in my newsletter, and you could see like the, the bigger ones that I talked about, they do this, they have multiple sections, that way, people get at least one thing that is valuable to them, and we'll make them keep opening. So put sections in your newsletter. And for mine, like I do, like tech, and then something with revenue, like revenue driving, for me, that's the monetization, I do something inspirational. And then my fourth section is like, whatever I'm feeling, right. So it gives me a little bit of flexibility. Those bigger ones like the skin, the hustle Well, the skin and morning brew or Newspace. So they talk about like the top news, those are really difficult to produce, they have entire editorial team, so they do them daily trends, the hustle has trend section. So like marketing trends, you could do a copywriting one that had, you know, like, you know, here's the headline, I'm going to rewrite of the week, and, or something like that, like, just think about what content your readers want. And then, you know, say you did continent week, here's the headline, you know, oh, you can get all my good tips in my course, here it is. Right, you can just keep selling your course. Now, if you want to get super advanced, you can segment your list of people who have already bought, and people who have not bought put the link that for people who have not bought, you know, that's your normal link, if they have already bought, like upsell them to something else. Or if you don't have something else sell, you know, something else that is related. So if you have a friend that is, you know, a competitor in this space, or some other copywriting course that you took where you learned from, you can send them to that as an affiliate.

Jennie Wright 14:11
All right, so there was a structure there that I really, really liked. Right? So the headline, or the main topic that you could talk about in those newsletters and then breaking it down into other subsections. You said you have four sections in your newsletter, correct? Yes. Okay. So do you recommend that like four sections is probably the most that people can handle it because I don't want to scroll forever. I do want to get some content, but I don't want this to become like, I don't need, you know, the Iliad or the Odyssey or anything like that as my Saturday morning reading.

Monica Snyder 14:42
So I would say that it depends on your audience. I think you could go as as long as you're not boring. Like my rule for email is that there is no right or wrong length. As long as you're not boring. You can't be boring. So boring is obviously in the eyes of the reader. If you could have 16 sections, and if they were short, that will be fine, I think because people would scroll find the section that they care about, and click through. Now, you also would want to just test this and see like, okay, nobody's ever getting to my bottom links, right? Because you can see in your stats, like what links were clicked and no in my, I can actually see who clicks them. So if like, my ideal customers are not clicking the right links, that I wouldn't want to change up my sections or do something different. But that would be database, and I would have already tried it. So try what works because that like the skim and the brute like morning brew, they're super long, they're not short. So

Jennie Wright 15:36
if you look at like the Seth Godin, he sends a newsletter every day. And his is like I've maybe two sentences Max. But his is one of those daily ones, the you know, the daily like, what do they call that a Seinfeld series or whatnot? And his don't always have a CTA, but sometimes they do. I don't know if you've ever heard of I've ever heard of Professor Galloway. No. So he's this big guy. In sort of the political space slash money, space, financial space, he's a professor and onwards, he has a company called section four. And he has a podcast and all sorts of other stuff. He's this big names, speaker to stage speaking and stuff. And he has a newsletter, which seems to come out less frequently than once a week, I will say, but it is formatted the way that you're talking about and has multiple multiple sections and like different calls to action, like this course is starting soon. And I'm, you know, Professor Galloway is going to appear here and catch up on the latest podcasts here and things like that. His a super formatted, it's super visual, you know, has all that kind of stuff. And so it reminds me the fact that you said that this style seems to be coming back. Which then leads me to the question about deliverability. Because we were told, we collectively, were told to get rid of the images in our emails, get rid of the headers in our emails, get rid of all that kind of stuff, because it was affecting our deliverability, it was meaning that we might get marked spam or whatever. If we're going back to that sort of format of newsletter style, what's changed?

