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Ian Brodie

Ian Brodie is the best-selling author of Email Persuasion and creator of Unsnooze Your Inbox - *the* guide to crafting engaging emails and newsletters that captivate your audience, build authority and generate more sales.


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Groundhog day

Posted on 22nd February 2023.

I got interviewed for a video podcast last week and the first question was basically “how did you end up doing email marketing?”.

It's something I remember really well, and with more than a little embarrassment.

After I started my own business back in 2007 I got into blogging big time and was doing very well. At least in terms of visitors and ranking in the search engines.

But it wasn't converting into sales. Almost all my sales still came from more traditional methods: referrals from my old contacts and doing live presentations at events.

My big hope was that online would generate a good proportion of my sales because I knew the referrals wouldn't last forever. But it just wasn't happening.

Then out of the blue I got an email from someone who'd found my blog. He made some insightful comments about my content so we got chatting. And then he uttered the words which started it all…

“Ian, how come you're not doing email marketing?”

I'd like to tell you I immediately jumped at the idea and became an email expert overnight.

But what actually happened is I said…

“Because it's 2008 Lee. Email marketing is dead. Blogging is where it's at”.

Eventually, of course, I did try out email. And it turns out Lee was right. After a few months I started to get enquiries from my email list about coaching and training that I'd never managed to get from all those visitors to the blog.

Since then, email marketing has been pronounced dead at least half a dozen more times. And each time it's continued to thrive.

When I used to speak at marketing conferences about email I always used to amuse myself by looking at the websites of the other speakers who majored on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or whatever was “hot” at the time.

The amusement came from the fact that without exception, the most prominent thing on every social media speaker's home page was an email signup form.

But to be fair, they weren't being hypocritical. Email marketing works brilliantly hand-in-hand with social media, not against it.

Social can be a great way for people to find you (as can search or paid ads of course). Email isn't great for discoverability.

But where email rules the roost is follow-up. Keeping in touch on a regular basis to build credibility and trust until someone is ready to buy. 

And because almost every significant sale needs a lot of follow-up, that's why email has stayed top of the pile.

I suppose someday someone will proclaim that email is dead and actually be right. Nothing lasts forever.

But it seems from all the data that email has a good few years left in it yet. It's still generating the most sales of any medium.

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Overlooked assets

Posted on 19th February 2023.

A couple of days ago I took a look at the waitlist for the next run of my Persuasive Email Writing Accelerator course on Maven.

When I saw the waitlist was up to 110 people (with a maximum of 30 needed or the course) my initial reaction was relief.

“Phew – should go OK then”.

But then I realised I'd made a mistake.

I'd paid no attention to the waitlist for ages. I should have been keeping in touch to keep people warm and excited about the course.

Or maybe I could have run the course earlier?

No matter. It's in hand now.

But the bigger question is “what other assets are we overlooking that we should be doing more with?”

Do you have an email list you haven't mailed for weeks?

Or a couple of contacts who used to refer you business you haven't grabbed a coffee with since before the pandemic?

What about the people you talked to about working together where it never quite came off? Maybe they weren't ready then but they are now? Or maybe the partner they went with instead of you didn't quite work out and they're looking round again?

What about intellectual assets? Have you got brilliant articles languishing unread on your hard drive or that blog no one visits? Maybe sharing or serialising them on Linkedin will get more traction?

Or how about that great idea you had in the shower that you've not got down on paper and not shared with anyone?

It seems to be a core flaw in human nature that we find it easier to move on to the next shiny object than to follow through with what we've already started.

Don't let that be you.

Make a note in your calendar or to-do list right now to get back in touch with that old friend. Email that list. Resurrect that article.

And do it next week. Not the week after or the week after that.

– Ian

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Brave enough

Posted on 17th February 2023.

I had a bit of an epiphany this week.

