Growing an Engaged Email List: Climbing The Email Staircase with Liz Wilcox

Meg Brunson: I'm excited to be here today with the Fresh Princess of Email Marketing.

Liz Wilcox is an email strategist and a keynote speaker showing small businesses how to build online relationships, package up their magic, and turn it into emails that people want to read, and most importantly, purchase from. Liz, thank you for being here.

Liz Wilcox: Oh my gosh, I'm so excited and I'm gonna put in my headphones.

I just realized I don't have them in, but I'm really excited. I love talking about email and I think this format is really fun. So let's go.

Meg Brunson: Let's start with the age old question, is email dead.

Liz Wilcox: Oh my gosh. No, that's I, Meg just called it the age old question and it just blows my freaking mind that anyone would ask that question.

And I guess, throughout the years, so yesterday, let me say this. Yesterday somebody sent me a video and I noticed that he had 121,000. Unread emails. And so I guess to that point, Meg's eyebrow just went up to that point yeah, sure. It might seem like nobody uses email. I might not have 121,000, but I've got at least, a couple thousand unread emails.

But here's the thing, those companies. Are just doing email wrong when you can figure out how to do email, right? You become the bright spot in someone's email or somebody's inbox, right? You're like, oh my gosh, I can't believe Meg sent me something. Or, oh, here she is again. I'm I'm excited. I wonder what's inside.

It's the same as the mailbox. Sure. Like people might say, oh mail is dead, but I don't know about you. Amazon has used that. Infrastructure to, basically become the fastest growing company in the entire world. If it wasn't for mail, Amazon couldn't have created prime and couldn't have exploded in the pandemic to, basically take over the entire world via capitalism.

So it's the same with the inbox. The infrastructure is there and if you can use it properly, It is going to increase your business revenue and everything else. Like you could not even imagine.

Meg Brunson: I love that example because as a marketer, when I think of like direct mail marketing, I totally roll my eyes cause I feel like that is so old and outdated, but it's almost like you've just shown me that it's not.

That any, like the method itself isn't old and outdated. It's the strategy that if you're creative, if you are, aligned with what the recipient wants, then it's not the methods almost don't matter.

Liz Wilcox: Absolutely y'all, we have to stay relevant and we have to, I'm not one to like hop on trends, but we do have to evolve.

And the method, the e you know, email itself is not dead, but the, the customer is different. The consumer, the way that they read emails, the way they interact in their inbox can be different. You do have to adjust for that. You can't no longer, all those 121,000, those are the people that are not adjusting.

Those are the direct mailers. It's like you open it up, you can tell it's a one sheet, it looks like a church brochure or a JCPenney catalog from the nineties, and those people are not, adjusting for. The times, right? They're not staying relevant, right? They're using something that worked in the nineties or the early two thousands.

The consumer changes, so you need to change too. And what I love about email versus social media and why it will never die in my opinion, is email. Excuse me, is decentralized. Every, unlike Facebook, Zuckerberg owns Facebook. We all know that. We all saw him have to testify to Congress, right?

He is solely responsible for Facebook. Sure. He's got his minions, but he owns Facebook. He owns Meta, he owns Instagram, right? And so everything trickles down. It's so much different with email. Y'all email is decentralized. Google Hotmail or Outlook now talking of the nineties, right? Yahoo. All, there's so many email service providers that are allowing you to send mass emails and it's, it's through this very decentralized network and that's why it works so well.

That's why. It continues to keep stable cuz it's not one person at the helm, directing the boat. It's all these billions of users using it just like mail to get their messages across. There's not one person saying, Hey, these are the rules and everybody's got to follow them. It's so different and that's what makes it so effective and that's what keeps it alive.

Meg Brunson: I'd love to know your kind of origin story, like what was it in the beginning that got you into email marketing?

Liz Wilcox: Y'all y'all. I am an efficient chick. I do not like to waste time. Meg, right now, at the time of this recording, is in an rv. I started off as an RV travel blogger, and if you know anything about being in the woods, you can understand the internet situation.

