Email Strategy for 2025: What You NEED to Know as a Marketer

[MUSIC] Welcome to CMO School. Email is one of the highest converting marketing channels, but most people are not using it to its full potential. In this episode, I'm joined by Emily Clare, the founder of 10K Email Club, an expert copywriter who's helped brands grow and engage audiences through email that actually performs. We're talking about what it takes to build an email strategy that drives real ROI, whether you're growing your own list or leading email strategy for clients. From segmentation, to storytelling, to smart sending, and strategic collaboration, this conversation will help you rethink how you use email in 2025. So let's get into it. Welcome, Emily. I'm so excited to have you here. Can you start by giving us a little intro and background on you and how you came to be focused in email? Yes, I would love to. And thank you so much for having me, Jess. I'm stoked to be here. So I have a bit of a weird story. I used to be a full-time singer-actor dancer. I have a university degree in musical theater, something that has absolutely nothing to do with copywriting. And I was working as a performer on cruise ships all over the world for a couple of years. And I started a blog because I think people might be interested in this life. And honestly, I was also looking for an exit. I knew I didn't want to perform for the rest of my life. It was the lifestyle that I realized was not exactly what I wanted and it wasn't sustainable. But I truthfully had no idea what I was qualified to do. So I was like, let me just start a blog because this is interesting. And I found that I really like to write. I found that my writing resonated with people. And for me, it was this aha moment of, oh, this is a career. If I actually get good at this, I could actually write. So I need to cobble together a portfolio. I need somebody to take me seriously. I wound up getting some amazing travel opportunities. I got to stay at amazing resorts in Bali and travel blog about them. And then I had this moment of, wait a minute, travel blogging is also not the sustainable lifestyle that I was going for. This is not a career, Emily, for me personally. I know it does work for some people. And I need to do something else. So I got my very first full-time copywriting job writing emails actually for a few different lifestyle brands. And it was honestly the door that just unlocked everything for me. I got two female bosses who fully believed in me. And we're also incredibly honest with me. And they said, listen, you have literally zero professional copywriting experience, but your creativity is insane. So if you bring us the creativity and you bring us all of your time, we'll teach you all of the business side of things. And they really did. They threw courses at me workshops. People I should follow sign up for these newsletters. They gave me Marie Forleo's. I think it was the time or the copy cure was actually the one that I did. And it was awesome. And for me, I just fell in love with it. I absolutely fell in love with writing. I fell in love with copywriting. I think also in the sense that I quickly realized that the creativity and this kind of emotional element that I love from performing, really when you think about it, when you train to be a performer, you just train to make people feel things. Because when an audience feels something they react, right? Yeah, that's marketing. To me, I'm just doing it with words. So I need to figure out certain things besides what's a hook. You know what I mean? That's something I never knew seven years ago. It was once I got the lingo down and things that I realized that my skills were actually very closely intertwined with that of a copywriter. And then it was off to the races. And then I worked for several different brands. I moved to Europe at the time and was working for a few different European companies, mainly lifestyle, fashion, things like that. And emails specifically, I think I started to fall in love with because blog posts for me were just too long. I'm a very impatient person. This is a lot of words. Very important love it, but it was never my specialty, which is ironic because I started as a blogger. And I just started to see that emails were fun. You have a closer interaction with people, right? So you have that sort of a personal touch if something in an inbox. And I also started to see that, honestly, they just worked. I got such a kick out of being in the feedback meetings where each share the results of a campaign. It was like, hey, Friday's email drove $87,000 in sales. My email? That's amazing. Why are people doing this? It's fun. It's authentic. And it works. The more I started to do research, talk to people about marketing emails, everyone, is also one of the most affordable marketing channels for people. So for me, then I was like, this is it. I'm going to be the email person. I like writing them. They're short. They're not too long. They have an impact. They feel personal. And then I was just off to the races. So that's how I just fell in love with emails. I love that. And I can see such a natural connection between the acting, the creativity there, and the expression, and email. Because I think that the people who do email it is storytelling. And it's this level of authenticity that makes, in my perspective, email really strong. And you would be naturally bringing that. And so for you, it's really just learning the technical skills. Like you said, the proper terms for things, the structure, anything that's more technical, that is so teachable. But you are bringing a skill set that is not teachable and a lot of people lack. So I love that. That's such a cool transition. And I'd love to hear what does your business look like now? Because I know a few of your offers, but just for our audience, if they're new to you, what is your business? Can you share a little bit about the things that you do and how you work with clients? Yes, just say less. I'm happy to talk about my business. So my business is primarily the 10k email club, which is a done with you email marketing membership club for female founders with small businesses. About three years ago, I went off on my own, started my own business, and started working for bigger clients as a copywriter. So we're talking retainer contracts, right? And I just noticed that yes, it was cool and it was interesting. And I was driving amazing results with emails for these bigger brands. But I kept getting requests from smaller founders who wanted to work with me. Could you help with this? Could you help with that? And I'm sure you've seen this as well. It was a size of business where they honestly couldn't afford to have me on a retainer, right? Yeah, we've all been there. I don't like saying no. I think a lot of us don't. And this is why we wind up with contracts that we wish we would have never said yes to. How can I find a way to say yes to people? Because these founders aren't doing emails, because they don't know how. They can't