Dec 7, 2021
Whether you’re working a zero-inbox system or have thousands of unread emails, we’re going to teach you how to manage your email marketing like a #VOBOSS. In this episode, Anne and Laya discuss strategies for running successful email campaigns and teach you how to manage your mass communications like a total pro. From concise content creation to developing better reading and writing skills, it’s all about strengthening your marketing muscle!
>> It’s time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere Business Owner Strategies and Successes being utilized by the industry’s top talent today. Rock your business like a BOSS, a VO BOSS! Now let’s welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.
Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, along with my amazing special guest co-host Laya Hoffman.
Laya: Hey Anne, hey BOSSes. It's great to be back. I've enjoyed our conversations, this entire sequence of modern mindset. I really appreciate being here and all you shared with me. So thanks for having me back.
Anne: Yeah, so let's continue, shall we, on our modern mindset? Because our last few episodes we've talked about marketing, social media, and I think an important one to cover as well, in order to evolve, our businesses is email marketing.
Laya: Yes.
Anne: Like, do you do email marketing? How do you do email marketing well, in a modern way? How do you not become a spam annoying --
Laya: Yeah.
Anne: -- person out there? So, yeah, it's very, again, with all the chaos that is out there today, everything digital flying at us, it's hard to know sometimes.
Laya: It's a lot of noise. Yeah.
Anne: Yeah. How do you cut through the noise?
Laya: Exactly. And stay relevant, stay top of mind with your clients without kind of brow beating and being a bit of a nag and being the thing that clogs up their inbox. Because the last thing you want is them to roll their eyes when they see, you know, oh gosh, another Monday morning email from Laya Hoffman that's about her, and not anything I need. You know? I mean, that's where I'm very cognizant of. I think there was a big push maybe a couple of years ago when email marketing was at its height. And it seemed like there's still a lot of talent that subscribe to that train of thought that is like, oh, I must get content out. I must get a direct email to my list.
Anne: A newsletter.
Laya: I need to cultivate my newsletter.
Anne: It was a thing, a newsletter to the list.
Laya: And maybe it's still a thing, if you really have important quality content and information to share, that's rich for your client or your audience, like a podcast or a new episode. And you've got buy-in from the people that, that are really connected to that.
Anne: Backing up. Buy-in.
Laya: Okay. Buy-In. How do you even know?
Anne: Let's start there. 'Cause I think, right, before we send email, we have to have a list. And before we have a list, we really honestly should get permission --
Laya: You should.
Anne: -- for people to be on that.
Laya: It's the law.
Anne: It is the law.
Laya: That's the thing.
Anne: It is to be spam compliant. And I want this to be so important. If you guys get anything out of this episode, let it be that if you have permission for your clients to be on your list, that is really the optimum way of being able to communicate with your clients and your potential clients. And there's so many people out there with cold emails, and it's a lot of discussions going on in the groups and everything. And cold emailing is certainly way. However, I'm going to tell you, how do you feel -- first of all, actually, I won't tell you, I'll ask you. How do you feel when you get an uninvited email from somebody --
Laya: Gross, icky.
Anne: -- that's trying to sell SEO or trying to sell, uh, you know, we can develop your web page. I get it. And I look at it and I go, hmm, I didn't ask for that.
Laya: You automatically -- yeah. You automatically have a bad taste in your mouth, right?
Anne: Yeah, I don't like it.
Laya: That's the last thing you want from your clients, for sure.
Anne: So cold emailing anything, it's just, it's a tricky, tricky business. So I want to warn people to please just be very, very cognizant of what it is that you're writing in those emails and how you're sending those emails. I tend to get people's permission before I email to them. And there's lots of different ways to do it. It's a little bit more, I would say than an advanced kind of a method to do that instead of just mining Google for production companies or owners of companies. I think that with a little bit of work and a little bit of innovative marketing of yourself, you can get people on your mailing list, and then they're not going to be angry when you email them.