Pretty crappy. And I'd listened to podcasts like this get on webinars and everybody and their mother said all this, you're doing social media, you're doing blogging, you're doing this, that, and the other running ads. It's all to get people on an email list and that is where you sell.

So again, efficiency, right? That's the way I operate. I was like, okay, everything I'm gonna do is to build this email list. Coupled with the fact that I had crappy internet, most of the time, sending an email out doesn't take a lot of internet. It's not uploading a video. It's not this, that, and the other.

All these other things that couldn't distract you as a content creator. It was like, oh, I can just put up a landing page. Get on a podcast like this, talk about what I need to talk about. Get people on a list, send an email out once a week. Oh, that, that seems pretty efficient. That. It's only gonna take me a little bit.

I was also traveling with a toddler. If you've ever met a toddler, they don't really care about business. They're not really into it, right? They're, they're more into like peanut butter and jelly. So I had to get it done very quickly and I just realized that email was the most efficient way to market, and I just doubled down on it year after year.

And it was when. And I'll share this later. When I created a wait list, finally did the digital course thing, I had 141 people on my wait list and I made 141 sales. When I word got around about that, they're like, no, you didn't. No, you didn't. I'm like here's the receipts. But I was a travel blogger.

I thought if you created a wait list, you sold. Product and people would buy it. So I was ignorant. So of course I was selling it. Of course, I was doing the most, I was like, these people said they wanted it, so I'm gonna sell it to them. And so to me, it made sense why everybody bought. But when I got into the business to business world, everyone was like, that's impossible.

How'd you do that? That's when I knew I needed to sell the RV business and go all in on email. To me it was inevitable, and to them it seemed like a miracle.

Meg Brunson: Oh, I love that. To them it was a miracle, but to you it was inevitable.

Liz Wilcox: even y'all, my biz bestie, quote unquote, we had a separate business together.

She had launched her course a bunch of times. I had never, I had other small products, but this was my first course. And I remember being on the phone with her and saying oh, this is my goal. And she laughed at me. She was like, that's impossible. And I said, for you, watch.

And she had to eat her words, and we still talk about that today. It's just when you know your zone of genius, you know your zone of genius. When you know, when you've put in the work, when you've laid the bricks for something, it is inevitable.

Meg Brunson: That's awesome. Now, how has your experience with email marketing changed over the years?

Liz Wilcox: It's like those really gross couples that tell people. I just love it more every day. I just love them more. Every day. Every day. I just fall more in love for me. It hasn't changed much. Just every day I fall more and more in love with building an email list and making those connections.

The way that I built my first email list was really just trying to make friends. I heard someone say write like you're talking to your best friend. And I thought my best friend hates camping. I'm not gonna talk to my best friend, but I'll talk to somebody I met at the campground that loves RVing just as much as me, right?

We have this mutual interest. So that's how I started emailing. I started making connections. I started getting replies. And that's why I think, my. My digital course took off because I was literally in the inbox talking to people, and I do the exact same thing today. Of course I have an assistant now that handles a lot of the admin stuff, but if somebody asks me an email question or they wanna know something about Liz personally, I'm in the inbox three times a week.

I am literally the one emailing you. Cuz I, I truly believe in the power of friendship. I truly believe in having that connection to your email list. And I don't think I've changed the way that I write. I'm still just writing to that one person who wants to love email the way Liz Wilcox loves email.

And it's. And that's what I teach. And so I don't think it's changed much except that I just love it even more and it's become simpler to me. It's become easier. I can just get on my computer and write an email. I don't lament over what I'm gonna say anymore.

Meg Brunson: I love that you mentioned that you have an assistant, but that you're still actively in their responding to emails like you haven't let your. What's the thing? Like you haven't gotten so big, right? That you're not in there still doing the work. Yeah. And that you find that balance.

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. And at the time of this recording, I have almost 10,000 people on my email list and y'all, I do get a lot of replies because I encourage them. That's literally what I teach.

