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Work Less, Earn More is the podcast that explores how to get the most out of every hour you work. Gillian Perkins brings more than a decade of experience as an entrepreneur and educator to help you design a business that's not only flexible and fulfilling, but highly profitable. She shares strategies that are working in her own business to save time and maximize profits. She also features interviews with successful business owners on how they’re achieving big things in their businesses with crazy-little time investment. Share Work Less, Earn More with an overworked entrepreneur you know who could use a change of pace!
Gillian:
[0:00] Hey, friends, you're listening to Work Less, Earn More, and I'm your host, Gillian Perkins. Today, we're diving into a topic that is more important and more challenging than ever. How to keep making sales with email marketing, even in 2025 and beyond. With inboxes more crowded, buyer behavior shifting, and AI changing the landscape faster than most of us can keep up, what worked a year or two ago just isn't cutting it anymore. So how do you adapt? How do you keep your list engaged, keep your sales coming in, and keep your business growing, even when the market feels a whole lot tougher. To help us answer those questions, I'm thrilled to be joined by Prerna Malik. Prerna is the co-founder of Content Bistro and the creator of the wildly popular strategy for a sales program Ready to Sell. She's helped over 600 clients, including industry icons like Pat Flynn, Amy Porterfield, Copy Hackers, and Vanessa Lau, generate millions of dollars in revenue through smarter, more strategic email marketing. Prerna is known for her brilliant ability to combine conversion science, biopsychology, and strategic thinking in a way that produces industry-defying results. And today, she is going to share with us exactly what's working now, what mistakes to avoid, and some simple, practical shifts you can make to get your emails converting better this year. So, let's get into it.
[1:20]
[intro bumper]
We became entrepreneurs because more than anything, we want freedom. We want to be in control of our own schedule, income, and life. But unfortunately, that isn't always the reality of being a business owner. I'm Gillian Perkins, and I'm on a mission to take back entrepreneurship for what it's supposed to be.
In every episode, I'll share with you how to get the most out of every hour you work so that you can work less and earn more. Let's get to it.
[/intro bumper]
Okay, Prerna. So to kick things off, can you paint a picture for us of how email marketing has changed over the past year or two or three? What shifts have you been experiencing that we should pay attention to? And maybe you can even get into like what you see kind of coming, you know, as you're talking about this, these changes that are happening, you know, as we're looking into the future, where do you see these things going?
Prerna:
[2:24] Sure. Well, thank you so much, Gillian for inviting me. This is definitely something I love talking about because I have been at my keyboard, copyright or an email strategist for over a decade now, and I have seen so many changes. There was a time when you could have a standard launch blueprint. You would send out three webinar invite emails. You would send out three webinar show up emails. People would come for your webinar, and then you would have a 7 to 10 email post-webinar sales sequence. That was like boilerplate live launching. And then it was, you know, like, okay, we would do evergreen funnels and then challenges got into the mix. But over the years, inboxes have gotten way more crowded. Post the pandemic, in fact, there are more people that are going to be able to do that sending emails out, more businesses sending emails, people are signed up to all kinds of lists. It's getting way more difficult to stand out. And lately, it feels like a lot of the people in certain niches are saying the same things even,
Gabe:
[3:35] Right?
Prerna:
[3:35] So it becomes very hard for the average reader for the, you know, whether you're a B2B or a B2C business, for the average email reader to go like, OK, why should I even be reading this email? What's in it for me? And that is the challenge that business owners now need to navigate. Like, how do you stand out in inboxes? How do you continue to not only, I would say, connect with your audience, but also command attention and help them see that you can really help them move forward, solve that problem. How do you do that when literally everybody you know is sending emails out? So the big change is way too many emails in boxes, way too many messages sounding the same and way too short of an attention span for our regular readers.
Gabe:
[4:31] People are distracted.
Prerna:
[4:33] People are busy. People are sometimes just tired of getting all of these emails. So with this trifecta of challenges, it becomes even more important for entrepreneurs, for creators, for business owners to start taking a good hard look at their email strategy.
Gillian:
[4:49] For sure. And I can't wait to get into your recommendations on how to overcome those things. But there's one more thing that I want to talk about, one more shift that I want to talk about beforehand. And that is, what about AI? Specifically in the last year or two since AI came on the scene, how have you seen that affect things? And maybe specifically, how have you seen that affect buyer behavior?
