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I've been working on Swim University's email strategy. I aim to treat email more like social media notifications, directing attention to long-form content on YouTube and our website. For March, I planned video promotions, a filter cleanse BOGO sale, and an article on hot tub water testing. I've also switched from Yoast SEO to Rank Math and migrated to the Gutenberg editor in WordPress for better features and efficiency. If you have any feedback or questions, email me at matt@moneylab.co.
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What is Money Lab?
Matt Giovanisci and friends drop the gauntlet of truth about being self-employed, serial entrepreneurs. They're not "teaching" how to build a successful company. Instead, they run business challenges and experiments offering a transparent view of what it takes to make money online.
Hey. It's Matt, and welcome back to Money Lab. I was, given some feedback about the podcast, and I figured I'd, let you know. One of the feed pieces of feedback was that I should inform new listeners, so if you're listening to this part 2 episode as your first time, I am walking around in my garage, which I have converted into a brewery. It does have some sound panels in it, so it sounds better than it did when I first built it.
Matt Giovanisci:But I am just talking on my iPhone, and that's why the sound quality sounds the way it does. Because I'm just kinda doing this off the dome, off my phone, if you know what I mean. Because it's exactly what I mean. I said it. That's that's what I mean.
Matt Giovanisci:It is what it is. Alright. So today, for this podcast, figured it'd be interesting to record, we'll see. I have to so it's it's March as I'm recording this, and I know you're listening to this in May at some point. It's, like, 2 months ago.
Matt Giovanisci:But I am currently where the hell is my freaking pen?
Matt Giovanisci:Alright. I'll just use this one,
Matt Giovanisci:I guess. I I guess I'll use this one that's the exact pen I was looking for just in a different spot. Okay. So I have to come up with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 different emails that I wanna send for the rest of the month in March for hot tubs. Now I am staring at a calendar.
Matt Giovanisci:I know you can't see it. And if you just heard that sound in the background, that is my glycol chiller kicking on to cool down. Glycol chiller is something I use to cool the beer as it ferments, because that's I'm a home brewer, and this is my, brewery that I'm in. Gotta tell everybody what I'm doing. Make it.
Matt Giovanisci:So I have, 4 different email types. I'll go over this again. I have article so the way that I'm treating email and and what I talked about in a previous episode is that I'm treating email more like a notification social media. We have content on YouTube and on our website. I don't need a 4th long form content platform.
Matt Giovanisci:I just need to use email to draw attention to those long form platforms, and then do some other internal stuff that's more sales related and not newsletter related, if that makes sense. So I have different color, so I have this calendar, this desk calendar that I'm using, and I have, 4 different colored tiny little Post it notes that I'm using as my representation for email. And so I have, blue is my article, and so I only have one that I wanna promote. I have, orange, which are my videos, and I do those on Sundays. So Sundays are video days or when I promote videos.
Matt Giovanisci:And then, pink is my slash is my newsletter style or, you know, just content like, the email itself is content, and then yellow is is my sales. So, start I'm I'm recording this, on 16th. Tomorrow is Saint Patrick's Day. Does not mean anything for us, as a pool and hot tub company, but might it might dictate something. So I need to the first email that I need to come up with is to promote a YouTube video.
Matt Giovanisci:Alright? So here's how I'm going to pull this off. I'm actually gonna go to our YouTube channel on on my computer here, type in Swim University. Alright. And I'm just gonna go to videos, and I'm just gonna go to well, I'm just gonna see the most popular ones.
Matt Giovanisci:Alright. Or, sorry, the latest ones. So I'm gonna go, and find should probably only look at hot tub. Let's see. Let's go to playlists.
Matt Giovanisci:I should have a hot tub one. They're not easily split up. Okay. So I'll just do this. So on Saint Patrick's Day, we need to send a video out, and I'll have a little fun with it.
Matt Giovanisci:I will try to find let's see if I have one. A I got money saving spa tips. That's green. I was thinking green hot tub. Alright.
Matt Giovanisci:Green hot tub question mark? Got it. Okay. So that's gonna be Saint Patrick's Day. It's a hot tub algae.
Matt Giovanisci:So I'm just gonna write green hot tub. Cool. And then we since we're in video land, let's do one more. Actually, we need 2 more because next, we have, 5 Sundays in March. So Let's see.
Matt Giovanisci:The last week of March. So Steph also has a sort of an editorial calendar here by month. And in the month of March, we usually do hot tub draining or hot tub chemicals. I think we recently just did hot tub draining. So let's look and see what else we have.