If you are not making sales or you feel completely disconnected to your audience nothing is working. Get in your email and start to get some replies, you'll start to see some momentum. So that's what I teach and I just love it so freaking much. Y'all, and I'm gonna share this in a little bit, but you, the people on your email address are just that they're people, they're not email addresses.

It's not, oh, I've got a list of a thousand, got a list of 50. It's there. These are 50 individuals who have given you consent. To market to them. Like I don't take that lightly and neither should you, but not in a, oh my gosh, this is a big deal thing. But oh my gosh, these 50 people wanna geek out with me.

They wanna learn more. They want. Like they're interested in the same thing I'm interested in, so I'm just going to email them and have some fun with it. So of course I'm still in the inbox. I love it so much. I love, love, love connecting with people. And I just find, when I do that, it just happens to also make more sales, which win- win.

Meg Brunson: I would love to pass the mic to you and allow you to deliver your presentation, and then after you're done, we'll come back for some q and a little bit more discussion before wrapping it up.

Liz Wilcox: Awesome. Yeah. So I'm gonna talk a lot about how we turn those people into friends and into customers.

What Meg set me up for, she's a pro, isn't she? So this is called, I'm building my audience now, what how to turn followers into customers with email. And today I really just wanna share a little bit more. Why you should consider email marketing the email staircase framework, how to make real connections.

We've already talked a little bit about that and how to write your newsletter and simplify the selling process, but I know I'm gonna throw a lot at you, and my biggest objective is for you to just take one of these things and run with it. Don't try to do everything all at once. Email marketing already seems difficult, so just pick that one thing and get going on that one thing.

And you'll be good. We already shared a little bit about Liz Wilcox, but I did start off as an RV travel blogger. I sold that company. I started a second business about RV travel. It was a digital summit. I got bought out of that business. And now we're working with liz wilcox.com today and what I really wanna share, and we prefaced at the top of the hour.

Everything that I'm gonna teach you is through a couple different lenses. It's through, just being really scrappy and resourceful and having to just work with what I got. So you'll see if you're watching this video, you see a picture of me and I'm actually selling my digital course. At an in-person RV rally.

And so I'm among the MLM crowd network marketers, all that. And here I am trying to sell a digital course on RV maintenance with a giant sign, all of that. And then you'll see I'm actually on this other side. There's a picture of me holding up my phone with a slide of this exact presentation. And what was happening here is.

Internet was so crappy that I couldn't share my slides. I couldn't go live and share my slides at the same time. So I downloaded my slides on my phone and I was literally putting my phone up to the camera so people could see what I was talking about. And I want to preface this because everything I'm gonna teach you about, how to turn followers into customers has come from that.

Just get it done attitude. We need to get in, out and on with life. And the last thing is I'm really good at email. I'm sharing a screenshot right now that shows you I have a 70% open rate, almost 10% click rate. This is a few months old now, so I think my open rate is actually much higher now. And really, Why you should care about email is you own your list.

You don't own Instagram. Raise your hand if you heard about in 2022 some billionaire bought Twitter and it imploded on itself, right? If you were. If you had your audience entirely on Twitter, they might have started leaving in droves in 2022. But with email marketing, you own that list Meg and I talked about earlier.

It's consent based, right? And because it's consent based, because Liz says to Meg, yes, Meg, I wanna hear more. Email me. It has a crazy ROI for every dollar you spend, you can get up to 40 bucks in return when you do it. And last, you can make real connections. I think Meg and I first connected over email marketing and that is what I love so much.

I love that I can go out and meet the people on my email list or do podcast interviews like this and, excuse me, especially when I was in my RV travel days. I would literally, I would, I met hundreds and hundreds of people on my email list. Because I really wanted to make those real connections.

Now, you might be thinking, oh, I'm an introvert. I would never go out and actually meet people. But you can still have those intimate conversations in the inbox, and that is when you can really make some magic happen. So I follow something called the email staircase. First you have a follower, you get 'em on your email list and you turn 'em into a friend.