Prerna:
[5:13] Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because one of the challenges that I mentioned where, you know, people are reading a lot of the content that's sounding the same is caused by AI. And here's the deal. I am totally not anti-AI. I love it. Use it all the time. But I also recognize both as a strategist, as a copywriter, that there are limitations to it right now. Would it change in the future? Absolutely. It's something that's evolving and growing and developing pretty much on a daily basis. But right now, if you as an end user do not understand how persuasion, how psychology,
Prerna:
[5:55] How copywriting itself works, it becomes very hard for you to decide whether what it's giving you is good enough or not. That is one. The second is because LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude have been trained on tons and tons of copy that's floating out there, what happens is your email may sound good, may even read really well, but it sounds a lot like everybody else. Especially if you've not taken the time at least you know a reasonable number of hours to train your ai to sound like you to know you to understand your voice to understand your vision to know your audience inside out it's like working with another team member you need to really put in the effort and even then you cannot just take whatever it gives you and then send it out without thinking about it and thinking and looking at it and going, OK,
Prerna:
[6:55] Does this really reflect me? Does this really serve my audience? So I can see business owners using AI and I think it's great if they're doing it. It's just that they need to be super aware of not just using whatever it gives it as, you know, yeah, this is fine. Let me just send an email out because then you're just, you know, phoning it in, unfortunately. And the second is using it without really taking the time and putting in the effort to train it really, really well so that it doesn't just regurgitate whatever it's been trained on, you know, the same as everybody else. So use it, but use it wisely. Because remember, yes, AIs exist, but the people that you're sending your emails to are still humans. So you need to really keep that in mind.
Gillian:
[7:46] Yeah, for sure. And it's interesting. And I'm glad you're bringing up this thing about more and more people sounding the same or more and more brands and their messages sounding the same online. It's definitely something I've noticed. It's really interesting to me. And I don't think it's caused only by AI because I did notice it before the onset of AI. When I first started my business about eight years ago, there were a lot fewer players. And I'm just going to use my industry as an example. But in my particular industry, there were a lot fewer players or a lot fewer brands competing online. And so it was pretty easy to differentiate myself. So, you know, there was maybe like Gary Vee and there was Russell Brunson and there was Pat Flynn and there was Amy Porterfield. But it was like just a few big names and they all had distinctly different messages. And so it was really easy for me to come in and be like, and here's where I stand. And it was like a decidedly different camp than those other people. But as more and more brands and experts and leaders have entered the market in different ways, I have noticed that they kind of have mostly kind of glumped onto one of those existing camps. There was like, and I don't say that to put them down or anything like that. They kind of didn't have another option, you know, like all the camps had already been claimed.
Gillian:
[8:59] And so the best they could do, you know, was to maybe be a mixture of, you know, Pat Flynn's message and Gillian's message, you know, or Amy Porterfield's message and Gary Vienbe, somewhere in between those two. But yeah, so there was just like a lot more, it sounded like an echo chamber, right? Like where people were kind of just repeating other things that they'd heard people say. And so I had noticed in the past few years, again, even before AI coming on the scene, there were a lot more people who were saying the same things I was saying, which was interesting to me and a little frustrating, you know. But again, like nothing against those people. I understand that that's just
Gillian:
[9:32] kind of like the nature of kind of a growing or a maturing market. But then with the onset of AI, it certainly has gotten even a little bit more intense. And my personal frustration is that I was already saying the things that I'm saying. And now AI is saying them too. And I think it's because I did create content on the internet for years. And so my content is some of what fed the AI. So people who have a similar message to mine, who are now using ChatGPT and Cloud, etc. To create content, those LLM systems, they're using some of my content to inform what they're writing for these other creators. So I'm not against AI either. I am using it a lot and I love it. I find it a very helpful writing assistant. But it's definitely something that there's a lot of new challenges that are coming along with.