afford to hire somebody full time. And yes, you and I can go watch all the courses and workshops in the world. But are we actually going to feel confident enough to execute that ourselves? If there's not that kind of sounding board telling us, hey, this actually is a great idea. I love this storyline. What if we just tweak the CTA or something like that? Yeah. So I had this idea at the time. Everyone was talking about how you need to have a scalable offer, right? And I was like, wait a minute. Maybe this could be my scalable offer. If instead of done for you, it's done with you. So how the 10K email club works is we have that planning session every month with each member. We sketch out your emails for the month. You know exactly every single week what newsletter you're going to send. We focus primarily on newsletters. You have the plan. You draft the email. And then I come in and edit it with better copywriting, right? Better CTAs, better hooks, three different subject lines that based on my seven years of experience as a copywriter, we know we're going to drive results. Because I started with this model, I realized this is scalable, A of all. B of all, it's affordable. And C of all, it's getting these women with their businesses who've been sitting on the sidelines literally not sending emails. It is opening up doors to incredible possibilities for them because they're finally marketing what they do. It was so amazing. I had an onboarding session yesterday with a woman where she's new in the email club. And she was like, nobody's signing up for this yoga membership. I can't believe it's such a good offer. Why is no one signing up for it? And I said, this is so interesting. I'm with you. Have you told people about it? Have you sent an email? You just said no. I thought we're going to send an email about it. Why isn't anybody signing up? Literally, I'm sitting here. Why aren't people finding me? Like my favorite question to answer from people is, I'm so sorry to inform you that what everyone else has figured out is you've got to put yourself out there. But I mean, so that is the long story short of how the email club came to be formed. I just wanted to have a more accessible membership model that allowed me to work with people but not do everything for them. Because the founders actually do have great stories to tell. And I prefer that it comes from them instead of a VA. I love that. And I completely relate with that. Because I see that all the time. And I've been doing this business now for about four years. And have had similar thoughts with marketing strategy and our CMO retainers where there is, unfortunately, lots of clients that I turn away because they just can't afford to work with us. And I also, even if they would take some budget and work with us, I don't really want them to allocate the only budget they have to a strategy that I know they can't execute on. So I've often had similar thoughts around, how do I help those people? Because often those people, there's just something about them that I click with and I can really see maybe something that I identify with in them. And I really want to help you. And I know I can, but not in this container. So I love that you created that. It sounds so cool. I've also never heard of anything similar. So I think it's just such a great gap that you've filled in the market. Thank you. I appreciate that. So I want to talk about email in 2025. I have some thoughts, but I'm so curious to hear from you. What do you think is working? What are you seeing as things that are performing really well in 2025? Oh my gosh, I love this. And once I tell mine, I want to know your thoughts. I think something that's working really well. And it's not revolutionary, but I think more smaller businesses are getting behind it, especially now with all the cool AI capabilities and stuff we have is segmentation and frequent and consistent with communication. My specialty is mainly email newsletters. So of course, I'm going to say email newsletters are still working like they always have. But I think what's really working is getting really curious and specific about your list. So sending a second email every week, if you're only sending one, let's say, having a second one that goes out to your super fans with special things in it. Almost every couple of months, every email tool is coming out with more engaging options. Like FlowDest now has polls for the first time, which is really exciting. Kit, formerly convert kit, how's all kinds of fun capabilities that you can start implementing into your email. So I think emails are becoming more than just words in an inbox. They're becoming much more engaging, much more specific and much more personalized. And I'm really excited to see that moving the needle forward for a lot of founders. So that's what I'm seeing. Instead of these kind of generic, set it and forget it flows. Sign up for my freebie. Then you get the freebie and then you never hear from that person again, until you're spammed with 20 emails selling you into their next thing. I still, yeah, exactly. I'm still a big fan of sales flows. I think there's a time and a place for that. But I think we're able to make them more unique detailed now, where we can play with the segmentation of, okay, but once that person clicked that, what else might they be interested in? Having the exit the sales flow. What I'm seeing and I'm really enjoying playing around with. What are you seeing? Actually, I'll tell you in a minute, but I have a question for you. So our listeners, they are a fractional CMOS, they're marketers. So they may have their own email list. Or more often they're working with clients in such a variety of industries and such a variety of sizes when it comes to segmenting. Because I love this strategy and I love segmentation as well. Is there a point where your list is too small to be worrying about that? Or what are your thoughts around list size and segmentation? And how much you should be looking at that? Okay, first of all, I'm so happy you asked about list size because this is one of my favorite things to talk about because I've talked to so many people. I would say almost every person I talk to thinks their list is too small. They could have 2,000 subscribers and they could have 20,000 subscribers. Everyone I talk to just thinks that everyone else has a bigger list than they do. And it's so not true and also it doesn't matter. So I think is your list ever too small? If your list is five people, yes, I would say maybe honestly, just I would put my efforts into growing my list before I would worry about segmentation. I think once your list is like 250 people, for me, that's totally fair game to start segmenting. For me, the only thing that really matters with email is just how engaged people are. Right? And how are you going to get them more engaged by sending them more specific messages that relate to their life? Which would, which would warrant a segment. Ain't that? In my opinion, there's really no perfect list size to start