Overview:

Marcus shared his system for creating monthly sales surges using a 1-hour reload email sequence sent throughout the year. The emails promote different products or topics each month, with the content needing only minor updates each year. Attendees discussed ways to apply this approach in their own businesses, such as focusing communication on their top clients or leveraging holidays and cultural events. Sending value-adding content between promotional emails was emphasized to keep people engaged. Testing fun and unexpected subject lines was also suggested. Attendees commented that implementing even a basic recurring email sequence could generate a good ROI from the regular income. The discussion provided ideas for segmenting lists and personalizing communication to different groups.

Takeaways:

• Marcus shares his 1 hour reload email system for creating monthly sales surges through a content calendar approach with recurring themed emails.
• He targets prospects and customers separately with different messaging, updating emails annually but keeping the same overall structure and themes.
• Themed emails tie into holidays, resolutions, cultural events etc. to boost engagement and sales around predictable times each year.
• Value-added content and free lessons are included between promotional emails to nurture relationships without constant selling.
• Segmenting the list and focusing extra attention on top clients/customers through monthly gifted content without direct selling was highlighted.
• Testing subject lines with curiosity/benefits and alliteration can boost open rates.
• Humor, unexpected themes and breaking tension may improve response rates.
• Starting slowly with a content calendar and building up frequency over time works better than an overloaded schedule.
• Forwarding emails as if they were shared can increase open rates significantly.
• Both B2B and B2C approaches were discussed, showing the flexibility of this system.

Automatically-Generated Transcription:

Okay, so our first member that's going to be, or our first talk today is Marcus Santa Maria.

And what Marcus is gonna be sharing with us is his one hour reload email system for creating a surge in sales each month.

So Marcus basically has an email list with over a hundred thousand people and runs one of the leading learn to speak Spanish organizations on the planet from his abode in Launceston, Tasmania.

And in this session, he's gonna be revealing his one hour relay calendar based promotion system that he uses to create a surge in sales each and every month via automated email promotions.

Marcus, over to you.

Alright, thanks Scott.

Yeah, I like a couple of things in the intro there.

Definitely a lot of how not Wow.

We'll be looking literally under the hood.

So I haven't prepared a slide presentation, but I will show you inside my infusion.

So account and how we we do this process.

It was also fun to hear you pronounce my name Santa Maria.

I don't think I've heard that since high school Santa Maria.

Anyway, doesn't matter.

Yeah, so my idea comes from, I had a marketing consultant, actually a systems consultant work with me for a long time.

Josh from, he was in Arizona and I'd just done a Christmas promotion and got a surge of cash from the Christmas promo and then backed it up with another one in March 31, which is my birthday.

And Josh said to me like, why don't you do a marketing calendar?

All the department stores, all the major retailers, they have a marketing calendar.

And so every month they know any a year in advance what they're gonna be promoting that month.

And it sounded like a pretty good idea.

And from there we just build it out.

So each month we come up with a, a reason why for our promotion and build some email marketing around it.

And the beauty of it was that when it came 12 months later, all I had to do was update the copy to anything that was specific to time and date.

For example, my birthday, I got a year older, so we changed that out in the email.

Anything that referenced the year.

So at New Year we always reference something like, make 2022 the best year of your life, or Make 2022 the year that you'll speak Spanish this year we'll just change that to 2023 and press send again.

And, and away those emails go to the new prospects that have come in.

And it all works very much like clockwork.

Even better than that, I have a guy on my team who does that, all that for me.

So I just say to, uh, John, update those emails in, in Infusionsoft and make them ready for, for this year.

And it's very much hands off for me.

So it's given me, it's given me a lot of stability really in, in each month I know I'm gonna get a surge of cash and therefore that gives me, I'm in Strategic coach.

They call about, they talk about cash confidence when we start out in business, we're really hustling all the time and we don't have any time to think we, we hustle and we don't get the time to step away and, and look down on our business.

But when we start to get a bit of cash confidence, we can start, start to say no to things and, and really think about my business.

So even though this is, you know, around promotions by making it part of a calendar, it's really given me a lot of time to, um, work on my business rather than in my business.

So that's the big idea.

I guess the other part of the big idea in this is there's a couple I will just share my screen.

Just let me know when you can see my screen guys.

Yep.

Yeah.

Cool.