Matt Giovanisci:Hot tub temperature, reduce chlorine, hot tub airlock. Let's do that one because it's about reef well, let's do one about refilling and then hot tub air lock. Alright? So we'll go hot tub startup and then hot tub air oh, is it startup? No.
Matt Giovanisci:It's draining. It's draining. It's draining. It's draining. K.
Matt Giovanisci:Go back. Okay. Well, hot tub airlock, we can do because that'll be oh, fuck me. See, this is hard to decide. You know what?
Matt Giovanisci:Since we said money saving tips, let's do money saving tips. Let's make another green one. Money saving tips. And then for our third one, we will do let's see. Looking around here, how to add chemicals,
Matt Giovanisci:how to minerals.
Matt Giovanisci:Salt water hot tubs. I can't get the pH right. Just look up hot tub drain. Number 1, how to drain and clean a hot tub. Fuck it.
Matt Giovanisci:That's what we're doing last Sunday of the month. Cool. How to drain and clean hot tub. Alright. Now we need 3 sales emails.
Matt Giovanisci:I already know that I want to do a BOGO but I want to do a filter, cleanse, BOGO. And then their second email we'll do on so that's Monday is when we're gonna announce that sale. So it'll be a week long sale. We're gonna do a filter cleanse, buy 1 get 1, which is what BOGO means, because we have a lot of filter cleanse we need to get rid of. We have the filter the second email is gonna be a filter cleanse FAQ, And then the final email will be filter cleanse last chance.
Matt Giovanisci:Alright. Then we have on the 27th, which is a Wednesday, that is going to be an article. And so for that one, we will. Alright, that'll be fun. Let's see.
Matt Giovanisci:Hot tub chemicals and and hot tub draining and cleaning. So hot tub chemicals, hot tub chemistry. We've done a lot of these already. I want to get down the list a little bit. Alright.
Matt Giovanisci:Let's look. See all the guides. Hot tub. Hot tub water testing. Let's do that one.
Matt Giovanisci:Hot Tub Water Testing. Alright. And now for our newsletter, which is gonna go on that Friday, the last Friday of the month, what we are gonna do is for this one, I'm gonna go to Instagram. Oh, also, I'm drinking a beer. So if you hear me sipping I'm sorry.
Matt Giovanisci:I'm a slurper, guys. Oh, I'm a slurper. Alright. So I'm gonna go to my Instagram account, and I'm gonna look at the reels tab. And I'm gonna look at plays and see what got a lot of play in hot tub in hot tub world.
Matt Giovanisci:This one recently did. Hot tub shop vac. I like that one. Alright. So we did this, hot tub shop using a little mini shop vac as a tip.
Matt Giovanisci:Hot tub shop vac real. Alright. And so just to kinda recap, I have my video templates designed, and I designed it in Figma and then created a template within Klaviyo or Klaviyo, which is my email provider or my email service provider. And the the videos I'm noticing so I was I had my logo at the top, and then I had a a headline, and then I had the text. And the headline and the text were all done natively, so they're actual text.
Matt Giovanisci:But I noticed that because I use, pop ins, which is not a WebSafe font, when I open the email on my phone, the font just doesn't look good as the headline, so I think I gotta do one of 2 things. I either have to not include a headline at the top, which is kind of where I'm what I'm leaning towards, or do a and this is what I really don't wanna do. Yeah. Or I gotta figure out something because the headline just doesn't look right. So I'm probably gonna end up using Arial and just designing it with a website font so it looks a little bit better.
Matt Giovanisci:So I have that done. Shouldn't take me that those three emails, I should be able to do in, like, 15 minutes because it's all the same template. The template's already in Klaviyo. All I have to do is grab the thumbnails from each of those videos, which I can download right off of YouTube, update in update it in Figma, export those images so I have those images, and then everything else is exactly the same. I just have to copy and paste the I use the YouTube description, which is about usually about 2 to 3 sentences.
Matt Giovanisci:It's like a perfect size, and it's a perfect teaser for the video. So I'll just use those right in the email, and then I have a big watch now button. And I usually include 2 links to the video. So I'll do that, takes 2 seconds. The BOGO sale, I have a template that I kinda designed, but this is one I'm gonna have to create from scratch.
Matt Giovanisci:And I I actually don't have 2 bottles of filter cleanse at my house, so I can't take a real photo of 2 bottles. So I'll use a fake one or the the doctored image or the digital image, I I should say. And I'll do that as, the for the, filter cleanse. The I I should I need to create a template for sale emails. So I'll be doing that for this one sale email, and then I should be able to reuse it for April.