segmenting. The only caveat I would add to that answer is if you are really just getting your list up and running, I would rather your efforts go into growing that list. But I think honestly, most of your listeners, they're going to be dealing with really sizeable lists, right? The list of thousands of subscribers, in which case, that is the time to start segmenting. And yeah, to segment a lot and to play around a lot. And AB tests a lot because you're going to start to see in the email club right now. It's fun. We're doing a segmenting send off challenge. The only reason I created this was because I wanted people to compare their open and click rates for specific segments versus their whole list. I love that. And the stat difference is incredible. Always at least a 10% higher open rate. At least a 1 to 2% higher click rate. More specific you get, the more interested people are. If people don't know about their list or they don't know about their subscribers, to segment, obviously we can look at things like you mentioned, what they're clicking on and things like that. Do you have any other tips or tricks that you've used to learn more about your email list? So that you can segment based on their interest or who they are? Yeah, I think you can do a few different things. One, with a lot of the email tools, now you can put a poll in an email and just have a few different polls in there. From a marketing perspective, from a messaging perspective, you can frame it as something really fun and engaging. Would you rather do this or do that? Whereas in reality, you're actually asking them questions like where are you based? What can I offer you that actually solves your problem? But there's a way that then I think based on the answers that people choose, you can start just learning about them. If you've got a smaller list, you can also just do this sort of question, A or B reply to this email and let me know. That is much more manual. So I would prefer to do a sort of internal email poll type situation. And then you can just start strategically adding in new buttons that ask people more specific questions. I think on this DIY level, one of the members of my email club, she's a tutor, she has a math tutoring business. That's actually quite successful. But she wanted to figure out the ages of the children. A kindergartener is going to need very different resources than an eighth grader. So she made it look really fun and colorful. And we had five different buttons that all were about the same size. And each one was a different color. How old are your kids? And they would click a button. And then from there, you can segment them, right? Yeah, really easy way to figure out. Okay, these are the resources I'm going to send to this group of people. Those are the resources I'm going to send to that group of people. I love it. Okay, you asked me what I'm seeing. I'm seeing something really interesting. And I'm curious to know your thoughts on it. So I'm seeing such a polarizing mix. I subscribe to tons of different newsletters, mostly for certain research purposes. I'm constantly looking and seeing what people are doing that's new. And I'm seeing right now this shift from these very long storytelling style emails to these really brief, hey, just thought of this thing for you. So I'm curious to know that sort of the shift between the long form versus the really short, are we shifting in the short direction, is that the trend, or is there a particular use cases? So that's one. And then the other thing I'm seeing is more frequent emails rather than just the weekly. So curious to know your thoughts on like frequency and length. Well, this is getting spicy. I love it. I would agree with you. I think it's become polarizing. I totally agree. I've seen some really short, really bare bones emails where it literally looks like clip art style, put this together in two seconds and send it out, really short dispatches. I think that's cool. What I like is that people are starting to feel more comfortable that they're testing things. We'll see in the email club and what all work on with members is if a newsletter just starts to have too many parts to it, let's just make it emails. Let's break it up. And then maybe there is a format for some people where they do have that longer, more content driven newsletter tips, tricks, all this kind of thing. And maybe then there's a really short Sunday dispatch. I've seen a few different people doing much shorter emails. I think it's honestly just going to depend on what resonates with the audience. I think people are testing things and that's exciting and that's encouraging. I definitely think in the same way that Instagram has moved away from these hyper designed feeds and aesthetics and things like that, I think emails doing the same thing. Like, I'm excited to see how that changes. The more you stare at the same thing in your inbox every week, the easier it is to tune it out. So I think it's cool to see people testing things. Yeah. Same trend. It's funny that you draw that connection because I have as well. And it feels like the same sort of shift of people are wanting authenticity. And so on Instagram that looks less curated, less designed more. Here, I'm going to post a bunch of things for my camera roll vibe and email. I'm feeling the same. I draft it on my phone and I'm shooting it off and it's written in the tone that I would speak to my friends as opposed to those newsletters that are the same repeated sections and the same kind of long format, those can work. There's definitely some newsletters that I follow that I think are still doing a great job of that. But yeah, shift to the authentic voice and just showing up like a human, I think is just across all channels. I think there you get the nail on the head where it's this human factor. I think a lot of us right now, I'm a big fan of AI and I think AI is doing amazing things for marketers. We've all signed up for newsletters that are just very clearly written by AI because somebody wanted to get something out the door. And that is so disheartening that I think we then start to lose faith in our inbox if that makes sense. Human centric, even if there's a typo in it, great. That means I know you actually wrote it telling everyone to go send emails with typos, but I think there's that human factor to it that I think we're all responding to exactly what you said that even now on Instagram, these accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers are just sharing unedited photos from their iPhone camera roll. I think it's that exact thing as people just want to know that a human is behind what's appearing in their inbox. Absolutely. It feels more engaging. You actually want to open it up and read it. Agreed. On that note, what are you seeing as far as the biggest mistakes? What are common mistakes that people are making with email? Ooh, that's a great one. Number one, honestly, from my side is really just trying to be perfect. Trying to be what you've seen from somebody else's newsletter, right? It's