374 – BASH – How to Start Your Email List

Gift biz on rapt episode 374.

Yes. It's another bash Attention.

Gifters bakers,

crafters and makers pursuing your dream can be fun.

Whether you have an established business or looking to start one.

Now you are in the right place.

This is gift to biz unwrapped,

helping you turn your skill into a flourishing business.

Join us for an episode,

packed full of invaluable guidance,

resources, and the support you need to grow.

Your gift biz.

Here is your host gift biz gal,

Sue moon Heights.

Hi there.

It's Sue and I am so excited that you're here today,

because guess what?

It's another bash.

What's a bash.

You're going to experience it in a minute.

I also have a fabulous topic for us to cover,

but first,

one of the most fulfilling things I've discovered through starting gift

biz on wrapped is the warmth comradery and generosity of the

community that we formed.

You're so giving and so talented.

And of course,

I always want to give back to you too,

to do something that can make your efforts easier and your

result greater.

So I asked you how you surprised me.

It wasn't help with an email marketing strategy.

It wasn't about selling it shows or any other number of

topics that make up a solid growing business.

Nope. What you're overwhelmingly asking for is help with social media

posting. You've been telling me that you're putting in the time

you're posting frequently and you're discouraged because you aren't seeing any

of this move the needle for your sales message received,

putting in more and more time posting in the same way.

Isn't going to magically bring you in the sales.

You need to change the way you're posting and what you're

posting. You don't need to put in more work.

You need to put in the right work.

And that's when you'll see things change.

And I've created your guide to do just that.

It's called content for makers and it's specially designed for handmade

product makers.

Like you content for makers will help you understand why your

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It will also show you how to put in less time

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And all of this continues to build upon itself naturally.

Yes, this really is passable content for makers will accomplish this

for you to see all the details,

jump over to gift biz,

unwraps.com forward slash content for makers.

But honestly at only $27,

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Okay, let's talk about these bashes.

This is a new concept format.

If you will,

that I've incorporated into some of the podcast episodes.

It addresses a common issue of yours getting more visibility to

your business.

You're going to hear from handmade creators,

just like you.

In the second half of the show,

they've raised their hand and said yes to showcasing their business

to all the listeners of gift biz on wrapped,

bringing them loads of visibility.

You're also going to hear some collaborations being offered.

Perhaps one will peak your interest once you've experienced this bash.

If you're interested in being included in the next one,

go over to gift biz on wraps.com

forward slash bash.

I'm getting ahead of myself here.

The first part of each bash is a short training from

yours truly.

And today we're talking email marketing now more than ever.

It's important to put this in place.

I know it can seem daunting,

but when you know the steps to getting started,

you're going to see it's not that difficult at all.

Hello and welcome to what is now the fourth bash.

I am here with a number of fabulous handmade business owners

that you're going to hear from shortly.

But first I want to dive into a topic that is

coming up more and more.

Have you been hearing about it more and more to email

marketing? There is more attention being given to this now more

than ever,

because lots of social media platforms are changing.

Everyone's kind of wondering what's going on.

And email marketing ends up being the place where you have

the most stability.

That's what we're going to talk about specifically,

how to start an email marketing program.

I've been finding within gift biz breeze,

my Facebook group,

but that's always a big question.

You know,

there's other questions around email marketing,

but the biggest obstacle is,

as it is,

I guess,

with lots of things is just getting started.

You might have thought about sending out emails to attract people

to your business and to stay in touch.

And if you are doing it already a huge high five,

because I think it's going to become more and more important

as we go on.

And if you haven't ever thought about it before,

it's important to start thinking about it and get started.

And that is my goal here for you is to understand

why I'm saying it's so important.

And then the very simple steps you need to take to

get going.

The first thing is why.

And the biggest,

most significant thing is you now have control over being able

to communicate with people that you have started to interact with,

who would possibly be interested in buying a product from you.

Maybe they aren't ready to buy right away.

Maybe they already have bought.

Maybe there are people that you run into in networking meetings.

There are so many different ways that we run into people.

And if you're able to collect their email,

this is one asset.

I'll say that you own,

that will allow you to be in control of being able

to communicate with people further.

It really is a powerful asset for your business.

And if ever you were to get to a point or

you hear about other people who are looking at selling their

businesses, an email list is worth money.

It adds to the value of your business.

For that reason,

you have a list of people,

list of contacts,

customers, and prospect who have raised their hand and voiced interest

in you in the past.

Also going along the lines of being a powerful asset,

we need to always remember that when people intercept with us

for the first time,

they are not always in a position where they have a

need or are interested in buying.

Yet you have someone might go from a Facebook post that

you have over to your website,

love what you have there,

but just not be in the market to buy yet.

Or their child just falls and skins his knee or a

husband is intercepting you and saying they need something.

Or there's some other disruption you've got to go cook dinner.

And if that person leaves your website and doesn't for sure

remember what your name was or know how to get back

to you,

that interested they might've started could be lost forever.

But if you have something on your website that can attract

them in and entice them to leave their email,

then you're able to talk with them further.

You're able to remind them of your site and they can

then come back and look at you when they're ready to

buy craft shows.

Same thing.

I see this all the time.

In fact,

I was just at a craft show this past weekend.

And very few people take advantage of this.

How many people do you interact with?