And if anyone has any questions along the way, I'm happy to make it pretty informal and, and help anyone out.

Actually, I had a thought just as Scott was talking, um, a a lot of the people I noticed as we went round introducing a lot of the people are business to business rather than business con to consumer like me.

Um, can I, maybe just with the show of hands, see if anyone's business to consumer, just hands up two.

Yeah.

Okay.

Not a lot.

So there's another idea that could piggyback on this to business.

So a guy called Shed Homes had a, an idea of the top 100 club.

So it's the a hundred people you, you would really most like to do business with.

And you basically give those people something every month.

So let's say you wanted to, I don't know, let's say you wanted to do business with me for some reason, every month you can get in touch with me, Hey Marcus, it's Christmas.

Like to make 2022, the best year of your life, here's a little thing that worked for me, maybe a little Christmas gift.

And you keep in touch with those a hundred people giving them value before you do business.

And over time you're gonna, you're gonna get in the door and be able to hopefully build a relationship and do business with those a hundred people if you have it in a calendar.

Same thing.

If it's based around events that occur every year, the next year it's just turnkey to to roll it out again and yeah, okay, so that's just the idea for to business people.

So I'll give you a little look under the hood of the type of things we do.

This is inside my Infusionsoft account and one of the big things with this is reason why advertising.

So why are you, why are you emailing me and what's in it for me?

So at Christmas it's very easy 'cause everyone's thinking about starting to think about 20 the next year and, and their next year's goals.

So we just start that out.

Actually, I'll back one, We go to this one.

Yeah.

Pretty simple.

Christmas is 2022 going to be the year you finally speak Spanish.

Do you want to achieve something great with Spanish in 2022?

Here's my best offer to help you get there.

So things like this kind of reason why advertising.

Another one we do is on the 21st of January, There's the idea of everyone sets New Year's resolutions and most people, they're done and dusted within a few weeks, uh, to give people a reason why for another kick to do something with their Spanish.

That year.

We, we run a promotion on January 21.

Starts out statistics show that 95% of people who make a New Year's resolution have already broken it by today, 15 days into the year and it's over.

Um, fortunately there's a better way if speaking Spanish in 2022 is a resolution or a goal or even a wish for you, this free series of videos will show you your potential.

So again, like tapping into a calendar and, and something that's replicable for year in and year out.

Yeah, just with that thought in mind, I just wanna make sure everyone's getting some value out of this.

Is that something you could maybe apply to your business?

Maybe someone around the room could tell me how they might use that in their business?

Yeah, I, I wanna learn Spanish in 2022 I started learning a few words, but that's not the main thing I know you're trying to work on here.

But I absolutely want the Spanish in 2022.

Mm-hmm.

And in 21 and in 20 and in 2019 and 18 and 17 and 16.

But this is now gonna be the year.

That's it.

Yeah.

Perfect.

True.

This, this could be something that I could use in my business because, uh, we already do, uh, the little celebration things for the internet holidays on LinkedIn and we make like image posts behind it, but we never converted it to an email format.

And we can also leverage the internet events that are more so in our field when they have to with technology or specific demographics that we're targeting.

And it can be used in a way where it could be replicable, like you're saying, year to year.

So creating a content calendar around it, something we've been meaning to do for a long time, but you're giving me some ideas of how we could potentially leverage the holiday or like the mistakes that are made after the holiday, such as the resolution or something and drive that type of stuff with, uh, consistent touch points that's, that are not going to annoy people and create some illustrations around it that are effective for that.

But it's all about building the relationship in B two B.

So we're very good at building relationships, but, but my company, we don't market all all that well 'cause there's no marketers on our team.

So we need to do as best we can to create something that's reusable and to drive communication to continuously build the relationship, not necessarily sell them something.

Perfect.

I love it.

Yeah, that's exactly what I wanted to hear.

Just wanna say this, I'm, I have nothing to sell.

I'm in the business of selling Spanish, so I'm not trying to, trying to sell you a surface at the end of this.

Just wanna share some good ideas.

So I really wanted to see that someone around the room was getting value and that's really good validation that this is worth if one, if at least one person gets some good ideas out of this and it's worth my time and yours.

And just, that brings me actually into one of my other points.

Yeah, of course you wanna run a promo and there's selling, but there's also value involved.

So how we do that thematically as well.