the number one thing that I think holds people back from being better with their emails is just trying to be perfect based on what another brand is doing. This goes back to exactly what we were just talking about. It's about authentically showing up presenting that real raw version of yourself with a slight filter in the sense that, yes, people need to actually work with you based on what you're talking to them about. That's number one. I think the second one that I see a lot of times in emails and I flag this all the time in newsletters that I get in my own inbox as well is just having really unclear CTAs or having too many CTAs. I think sometimes we're now trying to accomplish too many things with one email because we're like, oh, I've got your attention. There's this and there's that and there's that. So a lot of the work that I do with members of my email club is just getting rid of the noise, right? Making sure that every email has one very specific purpose and, you know, if there's more it can wait till next week or we can send another newsletter or something like that. Those are the main things I'm seeing now. Another thing that I think and we might get into this later so you can tell me if you want to put this on hold. I find it so interesting that a lot of people are now falling in love with some stack again. And I think there's something really interesting about more people wanting to have a newsletter, wanting to have this connection because to be fair, I think we all know, and especially your audience who are brilliant CMOs have probably seen, you need to have that email connection with people because social media is all over the place and inconsistent these days. I love it. I absolutely love it. I'm very pro social, but people are realizing they need to have a list and they're turning to sub-stack for their newsletters, which I find really interesting because sub-stack is not an email marketing tool, it's for dispatches, and kind of more storytelling and stuff. And so I find it interesting that people are turning to sub-stack to grow their lists when it's not an email marketing tool. I would be cautious. Yeah. Okay. I'm curious about this because that's one area. There's sub-stack and there's a couple of others that I've heard about. I haven't had any clients use that or similar tools, haven't used them myself, but I've definitely heard of them. I've looked into them in the past. I don't really know much about them. And I have heard polarizing opinions where it's not great for email or it's the best thing ever for email. So I'm curious to know, maybe you can give us a really quick overview of what is sub-stack and all the other similar tools. And why do you think they aren't the best versus using something like kit or float-ask or something? So I have to preface this by saying I'm not an expert. And so if any of your listeners are like, I'm a sub-stack expert. I've been there for five years. Please do not come for me. But the thing that I will say is sub-stack is like blog meets newsletters. It's a really great way to just share content. What I'm seeing a lot is influencers and content creators turn to sub-stack to have that sort of newsletter connection with an audience. I think you and I would probably both tell everyone, yes, you need to grow your audience in a place that's not Instagram. That's awesome. The only reason I say that I think that is a mistake is it's not an email marketing tool. In the sense that you're never going to send somebody a nurture flow or a sales flow or something like that from sub-stack, it's just not what it's designed to do. Let's say you are a content creator or an influencer and you've got 150,000 followers and you're starting to grow this audience on sub-stack. That's amazing. But what happens then when you decide to start treating email, honestly, but more serious marketing channel, which it is for your business, and you're really limited by what you can do. So then what are you going to do? Go open up another email marketing tool and then you're sending emails from two different things and the design. Yeah. That's the only reason why I'm just a bit cautious. I'm seeing a lot of content creators turn to sub-stack. I'm not saying it's all negative. I think it's great to grow that list somewhere. Maybe then you get to a point where you go, okay, now it's time to take this list and go to Kit. That's the only reason why I would say I'm curious to see how this unfolds. Maybe the people at sub-stack are like, hey, all these people are here. We now need to increase our capabilities. Yeah. I've seen so many marketing tools try to do that and it never is exactly what you need and they're slow and at end, you saying that is making me think about just other areas in marketing where I've come into a client's business and done an audit in the strategy and seen them make decisions, whether it be a platform they're investing or a channel they're investing in. And I think it's this element of you don't know what you don't know. And so these people building on sub-stack, if email is new to them and they don't have any idea what they could do with email, they don't even know what they should be looking for. And the segment and can I set up flows, they don't even know what that is. But when it gets to be taken as a serious channel and they're looking at segmentation and A/B testing and flows and all of these cool things you can do with email, it suddenly doesn't work for them. Right. I think that's a really good point. And the other thing I would say that, and I think you hit the nail on the head there, is I think a lot of these creators are looking for that natural next step and they don't want to be salesy because they already feel a bit uncomfortable asking people to join them on a new platform. Sub-stack I think has a great reputation for just being information shares, broadcast, things like that. There is never really anything salesy about sub-stacks. So I think that's why it is a very easy place to convince your audience to follow you. Whereas if it's kind of for my newsletter, I think people sometimes feel undeservedly, like that's a big ask if that makes sense. That just feels like an easier lift. And exactly like what you said, then I think people just don't know what you don't know. Yeah. Absolutely. If we are marketers, we're fractional CMOs, we're looking at email strategy for our clients. I want to ask you, where do you think we should be starting? We're often thinking about list growth, or we're looking at their nurture strategies, or their flows. What's your take? Because I imagine you're coming in with fresh eyes all the time, looking at your 10k email club people, and you probably have a million things that you tell them for quick wins. So what should we be looking for? Where should we be focusing? Yes. I love this question. I have the absolute privilege of going in with fresh eyes to so many female founded businesses all the time. And there's about two or three things that I consistently see. One is, great, somebody