And once you have a list full of friends, you can basically just ask them. I know you talk about X, Y, Z a lot. I created a workshop on X, Y, Z. Do you wanna buy it? And you can turn 'em into customers. So how the heck do we make friends in the first place? What do I mean by all of this? It's really quite simple.

Number one, you've got in your emails, you've got to show that you are invested. Number one invested in your business, saying things like, oh, I just listened to some email marketer for an hour on how to write better emails. Hopefully moving forward, I won't be wasting your time in the inbox. You might think, oh, Liz, I, I sell.

Sports drinks to athletes. They don't care about me in my email marketing class, but they do. People will invest in people and businesses that they know are first invested. I just did a launch where I was sharing all the numbers the whole time of the launch, so people saw how I was invested in this launch, and they decided to invest back in the launch.

You can do this in your emails. Oh, I just bought a new computer. I just upgraded to this software. I'm really excited because it's gonna help me help you more, right? Show that you are invested first. Number two, as far as investments go, show that you are invested in them, right? So with me, all I care about is your email marketing.

I don't care about your podcast, I don't care about your social media following. All I care is that you figure out email marketing. So in my emails, I'm constantly saying, I want this for you. I want you to untangle the email marketing knot. I created this product because it's going to help you write a consistent newsletter, right?

I'm showing that I'm invested in them so they will invest back into me. Number two, you gotta share in a relatable way. And notice I didn't say interesting. I said relatable. Being interesting can be really hard. That's when our 10th grade English teacher comes and says, oh, you gotta tell a story, but it, you gotta have.

Hook right away and this and that and the other. Trying to be interesting is really hard, but being relatable is actually pretty simple. Me saying something like, I had to scarf down my food before this podcast interview cause I only had 20 minutes to eat. Is that interesting? Absolutely not. Is it relatable?

100%. Immediately you were like, oh, been there. Yep. I'm eating right now. This is the lunch and learn. It's incredibly relatable. Saying something like, oh, I had to take my dog for a walk before I sat down to write this email. Incredibly relatable, right? So just share in a relatable way.

And then number three, stay top of mind. And this is where most people, oh, Liz, oh gosh, I can't email daily. I can't email weekly email's not for me. But let me tell you something. When you can be relatable, when you can show you're invested, Staying top of mind becomes so much easier. You can forget one week.

You can pick up where you left off because people know you're invested in them. People know you're relatable, so it's easy to stay top of mind. Alright, now I know some of you are listening to the podcast and so you might not be able to write this down, but I want you to remember people buy from people they trust. Okay. And that is the power of friendship. I'm showing two things on the screen where I wrote a newsletter. It was titled, what are You Doing this Week? And I literally asked people what they were doing that week, what were their travels? And I also was doing my very first digital summit, and I was nervous, so I shared that I was nervous.

Remember that's relatable. Is it interesting that I'm nervous? No. Everybody gets nervous. That's not interesting at all, but it's incredibly relatable. So I had two replies here that I'm showing on the screen. You go, girl, wahoo. No camping for us yet, David. He says, wahoo, you can do it this week.

We're in Southern Rhode Island, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's, now, let me ask you this. Do you think these people would buy from me? If I said, oh, David, you're in Rhode Island, you need to stop by this ice cream shop. Do you think that person would buy? If the other person says, oh, Liz, oh, we're trying to get our ceiling fan in.

Do you know anyone that sells them? If I recommended, do you think they would take my recommendation? Absolutely because people buy from people they trust. I shared this earlier, but remember I had that wait list. I said, Hey, do you want this course on RV maintenance? I had 141 people click that said yes, they'd be interested.

And by the end of that I had 141 sales. That is the power of friendship. There are some other examples of this, these types of emails working. I have an example from an astrologer that says she sent out a version of one of my emails and it resulted in three one-on-one bookings. So even if you're not selling digital products, this is gonna work.