Prerna:
[10:19] 100%. And you're absolutely right. You know, like as an industry, as a market, as a niche kind of grows, there is obviously going to be, you know, some of the same voices, some of the same opinions, some of the same hot takes that aren't really hot takes, you know, but surfacing, which is why I feel from an email point of view, it's becoming even more important for you to really, really stand out and going back to some of the basics. Start using some of the basics that we may have moved away from over the years. Storytelling, for instance, used to be really, really big. You know, when I started blogging online, this is like 2008,
Prerna:
[10:58] So this is way back in the day. That was like old-fashioned diary-style blogs and things like that. But people used to read that because it used to help them connect. Right now, emails that are converting really well aren't emails that just are, you know, like, oh, I have a, you know, hot take to share. No. Or this is what you want to share what makes you. That could be your story. That could be your values. But not just, oh, this is what we stand for. But how are you really standing for that? Whether it's in your launches, whether we're seeing it, you know, over and over again. For instance, with some of our clients, what we found, an email that we used to rarely ever include would be, what are we standing for today? And how is that showing up in our business on a daily basis? So those emails are converting really well. The other thing that we found has been newsletters. For the last two years, Gillian, writing Nurtured for Sales newsletters, that's Nurtured for Sales newsletters like a phrase that I've come up with. I'm sure that people who call it something else has been by far the number one kind of email that not only our clients are hiring us for, but also that have been working really well.
Prerna:
[12:19] Why? Because it blends story, either the clients or their clients. And it does encourage people to buy, but on their own timeline, because that's the other thing that we found is like, you know, yes, launches are still working, but an increasing number of people are choosing to buy when they're ready to buy. And for a variety of reasons. So just kind of making these shifts would help you to not only stand out, but also be more memorable, be more remarkable. It is so easy to produce content right now. Like content production is not the problem. Getting people to connect and consume that content. So getting them to, you know, go, okay, this makes sense.
Gabe:
[13:05] Tap reply, talk to you.
Prerna:
[13:07] That is the challenge that you want to kind of solve for. And it's only when people start, forget opening your emails, like they may be opening, but they're not clicking through. You know, it really makes no difference. You could tick that line item off that I did send an email, but is that email doing the job that you've hired it to do That is the question you want to answer.
Gillian:
[13:29] Yeah, well, thanks for sharing those tips already. The last one you were talking about, the newsletters, what was the phrase you were using? I couldn't quite understand the words you were using.
Prerna:
[13:38] So I call it nurtured for sales, nurtured for sales newsletters. So I call them that because they basically nurture your non-buyers. They nurture them with value with connection with content you know and then move them towards
Gillian:
[13:59] Sales yes okay i understand and what you said you have a lot of clients who are hiring you to write these sorts of newsletters these nurturing newsletters what is kind of like your go-to format for these and i know obviously we're trying to get away from being too like formatty or template-based perhaps but all right what sort of newsletter are you talking about are you talking about a newsletter that like is sharing several different pieces of content with them or is talking about like current literal news in the industry or the story sort of newsletter? Like what exactly is the sort of newsletter you're describing?
Prerna:
[14:34] So these particular newsletters are different from, say, a newsletter that you would sign up for from a creator like, say, James Clear or, you know,
Prerna:
[14:43] Dan Coe or Justin Welsh, for that matter. Those are more, you know, OK, here's my opinion or here's what I'm seeing in the industry. These particular newsletters go out only to people who are high intent prospects. So these would be non-buyers of your program. These would be people on your wake lists if you have a wake list for your course or your membership. These would be people who in the past have attended, say, a webinar or a challenge, maybe even bought a tripwire, but have not signed up for your signature product. Right. So these only got to a segment. The second thing is the format specifically varies depending from client to client and what their kind of audience wants. But I'll give you a couple of examples here.
Prerna:
[15:33] So for one of our clients who is a health coach, she is in a very specific need. She is a health coach for immigrant Indians in the U.S. Her audience connects really well with her personal story and stories of others like them. So her newsletter would literally be either the story of one of her clients, like what were they going through? What happened? What did they do? Like customer success story.
Prerna:
[16:05] Along with a call to action to book time to chat with her. Or it would talk about her struggles when she came to the U.S. And what did she go through, et cetera, et cetera. So it was just essentially a lot of leaning on social proof storytelling.
Prerna:
[16:19] Because that's what they were connecting with. They needed to know that it's going to work for someone like them, right? Yeah. For a lot of our other clients who are business coaches and have a range of either programs or memberships and things like that, What we found works is most of us, most of our clients, in fact, and I'm sure that's true for most of your listeners as well, have already have a lot of content, right? So the idea here is not to just keep creating more content. Like I said, the idea here is to get more people to connect with your content and for your content to be a better conversion driver. So for business coaches, what we found is like just looking at what program we were wanting to sell and then pulling pieces of content that we already have that were relevant and related to this program and then using that along with either a call to action or a preview or a free trial and see that. So it kind of depends on this. Rarely are we using industry related news because these only go out to high intent prospects. So we know they're interested. They just either need to buy on their own timeline or they need more answers or they just need to know that it's going to work for them or they need to just feel more confident about the creator. So the goal of these newsletters is to do all of these things.
