Breaking Best Practices

0:02: I am secretly hoping that last week’s episode will be my most popular episode.
0:07: I know, I know I’ve said before.
0:09: This one’s my favorite.
0:10: No, wait, this one’s my favorite, but this time it’s different.
0:15: Yes, there’s a lot to learn from it from a copy and strategy perspective, but there’s even more to learn from it from a business practice perspective.
0:24: Alex is a Alex is a legit good guy and he runs his business in such a unique way because he’s really following his guiding principles.
0:34: Not just some playbook of how to run a SASS.
0:38: This is both really encouraging from a people relationships perspective, but it’s also just really unique and fresh.
0:44: Most of what you see has been done before and things start to feel stale.
0:48: Not so with pod match, I feel like I find another gold nugget the lighter every time I go to their site or get an email notification from the community.
1:00: Ok.
1:00: But enough about pod match, let’s get into the email.
1:04: If you ever start a podcast.
1:06: If you ever start a podcast, prepare yourself for a lot of cold pitches, like a lot of cold pitches, everyone from editors to managers to community builders will be getting in touch with you, congratulating you on making it past episode five and then pitching you on whatever it is that they do.
1:26: So the fact that this email stood out is already saying something.
1:30: My favorite part of the pitch was when Alex asked which episode he should listen to, that’s tangible interest.
1:36: I was a little skeptical that he would actually listen, but we’ll get into that part in a second and even still, it gave a feeling of recipient interest versus self interest.
1:47: Another thing that I found interesting was how Alex led with something of value free, which obviously was the whole shift in strategy from that typical cold patch to this version.
2:00: The reason I found it so interesting is because I have always been a big proponent of the idea that you don’t need to nurture pre pitch that you can pitch right away and build trust within the email itself.
2:10: You don’t need a whole warm up to get to the main event clearly that didn’t work for him.
2:16: And it also didn’t work for anyone else who cold pitched me.
2:21: So I’m rethinking this idea.
2:22: And what I’ve come out with is that to succeed at gold email, you need to know how others are pitching your recipient.
2:30: The fact that everyone in the podcast industry pitches me, driving me straight to their paid services means that there’s room for differentiation does that mean you can’t drive to the paid service and differentiate some other aspect of your pitch.
2:42: Of course you can, but that takes a bit more creativity.
2:48: But the more important aspect of all of this Alex tested driving to his paid service and the results weren’t what he was hoping.
2:54: What he was hoping for.
2:56: This shift was based on data.
2:58: And thankfully, his new hypothesis proved correct, which I mentioned in the episode is the most critical aspect of cold pitching, testing, iterating, testing, iterating, testing and iterating some more.
3:16: So let’s wrap all this up into a takeaway.
3:18: Cold pitching is not a one and done sort of method.
3:20: You may see some success like that, but typically you’ll need to try different offers until you land on the right one and that obviously will affect the copy as well.
3:30: So look at cold pitching as a sprint, not as a project.
3:34: One thought I’m having by the way about how they hit success after just two tries is because they built learning and iterating into their process.
3:43: They have that staggered, send time buffer for all their emails.
3:46: They have that beta group, they’re always talking to podcasters and businesses that serve podcasters.
3:51: So take away number two, the more research you have the stronger your hypothesis is going to be.
3:58: I found Alex’s creation process.
4:00: So inspiring.
4:00: I love that he took two weeks to create this one email, one email that had a goal of sounding like himself.
4:06: I know sometimes I feel like writing like you speak can be an excuse to be lazy with my writing, but he didn’t get sloppy on the flip side.
4:17: Sometimes sounding like yourself can be so hard and can actually take way longer than using someone else’s voice.
4:22: And that can lead to a different kind of sloppiness.
4:24: Either you just never do it getting stuck in the perfectionist trap or you just give up and go with mediocre Alex was smart.
4:31: He gave himself the time to let the full process happen without pressure.
4:35: And that’s takeaway.
4:35: Number three, finding that balance of both time and headspace where you have a goal, ideally a timeline, but you don’t have that pressure that kills the process.
4:46: By the way, when he said that the one thing he’s looking to improve is to shorten his words to increase comprehension.
4:51: I think that’s a particularly relevant goal for cold email.
4:54: The whole people have no attention span thing is a bit of a scientific misunderstanding.
4:58: But what is not a myth is that we are particular about where we give our attention spans.
5:05: We have to be interested and engaged enough to be willing to give someone our attention.
5:09: It’s not that we have short attention.
5:10: We’re just picky about where we give our attention.
5:16: So when we’re sending an email to someone, we haven’t built a relationship with, we either have to build that relationship really fast, which is where creativity with cold email comes in or we have to get our message across really fast.
5:27: And obviously both is ideal.
5:30: Personally, I felt like Alex did build the relationship quickly when he asked which podcast episode he should start with.
5:36: He showed interest in my work and that’s why you’ll see compliments in the first line of cold pitch templates.
5:42: That’s what they’re trying to complement with the whole compliment sandwich.
5:47: So take away number four, be quick with cold, not necessarily with the pitch though.
5:51: That does work, but quickly building the relationship works too.
5:59: Alex said he only sends one email because he doesn’t want to be annoying.
6:02: I personally don’t agree that it’s annoying to send one respectful follow up a week or two later.
6:07: People are busy.
6:08: People go on vacation.
6:09: People need time to prioritize things that aren’t on their immediate to do list.
6:12: They sometimes even just need time to get used to hearing something.