Monica Snyder 17:13
So I don't, so we collectively, I believe you've relied to, like, so companies have been sending email, like image based emails forever, the only rule I have for images is don't, you can only have an image, right. But tech is also advanced, right? Like, email started, many, many moons ago. And now the algorithms know, like, they know, if you're getting an email from like a retail store that is going to be super image heavy. Yeah. And they have all the data to say, like, you know, whatever store it is, is gonna send like 70 million, you know, images in this email, they're still gonna put it in your inbox, right? Now, the reason I think that the marketers went to this, like, Seinfeld, like text only thing is, honestly, for a couple reasons. First, they're easier to produce, right. So like, if you only have to put text and no images, that is an easier to produce thing. Second, they do act more personal. So they're like more from your mom or your friend, right? Like your mom and your friend aren't sending you these well formatted image based emails. So the relationship builds faster with those kinds of emails, in my opinion, however, you should put in a few visual elements like we are a very visual, like people are visual, right? So we want to see things. So in my newsletter, I normally have like, like, at least copy format, which means like bold, underline, make fonts bigger for hierarchy, like what things that should pay attention to. And a couple of images like that, for me is a great personal newsletter or a brand that wants to be personal. But if you're going to do like an email first business, and like, hey, like, I'm going to build a monetized newsletter as a business, then you're gonna want a format and a structure kind of like Professor Galloway or

Jennie Wright 19:00
so we have been lied to. I mean,

Monica Snyder 19:03
like, I don't understand why this was ever. Like, I've been sending emails with my companies for I mean, since internet started, and like they have been heavy image based without deliverability issues, like, what really matters is your sender reputation.

Jennie Wright 19:19
Let's talk about sender reputation, because you and I talked about that offline before. And it was a whole thing. Can you talk to us about the sender reputation piece? I don't think enough people know about this.

Monica Snyder 19:31
Okay, so you Okay, so let's start with, like a little bit of an overview of how the tech works. So if I start to lose, you just tell me. So you have, you have a domain name, right. So Monica schneider.com, right. It's my domain name. And I send email from two different sets of technology. I send email from my Gmail, right, like I use Gmail for my company, right? Like my assistant has a Gmail, that kind of thing, right. I also send from Active Campaign that is my email service provider for bulk email. Alright, so those two things both have my Monica schneider.com. But they also have different IP addresses. So IP addresses are like the addresses for the computer, just like a street address for your home, they're the address for the computer that is doing the work on your behalf. Okay. So that is that is the difference between your domain name and an IP address. So your domain name is tied to multiple IP addresses when you send email from different platforms, okay with me so far. Okay, so now what happens? Okay, so both of those domain names or your domain name, has those multiple IPs, when you send email, it goes to the Gmail is the Hotmail is that, you know, the outlooks, the Yahoo's of the world, the AOL still even,

Jennie Wright 20:44
they're out there, yep, they are out there, right.

Monica Snyder 20:47
And these guys, still, they have their own set of rules for if they're gonna put you in the inbox, the promotions folder, the what the junk folder, the spam folder, whatever they call it, right? The focused folder they have, you know, all of them have their own system. And they have their own algorithms to determine if your email is going to make it in. But the main thing that they look at is your domain reputation. So they have a record of how good your IP is, and your domain name. So it's a combination of those two things that come together, that basically give you like a good or a bad score. Now, the content of your email matters as well. They're skimming, if you have an unsubscribe link in your email, like in your in Gmail, like that unsubscribe link almost automatically puts you in the promos, tab, right like and you can't get around the unsubscribe link, it's the law. So just you know, you can get out of the promos tab. But generally, you're gonna go to the promos tab. And here's the thing is that it is actually unique to the individual, like where your thing lands, like where your email lands is unique to the human for the inbox. So all that is happening on the back end, right. So like all this stuff out, like you're like, Oh, I just sent an email, like it just went through like seven systems, were actually like four. Because the other thing is that I forgot to mention back with your IP address, stuff, like Active Campaign has their own set of rules for checking your spam and all of that stuff. There's also like blacklists that you can get on or off. And there's like, all these systems that work together to put you in somebody's inbox. So. So all that put together with the main thing is, is like if you are a good email sender, and you send them the regular to give them enough data to feed their algorithms, then they're going to know like, Hey, you're good, I'm gonna put you in here. But if you're sending email, and people are marking as spam, or you know, not, they're not reading it. So the other thing that they know is that Google knows how long you spent reading that email. They know what you clicked, and they know how long you stayed on the page after you clicked. Right. So they're not like they pay attention to all of that. And I would say, that's probably lower, lower their algorithm. Nobody knows Google's algorithm, except for probably those developers. And you know, but I can make some educated guesses, because I've been a software developer since I was eight. So that's how I know all the techie stuff. But they take all that into factor to say like, okay, Monica center.com, generally, since good male, you know, we'll give her a pass, if it's like one time, right to things off. But overall, Monica center is not good. But maybe this IP address isn't good. So we're going to put that in spam. Because Active Campaign, something happened with somebody else that was sending from that IP address, because you probably do not have a dedicated IP address to send from Your, like your Active Campaign, MailChimp, those kinds of things. They, they keep their okay, I feel like I've been rambling on about IP addresses for