signs up for your list. Do they get a welcome email? And they go, not sure. First thing you want to do is make sure there's a welcome flow up and running, right? I really like just a basic three email welcome flow. I think that's a really nice thing to have up ready to go for getting people started. I think that's number one. Number two is that consistent weekly newsletter. I literally consider that to be the foundation of a house. Your emails are the greater house and that weekly newsletter is just the foundation. It is what everything is going to be built on. And I think a lot of times it's very easy for not necessarily your listeners because they're the ones fixing the problem, but probably their clients, probably the people that they're working with get very overwhelmed by everything else that they're seeing in the world. And they're like, I need to send this and I need to send that until you really get comfortable with that weekly routine, I wouldn't bother with anything else. So the number one and two from my side are just get that welcome flow up and running, get that weekly newsletter going. And then from there, the next thing that I would probably focus on would be if there is a freebie, right? What is the nurture/sales flow from that freebie? It's typically the one that I like to go in and look at next. What I have to imagine your listeners are seeing and your fractional CMOs are also seeing is it's really worth even if someone says they have it to go in and make it way better. You never know what copyrighter someone has hired way back in the day from Upwork. I have gone in and there's no shade or judgment to any founder. We have all found scrappy ways to make things work. But there are flows that don't really work or do wonders for a lot of businesses. So going in with a fine tooth comb and going through that copy, making sure that's all great. And then also making sure that social is a part of that same ecosystem. A lot of times I see a disconnect between social and email for a lot of founders. And it is just, first of all, it's just an easy win because we're saving time when we recycle content and share it across multiple channels. And also it's just making you much more consistent and professional. So those were, I would say the first things that I see when I typically go in with fresh eyes to a business, I have a couple questions for you. You're three email welcome flow. What are those emails? I would love for some of our listeners are, and I think I mentioned this before we hop down. So I'm a generalist. I know a little bit about all areas of marketing, but I don't deeply specialize in email. And I think that will be a lot of our listeners too. So I'd love to hear from you. What do you think actually makes a good email flow? Those three emails. What's that standard for you? Are we selling? And them? Yes. So for both product and service-based businesses, I love to have just a basic three email flow. Why did I choose three? Honestly, because it's easy enough for a founder to execute or a CMO to execute without being overwhelmed. We're not talking about 10 emails here. So what I typically do in that first email is it's going to be really short suite into the point. And my perfect welcome email typically has five things in it. One is just say thank you for signing up. Really basic, but a lot of people don't get to do this too. Tell people who you are so often founders forget to introduce themselves in emails because they just think, oh, they saw it's coming from my email address. No, they probably didn't. So please say who you are. Thanks for signing up. Say who you are. Say what's special about what you do. What is unique about your business? What is your approach that's different to how everyone else is doing whatever it is that you do, right? Whether or not that's a product or service, it doesn't matter. The next thing is tell people what they can expect. Well, literally is this a weekly newsletter? Is it one of my favorite ones I signed up for was I think from a New York Times chef where she says in my semi frequent newsletter, I'll pop into your inbox with blood a blood. I was like, I love that she set that expectation. Get them excited to open their inbox on Thursday because they'll hear from you. And then number five is give them a very clear call to action. What is the thing you want them to do? If you're a product-based business, if you've got a shop or something like that, maybe you have a 10% off code and it's go shop with that 10% off code, right? If you are a service provider, maybe that call to action is to connect with you on Instagram and tell me where you're based or something like that to start that conversation with people. So that's typically that first email. Let's say two days later, I like to do the second email. And in that second email, I really like it to be founder-focused because I think we all buy from people. I want to work with you just because I like you as a person, not necessarily because I look at your website and I like your colors. So I really like to have that second email be about the founder. Why did you start the business? Let me into your world. Not too long and drawn out, but tell me a bit about who you are and why you started this business. And then the call to action for that email can be a few different things, but I like when that one's not really salesy. It's more, connect with me, say hi, read my full story on the about page of our website or listen to this podcast episode where I take you behind the scenes of what it was like to start this business or something like that. So that's that second email. Then in that third email, we've set the scene for solving a problem, right? In the sense that I set out to do this business because x, y, and z was wrong in the world and I thought I could fix it. And that third email is where I do like it to be. And here's how I solved that problem. Here is the product or service that I am really awesome at. And then that call to action in that email could be for a product-based business. I really like taking people to what is the best selling thing that you've ever launched, right? And what do people go nuts over? What's the viral products that people can't stop getting enough of? I don't think you're going to sell a $10,000 coaching package from the third email and it will come soon. So maybe in that third email, it's then going to be having a coffee chat, right? Having a discovery call or getting in touch on Instagram or connecting on LinkedIn or somehow having that next step to learn more about that service, knowing that people aren't really going to outright buy. I think it's important that by that third email, people start to understand, oh, this is what you do because they already like you as a person. So then they want to know more about your service or your product. Yeah. And the question on the welcome email, are you using that flow after a freebie? Or do you like to pop right into a sales flow? Because I see both. So I like a hybrid after a freebie