And like,

we'll walk past a booth that you have network meetings,

the same thing,

same type of a concept,

but I'm going to stick with craft shows.

For my example here,

depending on the craft show,

it could be hundreds of people.

If you were able to collect emails from even only a

small percentage of those people,

there are people that you can then continue to talk to

on a semi-regular basis who might not be ready to buy

right? When they saw you at the show,

but had a good interaction with you.

You were friendly at the booth,

they got a chance to see your product.

They just didn't hand over their credit card and buy right

now, but maybe they're going to be ready in a month

or two months.

And if you let them walk away from your booth without

getting their email again,

it's like poof,

all of that energy of having the show,

the only value is in the people who are actually purchasing

at the show where really it can be so much more

than that when you collect the emails.

And then of course customers,

I'm not going to make any assumptions,

but hopefully you are collecting emails from people who buy from

you because also common thing at craft shows,

people just,

you know,

exchange the money,

put a product in the bag,

say, thank you so much for the business.

Maybe put a card in there,

but then you're leaving the onus on that person to call

you up.

Or if you put a card in your boxes,

when you ship things out,

all of the potential reconnection is on their end.

Not your end.

If it,

if you get their email,

you're able to initiate it.

So these are all the reasons why email marketing can be

such a huge asset to your business.

And when you're not doing this,

you are truly 100% leaving dollars on the table.

So I don't think I need to drive that point home

any further,

but now let's get into the big stumbling block that I

see, which is how it sounds nice,

but that's intimidating.

There's a lot of other things you need to do for

your business.

So here are the steps to take.

When you're looking to put an email marketing campaign in place,

first thing,

pick an email server and don't get stuck here.

There are so many available.

This doesn't have to be a final decision.

I'm going to say,

go with a couple of the easier ones,

constant contact MailChimp.

Maybe we'll get some feedback from people who are here,

who are going to be doing the showcases later.

And they'll tell you what platforms they're on.

If they're willing to share,

the point is get started.

Don't spend a ton of time researching a million places,

pick one and just get started.

You can always export your customer list and send it over

to another service provider.

If at some point you decide you don't want to stay

with who you've picked.

So the first thing is picking your service provider.

I'm going to suggest MailChimp seems to be the one that's

the most popular right now,

but I have used constant contact in the past also.

And they're pretty easy to do.

They both have free plans for you to get started with

so no excuses there.

The one thing you absolutely should not do is try to

send emails from like a free Gmail account that you have

or a Yahoo account that you have.

And the reason is a couple of things.

First off,

it doesn't have any of the legal things in place for

you. Have you seen when you get emails on the bottom,

it says,

click here.

If you want to unsubscribe,

that is something legally you need to have when you're sending

out emails and these types of services,

like I was just talking about with MailChimp and constant contact

and any of the other ones that you would use automatically

have that in there for you.

When you set up your account,

it'll automatically be added to the end of the email.

So you've got that cover.

Another thing about trying to send from like a free email

account is if you start sending too many,

I think you could maybe send maybe 10 or 20 at

a time.

If you dare risk it,

but you start sending too many and they're going to see

exactly what you're doing,

knowing that it's illegal and block you.

Okay? So you could lose access to your email.

So careful,

careful don't do that.

Just go with the new email service provider.

It's better in every single way that I could talk about.

And like I said,

you can always change later.

So that's number one,

choose an email provider,

sign up for the free account.

Now you're ready to go.

The next thing is collecting emails.

The first thing I do just to get comfortable with the

system is add some emails from your friends and family.

Now it is true that you need permission from them to

add them to your list,

but friends and family,

aren't going to be yelling and screaming and mark you as

spam, right?

So you can clearly add them to start getting the system

up and running.

When you put something on your website that talks about collecting

email addresses,

it always says there's always an opt-in box.

So they're giving you permission just by way of providing you

with their address.

If you're face-to-face at a craft show,

for example,

let's say you do a sweepstakes for a free birthday cake.

Kim, I'm going to say birthday cake with you.

And you're letting people drop their emails in.

As long as you say,

they're enter into the sweepstakes by doing so.

It was allowing me to communicate with you further with promotions

and other such.

You say something that's a value to them,

but you make sure to say that then illegally,

you can add them in.

Also if they're already a customer,

if they've purchased from you,

you are already doing a business transaction.

So you then can legally use their address also.

So all of those things are important in terms of permission.

And then like I was just saying,

start collecting email addresses everywhere.

Is everyone going to be willing to give you an address?

No, that's fine.

If you collect 30,

40 addresses from a craft show,

that's 30 or 40 people that you would've never been able

to talk to again,

if you didn't have email,

I mean,

there's a lot of people.

So think about that at networking meetings.

One of the things we started doing at the ribbon print

company is when we go out to trade shows,

I don't care about the number of email addresses or business

cards we get.

I care about the quality of the emails or the business

cards. So that's another thing like you don't have to just

be filling up like an email list of a hundred people

is no better than an email list of 50 people.

If those 50 people are really qualified,

interested candidates,

right? So it's not always the number.

It's good people signing up.

People who stop at your booth at a craft show.

Yes, don't put everybody in who went to a chamber meeting

of yours.

If you think half of them are going to be interested

in your product,

it's not worth it.

You don't need to go through that effort.