Laya: I tell you what I did when I first started my email list. And I dunno, there's a couple of hundred emails on there, and sure, I'm able to get that. You can sign up on my email list on my website, 'cause there's a capture there. Or if you've ever sent me a message on my website --
Anne: But that's a good thing. Right?
Laya: -- on my website --
Anne: That's a good thing.
Laya: Sure. You know, there's not a lot of people that are signing up on my website because I don't really have a newsletter. It's more of an inquiry --
Anne: Yup.
Laya: -- taken there. But what I did, I think as I started to cultivate my list of clients, I would send -- and I only send maybe an email once a quarter as mostly about bookout dates or anything, really new and relevant that may be worth sharing and provide value to them. Like, you know, the kickoff of our podcast or this podcast right here. Hey, check this out. You might find value in this. I say at the top of the message always why and how I've secured their email. You know, thank you for being a great client of mine. I've enjoyed working with you in the past. I would like to include you in this message. However, if this doesn't resonate with you, and you'd like me to remove your name in the future, please click here. That's almost like the first thing that I have communicated. And I feel like that may cross the line a little bit, but it's still asking for permission right from the jump. What do you say?
Anne: Oh no, I think that's excellent. I think if you did not actually get their permission by, you know, they clicked on that -- because I actually have pop-up windows on all of my websites that say, do you want to be involved or do you want to get on my mailing list? And so there's the terms and policy that is there as well, saying that --
Laya: Sure.
Anne: -- by clicking this box, you agree to allow marketing, blah, blah, blah, blah. I can't remember the exact verbiage, but it's there. So if they decide to be on my mailing list, they agree that I will be able to market to them, and they will have the option to get off of that mailing list. So that's number one for me. And so for me, because I have three different brands that do three different functions, that helps me to get a lot of people on my list. If you're just doing voice talent, you're right. People are probably not running to your website and clicking, oh, sign me up.
Laya: Sure.
Anne: But even so the ones that do, which I think are great, anybody that might want to inquire how much it might cost you to do a particular job, and maybe they'll sign up for email. That's great. You've got their permission. And then also if you're going to do that cold email, I love the fact that in the very beginning of you say, hey, you've been a client of mine. If not, you know, if you would like to be taken off this email list, click here or simply reply, remove to this email. And I've seen that on like a, a regular text email. You know, for me, I send out all emails that are HTML enabled and have graphics and that sort of thing. But if you're just writing through Gmail or Apple mail or however, you're communicating with these people, a simple text message that says, this is how I got your email. Please reply remove if you'd like to be removed from this list.
Laya: Yeah.
Anne: And I think that is the most gracious way to do a cold email.
Laya: Exactly. That gives grace and says like, asking permission right off the jump and letting them know how you secured their information because privacy is a big thing.
Anne: Oh yeah.
Laya: You got to respect that in every aspect we can. And that kind of takes that --
Anne: It's the law.
Laya: -- gross feeling off. For sure. It's the law.
Anne: It's the law.
Laya: Stick to the regulations and follow the rules, people.
Anne: It's funny how many people don't -- like you think just sending an email to somebody unsolicited, you know what I mean? It is the law.
Laya: Yeah.
Anne: I mean, it, I mean, people may not take action, but it is the law.
Laya: Well, in the states --
Anne: Exactly.
Laya: -- it's less, I think, regulated as bad here, but like, you know, in the European Union --
Anne: Oh my God.
Laya: GDPR, Canada. Absolutely.
Anne: And California now has their own set of rules. And so --
Laya: Sure.
Anne: -- it really is. And I think as we progress, and data just becomes increasingly larger and larger and just more and more digital information coming at us, I don't think those laws are going to go away. I think they're going to be more of them coming. And so we need to secure permission in order to email people. And I think that is a very forward thinking, modern mindset, number one. So how do you get people on your list? You must offer them a way to get off of the list if you did not ask for their permission. Absolutely. So that's number one.
