Kennedy is the founder of Email Marketing Heroes and the host of the Email Marketing Show podcast. He’s a professional mind reader turned email marketing expert. He combines psychology, showmanship and strategy to provide his clients with seriously powerful marketing insights.
An Interview With Kennedy
Why Your MSP Needs an Email Marketing Strategy
All businesses want to serve existing clients well and attract new clients at the same time. Kennedy says that when we’re busy with work, our marketing falls by the wayside, and we don’t tend to notice until things slow down and there are no new leads.
“So you’re constantly switching between delivery and lead generation, which is tricky. But if you took small, simple actions, you’d see a big difference. And these can be automated to make it even easier. You just need to be consistent with your email marketing.
“Your strategy should allow for you to turn it up and down depending on how busy you are, but it should allow for you to scale. You can send as many or as few emails as you like, but without any kind of strategy everything in your business is harder than it needs to be.”
Why You Can’t Just Rely on Social Media to Market Your MSP
There are three elements to a business, says Kennedy. First, build an audience, second convert the audience and third, serve the customers. But where people go wrong is thinking that the platform you use for stage one will help with stage two, and it won’t.
“Social media won’t help with conversion. It helps you get to know people and build a relationship, but that’s all. And remember – never build your business on borrowed land. If the platform decides you can’t post, or deletes your account, or even just changes the algorithm to reduce your risk, you’re in trouble.
“You have no control over it at all if something goes wrong. And while you can appeal to reinstate a lost account, the decision isn’t always made by a human and you don’t get it back. So you’ve lost all of your contacts and the connections you’ve built up.”
How to get Prospects onto Your Email Marketing List
Kennedy’s advice is to avoid buying a list. There is a time and a place for that, but if you’re just starting out, don’t do it. “You want people to join your list because they want to be there and to hear from you, and there are a couple of ways to do that.
“You can simply tell people about it, and share the sign-up link. You might have heard that PDFs aren’t working any more, but that’s about how you position them. Instead, offer a checklist or a plan to achieve a certain outcome. Quizzes also work well.
“Whatever it is, have your audience in mind when you create your freebie (lead magnet). They don’t know how you can help them, so you use it to educate them. Ideally, have two. One for those who are aware of your problem, and one who aren’t so sure of what they need.”
How to put Your Personality into Your Emails
One big risk with using AI in emails is that people are going to be able to easily churn out a high volume of emails, adding to the noise in people’s inboxes. Kennedy adds: “Anecdotal evidence shows that we have shorter attention spans and more choice, so attention is being pulled in many different directions.
“However, you can train AI to write in your voice. But don’t give it your previous emails, because they’re often in a dull tone. Instead, give it some audio content – a presentation, a podcast interview or even some bullet points that you read out. Then feed the AI your transcript so it learns your voice.
“Next, train it on your products. Give it your books, blogs, brochures and product pages. Once it’s got all that, you can ask it to write emails for you in your tone of voice. It can also help you to make links and give ideas that haven’t occurred to you. But use the outputs as a first draft, not the final version!”
A Simple Email Marketing Automation Every MSP Business Needs
Kennedy has come up with what he calls a ‘tell me more campaign’, which can be set up and automated. “So, let’s say someone visits your website three times in 90 days. They’re showing a level of intent to buy and you know they’re interested.
“In a bricks and mortar shop, if you look at something for a while, an assistant will come over to see if you have any questions, so you do the same with your virtual shoppers. Pay attention to the links they click in your emails and the pages they visit.
“Because if they come back to the same place in a short period of time, they’re a good lead. So set the automation to offer the visitor an opportunity to chat or have a demo. Alternatively, if you have a sales team, the automation can escalate it to get a salesperson to get in touch.”
The One Thing You Think You Want From Email Marketing That You Don’t
Most people think their emails should look pretty. They should have titles, sections, graphics – like the school newsletter. But, as Kennedy says, it’s not the school newsletter!
“I say to my clients – take out all of the images and the colours, make it look like you’ve sent it from Gmail. And almost every time, they get fewer spam reports, higher open and clickthrough rates, and more sales. Why is that?
“Well, because people like to imagine things for themselves. So what we do with email is paint pictures in people’s brains with words. The reason we do that rather than showing them is because when we imagine a thing in our heads, it’s way more powerful. Why? Because it’s emotional. And nobody can buy until they feel.”