But if you have any questions on that,

I can talk about that again a little bit more at

the end,

but so you start collecting emails on a website.

You often see pop up boxes for 10% off your first

order. You know,

that type of a thing you can certainly do that.

You can also just say,

get on my special list.

So you're the first to know about whatever or get on

my list and you'll have input into the next flavors or

the next sense or whatever's going on with your business.

The one thing I would suggest you stay away from is

saying, join my newsletter.

You know,

most people are not interested or attracted to that.

What's a newsletter.

I'm giving you my email.

You're going to send me things to buy.

Everyone's kind of conditioned to that already.

So if you can entice them with,

including something else that they're going to get that they're going

to be like,

yeah, I want to know about that.

Then you're more likely to get the email addresses.

Okay. So that's step two.

Then the third step,

which gets to be a little bit more of a sophisticated

step, but it's easiest to do when you're just starting is

to start tagging emails.

And by that,

I mean,

if they're a customer,

add a tag,

you learn how to do that.

Based on the email service provider you have,

but everyone now allows you to make subsets of your master

list based on what I'm going to call tat.

Some people call them different things.

So the easiest and most obvious tag is customers,

not customers,

right? So you could send an email to somebody and say,

thank you so much in the past for your support,

wanting to make sure that you were the first to know,

blah, blah,

blah, blah,

blah, blah,

blah. If your emails weren't tagged,

you don't know who's a past customer and who isn't.

Right. So tagging is really great in that way.

You could also tag based on people who come to trade

shows because you know,

then they're local probably right.

If you're doing local craft shows.

So then you could send emails just to that subset of

your list saying,

Hey, I'm going to be at SpringHill mall next Saturday,

come join me.

If you do,

and say the word peppermint I'll have something special at the

booth for you,

things like that.

You have fun with them and play with them like that.

Okay. So in summary,

these three steps in terms of how to get started with

your email list is first picking a service provider.

Second, starting to add into the emails into that system and

then tag them even in the most simplistic way,

because all you're trying to do right now is get into

the sync and understanding the whole email process.

Okay. And you can get fancier later if you want.

I want you to get into the process.

Okay? So those are the three steps to get started.

Then none of this means anything,

unless you start sending out emails,

right? It doesn't matter how much you have in the back.

If you're not using an actually communicating with them.

So what I would do here is just decide on and

commit to some type of a frequency I would do at

the least monthly.

I feel like that's a little bit too little,

but look,

if that's what you can do,

and that's what you feel you can commit to get started

with that monthly or every other week or weekly.

I don't think as smaller brands,

like we all are,

you need to be doing every day or multiple times a

week. I don't know about you guys,

but I have some brands that I've been following.

And especially since my son just got married,

I was purchasing regularly from a couple of them.

And they send me stuff like almost every single day,

but they're a big brand.

They have the power behind them to do that.

I'm getting a little irritated.

I'm not even opening them anymore.

So it's just a little bit too much.

And especially a smaller brand.

You don't want people to opt out or unsubscribe.

So that's what I'm saying weekly over your other week at

the very least monthly you should do.

So then what do you say in these emails?

Okay. That's the next thing I'll tell you the easiest thing

to do here.

If you have Gmail,

you know how they're on the very right side is the

promotion folder.

Click on that and see what headlines,

what subject lines interests you,

what prompts you and makes you interested in opening.

You can pretty much copy,

substitute out some of those subject line words and use those

for your emails.

You don't have to sit here with a blank piece of

paper thinking,

oh my gosh,

what am I going to say?

What am I going to say?

Right. It can also give you ideas for content to put

in your emails.

So I see that as a great wealth of idea prompts

for your subject line.

And then when you're getting into your email,

obviously the content needs to follow whatever you're saying in the

subject line.

But for the most part,

you're looking at obviously a product,

you know,

you might talk about something that's new,

or you might be promoting a special product that relates to

an upcoming holiday.

Potentially. I love the idea for,

again, us as small business owners to give some type of

a personal look into the business,

whether you show a picture of,

Hey, here's what I was working on this week.

And you show you pouring soaps or someone delivering the flower

part of the cake or a gift basket or whatever it

is so that they start to feel like they know you.

The big brands have spent millions of dollars in advertising,

developing a persona,

a theme,

you know,

the business,

et cetera.

We're smaller businesses.

So the best way that we can do that and get

people to feel like they really know us is by sharing

a little bit of something personal in the emails.

Doesn't have to be long.

One of the things,

and you'll love this.

One of the things we have found recently is people like

shorter emails,

not longer,

which means you don't have to be writing a ton of

words. You know,

just something little to get your message across couple of photos,

especially if you have products links to the product,

not just to your overall website,

but the specific product that you're looking at are really important.

And great idea is if you want to,

and you don't necessarily need to do this with every email,

but ask your email recipients a question,

Hey, if I were to create these scarves in a new

color for the fall,

which of these three colors,

would you resonate with the most?

Or which one do you think I should do?

Just hit the reply button and let me know which color.

And of course you can apply that to all different types

of things.

When you do this,

it does two things.

The first thing it does is it makes them feel like

a part of your business.

They are investing in the business and now,

you know,

they want to know what color you end up deciding on.

Right? But the other thing that that does is when they

reply to you,

very similar to social media algorithms,

when they reply to you on email,

your account is going to say,

oh, Nicole likes getting emails from that person.

