Cold Connections: How PodMatch overhauled their cold email strategy to better build relationships and help more podcasters succeed

Nikki Elbaz: I think that’s amazing that people are responding six months later. That is
so cool.
Alex Sanfilippo: It’s really cool. I actually those are my favorite ones to get because I’m
like, wow, someone actually really thought about this. So those are so fun.
Every other week we’ll talk to an email expert about an experiment
they ran
Nikki Elbaz: Welcome to email swipes, where we peek behind the scenes at the emails
that catch your attention and earn their place in your swipe file. Every other week we’ll
talk to an email expert about an experiment they ran, and in the following episode, we’ll
dive into the strategies and methods used in the email so you can inform and inspire
your own email work. I’m Nikki Elbas, the copywriter behind winning emails for eight
and nine figure SaaS and ecommerce brands like Shopify Four, Sigmatic, and Sprout
Social. And I know that hearing the background stories to these emails will help you
turn pie in the sky insights into plug and play actions ready to make inspiration tactical.
Let’s go. First, let’s read today’s email.
Nikki Elbaz: Hey, congrats on your success with email swipes. I immediately noticed
you’ve released more episodes than most podcasters ever do.
Nikki Elbaz: Keep it up.
Nikki Elbaz: I’d love to listen to the show to support it. What’s one of your favorite recent
episodes that I can start with? Drop me a link so I can listen on my end. I created a quiz
called Podscore. It’s a data driven, free quiz that helps podcasters reach their goals
faster.
Nikki Elbaz: Plus, it tells you which of the.
Nikki Elbaz: Twelve podcaster personality types you are. I’m, the software savvy seven.
I’d love for you to take the quiz. When you send me your recent favorite episode, let me
know your podcaster personality type too. If there’s anything I can do to.
Nikki Elbaz: Be helpful, let me know.
Nikki Elbaz: Everything I do is in my signature. So glad to be connected. Looking
forward, Alex Fan Filippo focused on helping podcast hosts and guests reach more
listeners and grow their income so they can change more lives.
Alex Sanfilippo helps match podcast guests and hosts for interviews
How I serve podcasters Pod match matching podcast guests and hosts for interviews
Pod score take the quiz to find your podcaster personality type. Podcasters report. See
how your podcast compares to the industry. I’m a real person, but if you don’t want to
hear from me, click here. I respect your privacy and won’t email you again either way.
Nikki Elbaz: Alex, thank you so much for joining. Tell us who you are and what you do.
Alex Sanfilippo: Yeah, Nikki, thank you so much for having me. My name is Alex
Sanfilippo. I’m the founder of a website called podmatch.com and Podmatch is a
software that automatically connects podcast guests and podcast hosts for interviews. I
always say it works like a dating app, but instead of connecting for dates, connects you
for podcast interviews. In addition, on podcast hosts and educator in the podcasting
space, 100% of the time, what I focus on is podcasting for guests and hosts alike. Just
trying to help them build a level up and grow their influence and creativity.
Nikki Elbaz: Super.
Nikki created an email that helps podcasters get better results from
podcasts
So tell us about this email that you created. Clearly you are serving the podcast
industry amazingly well and trying to get pod match out there to podcasters. So this is
kind of where this email sits. So what was the, strategy behind it and how did you come
up with this idea?
Alex Sanfilippo: Yeah, so I actually realized that I know pod match helps podcast guests
and hosts. I know the value it has, but it does have a price. And I used to just send
people straight to that. I know it helps, but that’s a hard pill for someone to swallow,
being like, hey, cold email to me and you’re trying to sell me something. And so this was
an alternative to that. So basically what we decided to do with this email is instead of
leading people to pod match, we lead people to a, quiz that we created instead. And so
we want to acknowledge that they have achieved something in podcasting. So that’s the
first thing we kind of open up with. And then we go into, hey, there’s a quiz. It’s like fun
personality quiz, but also will help give you a roadmap for how you can get better
results from your podcast and everything there is free, there’s no paywalls, no upsells
anywhere involved in it. As a matter of fact, if you click through stuff, you’re going to see
it mentioned. It’s not ever said, okay, and here you have to use podmatch to do this
stuff. It’s just not the route we wanted to take because we really wanted to help people
make it in. Podcasting was really the goal behind this. So the whole motivating factor
was just, can we do better and have some sort of free educational resource that really
serves people? And that was the entire idea behind what we’ve got here.