Laya: That's number one. Yeah. And then frequency in general, I think we touched on this just a moment ago. I have a different kind of routine than you do, but also a very different brand and I'm not offering coaching and products and things like that, but always providing value within that email. And keeping it, for me, I feel like everyone realizes their attention span.
Anne: Oh my goodness, yes.
Laya: We -- the humankind has the intention span of a gnat these days. You know, if you're still listening right now, a few minutes in, we're grateful for that attention because thank you for being more than a gnat.
Anne: Yeah.
Laya: But really you, you have to be concise in your message and don't waste the reader's time. Value their time and input and that they gave that much to you. So being concise is key. What is there? There's like a new acronym at the top, TL/DR. Too long didn't read. And that's really to give you the footnotes of what you may say in three paragraphs in three sentences. And so once you write that email, I always take a step back, come back to it a few hours, or you know, even a day later, if I have that opportunity and like cut it down. I mean, you feel like you've got so much to say. Somebody else may only have just, you know, wants the bullets or the, the light version of that. So keep that in mind.
Anne: And you, and you mentioned too that you send a quarterly email and say, well, maybe if you're going to book out a certain amount. So very similar to our BOSS Blasts, you know, we do a monthly BOSS Blast that just has bookout dates. It's super simple. It's like a few sentences. Hey, happy summer, you know, nothing that's necessarily too spammy or selly and oh, by the way, here's the new project that I just voiced or whatever that is, a picture of my cat. Again, it could be, you know, something that is not going to be intensely annoying. By the way the BOSS Blasts are --
Laya: Or selly.
Anne: Or selly. By the way, the BOSS Blasts are all what I call vetted lists. People have already given permission. So we do a once a month. And in reality, we also know who we're sending to, so agencies or we're sending to in-house production companies. So if they've already agreed to allow us to send them email, they're expecting us to market to them. But again, we still don't want to waste their time. We're very succinct in our body of our text and our email. And hey, these are my bookout dates. Here's a new project, send a link to YouTube channel. If they want to take a look at that, and hey, have a great summer or, you know, hope you're doing well. And that's it.
And actually once a month, if you think about it, and I always tell the story, like I subscribe to, I don't know, Old Navy, right? Old Navy three or four times a week sends me email when they have sales on different things. And so I know I'm subscribed, so I'm okay with getting the email from Old Navy. And as it goes through my inbox, I see it. I look at the subject, I look at who it's from. I look at the subject, and if that subject entices me to open it up, like maybe there's a sale. Well, I have -- a sale on shorts. I have a need for a pair of shorts. That's going to make me click it. I click it. And then I see the body of the email. Maybe there's a coupon code or whatever there is. And then if I want to go and buy, I will go to the website and buy. Think of that in terms of your voiceover business.
Laya: Yes.
Anne: So people may just see who it's coming from and your subject line. And if they don't need you at the time, they may just let it go through your inbox. Especially if they've given you permission, right, to allow you to market to them. It's okay. It's going to stay in my -- or you'll delete it later if you don't need it. But that doesn't mean that you can't email them next month, right? And next month they're like, oh yes, I need a voiceover to do this particular job. Click and buy. Boom. That's it.
Laya: Yeah. And a good point of that is, especially if you are including your bookout dates --
Anne: Yup.
Laya: -- maybe include the -- as your subject line. So if they don't read, and they're like, oh shit, she's out of town next week.
Anne: Yup.
Laya: I was just thinking I needed a voice talent. And you know what? I want to pick up the phone now so I can lock her in for, you know, before this time she's given us, a couple of weeks. How far out, just speaking of bookout dates -- I don't want to digress from this. This topic is so key -- but how far out do you give your clients notice on bookout dates?
Anne: Well, I do a monthly blast. So it's anything within the month.
Laya: Okay, so wherever that falls.
Anne: Yup.
Laya: Got it. Curious about that. Like how far is too long? I think two weeks' notice is always good because inevitably you get the call like the day before you leave town.