Matt Giovanisci:And then articles, I have that done. That should be relatively fast. And then for the newsletter style, I don't have one, and I think because every newsletter is gonna be slightly different. Like, in the case of the one that I did for the pool one, which is the pool chlorine tablet shortage, which I have to do this week. That one I was thinking it's got I think it has steps in it.
Matt Giovanisci:And when it has steps in it, I can create little icons and, like, break the steps up so that they're easy to read and and, like, well designed, meaning I use an image. But for the Shop Vac one where it's just one image of a Shop Vac, I may I may have to create multiple templates for newsletters depending on the style of the reel that we're taking. So what I'm gonna basically do is repurpose our short scripts as newsletters. So any short that does really well on Instagram or TikTok, I'll be able to take the original script that we that we wrote to film that video and basically just format it into an email. Now it'll be very easy to do text only, so I'll have a text only version, I'll have a visual version where, you know, I take the text and kinda design it with, like, maybe some icons to break up, I guess, depending on the style.
Matt Giovanisci:So if the short has, like, steps in it, like step 1, do this, step 2, do this, or has a, like, numbered list of things, I'll probably do it in a visual way. But if it's just a block of text that's like, here's how to do x, That'll probably just be text, like formatted text with, like, one major image at the top. So we'll see. Having multiple versions to choose from in the template would be great, and same with the sales emails. Most of my sales emails kind of go like this where we have, like, an announcement email, basically a sales letter, and then we have we send out an FAQ, so any that's so we basically go, it would basically be stacked like this.
Matt Giovanisci:It would be the first email announcing what the offer is and why you should take advantage of the offer. So in the case of a filter cleanse, which is a 32 ounce bottle that you dilute with water and you take your hot tub filters and you soak it in the solution for 24 hours, and it renews your filters, make them look like new. It gets all the dirt out of the pleats, all that kind of stuff. You can use it in multiple filters, etcetera. So, for that one, I'll probably go, hey.
Matt Giovanisci:If you buy one bottle of filter cleanse, you'll get another another bottle for free. That'll be the top image. And then it'll say, basically, like, when was the last time you cleaned your hot tub filters? Hot tub filters get dirty, really fast. You're talking about a small body of water.
Matt Giovanisci:And instead of, you know, having to replace them every year, it's best to just clean them as best as possible. And a hose a garden hose is only gonna do so much, and a spray, you know, really doesn't get really doesn't do any deep cleaning. It only it only cures the surface. So we invented hot tub filter cleanse, which is a deep cleaning soak soaking solution, where you take some warm water from your hot you take some warm water from your hot tub, you add entire bottle of filter cleanse, and you soak your filters for 24 hours, as many as you have, and it will and it gets between all the pleats, and it makes your filters work and feel like new, etcetera. And the best part is that we have we're running a special offer this week, where if you buy one bottle of filter cleanse, you'll get another bottle absolutely free.
Matt Giovanisci:Right? But don't miss out because this deal ends at the end of the week, etcetera, etcetera. The second email that we send out is usually like, okay. You probably have questions about what this thing actually does and, you know, how often you need to use it and all the just FAQs that we have for that product, we spell those out. We might throw a testimonial in there.
Matt Giovanisci:So we can say here FAQ slash testimonial. I don't think I actually have any testimonials for that product because it's fairly new. And then we just reiterate the offer. You know? Just remember, we're giving away, a free bottle when you buy 1.
Matt Giovanisci:One bottle only cost blank, and shipping's free, etcetera. This is the best deal you'll ever see on this product, and we only have a limited limited quantity available. So now's the time to purchase basic basic sales stuff. And then I'll send one more email that I sometimes make just look like a personal email. It's just it's just a plain text email that says, like, hey, person's name.
Matt Giovanisci:Just wanted to let you know that that filter cleanse deal we were offering, it ends tonight or it ends tomorrow. So I just just wanted to give you a heads up that this was your last chance to take the take a, you know, take a take a chance on the offer, etcetera. So that's those 3 emails. And I and I think I pretty much have templates for some of them, but they didn't need to be changed. So that was relatively pain painless.
Matt Giovanisci:I mean, I didn't do a whole month, but 2 weeks worth of emails, a lot of emails. This one's a a rarity because I have to do a sale email. But next month, I have 1, 2, 3, 4 videos, 1, 4, articles, and then four newsletters. So I'm gonna be sending 3 emails a week for hot tubs, and I'm gonna see what comes of that in April. So, yeah, figured I'd just do a quick follow-up to this.
Matt Giovanisci:And, yeah, let me know what you think. Email me matt@moneylab.co.