This follower friend to customer sharing that you are relatable, investing, staying top of mind. It definitely works. And here's how we do it, okay? Remember email staircase, follower, friend, customer, ba bing, ba da, boom. So first you just need a welcome sequence to start the friendship.

Okay? The welcome sequence should show off a bit of your personality. Meg we love Meg. She shows her personality and there's something about that that connects us to her, right? I'm looking on Zoom right now and her headshot, she's got purple and pink hair. I love that.

Immediately I'm like, oh my gosh, Meg's a unicorn. So am I. Let's go. So share a little bit of personality. Number two, your vision. What is that vision you have for your potential client, students, members, whatever you call them? For me, again, my vision is, You make money with email marketing. That's it. If you're walking across the stage of Wilcox University, the degree I'm handing you is email marketing, right?

That's my vision. I want you to make money with it. Okay? What is your vision? Share that in the welcome sequence. Share what bus they just got on, or what class they just enrolled in. And number three, your values. Now, this does not mean you have to put out a press release anytime a social injustice happens.

This just means there are certain principles that guide the way you do business. Sharing those is really gonna behoove you. It's really gonna connect to the people that would be your friends in real life, the people that are going to open your emails over and purchase from you. For me, one of my values is affordability.

So I say that right up front. Hey, my prices are pretty cheap because I value affordability. I want this to be accessible to you. Okay, so that starts the Friendship Now, newsletters, those weekly newsletters, biweekly, monthly, whatever you feel comfortable starting off with, this is gonna help you grow the conversation.

Or, I'm sorry, grow the friendship. It's gonna keep that conversation. You started in the welcome sequence going, it's gonna allow you to establish expertise, give value, and create real connection. Now these newsletters, Are gonna be where you share how invested you are, where you are relatable where you stay top of mind, right?

You could share anything. Basically a two to three sentence personal update. This is where you share how you're invested or how you're relatable. And then you segue into whatever content. Hey, check out my new podcast. I'm trying to grow my Instagram. Here's my new product, right? ET c. And then to solidify the friendship, you've gotta make some sales, right?

We've got to commit to each other. I'm the email marketer for you. You are the, what was the example I gave earlier? Whatever. I'm moving on. So sales emails. Vary the content be between short and long. Sometimes if you wanna get on your soapbox, you've got a good story that segues into your sale, go ahead, write that long email.

Other times it might just be, Hey, don't forget I have this $12 list building challenge coming up. Make sure you join here. It's for X, y, z. Just really simple, peace out, hope you make it. Number two, just. Constantly remind people of your offers. Don't just sell something one time.

Sell it over and over again. That list building thing that I just mentioned, I've been doing that for almost three years, and let me tell you, some people buy now. Some people buy later. The thing is, people don't buy when we launch. People buy when they are ready. I just had a launch. About three weeks ago, and I just did the numbers.

Right here. I got the numbers and I had 779 people on the wait list and 321 bought, so that's about 40%, I think 39.9% bought. So that means 60% of people who were interested. Weren't ready. So constantly remind your people just because you launched and 60%, 80%, 90% didn't buy it doesn't mean they're not going to buy in the future.

So always be reminding people of your offers. Now, if that feels really daunting, if selling feels icky to you or you haven't found your groove with it, you can add something called a super signature, which is, basically the footer of your email. PS When you're ready, here's ways we can work together.

And then you list, book a one-on-one call with me here. Join my program here, buy my workshop here, whatever offers you've got. Listen to my podcast here. So adding that super signature. Make sure you're reminding people of your offers. Cuz here's the thing. Your job is not to make money.

It's simply to find a problem that needs solving, and that awesome quote came from Robert Kiyosaki, the Rich Dad, poor dad guy. So your job isn't to make money. It's to find a problem that needs solving. Because the key to customers is just to get to know your subscribers, right? Turn them into friends, and then create the solutions, the packages, the offers for what they're struggling with for the obstacles they had.

I mentioned my list building challenge. That's because people are always saying, oh, Liz, your newsletters are great, but. I got nobody on my list. So what did I go and create a list building challenge, right? That's because I got to know my subscribers first and then I created that solution. Here's some other proof that fix it yourself.