Jennie Wright 23:38
too long. Oh, this is good stuff. There's, there's a whole slew of our audience that has probably paused, and, you know, Google, and looked at this now, there's something you told me about the other day, which I think is pertinent and we should talk about and that is, and I know, Allison has a question, too. But that Google thing that you had me do the other day? Yes, I have a very bad memory, therefore can't remember exactly what it's called postmaster or something postmaster

Monica Snyder 24:01
tools. So if you Google, literally, the word Google postmaster tools, you're gonna find this is this is where Google lets you know about your domains, deliverability, and the IP addresses associated with your domain. So this is specific for Gmail. But that's one of the biggest providers in the world. So go to there. And you have to, there's a button in the bottom right corner for you to add your domain. Or it may just pop up if you have no domains to address. And you have to do some domain verification. So you have to say, hey, yes, I do on this domain. And they'll walk you through that. And once you do, it'll start collecting the data. And then what it will tell you is your IP reputation and your in your domain reputation,

Jennie Wright 24:41
your scam rate, and then your feedback loop and all that kind of stuff. Yeah,

Monica Snyder 24:46
yeah. So if you flip through like so it's all on top. Now it's a little hidden. So on the right side, there's like the number of days like go as many days as you can on the right side, and then flip through the different charts. And if any of them are red, or like big dunked down or say back added, then you have a problem. Okay.

Alyson Lex 25:05
All right. So we have talked a lot of technical stuff. And what I'm going to do is put a link to the postmasters, the postmaster tools, which is postmaster.google.com. Because that's how Google does all their extension sites. I want to back up and just for people that may have gotten lost in the IP talk, all right, because they're the dedicated versus shared IP address also happens with web hosting. And basically, these big companies will have, let's say, you know, you have an IP address, which is the identification of where your email is coming from, and they send on behalf of 100 people all using that same address. It's like being in an office building with 100 other offices, when you have a dedicated IP address, if you own your own building, and you are the only one with the key. Yes, that is the difference. And the same as happens with your web hosting shared server versus dedicated server. Typically, it's the big guys that get the dedicated stuff we're most everybody is on shared, am I right?

Monica Snyder 26:15
Yes, unless you specifically request a dedicated IP, what you can do, it will cost you more money. However, if you do that, know that you have to warm that up. Because you and so what I mean by that is you have to start some new small amounts of mail, like 50 a day for seven days, and then you can double it slowly. But you can't just take a call that we call it a cold IP address, like a brand new one, you can't just take that and like start sending 10s of 1000s of emails because that's what spammers do. And so that will red flag you and your domain like super, super fast. So if you do want to get a dedicated IP, it is recommended. If you're sending a lot of mail, talk to me, this is where you might want to like call it an actual expert. But know that you have to warm up that IP. And you probably should also have a backup IP.

Alyson Lex 27:04
Okay, so basically, you're gonna call Monica. Yeah, don't call us we don't know. No, but no, that makes sense. Right? Like, you're letting all of the other 100 people that you're with, I like round numbers. They're doing some of the the credibility work. Right? They're sending emails, you're sending emails everybody's getting into. And that's why these email service providers are are not email marketing providers rather, are kind of stringent, right? They don't want you to screw up their shared IP for all the other 100 people. Right.