But your deliverability of your emails gets better.

When people reply to your emails,

that's a little behind the scenes hack there.

So I'm going to wrap this all up because we want

to get into our showcases.

In summary.

What we're talking about here is email marketing is such a

huge asset for you,

for your business and can be so powerful for attracting sales.

All this work you're already putting in.

You add this one other element on top,

and it's going to help you grow your sales.

You're never too small to start your email list.

If you are brand new,

if you're listening to the show today and you're just starting

that's okay.

These email service providers are free.

Sign up for one,

start putting your friends and family in and start getting into

think of doing emails.

It's never too early to start.

This is also now a perfect time to do this because

if you can start collecting,

you're rolling into,

I can't even believe I'm saying this already,

but holiday sales.

Yeah. It's only the beginning of the summer while we're talking

here, but holiday sales are going to be right around the

corner. So if you've been collecting emails for four months or

so, you're going to have a group that you can talk

to as the holidays roll around.

So this can be part of your Ben holiday sales strategy.

So in terms of strengthening your business,

yes, there are lots of things to do face to face

sales of course is always my favorite thing.

There's online marketing.

Of course you have e-commerce and all of that,

but the single biggest thing that you can do to really

lay the foundation and strengthen your business as you move forward

is starting.

If you haven't already,

and maybe I will just reignite some of you in terms

of your energy,

you have all this in place,

but you haven't been using it.

I know that happens a lot too,

but just get that email list in play and start using

it because it is a huge asset for you and your

business as you go forward.

Okay. So that's a line in the sand.

That was what I wanted to talk about today.

Anybody here want to unmute before we get into showcases and

either unmute,

if you have a question or if you want to share

what email service provider you're using.

Okay. Anita,

why don't you go ahead.

Okay. I have two,

one I'm using MailChimp.

I must admit I need to use it more,

but I do have a question.

When you were mentioning that your email list is worth money,

how do you put a value on an email list?

If you want to sell a business,

like when you're down the road and you want to sell

a business,

how do you put a value on that?

Because I'd like to build my email list now so that

I know that it's being built properly for what?

At the time,

when I do want to retire and get rid of my

business for selling,

I think,

and I have never sold a company yet.

So I can't for sure tell you,

but I,

there are some things that I know about this,

and this is a great question.

The NEDA is first off,

you know how on social,

you can buy likes and buy followers and you know,

all that type of thing.

So it doesn't even matter like the social metrics and credibility

aren't even necessarily what's really happening or like Twitter.

Now, you know how everyone's questioning how many bots are really

there versus real people.

I think the best thing that you can do is keep

the integrity of your email list by not loading it up

with people who would never have an interest in your product.

And I will tell you an example of when we did

this wrong at some of our trade shows,

ribbon print,

Anita, you might've even been working in the booth with me

when we did this for a little while,

we let people enter their email address and we did a

drawing for a free ribbon printer.

So we were giving away a thousand dollar printer for free,

you know,

in a collection of all those addresses.

Now, granted it was a trade show.

So it was all business people.

But I got to tell you,

we went back and tracked none of the winners,

except for a couple of the shows were more connected with

customers. None of those shows where we gave away those printers.

I'm going to say there were three of them ever use

their printer.

They saw no value in it.

What they were doing is going around and they saw,

oh, I don't even know what I'm signing up for.

I'm going to write my name and put my email address.

And I don't know,

like I probably won't win.

Anyway, there was no real correlation to what they were winning

and the value of it.

So we stopped doing that once we figured that out.

So what I would say is just as you're going through,

you know,

how you're collecting the email addresses so you can speak to

when it gets to the point,

when you have someone come in and look at the value

of your business.

If you're going to go through like a business sales manager,

they're going to look at all of your assets.

And also in those service providers,

I believe it says the dates of when these emails are

added in and how active your list is,

like, what is your open rate?

How many people are reading it.

And that's always going to be higher.

If the quality of your list is better.

So that's how you increase your value.

I cannot speak to what the value would be,

but I can speak to those things as contributing to the

value. And Amy,

it looks like you're biting at the bit here to talk.

So let me unmute you since you're driving.

What do you know about this?

Hold on.

Okay. It's making me ask you if you want to be

un-muted him.

I'm seeing that you're running to talk to Amy.

See if you can unmute me.

Maya. We'll have Kim talk for a second.

Amy is now totally frozen.

Okay, go ahead,

Kim. So I have a question on the kind of legality,

I guess you called it of emailing people who haven't signed

onto your list.

I'm not exaggerating.

When I say I answered 12 to 15 new emails every

day from inquiries,

brides, graduation,

cakes, birthday cakes.

I mean,

every day I turn my,

you know,

I come in,

I answer my emails.

Can I have a cake for this cookies for this?

Have they,

by the nature of them,

emailing me already become part of my email list.

No, No.

Okay. I'm going to mail.

Send them someday by MailChimp.

I still need to ask them to join my list.

I think you can email a single person.

Okay. Cause that's just communication.

One-to-one when you're getting into these mass emails,

that's a regular promotional email.

However you can say,

and we do this for the ribbon print company.

When people ask and inquire about a ribbon printer,

we will ask them,

would it be all right if we added you to our

list and we tell them you're going to get a series

of emails that will give you more information about how people

are using the printer,

different types of things.