There's things like this and you know, everyone's gonna have things specific to their interest.

So we've got one called, this goes out on the 28th of December and it's beware of Spanish speakers today.

Don't lend them money.

Check that the sugar is sugar, not salt.

Double check the time on your watch.

They always get me on the money.

Marcus, can you lend me 50 pestles?

Of course then they pocket the money and laugh.

They have the innocence is the equivalent of April Fool's Day in the Spanish speaking world.

So if you wanna learn Spanish and you're going to a Spanish speaking country, that's good stuff to know.

It's a little cultural insight that if you're gonna, especially our audience who are people who wanna retire in the Spanish speaking country.

So they might not necessarily know the, the culture, but they love the idea of trading in their lifestyle and, and you know, their money going further, living on the beach, living in a warmer climate, maybe getting a housekeeper, that sort of thing.

So people are gonna go and live in a different culture that's good information for them in an entertaining format.

Another one we do on that day A around that time is, Okay, so I was just gonna ask big picture.

Mm-hmm How many campaigns do you have throughout the year and do you repeat them year in and year out?

Do you repeat the exact same campaigns?

So the same people year in and year out?

And how many campaigns do you have throughout the year?

Yeah, so there's approximately 12 and the answer is yes, we do repeat them.

And not only that, now you, I I started thinking year two, someone's gonna say, oh this again, I, I've never had that email.

'cause we're also flooded with emails like I get really good open rates, but they're around 30%.

So we're all bombarded with emails and by the time the next year rolls around, most people have forgotten it all.

That nicked them on the way by.

So even if it hits the same people, it still works.

And then the other systemization, systemization thing we do is we run the same product to different segments within the list.

So if someone is a prospect, they get the prospect version, but if they bought a product instead of talking about 2022 being the year to finally speak Spanish, we talk about 2022 being the year to, you know, speak even better Spanish, be confident with your Spanish, achieve freedom and fluency with your Spanish.

So it's tailored to where people are in the ascension through our products.

But based on the same three themes over the 12 months.

Because what, what I'm clear on, what I just wanna get clear on is a big picture.

Mm-hmm.

Um, what are the 12 themes that you go through and you take like that you've, that you've got and mm-hmm when you repeat them, is it the same?

Is it very similar Open rates click-through rates year on year based on that?

It actually is, which I feel stupid saying it, I don't want to check my stats, but really every year it just works and, and I don't see any spikes or dips that, that send me a signal that to want, so I couldn't give you numbers.

I've not not noticed any spike or dip that worries me in the statistics.

Okay.

So in terms of the, in terms of the, so you've obviously got, you got a Christmas campaign.

Yep.

You got a New Year's campaign.

Yep.

What are the other campaigns that you've got?

Yep, So there's that January 21 or or January 15th, sorry, where we remind people about their New Year's resolutions and most people have dropped them and, and we've got some free lessons and then an offer Valentine's Day.

So with Spanish it's woo or seduce someone with your Spanish.

Then March 30 one's my birthday.

So we give a a discount that goes up 1% every year as I get a year older.

Then April, we had my son's birthday, but that was a bit corny so I pulled that one out.

Although having said that, maybe I shouldn't need to revisit that.

There was a lot of story around that.

My son was born in Mexico but in a car on the way to the hospital in Mexico.

So we, yeah, had a, had a bit of story around that I guess.

I feel a bit, he's getting a teenager now, so I don't like making a big deal about him.

Umm, may we have teacher's day in Mexico?

So every country in the world has a teacher's day and that one is here.

I just wanna pull that out because it highlights the reason why.

So the, the kind of reason why is really blatant.

So Mexico just celebrated teacher's day.

I want to use this day to make you an irresistible offer to make, to take the next step in your Spanish fluency.

So, you know, basically saying there it's teacher's day and we are using it as an excuse to, to offer you something.

Then June we have, it's halfway through the year, so halfway half off and also not too late to achieve your goals.

There's still six months left in the year.

Testing my memory for the rest.

September is Independence Day in Mexico.

So achieve independence and freedom.

So obviously Mexico, actually it's beyond Mexico 'cause other countries like Columbia, um, El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, a lot of 'em had their independence that month.

But we tie it to achieving independence and freedom with speaking Spanish.

So independence and freedom is pretty much what everyone's trying to do in their life and especially in business.