Monica Snyder 27:44
And then they manage that, I mean, that's what they're managing in the back end for you that you like, don't even realize as just, you know, like, if you if you ever get stopped trying to send an email, but it's like, Hey, you have a spam score, that's too high. That's them protecting, because there's they know, they're certain, there are certain keywords that, you know, that will put you into spam, kind of like, you know, I had a client, she's like, well, you use the word seven figure, like, isn't that going to put me into spam? And I'm like, No, not on its own. Right. But if you were like, you know, seven figure owner and like one link, then and you had like, you know, that link was going to a bad thing. The other thing is like, they can check to see if that link resolves, which means shows an actual good webpage, right? So if you think that they're not like checking those links, but like, you're, you're probably not a bad email marketer, you're not doing these things. But there are people out there that do do those things. So that's why all these protections are in place.

Alyson Lex 28:39
Okay, so we rabbit holed into the technical with IP addresses and spam boxes, and inboxes, and servers and all of this stuff. But how many people are actually going to see this email that has gone through all of this rigmarole like what can we reasonably expect for delivery and open rate? And everybody wants to know these numbers? Right,

Monica Snyder 29:03
right. So deliverability, so the actual number of emails that you send hitting the inbox should be like 96 plus percent. So that because and then sent because sometimes mailboxes are full, so they'll bounce, which means that it got rejected. Things like that happen, right? So the emails hitting the inbox or some sort of box within Gmail, I won't say inbox, but being delivered to some folder, it should be 96%. Now that's not a number that I wouldn't necessarily worry about. Check your balance reports. I remember because they're not always accurate. I wouldn't say that but anyway, I wouldn't worry too much about balances. Unless you want to clean up your list then just double check them. Because also sometimes the tech on the other side has problems like I remember Gmail like went down for a day you guys remember this had happened like last year. And so like all the Gmail, like they all bounced so if that was like a criteria that you use to clean your list, like about like, you should have excluded that but then Like you would have had to know that anyway. So lots of things like that. So open rates, let's talk about that. So open rates have, it now depends on your service provider. So Apple released iOS 15, last fall, fall of 2021. And they messed up open rates. So what they do now is that so first of all, let's talk about open rates get track, open rates get tracked with a tiny little image that are it's one pixel. And it's like a little tiny dot, it's invisible. And that's how it pings back to let the you know, email service providers of the world know if somebody opened your email. So forever, open rates have been a little off because people can block images and emails, and then that image when it gets sent, so that's fine. But then Apple decided that if you're using their Apple mail servers, they're going to open all the emails, they're just going to open them up. So some email service providers, like Active Campaign, filters out, all Apple opens now and basically says, we're just gonna take those out of your stats. So we, you know, you're not going to know what those are. So for me, my open rates went down, because I'm not getting those real open rates from Apple. Right? So but some of them leave them. And so then your open rates, like went up, right? So you're like, hey, what open rates went up, but not really. So it's a little bit unclear. So open rates, I still say, you know, 20%, is what you're shooting for. That is a good open rate. If you get higher, I have a lot of clients to get like the 43 45%, open rates, just make sure that they're not inflated, if you can. So what I really want to tracking is your click through rate. And this is why I want you to have a call to action that makes you money.

Jennie Wright 31:39
So you have something to look at for the click through rate. Yeah, exactly.

Monica Snyder 31:43
Yeah. So for click through rate, like you want to make sure that that is as high as possible. But just like most things in the world, two out of 10, people are going to be clicking. So 2%, again, is a good number, the higher you get there, the better. But don't be discouraged. If it's lower, if it is lower, then you probably should do some work on your copywriting. For

Alyson Lex 32:05
somebody who can help with that. And the thing that I always say, because when you said I want you tracking your click through rates, I did a little fist bump in the air. Because yes, that's what matters. Everything else can be I mean, some people, my husband still uses outlook, and you can auto read in a preview pane. And he never saw it, but it shows us read, like there are so many variables. But I've noticed that a lot of email marketing software's will give you 10 out of 100 people opened, two out of 100 people clicked. That's that's where you get your 2%. But I like to go 20% of my opens, clicks. So I actually do look at that open rate. Because if I send 1000 emails, and only five of them get opened, but all five get clicked. I don't have an email copy problem, I have an email deliverability or subject line problems. So it's really about figuring out how to improve based on those numbers. And, you know, yes, even with all the crazies with the open rates, you can still get a general idea.