You can always unsubscribe to them if you want to.

But I think find value with being on the list.

Is that okay?

They say yes.

And then Lori goes in and manually add them in.

Okay. I have to manually add because I'm not doing any

email marketing,

So yes,

you would add those in or have someone do it for

you obviously.

And I would tag them inquiries or bridal inquiries or something

like that.

And then with those,

if there's a way you can find the wedding date,

because if they are no longer interested after a certain date,

you don't want to be communicating with them about wedding cakes

anymore, obviously,

But they could be regular customers.

Sure could.

Yeah. That's where it kind of,

the strategy comes into play and what you're doing.

Okay, Amy,

I see that.

You're un-muted now.

Oh, good.

Yes, yes.

We can hear you.

Okay. So one,

yes. I have an email list.

I was using MailChimp.

I have moved to constant contact.

It is much more effective.

I have a lower bounce rate with that.

Not just a thought to well,

I'm part of the reason I may have a lower rate

with that is because I've scrubbed the emails.

So that may have contributed To you've done the list cleanup.

Yeah. We have tags that are either retail or wholesale.

That's that's as far as I've gone,

as far as detailing it out for my customers,

That's good because those are two totally different messages that you

would be wanting to send.

So that's a great example.

And then to Anita's question about how you get evaluation,

you want to talk to an attorney who knows about mergers

and acquisitions.

They're going to have the resources that value and provide future

value on that playlist.

I wouldn't say any,

depending on your business,

at least from what my attorneys told me,

your email asset may not be as valuable as a physical

asset, but it does still have some value.

And you're looking for every dollar you can possibly get when

you're looking to sell.

It also depends on your business because if a lot of

your business,

like for us,

for the ribbon print company is repeat business.

So we obviously need that.

And it's all,

e-commerce pretty much.

And so it depends.

It's very situational,

but that was a good ad.

Amy, thank you for that.

Any other questions or comments you want to share your email

provider? Anika,

go ahead.

Sure. I started out with MailChimp.

Then I use MailChimp for a couple of years and then

I switched over to flow desk,

which I really prefer.

It's really pretty.

I'm a very visually oriented person and it's easy to make

really attractive,

pretty emails.

I don't really,

I'm not very,

science-y about the data of bounce rates and all that stuff.

I do tag my list,

but I'm kind of inconsistent with it and I don't segment

it. I have a welcome series that goes out.

And then I just,

whenever I send an email,

I sent my whole list.

I haven't really gotten into segmentation and I tag people like

fire local.

Like they live like within driving distance of me farmer's market.

If that's where they signed up those sorts of tax.

But again,

I don't really use,

I'm not really utilizing them efficiently.

Okay. So maybe our conversation here will jumpstart you to do

that. Maybe.

I mean,

you've got it.

Like you've got it all there.

Ready to go.

And you're using it.

Some, it sounds like.

So like I said,

like, at least it's there ready now you just have to

take action on it in that way.

I'm sending emails.

I send about Us not separating Them,

right? Yeah.

Okay. No,

that's great.

You're doing a lot more than a lot of people,

so that's great.

Anyone else want to chime in here before we get to

the showcases?

Lily? Go ahead.

Yeah. Thank you.

I do have a question.

My husband thinks that yeah,

we have to have like a lot of customers in order

for us to have an email list,

but now I'm listening to you and you say,

even if it's really,

really small,

it doesn't really matter.

Would it be okay to have an email list and email

them every two months?

Every three months?

Is that even okay?

You could,

if that's all you could do,

then at least I would do that because at least you're

getting the ball moving and you're having some type of frequency.

I really would suggest no less than once a month.

Have you ever had people show up in your mailbox in

your email box?

And you're like,

all right.

I used to do business with you like three years ago.

And now all of a sudden you're emailing me.

You don't want that happening.

And honestly,

like I said,

if you go into your promotion folder and just look at

some of the things that other people are doing and just

copy that,

it doesn't have to be this long written email and it

can be to five people.

It's just a matter of getting going.

And there's so much money in an email list.

It's almost a sin not to do it because you're just

leaving money on the table.

All Right.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Joyce, were you going to say something or where you just

moving around?

I want to say something,

but I was moving around too.

Oh, Okay.

Good. I have chip mail and I have not added anybody's

manually. Anybody's email address.

People have been coming on with my pop-up window on my

website and saying I'm up for it.

And I'm trying to think I'm bad about email marketing.

I really am.

And I'm trying to do better.

However, I'm trying to figure out how long should I keep

them on my email list.

If they're not opening the email,

even though I'm not paying for it.

Cause they don't have that many people on,

I'm not paying for it,

but how long should I keep them on the email list?

And I say,

they sign up for themselves.

I haven't signed up anybody who signed up on their own.

And that's one good thing of buy-sell.

If they decide to unsubscribe,

it's not going to come back on me because if they

ever checked,

you saw that they were on their own assigned for it.

But I'm just trying to figure out,

should I look at that on a,

when I started doing more regularly,

should I look at it on a,

on a quarterly basis?

And if they're not opening the email,

get rid of them.

We do every six months,

but quarterly to six months,

all of that is good because one of the things to

think about also with email marketing is deliverability and especially we're

finding yeah.