As part of my analysis into what's working well on Linkedin I noticed that a lot of the people who are growing their accounts and engagement fast have one thing in common…

…they're comfortable admitting to the world they're still learning.

Actually, they might not be comfortable admitting it, but they do it anyway.

It's really interesting that the people building the most active tribes aren't necessarily at the top of their fields. But their journey and what they're learning seems to resonate.

And I think the reality is that we're going to see a lot of revolution in the next few years. AI for one, even though it's become a bit of a cliche.

We're all going to be beginners.

Of course, fundamentals don't change. Psychology doesn't change.

But plenty of other stuff does. Even in the last decade or so we've seen new platforms open up big opportunities for people willing to start from zero and learn.

But that whole “starting from zero” is actually quite hard.

I love learning new things. But I'm also very proud of what I already know and the fact that people look to me as a source of great ideas and insights for the topics I'm an expert in.

Stepping off that pedestal of expertise in one field to be a beginner and just one of the pack in another is really hard. It's tough for the ego to be the oldest guy in school.

But that need to always be the knowledgeable one, to always be the professional…it's going to kill you when it comes to learning.

Right now I'm watching all the noise about ChatGPT with one group of people trying to position themselves as experts and another group trying to convince us (or more likely themselves) that actually it's not a big deal.

I don't think either of those two groups is going to be the big winners.

I think the big winners are going to be the people who say “I don't know much about this. I'm not an expert. But I think it's going to be big so I'm going to learn everything I can”.

All new things start off rubbish.

The problem with the people who want to be seen as experts in the new thing from day 1 is that it stops them learning.

The problem with the people who believe the new thing won't replace the old thing is that it stops them learning.

The folks who are humble. Who are brave enough to be a beginner are the ones who'll learn the fastest.

And in a year or two years or five years when the new tech isn't rubbish any more, they'll be the ones positioned to get the most from it.

And that's true not just of AI but of marketing generally. Of Linkedin. Of email marketing.

Casting off the protective armour of competence and admitting you have a lot to learn is the first step to getting really good.

If you're brave enough.

– Ian

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This classic marketing formula works perfectly for new media

Posted on 5th February 2023.

I've been continuing my research into effective content on social media and as ever I'm reporting on my findings so far…

This week I noticed that a lot of top creators use carousels on Linkedin – and they get more engagement than other posts. So I thought I'd give it a go.

A carousel is a document like a pdf you upload to a Linkedin post and viewers can then scroll though it page by page.

On Linkedin the post is small, so a normal document would be unreadable. You've got to format it with huge text to make it readable.

To do my carousel I used a classic marketing formula: AIDCA.

Attention – Interest – Desire – Conviction – Action.

I wasn't selling anything, so I didn't go heavy on building desire or conviction. But I knew if I wanted to get people to read it I needed to grab their attention vs all the other noise they'd be seeing.

So the first thing I did was think about how to make my post stand out. And on most social media, that usually means getting an image or thumbnail that's very different to the other things your audience will see on their feed.

I decided to use a comic book theme with bold colours and a huge bright headline in a funny font. And I added in a photo of me gurning at a phone. You can see the image below.

It's amazing how easy it is to stand out on places like Linkedin if you're prepared to be a little bit brave and don't care much about how silly you might look.

So now I've got their attention, I need to get them to read the document by clicking the button Linkedin puts on the document to page through it.

That's where the interest element of AIDCA comes in.

I used a headline that had both a benefit in it (“save an hour a day”) and invoked curiosity (“5 simple tips? I wonder which ones they are…”).

I boosted the curiosity with a couple of graphical bubbles with phrases you might see on a comic book or dodgy magazine: “shock revelations” and “myths busted”.

One of the advantages of taking a light-hearted approach by using comic book imagery is it allows me to play around with exaggeration. If I'd had a deadly serious cover I couldn't have said “shock revelations” because the revelations aren't really that shocking. 