Monica Snyder 33:19
Well, I think I think what you're touching on is really important is that you need to know your baseline for your email list. Because you're the only person who has that email list. Nobody else has an email list that matches yours, right? Like you have a unique asset that is unique to you. So industry standards are what they are, but you need to know your numbers. And then you need to be working on improving your open rates, like you said subject lines, prior emails, content matters, right? Like if you bored me in the last email, I may not open your next one. And so just think about that if your open rate goes down a little bit, but know your numbers. So I actually for my newsletter, I have a big spreadsheet and I know all my numbers every single one and I track open attract number sent I track open rate I track the date and time I send and like now I extended the same date and time but I was testing for a while what was good. And then I track click through rate and I I don't click and on track open to click through rate to the click through rate you get from the service provider will be number sent to click not number opened to click so you may have to do that yourself in your very own metrics and you're maturing and this is how we become data driven. And then you know for newsletter you're going to usually have multiple links. So you even want to go deeper and see like what links are being clicked. So

Jennie Wright 34:42
I have a question for you and I'm also does too but I have one and this is really going down the rabbit hole of newsletters because of the multiple links in a newsletter Are you because we can track we all use Active Campaign everybody here has been on this particular episode is using Active Campaign and active campaign will tell you how many people clicked Link and other providers do as well. One of the things that I've used before with Active Campaign is tagging. So I've added a tag if they click the link, right? Do you do that as well? Like, do you tag people who are like one of my, one of my tags is literally link clicker. Yeah. You know,

Monica Snyder 35:19
um, so I actually don't use that particular time. But now that you started like, my, but you can also, like, you can segment based on any click any person who's clicked a link, like there's, there's the like, that's sort of one of the built in tags, I should, I don't know how to say it, but a built in tag. I do click tagging for sure. And so I use it in multiple ways. And a lot of it is to segment or to gather zero party data. So I don't know if that's a phrase that's familiar with your audience. Zero party data.

Jennie Wright 35:51
Explain that one.

Monica Snyder 35:52
Okay. So this is where I get techie. Right. So zero is data that you collect from your users that they willingly give you, right? So you have asked them for information, and they give it to you. So clicking a link qualifies as zero party data. So I'm in newsletters, sometimes what I do is like, hey, what do you guys want to hear more about? Click the link that most matches? And then you know, like, for me, I'm a marketer, right? So I'm like, Do you want more traffic? Do you want more Leads? Do you want more? Email tips? Do you want more whatever, right. So whatever they click, they tell me that and then they get tagged, and then I can segment based on that data that they willingly gave me. Right. So if they are clicking on links to say you, you know, are selling, you know, skincare, and you have three different things, and you're like, hey, like, you know, are you more worried about wrinkles? Are you more worried about acne? Are you more worried about dry skin, right? Well, now you've got first party zero party data that you can use to make your newsletters better. And some or if you're paying at high levels, you can actually just like write sections that deliver based on tags in your newsletter, which is pretty advanced. So like, you can basically say, like, if they have this tag, give them this section. But if they don't skip that section, or give them this other section of content,

Jennie Wright 37:12
we are probably gonna have to have you back on a different episode just to talk about segmentation and datatypes. Because this is a conversation Allison and I can geek out over my so much fun. Like we're sitting here going, we need to wrap. But we don't need to like,

Alyson Lex 37:27
I know, this has been a really long episode. And before we do I have a question. I want to bring it back to newsletters, because we've been really talking about email marketing, which is newsletters, but there's other types of emails to those promo only emails, there's, should we be sending these how often? Like, what all of this stuff and as it relates to our entire marketing system? Yes. How do we how do we fit these in the right way.