Who accounts sometimes never are received.

So it's one thing you have the email address and let's

say you email out to 10 people.

Okay? Not all your emails will land in that primary folder.

Some of them are going to land in Gmail,

promotion folders.

In the case of Yahoo.

Sometimes they're going to never like you don't know where they

go or some are undeliverable in total.

Like someone entered in a transposed number.

So it's not even a real address,

you know,

what's bouncing.

So you want to get rid of all of those.

And so I say,

as on a six month basis,

I would do your delivery.

So there's also such a thing as an email reputation and

you get this reputation by the service provider you use and

the quality of your list and the higher your reputation as

with anything the higher,

the deliverability will be.

In other words,

the emails landing in a primary box,

things like that.

So all of that is also based on how clean your

list is.

So that was an excellent question.

Joyce, I'm going to say six months,

if you wanted to do four,

that's fine.

And for awhile,

for me,

it was like,

I don't want anybody to be gone from my list.

Like no,

you know,

but, and so to get over that,

and of course Lori was at me like,

no we're getting rid of these people.

But what I ended up doing is just downloading the list

that I deleted and keeping them on the side.

Thank you.

Cause it made me more peaceful.

I'm like,

okay, they're not in the list anymore,

but I still have their emails.

I didn't know what I would do with them.

I mean,

they didn't opt out,

but I pulled them out of the list.

So I didn't even know,

but that made me feel better about deleting them.

And now I'm like a banty I go chip chop anywhere.

Cause I like seeing my open rates get better and deliver.

I don't have a lot of bounce rates.

I don't have a high bounce rate is very,

very low.

So I'm going to assume that it is going into their

email box or It could be going into their promotion folder

and the promotion Or what have you and stuff like that.

So I'm going to kind of test the metric for the

next couple of months here.

And once I started doing email marketing,

I just find the categories.

I have a free version of check mail and I just

cannot find the kind of hard that I really can't go.

I'm going to camp and create a email newsletter.

What have you,

but I can't put any links in it And I'm not

sure about,

we can look into that as we keep working together.

I've tried it when I was really looking into it about

maybe four or five months ago,

you get a nice email and what have you.

But I could not put the links in that.

And then like I say was Tamba you can transfer it

over, but buildings are not there.

So I don't know.

And I was reading that you can't do that with me

up, I guess on the free version.

I don't know if it's on the album.

So I mentioned We're able to then on the upgrade,

you might be able to do that with MailChimp.

Yeah. Annika,

where you going to say something?

Yeah. First when I had MailChimp,

I always put links in my emails and I had the

free version of MailChimp also.

Yeah. All my emails had links in them.

Were you doing them through Canva?

Were you making them in Canberra?

Yes. I know I can do it with chip mail,

but through CAMBA,

CAMBA has so many beautiful templates.

That's why I kind like to do do with them.

I may look into another email marketing.

We can talk about that later.

I don't want to take all the time in the podcast

right now to do that,

but we can be looking at that.

I actually had another quick question too.

When you're cleaning your list,

do you send me like a goodbye email out to people

before you remove them?

Like, Yeah.

I mean,

if you haven't cleaned it ever before,

you can say,

Hey, just want to make sure you still want to receive

email from me.

If you do,

please respond with a yes or high or whatever,

then you'll have them.

Then they'll get off of the unopens there'll be in the

opens and responded.

And if not,

then you let them go.

Remember they can always sign up again.

Like you haven't lost them forever.

If they really do want to see you.

All right,

let's go ahead now and move into showcases.

I hope no one else has a major pressing question.

If you do,

we can talk about it later also if you'd like,

but let's go ahead and do the showcases.

So first off for those of you who are here,

what we're going to do is I'm going to just choose

you randomly.

And what I'd like you to do is tell me who

you are,

your business,

and then what you sell.

Okay. If it's not immediately apparent then any special promotion that

you have going on,

or if you're going to be at a local show or

you're looking for someone to collaborate with any of that.

But just one thing,

because we're finding that it's easier and clearer for all of

us to take your information.

If it's one thing and then one place to find you,

whether you want to send us to your website or a

Facebook page or wherever one place online to go,

okay. Now,

for those of you who are listening to the showcase,

I want you to listen to everybody.

Who's here talking about their businesses because you obviously can support

them if you'd like to,

that would be fabulous.

But also there's other things that you can get out of

this. How are other people talking about their business or marketing

their business,

or what are they doing to get customer?

All of these things are things that you can look at

and learn from others too.

There may be one word.

Somebody says not even related to the same thing that you

sell, but that inspires you to do something different.

So this is also a learning exercise,

as well as supporting and getting the word out with all

of these fabulous businesses at the end,

before we sign off,

I will also let you know how you could join in

on one of the gift biz bashes,

if you would like to as well so that you could

do a showcase for yourself with that.

Let's go ahead and Anita,

I'm going to let you kick it off,

go ahead and unmute yourself and tell us everything.

Okay. Hi everybody.

My name's Anita Houseman.

I'm from the Hershey gifting company and we are a unique

gifting and promotional company that helps people remember special people,

moments and life events,

and especially for small businesses and those who want to stand

out above the rest.

Our number one product that we sell is custom printed ribbon,

personalized by our clients that have either their logo or their

personal message that helps them brand themselves or make their gifting

unique. So right now we have rolled out our ribbon on

demand service.