July four might work for nearly everyone in their business.

By instigating this thing in your business, you'll achieve more independence and freedom then um, we, we use 10 66.

That, that's one that's specific to us.

Um, it's a convoluted one where, where the French invaded England and brought lots of Latin words into England, which helped people learn Spanish.

'cause there there's, there's some words in English that are similar to Spanish.

So that's a bit convoluted and more for us.

But that's our October promotion.

And then November of course is Black Friday, black Friday in the us which is starting to show up here with all the sales.

So we do Black Friday and piggyback Cyber Monday with an extra offer on Cyber Monday And out of those campaigns.

So they get a similar result every year that you do them.

You write them once and you can literally repeat them 20, 30 times over do in terms They're register in the end In terms of like numbers, what would you get per name or do you have any metrics on what you tend to get from each campaign?

Yeah, That's uh, pretty good shot, isn't it?

So Yeah, maybe it helped the quality different style email.

It Was, sorry, I've just muted everyone and I'll just unmute Marcus, can you just unmute yourself?

Marcus, can you talk and just, yeah, yeah.

So I couldn't give you dollars per name, but yeah, it's five figures each time and, and so that's what I look at.

Just dollars in and dollars out and compared to the year on year and that's always pretty good.

Yeah, yeah.

So what you're saying is all of us here, like anyone with an email list could basically take our list, set up 12 campaigns, you've got excuses for Valentine's Day, your birthday teacher's day, whatever, make a list.

How many emails are these in general?

Are they five email campaigns?

Are they 10 email campaigns?

Are they three emails?

Yeah, so anywhere from five to probably 11 or 12.

But having said that, the last three, and this is where we get a, a surge of sales and this is one of the important things, if you can tie an offer to this that's expiring so you can create some scarcity.

So I'm selling digital products.

There's no scarcity of digital products.

You've got as you can sell as many as you have, but by creating a, a deadline date that creates a scarcity, you only get that discount or that package or that bonus until that date.

And there is, and therefore the last three emails are all around that 24 hours left, 12 hours left, five hours left, the 12 hours left and the five hours left.

Emails we only send to people who've clicked links in any of the other emails.

So we don't wanna burn out the list unless someone's shown some interest.

We, we only send 'em the 24 hour email, not the 12 or the six or it might be 10 or five or whatever, 10 or five hours or whatever it is.

Yeah, there's always three, three emails about the closing.

And then the first email is usually about the offer.

So if there's a formula, it's this, the first email is we have an offer.

I mean we have a reason why we have that offer.

Then the middle emails will maybe have a free lesson or some, some interesting tidbits like the, you know, the day of the day of the in innocence, which is like April Fool's Day in in Mexico, that New Year's Eve, we have one going out a few di few days about that, about how Spanish speakers will eat 12 grapes and make a wish for each grape for each month of the year.

And don't be a fool like me who ate all the grapes before the clock even rang.

The little things like that are, have some value, either free lessons or or tidbits of information.

And then the last three again are, are selling again and maybe, maybe in the middle we'll sneak in a selling email as well.

That's, that's just straight straight sell.

So I tend to talk about it as a straight sell email or, or a content email.

Another thing, um, hopefully I can just pick out an email and it'll have it in there for you.

Yeah, do a bit of this, see how we've got, there's one mistake that most actually my screen sharing, I still am, right?

Yeah.

There's one mistake that is almost certain to destroy your chances of Spanish.

And then we have this sort of reminding them of the offer and we found that the higher up in the email that is the obviously the more clicks you get and the more sales you get.

So some of the content thing will just have a little sidebar like this reminding people of the offer and have found that really helps generate extra sales.

Now that's good.

W would you be able to take us through maybe just one of your short lo like they're almost like launches, right?

That you're doing?

Uh, yeah, once a month maybe.

I don't know, one of your shorter ones like from, I don't know start if start to finish is too much, but just so we can see the, the structure of just one of them.

Yep.

Okay, let's see.

That's a long one.

Yeah, this is probably a good one.

So yeah, I guess no one wants me to sit here and read the email but so Black Friday's a traditionally a day of great deals in the U S A I doubt you'll find a better opportunity than the one I'm offering right now on my Spanish fluency program until Wednesday.

You can try out the first fluency module plus five conversation multipliers for just a buck plus as an extra super bonus.