Anne: Exactly.
Laya: That's a whole other conversation.
Anne: Don't you always get the most work when you leave town? Always, right.
Laya: When you're out of town. Yes. But I have a hard habit of actually traveling with my rig. Which I don't mind.
Anne: That's another episode.
Laya: That's another conversation, for sure, for sure. But getting back to this, I got to ask you two questions, which email marketing platform do you use? I use MailChimp. I was curious what you use.
Anne: I use -- well, for my BOSS Blast, I use Active Campaign because I have a number of contacts.
Laya: Okay.
Anne: And usually the mail servers or the mail campaigns, they have a limit to the number of contacts or you pay based on the amount of contacts that you have.
Laya: Pay over. Yeah.
Anne: I used to use MailChimp. And now I just, because I went to a bigger platform with the BOSS Blast because I need to support a whole lot more contacts --
Laya: Yeah, they charge you per, right.
Anne: -- I need to support like 90,000 contexts. So I'm using Active Campaign.
Laya: Go girl. Yeah.
Anne: So.
Laya: Yeah, I'm on MailChimp because under 1000 is free.
Anne: Yup, yup.
Laya: And I really like the interface and the kind of the user experience, the UX on that is really flawless --
Anne: Oh yeah, I love MailChimp.
Laya: -- for someone that does and doesn't know, plus they're Atlanta based, shout out, MailChimp. So that's kind of become my CRM, which leads me to my next question, to CRM or not? Anne Ganguzza, what's your take?
Anne: Well, the CRM, I've often thought -- I tried Nimble back in the day, and Nimble had a problem with the amount of email that I had in Gmail. So, and I may be very untypical, and I'll just kind of, I digress just a little bit. Right now, if I look at my inbox --
Laya: Sure.
Anne: -- I have, uh, where does it tell me -- I have 949,367 unread emails. So, so what that means is --
Laya: Oh my gosh! Hold, can we have a moment for my zero inbox anxiety that just had a heart --
Anne: I know!
Laya: -- palpitation?
Anne: Most people have that. Most people have that.
Laya: Anne, I have a zero inbox threshold. It's the Virgo in me and also the highly control freak. And I don't know, I don't know what that is, but you're -- you just gave me a heart palpitation.
Anne: I know. Well, okay. So very few people know this about me, but the people that do know me, they know me so well. So I signed on to Gmail back in the day when it first started. I want to say it was 1990-something. And so Google is a search engine. So for me, I just never deleted my email because I can search my mail.
Laya: Sure.
Anne: And it's a really good search engine, by the way, if you've ever used Google at all.
Laya: Yes, it is.
Anne: The Gmail search engine is a great search engine, so I've never had the desire to really delete my mail. So. Yeah.
Laya: Oh my gosh, I have a funny story for you really quickly. You know, how on your phone, if you're using an Apple phone, you can accidentally like select all, if you are in your email box?
Anne: Oh yeah.
Laya: Well, I did that once, recently. I select all and deleted, and I didn't mean to do it, but I did it. And then like after I got over the initial -- luckily this was not my business inbox, but after I got over the initial, like panic that I had just lost all this content, I felt like --
Anne: Free.
Laya: -- kind of, yeah, totally free. Meanwhile, you're over there just hoarding.
Anne: I know, unread emails do not disturb me --
Laya: It's awesome.
Anne: -- because I look at it as a search engine.
Laya: Okay. They disturb me. But that's fine.
Anne: So Nimble back in the day had a problem. They wanted to charge me based upon the number of emails. And so I was like, well --
Laya: They were gonna get rich on you, wow.
Anne: -- I am not paying that. And so in reality before then I had used Gmail believe it or not just to organize all of my contacts and star them and put colors on them. And that became my working folder of contacts. And ultimately, you know, my Active Campaign, which is my mailer. And I had MailChimp for a long time before I ran out of the contacts, and I just had, then I had to go into pricing more of which one was better, and which mail service could do the best for me. So I ended up with Active Campaign because it handled the amount of contacts, but it's also a CRM for me. I have a database of contacts. I know what the last campaign was sent. I know if they opened it. I know if they clicked. I know what links they clicked. And that is my CRM. And I have automations so that if I want to follow back with this particular contact, I can do that. So that's my CRM --
Laya: Yeah, that's awesome.