Nikki Elbaz: And I think it’s so cool because people will talk about give value, nurture
the relationship, but when it comes, push comes m to shove, they’ll send a white paper
or some blog post that doesn’t actually nurture the relationship, but here not only is it
something that’s not necessarily even connected, where they don’t even have to use it
in order to feel that value which you are promoting, it throughout a little bit, which is nice
so that they get that value, but as well, they’re seeing you, they’re interfacing with you,
and you’re giving them value that then contributes to your success. Because if they
continue podcasting, because we know so many podcasters don’t continue, if they
continue podcasting, they’re going to be more likely to use your services. So it’s really
such a great win win. And I love the idea. When I saw it, I was just like, wow, this is so
cool. There’s so many pieces here that you do that support your main goal, that really
people can come at it from so many different angles. I thought that was very cool.
Alex Sanfilippo: Yeah, that was important because you just mentioned the data point,
Nikki, that a lot of people don’t make it in podcasting. And I just pulled up the numbers
today. There’s only about 50% chance that people will make it through two months of a
podcast.
Nikki Elbaz: Wow.
Alex Sanfilippo: 12% people make it to a year, and 6% people make it to two years. And
that’s typically where I find that 100 episode mark. If you do one a week takes two
years. That
00:05:00
Alex Sanfilippo: 6% is really where I find meaningful results begin to happen if you don’t
have everything set up correctly. And most of us, we learn as we go, right? So it takes
about that much time to really gain that traction, figure out our lane and things like that.
And some people do it faster, but in general, that’s really, like, the motivating factor. I
was like, man, yes, podmatch helps, but people don’t realize that right away. And that’s
okay. Let’s come up with something else that can help them position themselves to be
in that 6% that are gonna make it to where the results really start kicking in and even
help them yield those results faster? Cause that failure rate was just so high. That, to
me, is just a real shame in podcasting to see that.
Nikki Elbaz: Yeah. Especially because everyone starts out so excited, because it really
is such a great medium where you’re meeting people and networking with people and
having great conversations, and then it’s like, oh, I have to edit this every week. Oh,
right, I have to find new guests.
Alex Sanfilippo: Oh, exactly. It. Yep. And trying to kind of get rid of some of the stigma
around there and train people in some ways to do the things. It took guys like me three
years to figure out, and it’s not all me. The education comes from a lot of people, and so
it’s just a matter of, can we help people figure out how to make this thing work as a long
term part of their life faster. Again, I, can go on that being the motivating factor. That’s
really, ultimately it’s all about because with my company, we’ve done our best to tie our
result to how the industry is doing as a whole. So the way that we earn, the way we
make is based off of how well we contribute to serve the industry. I come from a serve
first background. That’s my whole life mentality. And so we’ve done our best to really
align the company in that way.
Nikki Elbaz: That’s amazing. And you see it also. We were speaking before I hit record,
how Alex has a partnership with Riverside and speaks to them and helps them with
their features. You really do that. You really tie yourself to the industry. That’s amazing.
That’s really cool.
Alex Sanfilippo: Yeah. Thank you.
The email was created to help people stick with podcasting
Nikki Elbaz: Okay, so who contributed to this email idea? Was it your team working
together? did you just sit down and write it one day? What was the creation process
like?
Alex Sanfilippo: So we already had the quiz and the course because again, the whole
idea was, how can we help people stick with podcasting? How can we encourage them,
motivate them and give them some tools? And ultimately, we can only lead someone to
water, can’t make them drink, right. So we wanted to just help get them there. And I
realized, I was like, man, we don’t talk about this much. Like, this has been really
helpful. And we kind of, we’re even able to see the data, like, people who go through
that quiz and jump into the course, which, again, all freely included. Those people were
the ones that were part of that 6% that are making it. I was like, we’ve got to get this in
front of more people. I enjoy writing. I’m not always the best. Nikki, you’ll love to hear
this. I come from a big corporate background, so I had to learn how to write when I got
out of that because it was all so structured and proper and legal and, and all that.
Nikki Elbaz: So I had to jargon, yes, it.