Course that a hundred percent conversion rate. I keep talking about y'all. I've never changed a bite tire in my life. I had to hire out the content for this, but I knew that was the number one question I got for three years was how do I fix my RV myself? So what course did I. Fix it yourself. Tales from the Black Tank. This was my very first product, and Meg's probably laughing. She's on mute, but this was a collection of hilariously crappy RV stories. The Black Tank is where your sewage goes. I never in my life would've written this book had it not been for reaching out to my audience.

First talking to my audience and asking them, why do you follow me? They said Liz, you're really funny. You tell a good story. That was my first product, et c. So in summary, y'all email marketing is lucrative. I really want you in on this follow the email staircase follower, friend, customer, a welcome email, or I'm sorry.

Welcome. Emails and a consistent newsletter are essential to making that email staircase climbable and in the end, to turn people into customers, just ask them for what they want.

Meg Brunson: Amazing. I love how simplified you make things and yet, like I've seen so much of your stuff. I watch all your stuff, but like I still feel like I'm gonna have to go back and rewatch this again and take some more notes because there's little gems and little nuggets that I can use to make my email better.

I absolutely love it. I love your focus on relationships, and we all know the process of I hope we all know, right? The process of making a friend in real life, and this is just a way of doing that online.

Liz Wilcox: Absolutely. And that's what I say about when I share, just invest, and show you're invested.

Just be relatable and stay top of mind. That's how you make a real friend. If Meg and I, let's say today's the first day we met, right? And if six months from now I'm launching and I'm like, oh, she might be a good partner. Let me reach out to her. She'd be like, oh yeah, I re I remember you. Like we, we had a great conversation.

I don't really know you like that. Like I got other things to do. But if we meet today, I keep showing up for her. I invest, Hey, is there anything I can do aside from promote the episode to make this a win-win relationship? Or, Hey, Meg I know another person who would be great on your podcast.

Can I introduce you? I'm showing that I'm invested, right? And then I'm being relatable. Oh my gosh. I used to live in an RV too, and we did talk about that. I was like, wait, you're in a travel trailer? This is amazing. And I stay top of mind in six months if I ask her to be an affiliate. Probably more likely to say yes.

And that's the same thing you do in the inbox, right? If you just showed up six months from somebody gets on your list today, you show up six months from now asking for money. Ah, I don't know. I kinda need that, but I don't actually know you like that. But if you show you're invested over and over, you become relatable.

You stay top of mind when you launch. List building challenge or whatever. Oh yeah, I really do need that. And I know Liz has my back, so I'm gonna buy that. It's, it'll change your life. It'll change your life.

Meg Brunson: And you touched on this in the presentation, I just wanna touch on it again cause I think it's relevant as to where this conversation is going.

But the other piece of the puzzle is, you're talking about consistency and sometimes we, we stop being consistent for one reason or another. You get sick or you get overwhelmed or, whatever the case may be. And, Being honest about that, like that's happened to me where I disappeared, I just disappeared on my audience for a period of time.

When I came back, I wrote the email and I was like, y'all, here's what happened. And is that quote unquote professional? No, I'm not about being professional, right? It's, but it's building relationships. That's how you would interact with a friend. You would tell your friend what was up while you've been gone for a while, and then pick up where you left.

Liz Wilcox: Absolutely. And for the record, I'm only semi-pro. I'm never g I'm never getting into the N B A. Okay. I'm staying semi-pro. I like it here. It's comfortable and I can be real. And to that. If you have ghosted your list, if it's only been a few weeks, you can probably just gloss over it, and that's what most email marketers will tell you. Just don't even mention it, just get on with the show. But if it's been, four to six months longer, yeah, of course you're gonna wanna say, just like with a real friend, Hey, don't forget, I'm Meg. You. I'm supposed to be emailing you once a week, but here's the deal.