because after a freebie, I think you need more than three emails to be honest. I think that welcome flow doesn't really apply to freebies. I think it's important to have both. I think their elements of that welcome email, that about you, I think can be converted into another email in that freebie flow. When I sign up for someone's freebie, there's a really good chance I don't know that much about them. So I like a longer or more not drawn out flow. I like it to be a bit more spicy and exciting and engaging and also with a lot more teachable tips and things like that. I really like a flow like that for after a freebie. And then I'm talking probably at least seven to 10 emails. And are you selling in that flow? Yes. If it's a super high ticket thing, it's going to depend on what your, what does your sales like will look like for that are the doors always open? How does somebody apply? Things like that. So I think at the end of my current freebie flow, I think it's an application or what I'm calling an email diagnosis to figure out what's the problem with your list? They fill out a questionnaire and then that triggers an email to set up a coffee chat with me where we can talk about their list, work for those higher ticket things. Yeah. I think at the end of the day, we got to lead people back to our website services. I've already given you something for free. Congratulations. You can give me something in return. Yeah. I love that you're saying that too, because I do think there's this resistance. Sometimes we see from clients on all channels, email, social where they're like, oh, I don't want to be salesy and I don't want to be annoying. And my take on it is you want to be providing value. Of course, if you're like a car salesman on all of your channels and all you're doing is sell, of course, that's not going to work. But at the same time, you need to sell. People need to know what you do. You need to talk about it often. They're busy. They're not reading every single thing that you share on all of your channels. And so I think there's this balance of you need to sell and it's okay to sell and you actually want social media followers that want to buy an email list of people who want to buy from you. Otherwise, what are you doing? Yes. I think one of my favorite emails I ever got and I hope I am crediting it to the right source. I think it was Marie Forleo who basically told me you are stealing. I think this was the whole point of her email. Marie is out there right now looking at your competitors or trying to find the person to solve their problem. If you are not talking about what you're doing, you are robbing them of the chance to make the right decision. And I remember I was like, oh, that's so good because I think that's exactly how I feel about it. And the sense that I'm so with you, I am not out here trying to tell everyone, buy my freebie limited time. Do this. Do that. Absolutely not. But all of us set out to probably solve some sort of problem, right? So somebody is clearly looking to solve that problem. And if you don't tell people about your solution to that problem, your ideal customer is probably going to buy it from the wrong person. And you're stealing from them. And I think that's so accurate where there is a time and a place to let somebody know that you have their solution. Yeah. Absolutely. And you mentioned something about using email content on your other channels and things like that. So can you tell me what you're seeing that works really well because what that makes me think of is I see some people do it really well and then I see people where they're pretty much taking all of their email copy and turning it into a carousel. And I'm thinking, why am I cluttering up my email when I could just unsubscribe? And I know you're going to share it all on your LinkedIn or your Instagram. So how are you seeing people do that in a way where they are repurposing and not creating extra work for themselves? But it's also different enough that you feel as a subscriber or follower. You're getting different value from each channel. Oh, that's such a good question. And I love that you bring that up because I would say if you're not recycling this content in some way, shape or form, you're giving yourself extra work to post more on social. So I think already on social of really easy win from my side is to tease your newsletter content in a story. I always use Thursday because I said my newsletter on Thursday. But if you're sending on Thursday, what are you already teasing for people on Tuesday or Wednesday that is giving them, let's say we're getting into three different tips for how you can write better subject lines on Thursday. I would share one in my story. So I'm already educating people, giving them something and it's like, Hey, do you want the other two tips, including the one that increased my open rate by 15% on my last email, sign up for this week's newsletter and you'll get it in your inbox on Thursday morning. That's an easy win and I think is interesting enough. I would say the way I think about it in terms of repurposing something into a carousel is just making sure that your subscribers are always getting the full picture. I always want to make sure that my email subscribers feel like my VIPs. They should feel like the most important person because they've given me something, they've given me their email address, a follower can leave it any time and there's probably a good chance that depending on how the Instagram algorithm is feeling that day, they might not even see my post. I want to give them 100% of my knowledge and content and everything like that. Not really, but I still want to say thanks for being here and give them something. So how can I recycle that content and share a few of the really cool juicy takeaways, but not give them the full story. And I'm not saying to create a half baked post, but what I typically do with my newsletter is as I'm going through, I highlight the parts of it where I'm like, pull this out, take it for social. Right? Pull this out, take it for social. It can stand on its own. And then if people want more content like that, the CTA for that carousel post could be to get more content like this every Thursday in your newsletter and write better newsletters, subscribe to my list by commenting blah, blah, blah. If people have a podcast, is it a similar approach? Do you mean with recycling podcast content? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think that with podcasts, I almost think of it as the reverse structure where podcasts are longer, right? We're never going to write a one hour long email. What I would suggest there is again, having maybe a few of those juicy takeaways be bullet to points in the newsletter, getting into what are the things that you're talking about. It is very meta, but even talking about our conversation today. If people are really interested in what's the hot take on sub-stack, great. Here's why you maybe should be using it. Find out why you shouldn't by listening to the episode things like that to really give people a few takeaways where I never like when a newsletter just as serves as a tease. If you're not giving me anything and you're just trying to stoke some FOMO and get me to sign up for something, I'm not interested in anything. I've seen so much of that where it's okay, I'm covering the five ways I built my business as a fractional CMO and the emails three lines and it's go listen to the podcast. I'm like, you haven't even given me anything. I'm not even really intrigued yet. So I love that idea of taking a little nugget. And like you said, the reverse when it comes to the podcast and teasing a bit of that so that they have value if they don't choose to go listen, but then it's also driving them to go listen potentially. And it feels if we were to create a rule around this, it's almost like the longest form content is the one that sort of leads and then you're taking nuggets, taking nuggets from your podcast via newsletter or taking nuggets from your newsletter for social, but just not repurposing the entire thing. I agree. Turn nuggets. Yeah. So long form leads and then nuggets. What I want to talk a little bit about email KPIs because I feel when it comes to just marketing KPIs as a whole, clients, marketers can get overwhelmed. What are we tracking? There's a million things we can track and there's also some roadblocks, I guess, with email tools where you can only get so much information. And if you want to get more granular, you're looking at a UTM strategy and setting up Google Analytics and all of these things, and I think sometimes I see the pendulum swing really far where people are tracking literally nothing, they know nothing about their email or they are tracking everything and it's too much data and they get analysis paralysis because they are just looking at everything and then doing nothing about the data. So in your opinion, what's the most important data to track, just if you're starting, if you're on that side, tracking nothing. And then what point or if ever are you really getting granular and setting up some additional layers of tracking? So you can see, let's say, sales driven from one email or an email flow. Yes. Oh my gosh. I love this. Such a good question. I am a big fan of just keeping it simple and consistent. And in the 10k email club, what we do with every member is from the very first call. We have a really simple dashboard in ocean where we track open rate, click rate, subscriber number, and unsubscribes. That's it. I keep it really simple. Number one, I want to track subscriber number over time, just to make sure that we're always growing, right? We're not growing. We need to be doing something to get the word out about this business, right? So subscriber number is number one. I just always like to keep track of unsubscribes. I think unsubscribes are healthy and if people want to unsubscribe, bless and release them. Do not obsess over it. Do not see if it's your neighbor who is not interested in your email anymore. I can't tell you the number of people who have been like, oh my gosh, can you believe she unsubscribed? I'm like, it's clearly not going to buy from you. So unsubscribes and subscribes, and then my biggest KPI is honestly just open rate. Because if we're putting in all this time to emails, I want to make sure people are seeing them. If you're seeing an open rate of 25%, that means that 75% of your list did not open that email that you put that time and effort into. Yeah. I really like to track open rate as the number one KPI supported by the click rate. Why I say click rate gets a bit dicey is depending on the newsletter, especially not every newsletter is going to have an amazingly clickable super jewel worthy button that people want to click. So I take that one with a grain of salt, but I think it's really important to track over time because if you're seeing a click rate of 0.2% consistently, we've got a problem and we need to figure out how to reengage people. So those are the main ones that I like to take stock of for any list size, small, large, starting established for me that sort of indicator, that overall health indicator is looking like those are the ones that I like to keep track of. As you're dealing with more product-based businesses, then I like to throw in if we want to track sales from a certain thing when we're doing sales. Just a unique code for the email list is the most easy rudimentary way to start tracking sales from the list. I love that. When you look at those first four, I believe you mentioned that are the baseline. Yeah. I get this question a lot. Is there an average? Is there a goal we're looking for when it comes to open rate? Click your rate, growth rate percentage, or are you seeing it differ depending on the industry the size of business? I'm curious. I think a really generic boring answer would be it varies, right? But I gave an example of a 25% open rate and I think a 25% open rate might be common for some people. For me, that's too low. So what I like to see is in the email club, I'm proud that everyone has at least above a 40% open rate. I really want to see above 40%. To me, 50% is the gold standard in the sense that just I can be at peace with the fact that 50% of people did not care about what I have to say, but 60% is too high. Like 50% of the people that signed up for my newsletter are at least interested. So for me, 50% would be a gold standard. I would say anything above 40%, 35% to 40% also still good. Anything in there I'm fine with. In terms of click rate, like I said, it's going to depend on, do you always have something clickable in that email? I think we're looking at industry standards between 1 and 3% to 4% something like that. I've also worked with especially the content creators or bloggers or I work with a parenthood content creator and her entire newsletter is sharing resources and products and things that she loves. Her entire newsletter is so clickable that her click rate is consistently at 8% or higher. What she does is so clickable and it's not a storytelling newsletter, right? So there it's going to depend. So I do think it's fair to say that you should want your click rate to be over 1%. If you're getting between that 2% and 4%, I'm happy. And then in terms of that open rate, it's going to depend. But between 35 and 40 is awesome. I would aim for 50. Okay. That's amazing. And on click through rates, making me think of a kind of side tangent question for you. But with personal brand newsletters, are you seeing super signatures work well in newsletters? Justin Walsh is probably the best example that comes to mind for me where I actually really love his newsletter. It's always just really great storytelling. I like his style of writing and at the end of it, I don't know if you subscribed to him, but he's got a, when you're ready to work with me, here are the ways. And there's three or four different things you can buy or opt into. I think sometimes he's got freebie in the mix there, curious to know your thoughts on that