Gillian:
[17:37] OK, yeah. Thanks for breaking that down. And it sounds like the sort of content that I'll often use in like a warm-up sequence for a launch or for most of my funnels. I have what I call an evergreen newsletter where after they go through the initial promotion, if they haven't bought yet, then, and just like you're saying, like this is only for those high intent buyers, they get funneled into this email sequence that is this newsletter that I've written in advance that they get an email or two every week. And they're mostly like story emails of either my stories of things that worked for me or struggles I overcame or like you said, client success stories and also some just like informational emails and some that direct them to other content like to a video of mine on YouTube or a blog post or something like that. Most of them include the value in it. And then just like you're saying, they include kind of these softer calls to action of like whenever you're ready, book a call so that they can raise their hand at any point. Exactly. So yeah, that makes a lot of sense for sure. And we have seen a lot of success with that strategy as well.
[18:35]
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Gillian:
[19:42] It's something I'm already doing with my Evergreen newsletter, sending it to kind of that those highest intent buyers or those like hottest leads. Could you explain why you would send it only to those hottest leads and not to just like your entire list? What's your reasoning behind that?
Prerna:
[20:01] Yeah. So this is another thing that we've noticed over the years is that segmented campaigns are converting way better than general, you know, let's just send it to everybody. I'm not saying for your launch, you want to do that maybe for a live launch, you know, especially if you know your audience is extremely targeted and interested in what you and you have, you know, an engaged email audience, I would say, yeah, go for it. But what we've also found is that these segmented campaigns are working way better because this is an audience that is an audience of hand raisers already, right? They've already raised their hand and said, I'm interested in knowing more, which is why I'm on your wait list. Or I was curious about this, which is why I attended the webinar. And if they're not, they always have the option of either unsubscribing or, you know, like periodically you would give people opt outs like, OK, I'm going to be talking a lot more about this. You may want to jump off the list if this is not, you know, you would still get my other emails, but you'll not hear about this particular program. But people who are choosing to stay on. Obviously interested. And what we found was survey after survey would reveal there are basically a handful of reasons. And Gillian, you know this, right? People would say, oh, I don't have the budget, which means I don't have the budget right now. The second is I don't have the time.
Gillian:
[21:19] It's either I don't have. Yes, those are the two things. I don't have the money or I don't have the time. I love dissecting these and getting into like the real reasons. It's something I talk to my clients about a lot. Like when somebody says they don't have the money, what do they really mean? Like what's really going on behind the scenes? There's a few different things that actually they might mean, but mostly they mean they don't think the product is worth the money, right? Or they don't think it's going to work for them. Therefore, it's not worth the money. Because if they could snap their fingers and have that solution, you know, if they could already be on the other side, if they could get the result they're looking for. Yes, there's still some people who literally don't have the money, but that's like a small percentage of people. Most people would find the money if they knew that, you know, paying that money would get them that result. So it's really more of like a trust issue, not just like they think you're lying or something like that, but trusting that the product is going to work, trusting that you are a reliable source and at the end of the day that it's going to work for them. Anyway, side tangent, continue with your point.
Prerna:
[22:18] Yeah, no, no, exactly. And like you said, you know, sometimes, yes, they do not have the money right now, right? Or they may be waiting on a payment. They may have other expenses, like especially when you're like selling high ticket programs or high ticket coaching to business owners who have a whole lot of other expenses. It happens. That happens. The point is, we've got to stop treating these people as non-buyers. They're not yet buyers. They're not non-buyers. They're buyers not right now. But they can be buyers because like I said, whether it's a trust thing, whether it's a value thing, whether it's timing thing, whether it's, you know, I don't know you well enough thing, whatever it is. The job of these newsletters, especially to this specific segment, is to remove that objection and help them see that, yes, it will work for you. Yes, you can trust the process. Yes, this is what's going to happen and convert them into buyers.
Gabe:
[23:20] Yeah.