We're looking to collaborate with some other people for our clients,

particularly small businesses that want to provide ribbon for either as

an add on or as an additional service to help them

generate additional income or help them to promote themselves or their

brands. So you can find us@thehersheygiftingcode.com

on the internet or on any of the social platforms.

And if you use bash 15 as a code,

we'll give you 15% off your first order.

Fabulous. Wonderful.

Thank you,

Anita. Sheila.

So I'm heavily traits for you.

We were accustomed gifting company located in Nashville,

Tennessee, actually Smyrna,

Tennessee, but we consider Nashville as our home.

We are a custom gifting company that specializes in corporate gifting

as well as life celebrations,

any kind of special event that you're having hospitality,

all of that kind of industry.

We are known for our original guitar case that we use.

And right now you can follow us out on Instagram at

follow the Nashville guitar,

hashtag follow the Nashville guitar.

If you want to see some of the fun things that

our guitar is doing,

you can use.

I believe the code I gave it last time.

I believe it was bashed 10.

If I'm not mistaken,

if you ever want to do a gift for us to

send to someone,

we do shipping all over the U S and locally deliver

here in Nashville,

but we'd love to collaborate with some of you vendors as

well, because we were going to be opening a storefront in

our location.

So if y'all have some fabulous little items that you would

like to see in our storefront,

let me know definitely treats for you.

Dot com is our website.

And then we're on the social media platforms as heavenly treats

for you,

LLC. So if someone is interested in talking with you about

potentially having their product displayed in your shop,

they just go to your website and fill out a contact

you form.

Yes, that would probably be the easiest.

And there is our website and our email and contact information

is at the top of our homepage.

Okay. All right.

Perfect. Lily,

why don't you go next?

I do crochet jewelry and I'm going to be part of

a vendor,

a local vendor event Where you Looking at it.

I'm in Virginia.

I'm in Virginia.

So I'm going to be parts of these local vendor event.

And I'm going to use that opportunity to get some emails.

So I'm going to start my email list.

Yeah. Yes.

So it is June 11th.

When everyone is hearing this show,

when is the show that you're going to be at and

where is it?

It is going to be in Ashburn,

Virginia. Okay.

What's the name of the show?

It's not a show.

It's a friend who is doing,

she does Bonita,

Brazil, who is a jewelry thing.

And she does like more gold and silver.

Okay. Thanks.

And I do boho style,

crochet jewelry,

and I will love to get,

if someone here is able and we are in a similar

market, I would love to collaborate with someone here to get,

to put my products more out there.

My Instagram is every little thing.

So it is there in the next to my name.

So spell it out because the podcast listeners B E R

Y L I L E a T L E T H

I N G.

Cell it along.

Yes. Littlest spelled different.

So it's every little thing,

but little is spelled L I L E a T L

E. Yes.

Thank you so much glory.

Tell us all about you.

Hello everyone.

I'm Gloria King with Kings gift baskets.

And we're located in the Myrtle beach area.

We have sort of a storefront where we're open Monday through

Friday from 10 to two.

So a perfect pop operation would be anyone that wants some

of their items in our location.

In Myrtle beach area.

We're really focusing on local product,

but we will do any other product,

but our focus is on local product that's made in South

Carolina. So if you have any South Carolina products that you

would like to see in our store,

we will love to hear from you and you can contact

us. I can skip past is that common,

then just fill out a contact you letter.

Perfect. Perfect.

Thank you Gloria.

Thank you,

Amy. You got beautiful scenery going by,

but tell us about you while you're diving.

Lake Santi is gorgeous.

So I'm Amy Hughes.

I own marshmallow MBA.

We are in the business of marshmallows.

We handcraft gourmet marshmallows in over 150 flavors for retail and

wholesale clients around the country.

We are always looking to partner with gift basket companies.

Lily, you're actually a neighbor of mine.

I live in Arlington Virginia.

So if you want to contact me,

I'd love to chat and Gloria,

I can put marshmallows made with South Carolina honey in your

store, if you want.

So you can find me at www dot marshmallow,

mba.com. And we are at marshmallow MBA across all social media.

And we are partnered with the Hershey gifting company for all

of our custom ribbon products.

Beautiful collaboration.

Okay, Annika,

why don't you go next?

Okay. I'm Anika.

And I'm a nurse and an herbalist in Vermont and my

business is primal botanical CBD.

I make CBD products all made using certified organic hemp flour

grown just up the road from me.

I'm currently making CBD oils,

CBD rubs,

body butters,

bath salts,

and CBD toffees.

I'll Fees,

Not gummies.

I'm not a big fan of gummies.

So I decided to make CBD toffees instead,

which I got to say are delicious.

That sounds good.

I'm having a special promotion,

just for a gift biz listeners.

Oh, you can use the coupon code gift 15 through June

15th for 15% off your entire order.

And you can find me@primalbotanical.com,

primal botanical with no S on the end.

And I'm also a primal botanical on Instagram,

on Facebook.

Wonderful. And I recruited you to come in because you put

a post up in is breeze within the last couple of

days and I saw your product and I'm like,

oh my gosh,

you have to come on a showcase and you were willing

to do it.

So yay to that.

Thank you for inviting me.

Of Course.