Alex Sanfilippo: Took me a while, and I’m still not the best at it, but I have developed my
voice really well. The way I talk in person is the way I talk in email as well. And it’s taken
me a while. Weirdly enough, it’s not supernatural to be able to do that well. And so I’m
getting better and better at it. So for me, I took a couple weeks to write. It took me about
two weeks. And I’d always just do it when I’m feeling inspired and I just tweak the
verbiage. I would let the computer talk to me so I could listen to it, make sure that, does
that sound like something that I would actually say? And then I had my wife read it, and
she had tons of feedback, my business partner. And then we launched it to a small
group of people just to check. And whenever confusion came up, because sometimes I
say things that don’t make sense, like all of us do, there were some things that just
didn’t make sense to people. So we go in there and tweak that verbiage. But all in all, I’d
say it was a month long project to come up with just that one email, and there’s no
sequence after it. If you never respond, you never hear from us again. We make sure
that you automatically get added to a. I don’t know all the technical term, but some sort
of blacklist. Unless you sign up for something we do, then it’ll bring you back into it. But
it’s just one email that goes out, and I wrote it, and I think it does a pretty good job right
now.
Nikki Elbaz: I was gonna say it really does capture your voice where it really does feel
very personal and very helpful, legitimately helpful. You’ll get a lot of cold email where it
feels like the person is trying to be helpful, but it actually feels like they’re trying to help
themselves. And this actually felt legitimately helpful. I think you touched on that before,
where you were saying, I want to lead to somewhere that gives immediate value, not
somewhere that gives value for money, not to our paid product, but somewhere else. So
I think that’s part of what makes it so helpful. But I think also just naturally, your voice,
like you said, you come from a serve first background. I think that just comes through as
well. I love the workflow of having the computer read it to you. You hear that how you’re
supposed to read your writing to yourself, but I love the idea of having it read it to you.
So you’re actually listening more than when you read it yourself. And then obviously
giving it to other people for feedback, like personal people, like your wife. That’s a great
idea. And then business people as well. And then, of course, getting the feedback and
iterating on it, it’s so important for cold email. I think that’s like the number one strategy
that people miss in cold email, is all the iteration that has to go into it. After you send it
and get feedback, just keep iterating and iterating on it. So, kudos. Good job.
Alex Sanfilippo: Thank you. We actually implemented this in our entire way, we do even
just like a blast. Let’s just use pod match as an example that are on there. Occasionally
we’ll have an update go out. We want to email to people. We segment the whole thing
out where it sends one email every x minutes and we choose what the x minutes are,
but it can be changed at any point. So we’ll start sending it. And so we come back and
sometimes be like, hey, you had a typo. We fixed a typo. So the next person gets it. A
few minutes later it comes through and so it’ll go
00:10:00
Alex Sanfilippo: through the whole thing that way. But we find that typically there’s five
or ten changes just because sometimes my voice, again, doesn’t really translate to
written when you can’t hear me speaking it. Right, so m. Yeah, and so we’ve done our
whole thing that way. But you’re right. Like, I’ve found you have to make those changes
because if you just set it and forget it, it doesn’t always land the way you want it to.
Nikki Elbaz: That’s a really great idea to just give yourself that buffer time to fix things. I
love how, huh? Gmail. I mean, I don’t know how recent it was, but it feels recent to me.
It’s probably a few years ago. It lets you undo ascend. That was like, whoa.
Alex Sanfilippo: Needed that one. Feels like yesterday, but I needed it 100 years ago.
Nikki Elbaz: Exactly. Yes. So this is kind of like that equivalent.
You mentioned that there’s no follow up email for coaching clients
Okay, so you mentioned that there’s no follow up email. What was the decision behind
that? To not give a follow up?
Alex Sanfilippo: Yeah, this is probably where your wisdom, Nikki would be able to come
in. I didn’t want to come across as annoying or pushy at all. And so we send it and we
just let it be. I don’t know. Other than that, I didn’t want to be annoying. I don’t want to
add someone to, like, a full on email list. It’s like they’re in a full segment. Because I
know for me that happens a lot. Like, I end up on emails and typically, I’m not even sure
why. Oh, actually, I found out why recently. LinkedIn. Somewhere, someone left me a
review saying that Alex was a great coach. And so my LinkedIn messages are always
like, hey, are you looking for more coaching clients? Nikki? I’m not a coach and never
have been. But somehow these people also get my email address and they add me to,
like, these segments that are 2030 emails long, all about how I can grow my coaching
practice. I don’t have a coaching practice. And so I believe in treating people the way
you want to be treated. For me, I don’t want all those emails. And sometimes I feel rude,
unsubscribing or responding, saying, can you remove me from this list? I tend to be a
fairly nice guy who doesn’t love confrontation. Naturally, it doesn’t come to me, at least.