Gillian:
[23:21] Well, love that. Thanks for breaking that down. And love also what you were talking about earlier with using those... Kind of leaning more on not even just your personality, but your personal story, because that is something that really sets you apart. So rather than just like planting a flag in the ground and being like, this is where I stand, you know, or this is my hot take, you know, or this is what I recommend. When there are so many people who are giving the same recommendations or having the same hot take or whatever it might be, that doesn't make you stand out. But what does is your personal story and who you personally are. And that's something I've been leaning on a lot more too, is like, there are things that really set me apart from some of my competitors. A lot of my competitors, for example, don't have kids. I've got kids and not just kids. I've got five kids. I had to homeschool them, you know, and that's something that like is very different than most of my competitors. And it's something that gets most of the people who are most likely to relate to me and be interested in my products, be interested in learning from me, to pay attention to me versus other people because they realize, wait, you know, Gillian has, you know, she's figured out the solution I'm looking for in the context of having kids, you know. So basically, it's like kind of a unique challenge that they need to overcome is, you know, maybe they don't have time to invest a whole lot of time into growing their business. And so they want something that
Gillian:
[24:46] is like sustainable and it'll have a good work-life balance, et cetera.
Prerna:
[24:49] Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing you need to remember is, and I'm sure you do this already, but you shouldn't be afraid of repeating your story or parts of your story often enough. For instance, like one of the things that we are well known for is that we built our business while dealing with chronic illness, living in India. I mean, we're, yeah, we've been in India for, yeah, we are based in India. It's not like, oh, you moved to India and you're there. No, this is where we are based, right? And this is where we live. And we, you know, like you, I don't have five kids, but I do have a daughter. But we started when she was a toddler, so kind of building the business along with her. It's something that sometimes, you know, you may feel, oh, but I've already shared that story. That's okay.
Prerna:
[25:35] Get comfortable with the idea of sharing your story, sharing what you stand for in terms of your personal values and how they kind of link to your business as well. For instance, we've always been debt-free. We were very intentional about that when we were starting our business, which meant that there were a lot of things that we couldn't do, right? because we did not want to put things on a card and know that we wouldn't be able to pay it off in full. So what we do is for all our programs, all our services, we've always offered interest repayment plans, even though everybody's told us, no, you shouldn't be doing this, you know, the admin costs, et cetera, et cetera. No, but because we are committed to financial stewardship, it's something that we just felt made sense for us to do as part of our business and something that I talk about often. So just get comfortable with the idea of sharing these little things. Like a story does not have to be an epic narrative. You don't have to be the funniest person. You don't even have to have like the most interesting life because something I always come up against is like, oh, but there's nothing really interesting happening.
Prerna:
[26:41] That's OK. Just take like five minutes to think about something that happened today that you could use as a story. Get into the habit of just kind of noticing these things and putting them down. One of my favorite stories to tell, for instance, is how I decided to learn how to swim. When I was 43, I was like probably the oldest person in the pool, full of little toddlers and queens. But it was just something I wanted to do. And I used that story to tell people it's never too late for you to do something that you've always wanted to do. So just kind of get comfortable. It's not a fancy story. It's just a single line. It's just something I decided to do. But get into the habit of looking for the story in your everyday moments.
Prerna:
[27:23] It's way easier. And it's something that, again, will help people to connect. Okay, she did this. And like in your case, you know, like, oh, Gillian's been able to do this with five kids that she homeschools, right? She would know what I'm going through. And that's something they'll remember.
Gillian:
[27:42] Yeah, for sure. I love that. And to your point of sharing kind of ordinary stories, you know, where they don't have to be so big or grand or epic or anything like that. I think that actually sharing those like casual everyday sorts of stories is a great way to share your main story without repeating your main story over and over again explicitly.
Gillian:
[28:05] And I find this is a shortcoming of mine where I have a few like epic stories that are my go-tos and I tend to like come back to them over and over again when I am writing sales copy. And it's because I have like, you know, this good big story to share. But sometimes you can share a very casual little story like the story of you going to the grocery store and what happened when you went to the grocery store today. Yeah. And it is therefore a unique story You know, you're not going to repeat that story over and over again. But as you share that story, you're going to mention a lot of details that are like facts about you. So I'm going to mention, you know, like loading up my kids into the van. So now I've communicated I have kids, right? I'm going to mention that it was hard to get school done before we went to the grocery store or something like that. So I don't have to tell the story of like, I started my business and then I had, you know, five kids and I homeschooled them. I don't have to tell that story. I can tell this casual, tiny little story, but mention these details along the way and communicate these kind of important facts about me and help people to get to know me better. Yeah. Or I think about, you know, just somebody who's on my team. I have a designer who is on my team. She lives in Australia. And that's something that to me is an interesting fact about her. She lives in Australia. I've never been to Australia before.