Anne: -- but not -- it's not like a CRM like Nimble or any other, HubSpot or those types of things that you buy specifically a CRM for, but it does everything that I need a CRM to do.
Laya: Yeah. And I appreciate you giving us that candid feedback because I feel like there is a little bit of a push, and that's from some really great established voiceover-specific CRMs that have been fabulous for people. I just haven't personally kind of gone down that path yet. I always feel like, you know, is it cart before the horse, chicken before the egg? Like, you don't know, you need a CRM until you need a CRM, and you've got enough contacts, but it's also very hard to start or justify cost when you don't feel like you have a lot of contacts. So I kind of bridged this gap between managing my contacts through --
Anne: Yup, yup.
Laya: -- MailChimp, but also used HubSpot and Zapier to really connect those two and extract the emails and the content and the information I needed. There's a free program within those two that, that I was able to leverage. And I don't go back to it on a regular basis. I probably scrub all of my emails through the connection of Zapier and HubSpot maybe twice a year. And I would like to migrate eventually to a CRM because I feel that it can be wildly beneficial, especially as an ex-marketer and a new modern-minded entrepreneur. But I haven't gotten there yet either. And I think that's okay.
Anne: Yes.
Laya: I still have a thriving business. I feel like I have a flag system as well within Apple mail. And right now it works for me, but I definitely see that in my future too. So it's good to hear your feedback, especially with such an established list like you have. Um, very cool. Thanks for sharing.
Anne: I just have never kind of had the need to go more in depth than that. You know? I've got all the information that I need in terms of the contact information, the campaign they last opened, when the campaign was sent. I mean, there's just a ton of information. And if I feel like I need to have something that prompts me to contact them again, I build an automation, and that's, that's really all it is. So.
Laya: Yeah. Talk to me a little bit more about automation. I use it in some other scheduling platforms, like in Calendly. I use that there when scheduling for voiceover sessions and things like that. And I definitely think there's a whole conversation around hacks throughout this marketing bubble that can help streamline our workflow and make us more efficiently productive in our VO BOSS businesses. But talk to me about automation and how you use it in email. And do you use it as a one-off to individuals or is it just cyclical? How does it work?
Anne: It can be either or. So it really depends on where I'm doing this. So if I'm just working out of Gmail for an individual contact, um, and sometimes this works or not, you know, I have something called Boomerang, which Boomerang allows you to --
Laya: Okay.
Anne: -- you kind of put that to rest. It'll reappear in your inbox. And then if you decide you want to schedule an email after that, after you read it, there's lots of different things that you can do. You can schedule an email to go out, you know, the following week or the following month. In my Active Campaign, there is a whole module that you can build automations off of. And I have --
Laya: Sure.
Anne: -- information on, you know, I can put contacts in a list and contacts that are a part of that list. Every time something happens, every time they open an email, every time I send a campaign or whatever it is, it goes into an automation. And then it's like, you build a flow chart. And so, okay, open this campaign, and then you want to say, okay, they opened the campaign. Then, you know, wait two days and then send them a follow-up email. And then after the follow-up email, we're going to wait maybe a week or maybe a month. And we're going to send up the second follow-up email. And so you can check on the contact and know where they are in that automation. Are they 20% through? Are they, you know, have they reached this?
Laya: Did they read the whole thing? They click this link? Right? Very cool.
Anne: yeah.
Laya: I love how we can leverage that now to make us a little bit more savvy in our marketing --
Anne: Exactly.
Laya: -- more personal, but also again, with those light touches of personal connection, like as if, without being Big Brother --
Anne: Yup.