And so for me, I was just like, you know what? The way I want people to treat me is try
once. If I don’t respond, then let’s just leave it at that. And so we decided to do one. And
the interesting thing is, even this week already, I’ve had five or, maybe six people
respond. They got this email six months ago and they’re saying, hey, it took me a long
time to respond, but I really wanted to prioritize this. And they’re just now getting back
to me. And I have to imagine if I had 1020 emails going out, eventually they just be like,
forget this. This is just too much for me to keep up with. But I’m finding people who are
saving it and saying, yeah, I came back to it. I took a break from podcasting, but I’m
back now. So the deciding factor ultimately was just my own personal preference that I
wanted to treat people the way I like to be treated. If it’s a best practice, I don’t know. So
I don’t want to give that advice on your podcast. You’re the true expert. They would
know the right move here, probably.
Nikki Elbaz: No, I think that’s excellent because there are best practices that don’t fit
either certain industries or certain personalities or just the way that you want to do
business. So if that doesn’t work for you and it’s working that people are opening and
responding and you’re hitting your goals, then great. Why not do business the way that
you want to do business if it’s working? So clearly you can’t just, you know, mojitos on
the beach all day because that’s the way you want to do business. But there’s so much
room to do things the way that we want to do things and to build relationships that we
want the way we want to. Cause ultimately, that’s what email is all about, that we don’t
have to follow the best practices if they don’t feel right for us. As long as we’re reviewing
metrics and making sure that we’re still hitting the results that we want, it’s good advice.
Alex Sanfilippo: Thank you.
Nikki Elbaz: I think that’s amazing. People are responding six months later. That is so
cool.
Alex Sanfilippo: It’s really cool. I actually, those are my favorite ones to get because I’m
like, wow, someone actually really thought about this. So those are so fun. This week
I’ve been having a good time.
Nikki Elbaz: Great. Oh, and they all happen at the same time. That’s cool.
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00:15:00
Nikki Elbaz: time. Thanks Nikki. I love your playbooks. And one last one, this one from a
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Go grab a playbook or two and email them to twelve@nikielbuzz
So whether you want to save time, understand things better, or just get some amazing
inspiration, go grab a playbook or two, or twelve@nikielbuzz.com. email playbooks. And
yes, that link is in the show notes. Wish you were an ECOM just so that you could grab
my playbooks. But you’re in sass. Don’t worry, I got your back with the SAS success
pack. Say that five times fast. Okay. Don’t just head to the show notes. You’ll find the link
and grab it there.
You had an email framed around that idea, which I thought was really
great
Okay, back to our show.
Nikki Elbaz: Okay, so you’ve mentioned that there’s no follow ups to this email, but I
know because I’ve received this and taken the quiz and all that, that there are follow
ups to the people who take the quiz. And actually, you mentioned, there was something
that you mentioned that I remember seeing in one of the emails. It was that you don’t do
the work. If you don’t do the work, then you’re not going to see the results. So you had
an email framed around that idea, which I thought was really great because you give so
much value in that course, but you have to actually take the course and do the course.
So it was a really nice flow. All the different pieces, like trying to get people to take the
course and do the pieces. So what was that creation like? Were you involved in that?
Was that your team?
Alex Sanfilippo: Yeah, all me again. And, I should mention this. Everything. So the
course, the quiz, everything. We only have one email address, the whole company,
teamodmatch.com dot. And the way we handle it is there’s only three of us that handle
any of it. I’m one of them. So if you’re responding one of those emails, chances are it’s
gonna be me getting back to people. And a lot of people like, man, that does not scale
as a founder, but I’m a very community driven, service first type of person, and it’s just
the way I like to do business. And so we’ve built a lot of systems around things that
typically founders wouldn’t automate, that that would be their job. We’ve automated a lot
of those bigger picture things. So I can focus on a lot of the communication back and
forth because we truly believe we have a community. That’s what we believe. And so I
wrote those emails as well, and I did two things to come up with those. One was my
own experience going through courses, quizzes and stuff like that. But two I shared the
journey of what I learned along the way and the struggle that I had and the struggle and
journey that people had that went through the beta of it, like, what they were coming
back with. I just kind of logged all that stuff as data. I’m, like an excel nerd. So I was
putting it all in excel and realizing, hey, like, I should send you about this at this point,
because people were all saying it felt like a lot, or, I’m not seeing results. And it’s like,
well, have you done any of it? Well, no. I’m like, well, it doesn’t work for you. So, yeah, I
just kind of scheduled out. I shared, like, a lot of the journey, and one of them, right
before I launched this whole thing, before we started, I went to high ticket mastermind
and I got the hot seat. So it’s a bunch of professionals that have done a lot more than I
have from a business standpoint, I’m not selling myself short. These are just very
accomplished people. And I told them the whole plan. The course previously, I had
been selling it for $1,200. I was like, but I want to give it for free for anyone who goes
through the quiz first, and every single one of them must be 15 people there advised
very strongly against doing that. They’re like, they’re not going to take it seriously.