Gillian:
[29:13] And she doesn't have kids. And I would like to know those things about her, but she doesn't have to write me an email and be like, So when I was, you know, this many years old, I moved to Australia and I have, you know, never had kids. She doesn't have to say those things. She could tell me a story about, again, like going to the grocery store, going out to get a coffee and mention, you know, that she's in Australia, mention that because she doesn't have kids, such and such about her life, you know, those sorts of things. And so I think that sometimes those casual little stories are actually the most unique ones because we don't repeat them over and over again, but we can still communicate those kind of like major truths or facts about ourselves.
Prerna:
[29:50] Yeah, yeah. And you'll be surprised at how many people find these little moments so much more memorable than like, say, a big marketing message. So in an inbox where everybody is wanting to, you know, Plot of flags, take acclaim, stand out. You can rise above the noise by sharing the ordinary and everyday because, yeah, sometimes like the magic is in the mundane, right? And help your readers see that you are another fellow human.
Gillian:
[30:27] Kind of makes me think like sometimes being the girl next door is a lot more attractive than putting on like a really flashy outfit and a lot of makeup or something like that. You know, like the people who are trying too hard. It's just like people want to connect with real people, people who they can relate to. And a lot of how we connect with our friends is by sharing those little tiny stories. So I love that. So I want to go back to something you were talking about at the beginning of our conversation for now, which is you're kind of describing this go-to launch strategy, this boilerplate launch strategy of like three emails to promote the
Gillian:
[30:58] webinar, three show emails, seven to 10 sales emails. And you were saying, you know, that doesn't necessarily work nearly as well as it used to. So what are you doing these days when it comes time to actually launch a product? And I know, just to make sure we're on the same page, I guess, you're talking about these other newsletter emails that are kind of ongoing and letting people, you know, raise their hand or indicate when they want to buy, choose when they want to buy. But sometimes we've got a new thing or we want to drive a bunch of sales. So we want to do a launch. So how are you executing launches these days? What are you finding works really well?
Prerna:
[31:32] Yeah, I love live launches. And they're a big part of what we do at Content Bistro as well. And we've been doing a lot of testing and experimenting with a lot of different strategies. What we found, again, has been working really, really well is segmenting our audience right from the start. There will be people who will be interested in attending a webinar. But then there will also be people who are keener to go for a YouTube Live Ask Me Anything session. So just kind of getting a pulse of that and knowing what people are interested in helps us to kind of tailor our strategy accordingly. The other thing that we found is working really well. And I don't know if you've tested this out yourself as mini workshops. So your opt-in is more like a standalone low dollar value product. Actually, it's $27, $47, but it helps people see that first step. And then, you know, continue to move forward with your paid offer. Those have been working really well. In terms of an email strategy, what we found is, yes, you want to send out webinar invite emails, but you also want to let people know that if you're doing other launch activities like an open house or an ask me anything, give people that option. Readers are responding really, really well to transparency and to being given options. Because not everyone wants to attend a live webinar. And we know webinars convert, but they'll only...
Gillian:
[33:01] I say that all the time. Not everybody... Yes, exactly. Webinars convert really well, but not everybody wants to go to a webinar. And I want to respect that, you know?
Prerna:
[33:10] Yeah. So by giving people options up front, you're helping them, but you're also helping yourself. And I feel like more people need to start sharing that up front. And we found like clients, audiences respond so well. You know, people will literally reply and say, hey, I'm so glad that you let me know that there's an Ask Me Anything live happening on YouTube at this time because that works way better for me. And I do have questions. So I'll, you know, show up there and ask, which is so great. They already have probably heard of the program. You know, they may have even attended a webinar in the past. So that is definitely one thing. The other thing is for show up strategies. So let's say you decide to do a webinar, but webinar show up rates have been lower than before.
Gillian:
[33:52] Definitely lower than they used to be.