Laya: -- and like, you know, too heavy in the sell or too creepy in the, in the callouts -- 'cause a lot of people that don't understand marketing or like how was that thing following me? Well, how did it know? At this point I think everyone's onto those automations, but it's also so helpful to streamline your business. So I love seeing that in real-world applications.
Anne: Yeah. Absolutely. It's, you know, and it's something you have to put your time into. I know there's so many BOSSes out there --
Laya: Sure.
Anne: -- and marketing -- you know, it's interesting. 'Cause I think marketing is the thing that we need the most of as entrepreneurs and business owners. But yet it is the thing that people like the least, or it's also the thing -- and this is, this is straight-up experience in terms of selling classes for years to the voiceover industry -- it is the class that does the worst in terms of sales, meaning they all say they need it. They all say they want it. But yet when it comes time for clicking the buy, right? Most voice talent are going to buy the performance oriented class rather than the marketing class. And it's just the truth there.
Laya: Yeah. Because it's scary.
Anne: It is.
Laya: And it's, there's so much complexity, and then you feel like, you know, you need it, but you can't learn it.
Anne: But you can learn it.
Laya: Gosh, it's an investment.
Anne: That's the thing.
Laya: And you absolutely can.
Anne: I want people to know that.
Laya: These can be baby steps. Yeah. That's why, I'm glad we talked about the CRM. Like I felt so much pressure to invest in the system that I was going to have to learn and apply and et cetera. And I just said, hold on a second. Let me just piece by piece. I know that's on my future roadmap as far as the business owner. However right now this is working for me. And I think it's okay to say that.
Anne: You know --
Laya: You know?
Anne: You know what's so interesting is that I did not go to school for marketing. Like nowhere in my educational history was there ever a marketing in class ever. And as a matter of fact, I didn't even start to learn how to market until I started becoming an entrepreneur, which is boom, I quit my corporate job. And all of a sudden here I was trying to build up my voiceover business. And so I went from making a salary to making $0, and my own, I'm going to say guilt --
Laya: Same here, girl.
Anne: -- guilt maybe of not being able to contribute to the household motivated me to move my butt to figure out how am I going to make money at this? Because I have to, because I want to be a contributor to the household. And it was my own motivation and push that I learned marketing online. I literally, I signed up for mailing lists. I saw how other people marketed. And over the years, I literally just became a marketer myself because I had to. I mean, it was just, and I think that anybody -- look, if I can do it, I mean, honestly I think anybody can learn marketing. It just takes --
Laya: Yeah, truth serum here. I'm right there with you. I went to school for radio broadcasting, not marketing, but then became a VP of marketing --
Anne: Yup.
Laya: -- because of learning --
Anne: Exactly.
Laya: -- and real-world application and just --
Anne: To survive.
Laya: -- paying attention to -- yeah. And to what resonates with you as a person. Right? And that's really all it comes down to. It's like, how would you want to be approached?
Anne: Be marketed to. So you know how to market to people.
Laya: Exactly.
Anne: That's it. Yeah.
Laya: Pay attention. That's the modern mindset in marketing.
Anne: That's exactly -- I think, you know what? I think that's absolutely how I even learned to like, what is acceptable in terms of email marketing? Right? Well, I'm email marketed to. Sign up for those lists. This is probably why I have 967,000 unread emails, because guess what? I signed up for every type of business email list there was --
Laya: Right.
Anne: -- so that I could --
Laya: It's research.
Anne: -- yeah. So that I could get those emails, look at them and say, hmm, okay. I see how they're marketing. I like this one. I don't like this one. This one's annoying. And literally, I completely honest, as a matter of fact, I didn't even realize that that's probably why I have all the unread messages, but again, I did open some of them. Right? And I did open enough of them to really kind of learn how to market in my own way that I felt would be effective for my business so everyone can learn.
Laya: Yeah.
Anne: Everyone can learn.
