Fisher Email Marketing - Stephen Fisher
Stephen Fisher recieved his first payment as an online writer back in 2009. “I always wanted to write,” he recalls, “and my first gig was to write website copy for an affiliate site, and I was paid 75 cents.” He was happy to get the project, but realized “clearly this isn’t sustainable, so I need to figure out how to do this professionally.”
Soon after, he read Peter Bowerman’s The Well Fed Writer, and that put Stephen on a path to becoming a successful commercial copywriter. His first business was an SEO company in Seattle, but after wrestling with Google’s ever-changing algorithms, he decided to shut it down and began freelancing. That’s when things began to click. I talked with Stephen about how he’s grown his email marketing business, and why email still thrives in the world of “Inbound” and digital content.
You went from SEO to email. Why the change?
I wanted to use my copywriting skills, and I knew I didn’t want to write for consumers. In B2B I genuinely felt like I was helping people. There were so many businesses offering great services, they just didn’t know how to say it. I help them tell their story in a way that gets customers to act.
How did you get your first customer?
Somehow I ended up arguing politics on Facebook. It ended in a stalemate of course, but right before we both got offline, the guy writes “That’s it. I’m done. I’m going to go walk the dog,” and I said, “I’m done too, I’m going to write cold emails.” Oddly, he wrote back and asked if I did lead generation. He happened to be looking for help with his business. Thirty minutes later we were on the phone discussing a project. You never know where a relationship is going to start!
Do you work with a certain type of company or a particular industry?
Ideally, I want to work with people I can learn from. When you write for someone else, you really need to understand them, their company, their short and long term goals. That’s how I build solid working relationships.
Do you do much email marketing for yourself?
I do. I also write a lot of LinkedIn messages, and as an owner I receive a lot of LinkedIn requests. So I do get projects from my own campaigns. Although two-thirds of the messages I receive are sales pitches disguised as project requests. That happens, but I’m looking for that third that are interested in a working relationship, something that will benefit us both. I have a bias towards founder-sellers, because they don’t like to sell, and that’s where I can help. But generally speaking, in terms of the software, I’m always experimenting with different email platforms.
Are there any platforms that you recommend?
One of the best is Outreach.io, they have good data management and workflow management features. Some of the others I’ve tried recently are MailShake and Woodpecker. All of these platforms have pros and cons. Some have great features and some, which I won’t name, have features that are inexplicably missing!
Email marketing is a broad topic, but I did want to ask if you help your clients with customer and prospect lists.
I can help clean lists, but there are places that specialize in that, so a lot of times it depends on quantity - the number of names they have. I used to just trust the data I was given but learned quickly that I need to ask the right questions before deciding what to do with a client’s list.
I want to know where the data came from - is this an opt-in, was it purchased - these things make a big difference. A lot of people just want a ton of names, and often I have to tell clients that they need to make sure the list and the message match. That’s the strategy part of things that I like. And that strategy comes from the initial conversations about their business and about their business goals.
What have you seen in terms of response rates? I see different benchmarks online.
It depends on a lot of variables, even the platform. I’ve seen LinkedIn drip campaigns with response rates in the mid-30% range for initial connections, with replies anywhere from 5% to 10%. Average (non-social) email open rates tend to be around 15%. Conversion rates will vary by campaign, that’s a whole other conversation. But I’ve done email blasts for enterprise sales where they need to send over 30 thousand cold emails to close one deal.
The best results will come from a small list of homogeneous people, job-title based, where you have a clearly identified pain point.
So what’s the most important thing to remember when creating an email campaign?
There are a lot of important aspects to a campaign, but the most important thing is your Offer. There will be different rules for selling ‘marketing consulting services’ versus selling ‘software.’ There’s a different psychology, and there’s a different number of stakeholders. The best results will come from a small list of homogeneous people, job-title based, where you have a clearly identified pain point.
I mentioned my bias for founder-sellers, how they don’t like to sell. People have a tendency to sell with their personality but they’re not focused on their niche or they haven’t properly constructed a value proposition. That’s why you need to optimize, split test, iterate, measure. Nothing can guarantee results, but you can put yourself in the best position to succeed by focusing on your offer.
That’s good advice. Do you have any other tips or suggestions?
(Laughs). I have a lot of them, but some may just be superstition! I don’t like to send emails on Fridays. I try to have most messages hit inboxes around 9:30, except when I’m emailing tech-people, then nothing goes out prior to 10 in the morning! On a more serious note, make sure you always have a call-to-action but just ONE and only one call-to-action. Your goal for an email is get someone to act - get them on the phone, get a meeting.
Another thing is to not over-rely on one channel. In general, people with different titles tend to prefer different channels. So if you want to use LinkedIn, do an advanced search for “people who have posted on LinkedIn in the past 30 days” to see who is active there. That type of research is invaluable.
Last question - why should someone choose email as a marketing tactic?
Look… email is the most boring marketing tactic right now. It’s not free, it’s not perfect, but it works. It’s not dependent on things outside your control, it helps with complex sales because you can have real discussions and talk about serious things. You can use it to build real-world reltionships.
The average professional gets something like 120 emails every day. That’s a lot of emails, but your odds are still good. The bottom line is that it’s the most cost-effective way to get customers.