Prerna:
[33:53] Yeah, exactly. So for show up, what we found is just letting people know, giving them some pre-work to do, holding them kind of accountable and letting them know, hey, you know, when you show up with this workbook filled out, I'm going to go back to, say, 2020 or the, you know, 2018 kind of workbooks where it used to just be like, oh, come on the webinar and fill it in. and all of that. No, this is like actual pre-work that you would want people to do and come with to the webinar. So this is not just like, oh, I'm just going to take my slides and like put a worksheet together. No. So it takes a little bit of time, but it's been doing really well because people feel more invested and it's like that micro-conversion. So you're helping them take a little bit of action before the webinar and they know that, yeah, that's, you know, it's going to help them. They're going to learn something that's going to build on this. The third thing is also letting people know that you'll be opening up your program. Again, because they're better prepared. And it comes back to the transparency thing. So that's been working really well. The third thing, Gillian, has been longer pre-launches. Pre-launches have way more nuance and more...
Prerna:
[35:05] To them than they've ever have. You just need to kind of look at your pre-launches, not just, oh, I'm just going to do, you know, say, send out four emails, sharing value and things like that. No, you need to kind of really take time to think about your pre-launch strategy. What are the beliefs that you will be shifting? What are some of the objections that you would be removing?
Prerna:
[35:26] What are some of the social proof elements that you will share even before the launch and how do they kind of tie in what pieces of expertise authority content do you be sharing to build that trust so it needs to be it's gotten longer and way more thought out so we spend i think i would say equal amounts of time mapping out pre-launch strategies and launch strategies with our clients because we've seen that when you're rushing the pre-launch the launch is not going according to plan. That is not to say you can't have smaller flash sales and flash launches, you know, like the 72 hour only kind of a launch. You can totally do that. But if you're looking at a full blown live launch for a, you know, your signature offer or for a new offer, you want to look at a longer pre-launch. I would safely say like we found like four weeks of pre-launch should be a really good sweet spot. But I have a launch that I'm working on that's going to be happening in September. And we are actually creating Tim and I are kind of deliberating, looking even at about a six to eight week kind of a pre-launch, which is wild to me because this was never the case.
Gillian:
[36:47] Yeah, yeah. With those longer pre-launch periods, do you typically send the same number of emails per week that you would send when you're not pre-launching? So just like your normal, maybe one email a week that you would send with the newsletter as a newsletter? because obviously once you get to the launch, it's normally like an email or two every day throughout the launch itself. But yeah, what does that pre-launch period look like in terms of email frequency?
Prerna:
[37:14] The frequency is generally more. It's nowhere close to a daily email unless of course the client's already been sending out daily emails and their audience is used to it, in which case, yes. But otherwise we found is like we vary the cadence between two emails one week, three another. But what we're also doing is we vary the length of the email. So it's not, we're not, there's not a lot of cognitive load on our readers. Some of the emails are really short. Some of the emails are just, you know, like, hey, I'm going to be jumping on Instagram in a bit. Join me here. That kind of a thing, depending on what kind of pre-launch activities we've lined up. And then some of them are longer, of course. So we vary the cadence and the frequency. We also vary the length and the format of the email.
Gillian:
[37:57] And what are your go-to calls to action for those pre-launch emails? Are you telling people to get on the wait list or to apply or something like that? Or are you just like no call to action? Just like here's free value. What's that like?
Prerna:
[38:10] So again, it varies. We start with a survey. We ask people to fill out a survey so we kind of understand how to tailor the offers, kind of unitizing with a little bit of the research for the launch itself, especially if we're looking at, you know, different bonuses and things like that. So we ask people to fill out a survey. Sometimes it is more getting them to social, getting them to engage with you over there. We do let them know in, if we're sending out three emails, we let them know in at least one of them that this program is going to be opening up and, you know, take them behind the scenes a little, what's happening, what are you working on and that kind of a thing. So generally the calls to action would vary between join me on social, get on the waitlist, especially if you're going to be doing an early bird. So then get on the waitlist or click here if you'd like to be the first one to know. So we do the click interest and click segmenting thing if you don't have a formal waitlist. And then, of course, we also do a lot of, you know, ask me anything like let me know what questions can answer for you.