But taking a more humorous approach means you're saying it with a wink, and you can get away with it. Yet it still gets people wondering what lies beyond the front page.

I also added a big arrow with the instructions to “click me” pointing at the spot they'd need to click to page through the document. You'd be surprised how often people forget tell their audience what they want them to do – and then get disappointed when they don't do it.

AIDCA is kind of fractal. It applies to the whole document as well as the front page.

From a document perspective the front page grabs attention, then the second page builds interest by talking about the problems we all have with being overworked and stressed out.

You then get the tips – one per page – and formatted in an interesting way to make reading them easy.

And then there's a call to action with the last tip to get going implementing.

The results?

Over 3x the number of views and comments of any of my other posts for the last few weeks.

Not that it went viral or got tens of thousands of views and comments. But compared to my baseline it did very well indeed.

And it all shows that classic marketing like AIDCA absolutely works in new media.

– Ian

PS you can find the Linkedin post here if you're interested in the tips or in analysing it for yourself.

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How common is your marketing sense?

Posted on 1st February 2023.

I've been immersing myself in the world of content marketing on social media and I'm finding a lot of, er, rubbish.

Survey after survey has shown that marketing people are out of touch with the rest of the world. They use i-devices where normal people watch telly. They multi-screen where normal people don't. They're on all the latest social media channels and think facebook is old hat.

And worst of all, they think everyone has the same media consumption habits as them.

That's perhaps why you hear gems like this from the CMO of Levi:

“Our biggest challenge today is delivering tailored messages to our consumers 24 hours a day, 365 days a year across an increasingly complex communications landscape.”

Great. Just what I wanted. Personalised messages about jeans 24/7.

But it's not just the marketing high and mighty that get tied up in knots and lose their common sense. It's all of us.

One of the biggest areas we lose our common sense in is following marketing platitudes without thinking through whether that advice works for our particular clients and products.

One week we'll hear that USPs are vital. So the founder of a startup with a brand new product leads their marketing with all sorts of technical stuff when instead their potential buyers just need to know what the thing actually does for them.

Or the reverse: we read that it's all about the emotional benefits for customers so we start wobbling on about how buying our hammer will make you feel. 

Or we start making videos for TikTok to attract our corporate clients. Because, well, it's the cool thing these days.

Mea Culpa: I absolutely fall for this. Again and again.

But thankfully, one benefit of spending a bunch of time analysing marketing content on social media is that you see all the nonsense all in one go and it's easier to recognise it for what it is. Platitudes and hype.

So my suggestion for you, said as humbly as I can because I'm not good at it, is that whenever you're about to launch a new bit of marketing, run the rule of common sense over it.

Put yourself in your customer's shoes. Would this make sense to them? Does it talk about what they care about? In language they'd use? On a channel they use regularly? Does it deal with the kind of questions they might actually have about your product?

Those simple questions will help you move past the platitudes.

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The secret of consistency is…

Posted on 23rd October 2022.

I'm sure you've heard the phrase “the secret of success is consistency” or something similar. And it's very true. Most important results come from sticking with a task.

But what's the secret of consistency?

In my experience, it's success.

That's not a typo..let me explain.

As I'm sure you know, we humans are driven by immediate gratification. 

Sure, we like to think we can work diligently towards a long-term goal. But experience (and research) tells us that unless we see results quickly we give up.

So the best way of sticking to something isn't to try to rely on willpower. It's to go with our natural tendencies and figure out a way of harnessing the power of instant gratification.

Michelle Segar's research on behaviour change and weight loss, for example, has shown you're far more likely to get people to exercise regularly if you get them to focus on the immediate high they'll feel rather than trying to persuade them it'll be good for them in the long term.

And I've found it's the same in business.

I've built a reputation in the field of email marketing and I've got results because I email regularly.

But I email regularly because when I first started I got immediate small wins: positive feedback on my emails, and the occasional enquiry and sale.

Those successes motivated me to keep going.