You don't have to apologize or lament over it, but just being real and saying, Hey, actually, I got distracted because X, Y, Z, but I'm back at it. I'm ready to reinvest into this email list. Let's go. I think that's gonna be great. I love that you brought that up.

Meg Brunson: Now I have a question that takes it a little bit away from writing the emails and a little bit more towards the tech side of things.

Do you remove people who are inactive from your email list?

Liz Wilcox: Absolutely.

Okay. Y'all, I know you worked so hard building your list. You finally hit a hundred subscribers, a thousand subscribers, 5,000, whatever, and it can feel. Email is emotional. It feels emotional. And for someone like me to just be like, oh yeah, just delete 'em.

If they're not opening, they don't care about you. That can feel, oh gosh, Liz, don't say that. I worked so hard. I spent so much money on ads. Whatever. But here's the thing. Let's say me, I joined Meg's email list, okay? And I'm opening. Green flag. Green flag. Every time I open, I'm sending a green flag to the internet gods Meg's emails matter. Now, let's say Warren joins Meg's email list and he doesn't open. Every time Meg sends an email, Warren Red flag. Red flag. And red flags mean a lot more than green flags. Okay. We wanna get rid of Warren because we wanna get rid of those red flags, because then let's say La Kendra joins the list.

Yeah, sure. Liz is sending up her green flags, but we've got 10 Warrens sending up red flags, so that signals to the internet. God's. Oh LA Kendra just opened, but Warren Times 10 is telling us that these emails don't matter. So we're gonna put Meg into the spam folder because we know her stuff doesn't matter.

80% of the list isn't opening. We've got 80% Warrens, right? So you don't even give La Kendra a chance when you don't scrub your list of Warren. And these are friends of mine and I'm gonna have, I'm gonna refer this podcast. They'll find it's funny. But, So we've got to get rid of those people that aren't opening.

And remember, email works because it's consent based. I opt in to hear from Meg, and sometimes I might, for whatever reason, it has nothing to do with Meg either. I go offline for three months or I decide, oh, I don't really, I'm not ready for this next step in my business. Or, I'm distracted.

I'm focused on my social media right now, or whatever. And so I just let Meg's emails sit. That is in itself taking away consent, and you as a responsible business owner should be paying attention to that and should be removing them because sure, some people will actively unsubscribe. But given that example I talked about at the top of the hour with the 121,000 emails unread in Mike's inbox.

That is the responsibility, that is the problem of the business owner that keeps emailing Mike, despite him not opening. That is an irresponsible business owner, and I know that's not you, so I know you sh you wanna look at your people that are not opening and remove them at least a couple times a year.

That's my soapbox.

Meg Brunson: I love it.

I agree with you just because I knew the tech side of things, but I love how you brought that consent piece into it, right? Anything that's not an enthusiastic Yes. Is no. And so if they're not opening the emails enthusiastically Yes. Opening the emails, then we should stop

pestering them.

Liz Wilcox: Can we talk about dating? So I know dating online or dating right now is like really hard, right? Like it's all, everybody's dating online. So let's say you're texting. Somebody, and at first they're, they're texting you back and then a couple days, like the texts kind of stop.

You never set up that first date if you kept texting that person that's grounds for a lawsuit. You know what I'm saying? Eventually you should give up, right? Eventually you could say, okay, I'm gonna delete Warren's phone number. He, I can clearly see he's leaving me unread. I can clearly see he's not interested.

We never set up that first date. That's the same in the inbox. If somebody doesn't open for 90 days, I can clearly see that maybe they got on the bus, right? They were headed to email town. Something happened. And now they want off the bus. They're, they're not opening anymore, so I should let them off the bus.

I should remove them. If indeed they come back, then that's great, but sometimes they don't. Delete the number. Don't keep texting someone who hasn't set up a date

Meg Brunson: or opened an email. Now I wanna make sure we talk about how people can work with you. And I especially wanna talk about your email marketing membership.

I was an email marketing member that inspired me. A lot of people who are listening now or watching now get my weekly social content. And so I just wanna say that your email marketing membership is a perfect companion, to weekly social content. So can you go ahead and spill the beans on what the email marketing membership entails?