They’re not going to go through it. And so one of the emails is that I literally shared their
response of, like, they told me not to do it, but I’m doing it anyway. Cause I think it
serves that thing I said, prove me right, is what I think the title of it was. And I’m asking
you, like, prove me right. They made the right decision to invest in you, assuming that
you’re gonna be willing to invest in yourself. And so, yeah, the whole thing is very
personal the whole way through it. I actually had a lot of fun making that email
sequence, and we get a lot of responses to it and a lot of people saying, hey, thank you
for this email specifically. And I love that. And again, you’re a true professional in this
space, and I’m not gonna claim that I am. It’s worked well. It could probably be a little bit
better, more impactful, better open, right? There could be all that. But at the end of the
day, I know that the people that are really on the journey wanting to make it with their
podcast are the ones that are really going through it and taking it very seriously.
Nikki Elbaz: I think it was done very well. Thank you. I think to the point of going through
the excel sheets. That’s what we do as copywriters, is take what other people are telling
us and just spin it into an email that makes sense to read. So you’re doing a fabulous
job. It’s great. And the fact that people are responding and saying thank you for creating
this specific email is what got me to move forward. That’s incredible. To the point of the,
one email address. I kept trying different emails to respond to you.
Alex Sanfilippo: I saw that one email, you cc’d a bunch of, I laugh because it’s like, Alex
at this, this. I was like, how funny. But it’s so rare and sometimes it bites me in the back
a little bit because sometimes I’m like, hey, people, like, oh, how can I email you? I’m
like, teamodmatch.com dot in person. They’re like, seriously, man? Because they’re like,
that’s gonna go to your team. I’m like, no, I promise it’s me. 100% it’s me. I know it
sounds weird to, but I thought that was really funny. You’re the first person I’ve ever
seen do that. I loved it because I’ve definitely done that a bunch of times as well. You
and I think alike.
Nikki Elbaz: Oh, that’s so great. I was like, I just want to make sure the calendar invite
gets to you and this email gets to you. That’s funny.
You sent out a cold pitch and people responded rudely
Okay, so when you set this up, this first cold pitch, what were the emotions around that
where you’re like, okay, I’m gonna start sending this quiz out to people. What, were the
thoughts there?
Alex Sanfilippo: Terrified. I was very
00:20:00
Alex Sanfilippo: confident in the quiz. I knew that it helped, but I was absolutely terrified.
Previously doing this, we just invited people to pod match and it was going to much
smaller scale. Like, we’ve grown and made more contacts and other people have
helped us find people’s, hey, this person might be interested, all that, right? But at first it
wasn’t going to many people, but I was hearing back and people sometimes were just
really rude because it seemed robotic. Again, recovering from my long corporate email
writing sprint, it seemed more robotic. Felt that way. So people didn’t mind responding.
Probably the assumption no human was actually gonna read. It was some very rude
things. Again, I’m not like a confrontation guy, and honestly, like, it hurt. I was doing my
best to help. Maybe it wasn’t the best delivery on my, I’m trying to help, but it really did
hurt. So when I sent this one, I was legitimately terrified. I told my wife, I’m like, I don’t
want to read any response. I m put everything into this, but I just have a feeling the first
one’s gonna be, hey, f off, man. Right. And that stuff hurts some people. It doesn’t. And
I’ve actually, I’ve got a coach in my life who has helped me learn to. He doesn’t say
develop thick skin. He says developed translucent skin where it just doesn’t stick at all.
Nikki Elbaz: Interesting.
Alex Sanfilippo: It’s helping. But in the day, what really made me okay with the emotion
was knowing that, hey, I really do have a heart to serve. And there’s no capitalistic, me
first mentality in anything I’m sending here. Like, I really am trying to help, and if
someone doesn’t see that or they’re not, interested, I’m still going to just love them
regardless, but let them feel the way they do. And that’s what I’ve come to the
conclusion of. But absolutely terrified. Like, one of the most scary things I’ve ever done
was hitting launch, or I go live with all that there. So it took a lot for me to do that, for
sure.