6:16: I’m amazed again and again and again, by how many times I’ve given up on something, either a podcast invite or a lead who reached out and I push past the don’t be annoying inner voice and send a follow up.
6:28: And the response 90% of the time is gratefulness that I followed up.
6:35: But I still stand by what I said in the episode.
6:40: It’s his business.
6:40: He’s writing in his voice, it’s his personal brand.
6:43: And if it doesn’t feel right then it doesn’t feel right there is so much room to work with best practices.
6:50: They’re not set in stone.
6:51: And number two, not every best practice even works.
6:55: His experience is so different from the best practice of send lots of emails.
6:59: So you stay so you stay so you stay top of mind.
7:03: His email stays top of mind six months later, even without a single follow up.
7:09: So there’s no reason for him to do something that he’s uncomfortable with.
7:12: It’s working as it is.
7:13: He’s giving enough upfront value that people will keep it top of mind themselves and get to it when they get to it.
7:23: So we have two takeaways for number five.
7:25: Don’t be scared to follow up.
7:26: They’ve done respectfully with the recipient’s interest in mind.
7:29: People actually appreciate them.
7:31: And on the flip side find that balance of following best practices if it doesn’t feel right, find another way to reach that goal.
7:41: Let’s talk about responses now because we started getting into that.
7:44: What with the whole people responding six months later thing, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.
7:49: My favorite metric is the response metric.
7:51: It builds the relationship, it gives you a more, a more definite pulse and honestly responses are just fun but cold email is very vulnerable.
8:01: I you will get rude responses when you send cold email.
8:05: There’s so much bad cold email that some people just bristle immediately at the site of a cold email.
8:09: They won’t even give you a chance.
8:12: I love that, Alex.
8:13: I love that.
8:14: Alex’s wife screened his emails.
8:16: I heard this advice from others and it really is helpful to give yourself a bit of buffer time before hearing criticism or instead just hearing it from a third party and how cool that people actually respond to his request for help.
8:29: That means it feels genuine to them, which I think ties into what he mentioned.
8:33: The podcast industry is full of altruistic people.
8:36: They’ve started a podcast because they want to help.
8:40: So they don’t just click the link suspiciously and then believe him, when they see the value themselves, they actually read his email more, they actually read his email more altruistically and trust him more quickly.
8:52: I personally didn’t fall into that category.
8:54: I am a marketer after all.
8:58: Remember, I wasn’t sure he would actually listen to whichever episode I would recommend and I sure didn’t think I could really respond with some other podcast related question and that he would actually take the time to help.
9:09: But the fact is that most of his audience does trust him off the bat.
9:12: And there’s a safety net for those who don’t.
9:15: That’s the whole strategy of the offer.
9:16: He’s giving value with the quiz in the course without anyone having to even hit reply.
9:21: And this is actually really interesting because typically emails should only have one call to action.
9:26: He quote, unquote, shouldn’t be asking people to hit reply with their favorite episode.
9:32: He quote unquote, shouldn’t be asking people to hit reply with their favorite episode and asking for them to take the quiz and telling them that he’s here to help with the other podcast related questions that defies the rule of one.
9:44: But the cool thing is that all of these actions lead to the same goal building that relationship, building up their esteem and probability for success.
9:51: For success as a podcaster, it doesn’t matter what they choose, it only matters that they choose one last response comment, Alex mentioned how he sends video responses sometimes and I love that idea.
10:07: He’s that one to me when I responded to his pitch with a pitch to come on the podcast and it really built the relationship just to see the person hear the way they speak, talk to them async.
10:16: So take away number six responses is where you’re going to feel that human relationships of email the most.
10:22: It’s for good or for bad.
10:27: It’s where you’ll feel more vulnerable and it’s also where the community building happens and where you can really continue things with conversations that are one on one or even video.
10:40: Ok.
10:41: So now let’s get into the big question of this episode were Alex’s coaches wrong when they told him that people don’t value free when they told him not to give away his $1200 course for free were they wrong?
10:51: I mean, clearly they were in one year.
10:53: He had over 6000 people go through the quiz.
10:55: But why, how people don’t value free?
10:59: And I think it comes down to three things.
11:01: Number one, he had a why he wanted to help, he wanted to get the word out in a more creative way that pushed him to succeed.
11:09: The whole people don’t value free idea.
11:11: It touches us as creators as well.
11:14: When we make something free, we don’t value it either.
11:16: So of course, our audience won’t, he didn’t fall into that trap.
11:20: He made the effort to push it out and make it happen next.
11:25: He had a great story to tell how everyone advised him against this.
11:28: It’s just a very engaging way.
11:30: It’s just a very engaging way to introduce the friction.
11:35: And last, he used the psychological principle of prove me wrong.
11:38: People love that kind of thing.
11:40: We want to see underdogs succeed and we want to invalidate assumptions that paint us in a negative light.
11:50: So take away number seven, again, find your space within best practices.
11:54: Can you point to why something will work even if it doesn’t work for 90% of humans?
11:59: Do you have a theory or strategy for getting to your goal even as you’re going against the grain?
12:06: Ok.
12:06: Last thing don’t step away from this episode without checking out the pod match website.
12:11: When I said that Alex and Tim are doing things really uniquely.
12:14: When he said he’s doing things serve first.
12:16: We are not exaggerating.
12:18: There are so many little things across the site, both copy wise and offer wise that are so unique and so cool.
12:25: It is a great, great swipe.
12:28: It is a great, great swipe.
12:31: It is a great, great swipe.