because you had said earlier about having not too many CTAs and that kind of can go against that sometimes. But we're seeing both with clients, whether it's super signature or just getting super specific depending on the email content. Ooh, I love this question. So I would say for me, I don't like distractions. So if it's time to sell and if we're doing a sales flow, I don't want that super signature. Like then I would take it away. I think for a weekly newsletter, what I always tell the clients and members that I work with is if somebody read that and they want to work with you and all you've done is send them to your podcast as the button, which is fine. There needs to be something they can click to go to your website, to go to your services, right? I think Becky is one of our mutual friends and I love Becky's newsletter and I actually took inspiration from Becky's newsletter because at the end she always has this sort of exactly same thing of if you want to work with me, here's how that might look or here's the button to click if you want to work with me type thing. It's not a really prominent button and it's not dominating the email, but it's there is this grounding piece at the end of the email, it's this navigator, it's this compass for the email. If you read this and you actually are ready to work with me because you think I'm so wonderful, here's what you would click and I think in a weekly newsletter, especially for somebody with a personal brand, I think that's perfect. Amazing. I want to ask you one more question about list building. What are some of your favorite ways to build lists? Love it. Okay. A few different things. One of course is going to be a freebie, right? What kind of irresistible freebie can you put out there? I just love having a freebie for those moments where you're like, oh my gosh, what am I going to post today? Remember that time I put all that effort into creating this amazing free resource for people? So having a freebie is just a really easy, awesome way and a win to grow your list. Social. Honestly, all of us put so much time into showing up on social. Please talk about your newsletter at least once a week on social, product-based business, service-based business. I don't care. Talk about your newsletter at least once a week on social in a story if you can and then get people to join your list. Those are just organic ways that work. It's a slow burn. So those are two foolproof ways. Another way that I actually really like to play around with growing my list is, this is a really umbrella term. It's been collaborations going back to Becky, right? I collaborated with Becky. I call them newsletter takeovers. I took over her newsletter. She took over my newsletter and then the call to action for that was to sign up for each other's newsletter. What is that? Doing that for founders who I just genuinely like and get along with because a lot of times your audiences are aligned, they go, "Oh, wow. I loved Becky. Becky was so cool." And they go sign up for her newsletter and I now have 10K email club members who've signed up to work with Becky as a result of that. So it's just a cool way to, again, slowly but surely grow your list with the right people. Are there content creators in your sphere who share a similar audience? And would you be willing to have them talk about your newsletter? That could be something that I've actually tried in the past and it worked. And then of course, there's ads. But ads is a whole can of worms that I feel until you are so confident that your email structure is airtight and you are ready to convert those people, welcome those people and nurture those people once they show up on your list. All of your listeners are already going to know this but I'm worried that some female founder who doesn't have a CMO yet just listens to this and be like, "I've been doing ads." That's episode two. We'll have you back and we'll talk about when are we ready for ads. I would love that, exactly. So ads are a great way to grow your list. It can work wonders for growing your list but you need to be ready for it. So that's why before you do that, I would grow the organic way with a few of those different things that we just talked about. I love it. Okay. This has been amazing. Emily, thank you so much. I feel like I could talk all day long with you about email. Maybe I'm an email nerd. This has been so fun. Is there anything as we wrap up here? Anything that we haven't talked about that you think is really important for either the marketing strategist or the fractional CMO who's leading email for a client? I feel like we've talked about so many tangible, practical facts stats. That's not what I love. I love talking about this kind of thing. I think at the end of the day, the most success that I've ever seen with email is just from, and I don't want to sound so cliche here, but it's really not being afraid to have fun with it, to be weird with it, to get funky with your segments, to spice things up, to try sending an email to only 11 people and see how it performs, and include that in the subject line. One of the most fun emails I ever did was only 11 people are seeing this email, and my open rate was, of course, like 100%, because they're like, what's inside? So yeah, to really just not being afraid to test things, not being afraid to fail, and not being afraid to take up that space in somebody's inbox, right? Just knowing that there's always value in there. I was at this amazing, a few more founders conference a couple of weeks ago, and I think her name was Priscilla Tsai, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, and she's the CEO of CocoKind, which is an amazing beauty brand, and she said that she challenges her team. Every piece of content they share, there must be value in it. There has to be value in everything they are sharing, and if she doesn't find value in that, she challenges them to go back to the drawing board and then try again. So I just make sure that you're giving people value, and don't be afraid to show up with it. Don't be afraid to take up that space authentically, because people are at least going to know that it's not generated by a cloud or a chat GPT. My favorite email, speaking of being weird, is Jen from Tonic, and I think she's so weird. It's even something along the lines of her weird, rambly long email or something, and there's not a lot of emails that I will religiously read, but hers always. They are just full of personality and entertaining value packed, so don't be afraid to be weird, be yourself, be authentic, and don't be afraid to test, show up, all of those things. Thank you so much, Emily, for breaking down email for us in a way that makes sense. We talked about so many things that are working right now in 2025, and I know I was scribbling notes and have so many takeaways. If this episode was valuable for you, please rate, review, screenshot it, share it with Emily and I on social, let us know your takeaways, and thank you for listening. I will see you next time on CMO School.