Monica Snyder 37:59
So I would say, at a minimum, once a week newsletter, if you are a daily email, or you want to be a daily email newsletter person, like knock yourself out, like, go for it be interesting. And understand that not everyone will open every email just because of the nature of daily and so weekly, at a minimum, daily, if you're already the daily, like just put the promo into your daily emails, right. So whatever it is, you're promoting, generally daily emails are story driven. And so you are already a great story writer, like you can do that, you know, build your promo into that. If you are not, then you can either skip your weekly newsletter for the promo, or you can send on other days. So the one of the reasons I send my newsletter on Tuesday is because I generally promo from Wednesday to Monday. Like that's the that's the cadence that I have found works best for selling most things. And so I will newsletter on Tuesday. And that so that I get out of that. And honestly, here's my belief, you cannot mail too much. Like you just can't like if you are a good email, er and people want you in their inbox. You cannot mail too much. You can mail too boring, right? Like you can and then one of the things that if you are doing a promo and I'm sure you guys have talked about this before, but you know put in the footer put somewhere just like say, hey, like if you don't want this promotional series, click here and I won't send it to you anymore. And that is the easiest segment and then just in the future promos, you just take those people out, because those people want to stay on your newsletter, but they don't necessarily, you know, they're not interested in this specific promotion. So don't clutter their inbox and that gives them more control. They like you more all that good stuff. It's really easy to do a click tax. So that's my belief is like build your promo calendar and add a newsletter in or if you you know you have like you You really only launch every three months. Then do that. But then put your like keep your newsletters monetized with affiliates. So

Jennie Wright 39:56
okay, we will we will close this geeks out Shion on that note, it has been too much fun. And we've already Allison and I are writing notes while we're doing the podcast episodes. And we're already like in full caps. We are bringing Monica back to talk about segmentation and tagging in different data. So be prepared because there's gonna be another episode with Monica, this is just gonna happen. Monica, thank you so much for doing this. Where can people find you? How can they connect with you? Because there's people out there right now who are just literally Googling your name? Yes. So

Monica Snyder 40:28
I do have Monica center.com. You can also go to birdsong.co. That is where I'm most active. And you can find my YouTube channel or Instagram. So Oh, but if you do, go to YouTube, just be warned that I'm not dead. Apparently, the first thing that comes up on search for Monica cider is that I was killed or something. So I'm not

Alyson Lex 40:50
calling me that is probably the slickest way I've ever heard to get somebody to look you up on YouTube. Hey, listen, don't tell my secrets. Oh, no, this is look, thrive is an acronym and the The T stands for transparency. Okay, so it's awesome. True secrets here.

Monica Snyder 41:07
It's also true. Like, it's also true. Yeah, no, I know.

Jennie Wright 41:11
That's, you know, it made me go to YouTube, right?

Alyson Lex 41:14
That's what I'm saying. Like, I if I wasn't speaking, I would have been on YouTube. But I can't do two things at once. It didn't either of them. Well, yep, it worked.

Jennie Wright 41:23
I'll tell you that. Awesome. So let's do that. Let's also make sure we're you know, let's let's look at the the YouTube stuff, which also puts somebody else with a very similar name with you and a very controversial topic up there. Yeah.

Monica Snyder 41:37
So so make sure you find find me talking about email marketing, or marketing

Jennie Wright 41:41
or Yeah, and not the other person that seems to be talking about a other topic, which we won't talk about here. Because it's not related to the podcast. Okay. So anyways, everybody can go Google, the government can go YouTube, Google and find out and figure that out on your own. But find the right Monica the one with a nice, happy smiley face is the right person. All right. We're gonna wrap this episode up. If you want to hear more about Monica, if you want to get everything that she talked about all the links, because when she talked about the Google postmaster, we've got that up there. We've got all of her links and everything on the show notes for this episode. And this episode is episode 172. So go to system to thrive.com forward slash one, seven to get all the information on Monica and make sure that you're putting out a monetize newsletter, and get that out there so people can start paying you for putting out really good content. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. We'll talk to y'all soon.