Hi it's me, Jon. I'm still in Spain. I'm still at mom and dad's house.
I'm sitting here on the deck
of mom and dad's apartment looking over over the golf course that we live next to.
By the time you watch this, I'll be back in Australia. I think probably sleeping
because I'll be tired after my marathon, 40-hour journey.
But today's topic is Shitty Email Marketing.
(Don't do this). Or even Email marketing for trades businesses and how you should do it.
And I get these emails in my inbox every now and I'm sure you do get them as well
and that goes a bit like this, "Hi, thanks for connecting, Jon" sometimes, I get them in LinkedIn,
sometimes I get an email.
"Hi Jon, I've seen your profile". "Hi Jon thanks for connecting". "Hi Jon, I've looked at your website,
let me tell you about my amazing thing you might want to buy.
You should buy it, or you should come to my website, or you should come to my workshop,
or you should come to my webinar or some other bollocks.
It's a straightforward, "I've never met you before here's my thing".
And that's fine. I don't really mind being marketed to. We all market, I market. I reach out to people and say,
"I'm a business coach, join and look at that", so fair enough.
It's the next thing that's irritating. After a couple of days what happens is
I get an email saying, "Oh Jon, you haven't responded.
I sent you an email explaining how amazing I am
and you didn't respond and I think you can get f*cked, can't you?
Because I didn't respond to you stupid spam. If I was interested, I would have responded
and I wasn't interested so I didn't. I'm a bit cross now. I'm a bit irritated and I think that's a slightly irritating
approach.
It gets worse though doesn't it when you get to the third one that says,
"Hi Jon, you haven't responded to both my emails and now I'm going to assume
that you're not interested in my thing
and if you were interested you really should get in touch and I think you can f*ck right off".
Now I understand it's just marketing. I understand it's automated
and I have to pull myself in in my irritation.
I'm going to get the emails and go 'It's just bullsh*t', I should ignore it and I do.
But here's the thing for you. Don't do that sh*t. It's rubbish.
It's rubbish marketing. It's rude marketing. It's sh*t marketing.
Apparently it works. People seem to think it works. Don't do it.
Email is not a good way to start a relationship. It's a great way to maintain a relationship.
But spammers are people who send unsolicited emails and everyone hates spammers don't they?
Email is good for maintaining a relationship with your customers or your potential customers
someone who's come to you or come to your website giving you their email address
and sort of express some interest in what you do. Then it's a great thing.
For a trade business, email I think has limited application.
Let's not get too excited about email. Email is good when people want to read your emails
or watch your videos, when you've got stuff to say that's interesting or useful to your customers.
For my business, business coach for tradies, emails a bit useful because the service I'm selling business coaching
for trades business owners is about teaching you stuff,
stuff you want to learn I hope.
Marketing and sales and how to grow and scale your business. I hope that's true.
but that's not true so much for a trade business. Your customers don't want to learn
how to install the toilet, how to build a fence. They don't want to learn that, you do it for them.
You're there to do it, not to teach them. Teaching them shit on emails is not very interesting and frankly I think
emails from a trade business aren't that interesting and if you spend your energy and your money
sending emails to your customers teaching them trade stuff, you're missing the mark
that won't read them, that won't be interested, that won't open them and you won't get the benefit that you want.
The benefit you want
in terms of relationship marketing is to say to your customers, "We're here,
next time you need carpenter, plumber, electrician, whatever think of us".
And if they don't open your emails because they're not very interesting, you lose that benefit.
I think you're wasting your money and I think you'd be better to spend your money rather than on email
marketing. Spend it somewhere else instead.
Now where else to spend it isn't the topic of this video. I've done four minutes already. If you
watch my other videos, you'll see where I think you should spend your money.
And of course, if you join the program, I'll show you very clearly where I think you should be spending
your marketing money.
Frankly pictures of someone else's fence or pool or house aren't that interesting unless you're on the market
for a fence or a pool or a house. And of course there is an exception to this.
If your customer is on the market for a builder or a pool builder or a fencer or something
then what you do and why you're good is an interest to them.
I call this short term relationship marketing. If they've come to your site and they've downloaded
a free how to choose a builder or a free download and then you send them an email every week
telling them how good you are and why you're useful and how useful you can be to them in their project,
that's very interesting to them because they're interested in buying that stuff now.
So short term relationship email marketing is very important and if you think that's right for you,
it's right for project based trades businesses selling to consumers, you should be doing that.
If you think that might be right for you, get in touch I'll talk to you in more detail.
But apart from that, I think email marketing might not be where you should focus your money and your time.
Now I talked to digital marketers and digital marketers who specialise with trades business and I'm always
investigating new things and listening to them and some of them think email marketing might be right
so I'm investigating whether they might be right and I might be mistaken,
and if they are, they can persuade me with actual figures rather than just "I think it should be like this".
Then I'll change my mind. I'll change my advice to you. For now, I don't think you should spend your money
on Email marketing unless it's that short-term relationship marketing for people who want a builder,
or a pool builder, or a fence builder, or whatever and might buy in the next two or three months.
Now there are four ways you can engage with me.
You can subscribe to these emails and get them in your inbox every Tuesday.
You can join our Facebook group - The Tradies Toolbox Business Talk Group (Venus will post a link)
You can come to my next workshop which is in Melbourne in November
and there's a link below (Venus will post it).
And the fourth thing is if you can't wait that long, you can book a 10-minute chat with me
and talk to me about whether
my business coaching program, the Tradies Toolbox coaching program is right for you right now.
Otherwise adios, have a nice day.
You'll see this on Tuesday. It's now Saturday and I'll be flying until Tuesday. See you!