Nikki Elbaz: It’s very hard putting yourself out there, especially when people are rude
back and you’ve had experience like that. So did you not read the responses initially?
Alex Sanfilippo: No, I did.
Nikki Elbaz: Wow.
Alex Sanfilippo: I did. so Alicia, my wife, she’s also one of the three business partners in
this. So she’s like the gatekeeper of, like, a new email that comes through. So that
would technically go to her first. And I want to say she’s never told me this, but I’m
pretty sure she filtered some of the nice ones to me to build my confidence. And she
probably handled the meaner ones, but I don’t know. I did see a few of those come
through, but at, the end of the day, I just had to remember, like, hey, you know what? If
this is not something I can help, it’s not something I can help. That’s okay. And we still
respond, even, unless it’s just absolutely ridiculous, but we’ll still respond even the
mean ones, not to try to convert them, just to say, hey, so sorry. I want to let you know
we won’t be emailing you again. And just to do that. But I think at first she probably
gated those and gave me just a few of the nice ones to boost my confidence. But, yeah,
from day one, we respond to anything that comes through.
Nikki Elbaz: Wow, that’s so cool.
To date we’ve had just under 6000 people take the quiz
Okay, so as time went on, what were the different responses you got? And even just the
results in terms of the amount of people taking the quiz, things like that.
Alex Sanfilippo: Yeah, to date we’ve had just under 6000 people take it and it’s been
going for at time of recording this about a year. And so it’s been a great result, people
taking the quiz and the responses have been all over the place. Some people jumping
straight into the quiz and the course side as well and learning. And I engage with all the
comments there as well. Again, communication is really what I’ve freed up my time to
do to really educate because I just find a, the better podcasters do, the better we do as
a company, which creates a great win win. But a lot of the response has been very
interesting. People said would kind of do a deep dive research into like, okay, who’s this
guy emailing me making sure I’m legit, which actually that’s what I do. I really
appreciate that. I don’t necessarily follow blindly when it’s a cold outreach. I want to see,
okay, what is this person done? And a lot of people would say, hey, I saw that you have
done this or you had a podcast about this, can you help me with x? Or hey, I’m
struggling with y or what are your thoughts on Zenith? And I actually really like that. So
it opens as dialogue and often it doesn’t even turn into, at least initially, someone taking
the quiz, but they actually have like a direct question. A great example is today
somebody responded like, hey, this was perfect timing. I can’t take the quiz right now,
I’m really busy. But I just had somebody send me a cease and desist letter because the
name of my podcast matches their company. What can I do with this? And I’m not a
legal guy, but I do know a specific lawyer that works in podcasting. He’s a podcast
lawyer. That’s literally what he calls himself. I know, right? So cool. So I was able to
make an introduction there which might really help this person with their show if they
actually are like needing to be compliant with something. But that’s the type of thing that
I’m getting responsive with, which otherwise someone might have just been like, okay,
maybe I’ll just quit my podcast. Like, I didn’t see that. I’m not saying that would have
been the case, that would be very extreme. But perhaps it could have been a timed
email like that without knowing or realizing that was the timing that we were going to
have was to me just like a really cool thing. So getting responses like that is what really
makes my day, knowing that, like, hey, I did have a real impact to help this person. And
because of that, they’re going to be able to impact listeners lives, which I believe makes
the world a better place.
Nikki Elbaz: That is so cool. I was going to ask if people respond with the, help
question, you know, like, hey, if there’s anything I could do. Because it’s such an open
ended question that you could see people either just saying, forget it, he doesn’t really
mean it. This founder who has time to help little old me. Or you could see people really
taking advantage and saying like, oh, wow, he can help me. Okay, I’m going to hit
respond. So that’s really cool.
Alex Sanfilippo: Yeah, I like that part of it too. And sometimes people will say, hey, Alex.
And team or whoever checks this will be opening line. And I’m always like, hey, it is
Alex. And sometimes I’ll even send a video response if it’s something that’s going to
take me more than two minutes to write an email on. I find sending a 32nd video is
much quicker and I get my information out better. So sometimes I just use a website
called loom.com. i’m not affiliated with them, but it lets me do a very quick recording
00:25:00
Alex Sanfilippo: and I can just drop it right in the email. So maybe we’re like, oh, wow,
you are real. One time someone’s like, is this AI? I was like, I can’t win. I can’t win.