And because I kept going I got better. And I got bigger wins.

So I kept going and getting better and getting more wins.

The lesson in this?

If you want to get results and you know that results come from consistency: pick something to do where you can get fast feedback and quick wins.

Don't plough your time into something where you won't know if it's working for months or years. The reality is that you'll give up long before you see any results.

Whether you call it a flywheel or a virtuous circle – early successes lead to keeping going – which leads to more successes which leads to an unbreakable habit.

Then people notice and tell you that consistency leads to success :)

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3 unexpected rules for choosing your marketing

Posted on 9th October 2022.

There are, of course, plenty of different ways of marketing your business (despite certain “experts” telling you theirs is the only way).

The good news is that you can choose which to use.

The bad news is that choosing isn't easy.

But over the years (and a lot of missteps) I've found three simple and somewhat counterintuitive rules that can help you pick the best methods for you.

Rule #1 – do marketing you enjoy (or at least don't hate).

Marketing only works if you do it, and do it consistently.

If you hate making cold calls, making videos or doing presentations then no matter how effective those methods may be, you won't do them consistently enough to get results.

Rule #2 – do marketing that's quick and easy (for you)

This goes against the whole hustle-culture idea that you have to work 18-hour days and devote your life to your business to get meaningful results. I've not found that to be true.

And in particular, the reality is that most of us don't do marketing full-time. So the marketing we do has to be simple and intuitive.

I've found this with software for example. If I'm a regular user it can be pretty complicated but I'll learn the shortcuts and the best ways to use it.

But if I only use it once a week it has to be simple and intuitive, otherwise I'll just get stuck and give up.

It's the same with marketing. I used to use Google Ads and then Facebook Ads a lot. I don't now. So when I log in it's just a confusing mess for me. There's no way I can figure out how to do anything meaningful in the limited time I have available.

On the other hand, posting on Linkedin or writing an email is pretty quick and easy. I can do it without having to re-learn it each time. So I can focus my limited time on the message and the marketing, not on the mechanics of doing it.

Rule #3 – do marketing that whispers rather than shouts

We all know the reality that the vast majority of our customers aren't ready to buy when we first start interacting with them.

Marketing that shouts – aggressive, pushy tactics like cold calls or cold emails or ads and social posts that are straight pitches – may get you a small number of buyers. But it pushes away the much larger number of potential customers who are your long-term future.

And frankly, shouty marketing isn't something that most of us enjoy doing or find easy (see rules 1 & 2).

Marketing that whispers is marketing that adds value, is interesting, and has a gentle sales message.

It's marketing your potential customers will keep paying attention to. It's marketing that will build credibility and trust over time. It's marketing that will be there when they're ready to buy.

A podcast or youtube show does this. Email marketing does this the best.

The marketing you select using these 3 rules probably isn't going to be the latest silver bullet. Or anything cool. But it will work – for you. And that's the important part.

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Self-sustaining growth

Posted on 25th September 2022.

I've been reading Rob Fitzpatrick's “Write Useful Books” while on hols. 

Yeah, I know, super boring. But there are some very obvious applications beyond books for our marketing, our courses and services.

Fitzpatrick has authored two hugely successful books that – very unusually – have grown their sales over time rather than peaking at launch. “Write Useful Books” is about how to do that with your books but the principles apply much more widely.

The “secret” is to get your current readers to regularly recommend the book to others. Obvious really – but there are a few keys to it.

The first key, not surprisingly, is to pack your book with value per page. You need to wow your readers if you want them to recommend your book.

But how many books have you read that are really just a decent article stretched out so that the author could say they'd written a book?

Far too many.

That doesn't serve your audience and it won't get your book recommended.

And the same goes for online courses, or even our live work. Clients are buying the results they get from you and the faster that happens the better. More hours is bad not good.

The next key is to make sure your book (or service or course or lead magnet) provides a clear solution to a problem lots of people ask about.