Laya: Absolutely. And what's cool about email marketing, if you are a numbers person or if you kind of, you like to look at stats and see like a real ROI and the real results, so many of these platforms may get really hyper easy for us to understand the analytics behind what you're sending out. And then you can kind of tweak accordingly, you know. MailChimp makes it really user-friendly. I'm able to see how many people, what my open rate was, which really just means how many people from that several hundred actually clicked on my email, actually clicked through to see my latest link or my latest video that I embedded there.
Anne: Yeah.
Laya: It makes it so easy to drag and drop graphics and blocks.
Anne: Sure.
Laya: And there's so many new, easy platforms to help you get imagery and borrow content or share a great story. So it really doesn't have to be over complicated, and you might actually surprise yourself in seeing how fun it is to play the numbers game on the back end.
Anne: Yeah.
Laya: And, and, you know, get your little virtual pat on the back by looking at your analytics and starting to understand those things. And these days, everything from websites, minds -- again, with Squarespace, it makes it super easy on the back end to see those things.
Anne: Yeah. Wix --
Laya: Same with like MailChimp --
Anne: -- as well.
Laya: -- same with those, all of those, make it super kind of cool to look at --
Anne: Yeah.
Laya: -- your new, modern way of marketing again. So it's, it's really interesting to dive in once you do.
Anne: And by the way, for those of you that are interested, a 10% open rate is actually very good. And so --
Laya: So good, so good!
Anne: -- if you send an email to 100 people, if 10 of them open that email, that's awesome. And if by the way, over 1% click on it, that is awesome. So that --
Laya: It's a win!
Anne: -- is a win for you. So it's funny how many people don't realize, you know, it was kind of like when you invite people to a party, right? They say expect 10% to -- well, maybe not a party, but an event, right? Expect 10% to show up.
Laya: Oh yeah.
Anne: If it's my party, I want 100% of my people to respond.
Laya: 100% attendance.
Anne: Well, here's the deal. How interesting of a comparison is that? If I have a party and I invite people that I know, and they're my friends and they know me very well, I expect 100% of people to show up. Right? Maybe 90, if there's --
Laya: Or at least respond.
Anne: Right?
Laya: Sure. Right.
Anne: So think about that in terms of your email marketing, right. If you don't know anybody that you're inviting to the party, what are you going to say to get them interested? Right? And how many are actually going to open that invitation, and then how many people are actually going to click and go to the party? So I like to maybe compare it to, to the party. So that 10% open rate and over a 1% click rate is awesome. So.
Laya: Don't, don't let that discourage you.
Anne: Exactly.
Laya: Exactly right. And I think it's okay to, just like we've talked about in past episodes of like, what do I even say? You know, have a purpose, have something to share. Yes. But it's okay to start off with a little bit of kind of candid, you know, human, like --
Anne: Photo of my cat.
Laya: -- hey, this is my --
Anne: This is my cat!
Laya: -- very first email blast. Thank you for allowing me the space to share. And if you've gotten this far, I appreciate it and hope you're having an awesome day so far, you know. It's okay to be very human in that. In fact, I find that --
Anne: Will help
Laya: -- that creates more of -- yeah, connection and more empathy from whoever might be on the other end opening it. So don't let that scare you.
Anne: Good stuff, wow. I really feel email marketing is just one of those that I feel the mysteries of the universe for most voice talent. And we hope that we've been able to help you guys at least cut through --
Laya: Yes.
Anne: -- some of the mystery and get you thinking in a modern mindset for email marketing for today.
Laya: Yes. Thank you for having me, Anne. It's always a pleasure. I'm looking forward to our next conversation.
Anne: Me too, me too.
Laya: Thanks for having me, BOSSes.
Anne: Me too. That's a big shout-out to ipDTL, our sponsor. You too can connect like BOSSes. Find out more at ipdtl.com, and you guys, have an amazing week, and we will both see you next week. Bye-Bye.
Laya: Thanks, everybody. Bye-bye.
>> Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voboss.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a BOSS. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via ipDTL.