Nikki Elbaz: Wow. Yeah. And it really builds the relationship more, again, it has that
whole idea of the podcasting where you’re building that relationship with a person
instead of just words. I love that by the way, that you got 6000 people, like, clearly you
are being proved right. People are taking the quiz. That’s so great.
Alex Sanfilippo: Yeah, it’s such a blessing. It’s so cool.
What do you think contributed to this email success and the whole
strategy success
Nikki Elbaz: What do you think contributed to this email success and the whole strategy
success?
Alex Sanfilippo: It’s that, podcasters typically are people that are very, have an
abundance mindset. Typically they’re eager to learn, they want to grow, they actually
have a passion, a purpose, what they’re doing. They want to serve somebody. So when
they see something that can help them do that better, a lot of them are like, yeah, I want
to engage with that sort of thing. That’s exactly why I got into the space. And for me,
that’s why I got into the space. I got into podcasting because I immediately realized the
people in, the community that make up podcasting, I was getting around. Like, man,
these people, like, they have a desire to level up. They’re all trying to get rich and
famous and stuff, but they have a desire to serve people and to grow together. And so I
think the reason it’s been so successful is because it comes from that frame of like, hey,
we’re here to learn and grow together. Let’s make this happen. I really think that that’s it.
If it was an industry more like, I brought coaching earlier, if it was something like that
where I’m trying to sell coaches more leads, it probably wouldn’t go as well because
people are like, I need more money. I don’t have time for this. I just need more money.
And so I’m not talking about coaches. Coaches have their place and they’re great. I
have coaches. Right. But I just find that because it’s like the creator economy, it just
brings, brings a different type of person. And I’m speaking very general. There’s
outliers, of course, but I really think that’s been what’s made it so successful is the fact
that it’s just in the right space for the type of email that it is.
Nikki Elbaz: That’s such a great insight, and that’s really what it’s about. Like we
mentioned before about the best practices. You know, best practices only work for
where it works. So this is a perfect fit for what it is, which is so great.
Alex Sanfilippo: Yeah.
Nikki Elbaz: If you, I mean, you don’t have to go back in time. It’s still going out. Now, is
there anything where you were like, hey, I maybe want to tweak this, or, I mean, you
mentioned that you do continuously tweak anything, but is there anything that you did
change or you’re thinking about changing or anything that should be done differently?
Alex Sanfilippo: I still think my verbiage is a little bit big. I don’t know what’s to say it.
Some of the words I use are bigger words and bigger words. I literally mean, they’re
longer words. They have more letters in them, and I want it to roll off the tongue very
easily for someone reading it. I don’t want to be like, what are we trying? Oh, I get it
now. I don’t want people saying that when they’re reading my email. Right. I want it to be
like, congrats on your success. Oh, I see. I don’t want there to be any confusion. I think
that some of it there might be, and I use a little bit of filler words, and when I speak, you
can also hear that I use a little bit of filler words, but I do want to learn to cut those out
of the email to make it a little bit easier just to read through quickly. It goes beyond my
expertise, but I am learning and growing as time goes on. So yeah, I’m going to focus
on continuous improvement with it. That’s kind of my whole theme of anything that I
created is just I’m going to get better over time. But yeah, I want the words to be
smaller, I want to be simpler and just get it down to really just the point as fast as
possible and not losing my voice in it.
Nikki Elbaz: I like the idea of you use filler words in your speech, so let’s put some filler
words in the email so it still continues to sound like you. And then as you get better at
removing the filler words from your speech, you can remove them from the emails as
well. That’s cool.
Alex Sanfilippo: Yeah. 1% better every day. I got a long way to go, but 1% every day
works for me.
Nikki Elbaz: That’s the only way to do it. You burn out if you try too fast.
Alex Sanfilippo: Right.
Any other emails in your upcoming strategy that are similar to this
Nikki Elbaz: Okay.
Nikki Elbaz: Any other emails in your upcoming strategy that are similar to this?