Liz Wilcox: Yeah. When Meg said, oh, how do you, how do people work with you? You don't, I don't take client work anymore. All I really do is this email marketing membership. Of course, I sell other things, I mentioned my list building challenge, all this other stuff. But my main offer, and the thing that I love, the way that I love to serve people is with this membership.

So Meg's content membership, mine is for email newsletters. I talked about showing your invested,. Being relatable. All that strategy talk, I actually just do it for you. I realize email is one of those things, it's just like a knot. You're never gonna untangle, but it's my zone of genius.

So I thought, why don't you just let me write it for you. So every single Monday morning at 5:00 AM. It's really strict. It's the only thing strict in my life. You get that newsletter template where you can take and make it your own and how it actually works. And why I believe it could work for you is you get a video walkthrough.

I walk you. Through exactly how you could use the template, depending on your personality the goals you have in your business right now and the tone, right? Not everyone is as extrovert as Liz Wilcox, right? So if you're less comfortable, I talk about that. And then you also get a skeleton outline. So the bare bones, think of it like, when you're scrolling Instagram and they say, this is the trending audio.

Use this audio and then do X, Y, Z with it. That's what the skeleton outline is. It shows you the bare bones of the email so you can see what it actually is. I also give you an email explanation and two swipes. So not only do you get the template, you get swipe files. Those are a plus examples models of what this would look like in ABC business.

So one example might be a nonprofit. The other example might be you teach a course on how to be a solo woman traveler, right? And so it's all very different. So the more you're in the membership, the more you start to see different business examples, different tones, different styles, so that you can actually find your voice instead of just.

Using Liz's so I love my membership so much. We're at the time of this recording, we're at over 3,400 members from 22 different countries. It blows my freaking mind, and I just love to serve people in this way.

Meg Brunson: And let's talk about price, right? Because it sounds like there's a lot included.

Liz Wilcox: I didn't even, I didn't even mention the price.

Yeah. You also got a live q and a with me once a month and y'all, sometimes I'd be going two hours. Like nowadays there's over a hundred people that show up on that call and we just go. You get some other things like guest experts, things like that. Y'all, it's $9 a month. I really mean it. I think I said it at the top of the hour.

One of my values is affordability. I really mean it when I say I want this to work for you. And I know email is one of those things that is absolutely essential to your business. Which makes it the most expensive thing to learn, and I just think that's bs. And so when I created my membership, I was like, this is gonna be the jumping off point, whether you have made $0 in your business, or you know you're a nine figure business owner and you just are looking to add email, and these are real.

People in my membership, it's crazy. This is gonna be the thing to jumpstart this email list thing for you. And so I wanted to make it accessible for all people because it was the thing that I needed when I was living in my trailer, next to and just, I always say , I was just a girl with a mountain dew and a dream, and I had no money.

I had to figure it out on my own. And if that's you. Those are the people I wanna work with. That's why I can proudly say, you can't hire me to write for you because I'm too busy working with the people that actually need

Meg Brunson: me. Oh, I love it. I love it. I love it. And I am a member and I love it. So we will drop a link.

The link will be in the show notes. If you are in the group, it'll be in the group. We will drop a link so that you can go ahead and learn more and sign up for the email marketing membership. Liz, I wanna thank you so much for being here today. I love connecting with you, and I'm so grateful that you took time out of your busy schedule to pour into my audience.

So thank you so much.

Liz Wilcox: Of course, I cannot wait to see what everybody does with email. You can also just get some samples of the membership at LizWilcox.com. There's a hot pink button. You can't miss it. It's gonna give you a welcome sequence already written for you three newsletter examples directly from the membership to help you get people to click, reply and buy.

And if that's not. Writing from scratch. I don't know if but it totally sucks. So I give you 52 subject lines for free as well. LizWilcox.com. Thanks so much, Meg.

Meg Brunson: Woo. Thank you.