When do people recommend things? When someone asks for recommendations. Or says they've got a problem.

That means your thing must be ultra-specific. But just being specific isn't enough. 

It needs to answer a question that many people often ask or a problem many of them have and tell people about

It can't be a solution to a problem your clients don't know they have. Or that they won't admit to in public. Or that only a few of them have,

So it takes work.

It takes actually talking to potential clients.

Which is where the third key comes in – I'll talk about that soon.

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Never again

Posted on 11th September 2022.

We're on holiday this week – on a big old ship headed towards Oslo :)

I must admit I had a little too much to drink last night (Kathy would say a lot too much) and I found myself thinking “never again” this morning.

Of course, time passes. Memory fades. And we do it again.

Luckily having a bit of a sore head the next day isn't too big a deal. But the same trick often happens with our marketing.

We get so busy with client work that we just don't do enough to line up our next clients.

Then when our projects end we swing from feast to famine and we have to desperately scrabble around trying to find the next one. Often we end up working on stuff that's maybe not the best use of our skills or the best paid.

And we say to ourselves “never again – next time I'm going to keep marketing even when I'm busy”.

But time passes. Memory fades. And we do it again.

With feast or famine cycles, the impact is much more serious than a sore head.  So it really is worth doing something about.

And it doesn't have to be much.

If you only need a handful of clients each year, a couple of emails and phone calls every week to keep in touch will help.

If you create courses or get clients online, a short article on Linkedin or an email or a bit of “keep in touch” with potential partners who could help promote you will help.

Just a little bit each week will keep things ticking over so you won't find yourself thinking “never again” when you're short of clients.

And if you're in that situation right now where you haven't done any marketing for a while – don't put it off.

Don't nod as you read this email and think “I'll get right on to that…tomorrow”. Do it now.

Send a couple of emails. Get a “crappy first draft” done of that article you've been meaning to write. Jot down a list of 3 people to call tomorrow morning along with what you can talk to them about (that isn't a sales pitch).

As my kids would say “do it…do it…do it”.

It's simple stuff but it makes a big difference.

If only it were so easy when it comes to over-indulging on holiday :)

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Another chance

Posted on 28th August 2022.

We've been at a wedding this weekend. One of those one-in-a-million British weddings where it's actually sunny :)

The groom was my friend David (of whose stag night I wrote about a few weeks ago). And I can't think of anyone more deserving of another chance at happiness.

It's tempting to think that at a certain point your future is set in stone. But that's just not true. It can be really hard, but anything can be changed.

I gave Twitter a second chance recently. I'd grown very tired of the amount of anger and nonsense on it. But by essentially starting from scratch I've been able to get a feed full of interesting, useful and positive messages.

But more importantly, you can get another chance.

At what?

Anything.

Just because you always used to work with a particular type of client doesn't mean you always have to.

Just because you always used to offer a particular service doesn't mean you always have to.

Just because you always used to use a certain type of marketing doesn't mean you always have to.

You get my drift, I'm sure.

Of course, it's easier to harness skills and contacts and resources you already have. So you might not want to change everything.

But if you change nothing, you're going to get the same results you've always got. And there's a good chance you're going to get bored doing so.

Might a different type of client value your services more? Do you have other skills you've developed you might be able to build a business around (that's how I got into my current business).

One of the reasons new startups often leave established businesses standing is that despite the established business spotting an opportunity, it just feels too different and too risky for them to take.

I see the same thing again and again with individual consultants and coaches who struggle with their marketing.

Instead of rethinking who they're offering their services to, what they're offering and how they market themselves, they look for a silver bullet which will let them plough on down the same furrow but somehow with better success.

It rarely works like that.

Sometimes you find a magic method that lets you do the same things, just more successfully. But not often.

More usually you have to take a chance and do something significantly different. Focus on different clients, different services, different marketing.

A challenge, for sure. But it's how you get another chance at success.