You'll also receive Spanish ear training, which is now available on our all new video format too.

So that's the one we'd call out straight sale email, introducing the offer, then email two the easy path to Spanish.

This is pretty salesy too.

Yeah.

Okay, middling value here, not straight sale.

So one of the best things about being called a teacher in, in a Spanish speaking country is called is being called maestro in an Aussie amigo.

Thought that was very cool and instead insisted on calling mem maestro for a while.

Not that I minded a pository by the way, for only the next five days I'm offering a special $1 trial.

I'm bola vu with the simplest path to building fluency in Spanish.

So the structure we are using there is actually I'll, I'll go a little deeper here.

The subject line formula that we usually look for is curiosity plus benefit, not huge curiosity there, but definitely a benefit of an easy path to Spanish.

And then this structure is story segued into offer.

So not as hard selling as the first email.

Okay, email three, my secret source to and my secret hang on my Spanish secret source video.

A bit of alliteration there like the three S's, which is always good in a subject line and curiosity, what's the secret source benefit, implied benefit in that there's some secret source that's gonna get me speaking Spanish.

This video shows you my secret source.

I used to keep it close to my chest.

I thought it was too valuable to share outside of my paid programs.

Now I openly share it.

It can get you unstuck from unstuck from the verb conjugation nightmares that usually come with Spanish classes.

Check out this video and see how easy Spanish can be.

And that takes them to a free lesson.

So now that's value I number four, because of the structure of of this campaign, it's Cyber Monday.

So we're going straight into the offer again.

A few days ago I sent you an email with a fantastic Spanish offer.

It develops your ear for understanding Spanish and your tongue for speaking Spanish.

Um, so that sort of loops into the offer again.

And that straight sales email because of Cyber Monday Five I believe develops your ear for speaking Spanish.

Curiosity, again, what develops your ear for Spanish.

And then benefit, one of the things you, if you start speaking another language is you find people are hard to understand 'cause they speak quickly.

Um, so there's a implied benefit there.

Um, there are two ingredients to expand your confidence with Spanish speaking and being understood.

And number two, understanding what your amigos say.

Check out this amazing Cyber Monday offer to develop your ear for hearing Spanish and your tongue for speaking Spanish.

Then we ba basically go into a bit of a story of what of why textbooks are wrong and how to overcome it.

So it's definitely a selling email, but it's not straight off a hard hitting email.

Yeah.

And that then, like I said, then we get into that formula, oh hang on, no, the Spanish year training now on video.

Yeah.

Okay.

We're making the offer there again.

And then the last two emails are those time-based ones.

So 24 hours left and then it's almost over.

I'm guessing that goes out at about nine, nine, uh, nine hours before the close.

So that's basically the formula email number one straight offer, the the final couple of two or three emails closing offer.

So doubling down on the scarcity and this is where the, at least half of the sales come in the last 24 hours, often 60, 70%.

And then the middle emails may be something that's hard selling but softer sell and usually some something free and some value.

That's, that's awesome.

And in terms of, so you do that and in between these emails what happens?

Do you send the same content as last year or do you do unique content?

What's the process?

Um, yeah, that's a a good question.

In theory I like to, I would like to send out unique content and frankly if I don't have it, I'll just send out the same stuff from last year.

But usually the in-between emails are either story-based or some sort of value, something for free.

So we call those the goodwill emails.

They're building goodwill for the promo.

Obviously if you hit people with promos all the time, they're gonna burn out and they're gonna stop opening your emails.

So in between we make sure there's enough value that ideally you'd want people to be excited about opening your email.

'cause last time I got an email from this guy, I got something for free or I got an insight some way of seeing the world that changed how I look at things or an entertaining story.

Um, entertainment's always good.

So those sort of things, um, that's what I'm looking for in the middle.

And if I'm busy with stuff fra you know, frankly I'll reboot last year's email and still seems to work.

Yeah, no, that, that's awesome.

And you haven't found that sending those 12 promos a year, it doesn't burn the list if you're putting the quality stuff in the middle and nurturing and the story stuff and all of that sort of thing?

Yeah, no, I haven't found it at all.

I know it sounds counterintuitive and 'cause you've asked that question about three times, but it hasn't.

I've got a pretty big list and, and my list is there's always new people coming in as well.

New buyers and and stuff like that.