Alex Sanfilippo: I wouldn’t say we have anything else that’s similar to this. And as a
matter of fact, on the software side of pod match, like if someone joins, we don’t have a
newsletter for pod match. There’s notification emails and things like that and people can
choose to enable or disable however they want, but we don’t go beyond that. The only
other place that we have any emails that go out, which we more recently started doing,
is we have a community side of what we have, which is where the course is inside of
our mighty networks community. That’s the company we use. Again, not affiliated, but
Mightynetworks.com is what we use. We just like it for community building and for
course creation. And so we recently started using the notification features and it’s
usually me posting some update or anything like that that we’ve got going on and I’ll
choose yes to notify and it will email people that are in the community side of what we
do. And that’s the only other email that we actually have. But I always make sure that’s
typically pretty personal or important. I don’t care about it getting shared around and
stuff, but I want it to be something that adds value to the person who’s receiving it. So
I’m very careful with notify. Yes or no. It’s always a no if it’s something that people don’t
need to know, but it’s a yes if it’s something that I find that would be very interesting or
helpful to people that are involved in the process. So aside from that, we don’t have any
other emails that we do or anything like that. Again, we’re very value driven. We try not
to be overly abusive of somebody’s, inbox. We try to be respectful of, hey, let’s make
sure we’re giving them what they’re interested in. We’ve got no other plans to do
anything else at this point, just to get better and better at what we’re currently doing, to
make sure we’re delivering it in the best possible way, in a way that really serves cool.
Nikki Elbaz: I mean, just to keep improving. What you do have already in place is it’s 1%
better every day, right?
Alex Sanfilippo: Yeah.
Michael Hyatt and Brendan Burchard really helped inspire my voice
online
Nikki Elbaz: So do you swipe emails? Are there any emails that you subscribe to their
emails and
00:30:00
Nikki Elbaz: you’re just like, this is such a good email. This is inspiring me in XYZ kind
of way.
Alex Sanfilippo: I’m going to go with two that really helped me a lot of. And one
unfortunately is no more. But Michael Hyatt. It used to be Michael Hyatt.com dot. It’s
now focus company. So they still do emails. It’s just more corporate, more from the
company for their product. Michael Hyatt used to, we’re going way back. Nikki, I
assumed you’re younger than me, but back in my day, Michael Hyatt had his own
website and he was a blogger and he would just send out these emails that were very
like written from the heart. And yeah, they came out in a schedule. I know I was in a
sequence, but I always loved getting them because I felt like I was getting to know
Michael and I just really liked that and was helping me as a blogger myself, just trying
to figure things out that made it really fun for me. So I really liked that one. And now
again, it’s focus co, which it’s shifted a bit. But then was Brendan Brouchard, high M
performance coach, someone who’s always just really helped me and I just find his
emails. It’s like, you don’t even need to click any of the links in it. It’s already super
valuable. And for me it’s just like, man, I love that. And there was often times where I’d
get the email and I wouldn’t even click through anything, but I’d read it and it’d be like,
man, that’s the takeaway I needed today. Like, I love that. both of them had very simple,
like no real formatting. It was just like, here’s what you need to hear. And that’s it and
have a lot of respect for both those people. So Michael Hyatt and Brendan Burchard
really helped inspire the voice I’ve developed over time online.
Nikki Elbaz: That’s so cool that the content’s helpful, but also just the way that they
present it, helping you develop your voice.
Nikki Elbaz: Very cool.
Nikki Elbaz: Yeah. I think I subscribed to Michael’s list right as that shift was happening
because I remember being a little like, wait, what? Focus. What?
Alex Sanfilippo: Right. Oh, no, you were on that one.
Nikki Elbaz: Yeah. Like, I hadn’t built that relationship with him. And then it was like,
okay, here’s this new company that I’m gonna be subscribing to, and we’ll see if we like
it. So really interesting. Okay, thanks so much. This was amazing. There’s so much
here. I love getting the thoughts from someone outside of email who’s still doing email
really well and seeing that, quote unquote, normal person perspective, but still, you’re
still focused on the results and building the relationship. So that core is there, but it
gives such a new perspective. It’s really great. So thank you.
Alex Sanfilippo: Yeah, thanks, Nikki. I really appreciate it. And also, I learned a lot today
just from your responses and stuff. It gave me some good insurance and make me feel
even more confident. I love and respect what you’re doing. You’re doing an incredible
job here.
Nikki Elbaz: Thank you.
Nikki Elbaz: Thanks for joining me for email story time. If you enjoyed today’s story, give
this.
Nikki Elbaz: Podcast a review so email marketers like.
Nikki Elbaz: You can have more fun with email.
Nikki Elbaz: See you next week when we dig.
Nikki Elbaz: Into this story’s takeaways.
00:32:22