Wonderful. Okay,

Kim, why don't you go next?

Sure. I'm Kim Terrell.

I have a brick and mortar bake shop in central Connecticut,

Middlefield, Connecticut,

and we specialize in freshly baked cakes,

cookies cupcakes.

For all occasions.

When this podcast goes live,

you'll be focused on graduation from colleges and high schools locally,

all over the state.

And I can be found on Instagram at Cannes cottage,

confections.com. Wonderful.

Are you going to talk about anything else today or is

that it?

So right now,

that's it.

Okay. All right.

So stay tuned,

Kim. That means you got to sign up for another one

to give your announcements in the future.

Yes. Okay.

Graduation. Okay.

So we got suspense going on with Kim.

She has something in the works to talk about down the

road. Always,

always. Okay.

Joyce, why don't you take us home?

I am Joyce areola voices basket located in the beautiful sunshine

state of Florida.

My company is a corporate gift and personal gifting company.

Right now.

I am working on researching the find something that I can

have locally here that represents Florida.

So it came to mind that I'm searching.

I'm looking for pink flamingos,

whether they be cookies chakras,

I'm going to have a box created with the pink flamingos

that says welcome to south Florida.

So I'm looking for anything that's pink flamingos for bingo related

to create the Judas special box just for my area.

So if you girls up anything,

you know,

I don't,

Kim got me covered with the cookies.

You can do me a pink for me with that,

but I'm looking for,

I met a girl last month at the convention.

She does a chocolate shot here locally,

here to me,

maybe about three hours away.

And so I told her I would love to have pick

chocolate flamingos,

But anything Flamingo related.

So anybody who's listening today,

Anything for me or related?

Well, it doesn't always have to be food.

It can be anything that's from bingo related.

I want to put something together to create a box that

says something who were familiar with the that's our pastime never

for me goes Yet,

except probably not a real Flamingo.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay.

And where would people get in touch with you?

They get in touch with me and Joyce's baskets that time.

They can go to the bottom,

click the link and leave me a little message.

And I'll get you back up like ASAP.

Yeah, you are good.

You are a followup girl,

for sure.

I know.

You'll do that.

All right.

Wonderful. I didn't miss anybody,

right? I don't think so.

I have my little checkoff sheet to make sure that that

doesn't happen.

If you're listening and are super jealous,

because you would love to be on one of these showcases

and be able to get your name out to everybody.

You can see there's camaraderie within the group who comes into

these parties.

And we do this live just as you're listening right now,

you get exposure to all the listeners of the podcast.

So if you're interested in coming onto one of the next

bashes, you'll go to this following link,

gift biz,

unwrapped.com forward slash bash.

Now here's the thing.

I only have a certain number of spots for each of

these bashes,

because as you can tell,

if we had a lot more people here,

we'd never get off this podcast.

So I do have to limit the seats that are available.

So if you're interested,

make sure to go and sign up now so that you

can get yourself a spot.

I have two dates available in June.

I haven't put up the July dates yet,

but when this airs I'll probably have some July dates up

too. So sign up for one,

sign up for more.

They're at all different times of the day.

Cause I'm trying to accommodate all different people with all different

schedules with that.

I'm going to say,

thank you to everybody.

Who's listening to the show.

I'm thrilled that you're here.

I hope that I have achieved my goal,

which is to get you rethinking or jump-started in this whole

topic of email marketing.

And we've had a great variety of showcases here.

So you didn't catch it while it was going.

Go back,

listen again,

catch some links,

check out people's sites,

make contact with people and let's collaborate with each other because

we can all lift each other up.

Those of you who are here live,

hold tight.

When I'm done recording,

we can talk for a second afterwards.

And as I said,

thank you so much for joining us in this fourth bash

bye for now,

Before you move on to your next activity today,

make sure to get your name on the list for at

least one gift biz bash.

You can see the dates and times for upcoming sessions and

get signed up over at gift biz,

unwrapped.com forward slash bash.

And if you're enjoying the podcast and would like to show

support a rating and review would be wonderful.

It helps spread the word about the show too.

So it's a great way to pay it forward.

There's also another way to get something tangible in exchange for

your support.

Visit my merch shop for a wide variety of inspirational items

like mugs,

journals, water bottles,

and more featuring logos images and quotes to inspire you throughout

your day makes a great gift to,

and we've just added some new products for the season,

which is my favorite design right now.

It's a toss up with that gorgeous lemonade image and a

quote about refreshing and the beautiful butterfly design.

What yours turnaround is quick and the quality is top notch,

nothing but the best for you.

Take a look at all the options at gift biz,

unwrapped.com forward slash shop.

All proceeds from these purchases helps me offset the costs of

producing this podcast and now be safe and well.

And I'll see you again.

Next time on the gift biz unwrapped podcast.

I want to make sure you're familiar with my free Facebook

group called gift is breeze.

It's a place where we all gather and our community to

support each other.

Got a really fun post in there.

That's my favorite of the week.

I have to say where I invite all of you to

share what you're doing to show pictures of your product,

to show what you're working on for the week to get

reaction from other people and just for fun,

because we all get to see the wonderful products that everybody

in the community is making my favorite post every single week,

without doubt.

Wait, what,

aren't you part of the group already,

if not make sure to jump over to Facebook and search

for the group gift biz breeze don't delay.