And so I guess saying that the top Somewhere between four and 20%, we won't email.

So for example, if the buyers will only probably do this kind of promo four to six times a year, so the prospects every month, 'cause there's always new prospects as they ascend, it's less frequent.

So the buyers, yeah, say four to six times a year.

And then if the buyer people who've bought a standalone course ascend to a continuity program, I'm not gonna send them these promo offers.

'cause then it's more about retention in the continuity program rather than extra sales.

So it depends where they are on the list, how much of of this stuff they'll get.

Yeah, no, that's that, that's awesome.

That's awesome.

Thanks.

Thanks Marcus.

That's that's good.

Let's open it up to the room.

'cause I, I think that was, yeah, like it was real hard hitting what's working now.

Everything in there.

I just wanna throw it up out to the room now for questions.

Is everyone able to unmute themselves if I just unmuted?

'cause there was some background noise, but yeah, let me know if you can't and I can always, um, unmute you.

Any questions on that?

Yeah, Marcus, I've got a, I've got a quick question for you.

What do you find in terms of days of the week or time of the day?

Yeah, that's been the most effective in terms of responses.

So not just necessarily open but engagement all the way to sales.

Yeah.

Morning's better than night, but that's tricky 'cause everyone's in different parts of the world.

So I oscillate between what would be morning in the US and what would be morning in the uk.

So yeah, that's where my buyers are.

Maybe, I don't know, 10% of my buyers would be in Australia.

This part of the world, 60% would be in the US so I'm sending it their morning and probably about, I'm looking at maybe 11 o'clock New York time, which makes it about eight o'clock in.

Yep.

In the west coast.

11:00 AM Tuesdays and Thursdays in the US Eastern time.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah, that's pretty much it.

And then, but I'll oscillate it and sometimes send an evening one in the US I think I've got that 'cause that'll be morning in the UK and Spain where a lot of my other customers are.

So I'll oscillate between those two.

And then just also on timing, the people get paid on the first of the month in the US so it's some, if possible, like if the timing works, it's better to to end the promo as you flip over to a new month rather than at the end of a month where people are running outta money or thinking about money more.

Yeah, no, that's, that's great.

Any other questions, Marcus?

What about u use of a sense of humor?

Is Christmas and Valentine's Day and those markers in the year are, are they a little bit predictable now?

O o o obviously you're a genius at what you do and I'm, I'm not casting distortions in your direction, but I'm just wondering if you have any of those emails that have a sense of humor to them or have you experimented with Magic Propeller Day or Blue shoot Tuesday or Magic Mushroom May or A, anything that's going to interrupt attention?

Does that make any difference to the response rate?

I couldn't tell you if it did, but I love your idea.

Thank you.

That's a great idea.

Some weird, yeah, that too.

Yeah, that's fantastic.

Yeah, humor is great and basically my humor is self-deprecating.

Like something stupid I did 'cause I didn't understand, didn't understand something in Spanish or some cultural thing like eating the bloody grapes before everyone else when you're supposed to wait for the bells to go and things like that.

So that, yeah, that's my humor and it's usually self-deprecating.

Something silly I did.

But yeah, I love your idea of yeah, magic propeller day.

I think you can even create your own day and get it registered.

However you get international day of not being a idiot with Spanish day or something.

You could actually have a bit of fun with that.

So that's a really cool idea and and I love the idea that you mentioned of just breaking the tension and the unexpected nature of it as well.

So that's, thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cool.

Just wanted to thank everybody today.

I've got someone angrily waiting for me because it's late.

Yeah.

Since it's got put on my calendar last minute with Scott after we talked about it.

I'm gonna plan this out next time so I don't have to just leave in the middle of it.

But great so far and thank you so much Marcus, for everything that you presented today.

Very much appreciated.

Yeah, you too man.

Thanks for your contribution and uh, I look forward to, to getting to know you better.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I'll be at the next one and not have to leave early.

Thanks Rob.

Cheers man.

Perfect.

Cheers.

No, that, that's, that's great.

Why don't we go into breakout rooms now and I think the theme for the breakout room is really how we can 'cause because I think what you've shown Marcus is, is fascinating and how we can actually integrate, whether it's in our own list or in our client's list, you know, this content calendar to really, you know, bump up, bump up revenues.

So I think the, yeah, the theme is for the breakout room is yeah, executing on content calendars.

So we've got 21 here, so let's break out into, I think we go into five rooms.

It's probably the sweet spot.

Maybe six rooms, five rooms, let's go five.

Um, Wrap the conversations at the best moments.

Yeah.

To encourage, it's to encourage more engagement later, right?

We leave it on an open loop.

So it's, I gotta finish that conversation.

You forget what you were talking about 10 minutes ago.

Yeah.

So if might just do a quick round the room from, we'll start with Judith from our group.

What was your, what's your biggest takeaway from both Marcus's speech and from the discussion?

We had some great discussion when we all came together about the possibility of segmenting the list and whenever you segment it tends to get better results.

We also talked about how we overestimate how much people are reading our stuff and that we can be reusing it.

We love this idea that set and forget to a certain extent, you just needed to tweak it but get stuff out in a more strategic way.

'cause I think we all admitted that some of what we do is ad hoc and we do a campaign and throw everything into it and then move on.

And sometimes we've got great stuff there that we're just not coming back to and using as much as possible.

Adam shared a cool thing about using brain teasers and riddles and things like that to try and get that engagement back when you're asking the question and then people are coming back with answers and you're really getting engagement rather than the one way.

And we had a question around whether you tie in to your social media, LinkedIn, Facebook.

Do you do the same monthly idea as the calendar?

Are you amending it to make it much shorter posts rather than the the longer email?

Marcus, are you tying it in at all?

I don't do much on social media and so there's a big opportunity there.

Obviously I've done some paid advertising around it and it works really well.

Christmas and Black Friday, really well around the same sort of thing.

Black Christmas, new Year.

And then actually there's, we really hit hard between Christmas and January.

We do January 6th, which is, it's called Los El de los, yeah.

The, the day of the three Wise men.

And that's like Christmas for people in the Spanish speaking world.

It's another day of present.

So here we're, again, here's another present from us so that, yeah, that, that time of year works really well on Facebook, as does Black Friday.

The other one's on paid advertising, so I'm getting a return.

The others, yeah, I haven't, I haven't worked as much, but I think I need to adjust it for social media and then it could.

Cool.

Yeah, 'cause you've done all the work, so it'd be interesting to see adjusting it to social.

How, how about you Russ?

What was your biggest takeaway from your group and what you've seen so far?

From what I've seen so far on the, the presentation, I was a bit late to the presentation 'cause I was just wrapping up a, a webinar that we just ran this morning.

But on the presentation itself, I like the idea there of providing content in the email, which obviously yeah we do already.

But after the opening line, kind of inserting that offer.

'cause I just run an experiment this week where I've had short, punchy emails to promote the webinar that have all worked quite consistent.

And I went with a different strategy this week of using content to promote the webinar and the, the registrations were well down, but the quality was well up.

The attendance was, I think, uh, initially it looks like it's about 45% live attendance, uh, from the registrations, which yeah, was pretty good really for what we normally get.

Uh, so it's a different style of email, but I like the idea of inserting the offer in the content email after the first line.

I think that could improve those emails even more.

So yeah, that was certainly a pickup from the presentation now.

Yeah, yeah.

No, that's excellent.

Thanks.

And, and Mark, Steven, what was your biggest takeaway?

Hey guys, just wanna say Marcus, thank you very much for sharing your tips and strategies.

That was fantastic.

This is my first meetings, but I really got a lot out of it.

Lots of great ideas and tips.

I think probably my biggest takeaway, um, from Marcus's chat was to, regarding the, the top 100 business clients and staying in touch with them and giving them something of value each month without trying to push them and sell 'em anything, just to be there as that person that just keeps gifting them.

But I, but I expanded that from that idea straight away.

Made some notes saying I should do my, I I've got not a massive database, 17,500 people, but I thought that top 1000, the people who engage the most, that spend the most create that top 1000 list and just create the v i p group out of them and give them something every single month.

Like a special, Hey, you are part of this special group and here's something again, similar to that business idea.

So that was great and lots of other great ideas I've jotted down, made lots of notes, four pages full of notes.

So thanks heaps, Marcus, for doing that.

Then in the breakout meeting, I I, what I really got from John was his unops.

So if 30% of people open an email that goes out today by tomorrow or within two days, create forward in the subject line as if it's just an email that's been forward with a little, Hey, just want to check.

You may have missed this.

Bang, there's the same email, it's just to follow up.

And, and John said he's getting up to 20% of people then open that all of a sudden that takes the email open rate from the 30% to 50% or whatever it comes to, whatever the maths adds up to.

But I thought that was a good idea.

So yeah, a couple of great, great takeaways and enjoy being here in this first meeting.

So thank you.

Yeah, no, awesome, awesome.

Thanks Mark.

And Mark's, um, a bit of a PR guru.

Yeah, he's very good at getting on TV and radio and newspapers and all of that sort of thing.

Yeah.

That, that's, that's why we've asked them to, to join the group.

So welcome.

Excellent.

So we've got, and Greg Smith, what was your biggest takeaway from what you've seen so far?

That's some magic mushrooms for me.

What what's that?

Oh, sorry, what what, what was that?

Oh, I said that's Marcus's new byline for me.

Magic Mushroom may, he's gonna do some fun stuff with that.

Um, but the, the, the um, assumption that I made coming into a group like this would be that the marketing brains on our planet would be all over what Marcus just described to us.

So I'm a bit surprised that my assumption was wrong.

So that's refreshing.

'cause my act is not together yet in the way Marcus's is with that email sequence.

And, and the other relief for me in males was me, males mere humans, was that Marcus explained in our breakout group that he didn't start with that entire suite of messaging all sitting there ready to go in a heartbeat.

And so the concept of starting once a quarter and building to once every couple of months and then perhaps once a month, that's the way for a normal human being or a busy human being to build up that collateral and rinse and repeat it in creative ways each year.

We were saying before, it's like super valuable because even if you've got a small list and you're only making five grand every time you do that launch, if you're repeating it 10 times, you're literally getting, and it's seven emails, you're literally making over 10 years, you're making 50 grand from writing seven emails.

So it's yeah, that, that's a, a pretty good r o i, you know, so Yeah.

No, that's, that's good.

And, and uh, Jane, what was your biggest takeaway from your group or what you've seen so far?

Oh gosh.

So many things are dropping just from these comments.

Right Marcus, thank you so very much.

I really appreciated that.

And just listening to what Greg was saying, I've started talking about putting this together for this year and we were actually putting the months together on different products rather than just going, I'm assuming you are doing to just one product with just the different topics, is that right?

No, uh, I do have a suite of products, so it's not the same offer every month.

It's either a discount or a bundle or a dollar trial.

There's, yeah, there's always something a little bit different about it, at least having said that, within a three month period, they're all different offers.

Mm-hmm.

It's, um, I really like that.

I like the idea of just reminding us why you are emailing me, what's in it for me and that curiosity.

So we had a bit of a chat around the entertainment and Tracy added on that she's entertaining people with open rates and then sending a lumpy mail, which is interesting, which is, um, great conversion for her.

But I was thinking about this top hundred being a B two B with the energy, well, sorry, B two C to a consumer on property investing and, um, and mortgages.

And having done that with John Hubbard in the past and having built that business, I was talking to someone recently about the mortgage broking clients yesterday, and the top 100 came to me and the conversation we had yesterday was, build the top 100 within your client database through referrals.

And that those people who have given you referrals, for instance, could be the top 100.

You can run a competition and offer them something.

And Kenwood and I have had some conversations around what that offer could be, but it just, yeah.

Rather than actually going to your list or your community or who you really want to work with to have that top a hundred, it's just dropped to me that potentially could grow that top 100 within your current database.

Yeah, no, that's, yeah, that, that's a great spin on things.

I'm looking at how we can apply one strategy to Yeah.

To pull it across to another.

So that's awesome.

Thanks Jane.

We will, let's move on to our next presentation and give Marcus a hand of applause for that.

That was, yeah, that was awesome.

And thanks for co coming in and doing this, Marcus.

Really appreciate it.

Well, My, um, and I, I wanted to give back, 'cause actually I've got a lot from working with you and I know we've had a lot of calls where there was no money exchanged, but you gave me a lot of value, so that was really my motivation to do it, to, um, to give something back to you.

So yeah, thanks.

And also, I've gotta cut out in about 10, 15 minutes, so if you see me leave, I'm not being rude, I just have to leave.

Yep.

Yeah, no, no, no drama at all.

No, thanks for being here.

That's, yeah, that was a, that was a great presentation.