Prerna:
[39:15] Lots of engagement. And the reason we do a lot of, you know, include a lot of polls, interactive elements like polls and surveys. So, you know, like especially with ConvertKit becomes really easy to just embed a poll in the email itself. The reason we do this is, again, gets our audience used to, you know, just kind of hitting reply, clicking on a link, tapping, all that just to improve deliverability overall, but also gets them used to the idea of engaging with a client.
Gillian:
[39:44] Yeah, for sure. Well, I love that. And so I'm sure that the more expensive the product is, probably generally the longer of a pre-launch period you want, right? Absolutely yeah but in general it sounds like you're talking about maybe 8 to 12 emails leading up to the launch with the main call to action being something like get on the wait list with maybe half the emails are so mentioning that the product is opening soon yes well i love that and thank you so much for being such an open book and just like breaking that all down that is so good i'm definitely going to be coming back to this episode myself as we are prepping for one of our bigger lunches later this year. Okay, so we are out of time. But there was one more thing I wanted to talk to you about today. And that is your brand. So I know you mentioned to me before we started this interview that you're going through a rebrand yourself. And by the time this episode goes live, I think your rebrand will probably be live as well. So tell us a little bit about the content bistro and what your brand has looked like up until this point, and what's going to be changing. And I'd also love to get into like the reasons why you decided to make these shifts.
Prerna:
[40:49] Awesome. Thank you. So Content Bistro, we started, you know, way back in 2011. We were a different brand then. We rebranded to Content Bistro around 2015, 2016, when we started offering a
Prerna:
[41:02] lot of copywriting services to creators, course creators and membership site owners. And then over the years, the business has continued to grow and expand and evolve. And right now what we do is essentially solve the sales struggle for creative entrepreneurs. We help them sell more of not just courses, but also services, physical products. And most lately, we're even working with businesses like schools. It all comes down to sales. And we realized that Content Bistro as the brand was not reflecting the breadth of services that we were offering.
Prerna:
[41:38] And it just made complete sense for us to rebrand and let the new brand reflect everything that we stand for. The other thing that we also have been doing over the last few years is working with a lot of entrepreneurs who want to build businesses that are both intentional and profitable. So intentionally profitable has been one of our coaching programs and intentional profitability has been one of our core values. It's been what we've built our business on. We've been profitable from year one, Gillian, only because like I shared with you, we were committed to staying debt free. We kept a really tight hold on our expenses. So, yes, all of those things. So we've been working with a lot of entrepreneurs to help them build intentionally profitable businesses. And again, we wanted the brand to reflect that work as well. So all of those reasons led to the new brand. The new brand is going to be called, this is the first time I'm saying it in public, the new brand is Profitably Yours. And OK, yeah, it's going to help us continue to help creators and entrepreneurs build more profitable businesses and lives.
Gillian:
[42:44] Well, thanks for sharing that. And by the time this episode goes live, your rebrand should be live, too. So make sure we include all the right links and whatnot. Is there going to be any changes with the actual services or products that the new brand offers?
Prerna:
[42:57] We would be offering a few more services. Our core services of sales strategy and copywriting will continue to stay. We will, of course, maybe have new names for them and all of that. That's something that we're still kind of working on and it's in progress. But we would be adding more consulting services for entrepreneurs and also a few more DIY programs and products that they could use to build their own businesses.
Gabe:
[43:24] Yeah, for sure.
Gillian:
[43:25] Well, thanks for sharing and congratulations on that. That's very exciting.
Gillian:
[43:28] Thank you. Rebrands always feel so like fresh and new and, you know, like just a fresh start. And I love that. So Prerna, this has been a great conversation. And again, thanks so much for just being an open book and for sharing so much of the nitty gritty of what is working these days with email marketing and your real practices that you are using in your clients' businesses. I really appreciate that.
Prerna:
[43:51] Well, thank you so much for inviting me, Gillian. And if any of your listeners are looking to increase their sales without live launches or Evergreen Funnels or ads or affiliates, I have a fabulous freebie. I would love for them to go ahead and get it. It's at contentbistro.com/5X. That's contentbistro.com/5X. It's a five-part email course that shares five different strategies for you to increase your core sales without live launches or evergreen funnels.
Gillian:
[44:19] Very nice. Well, thank you so much for sharing that. And we'll be sure to include a link to that in the show notes.
Prerna:
[44:23] Thank you.
[44:24]
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That's it for today's episode. But before you go, I want to remind you about the Start Scale Succeed virtual conference happening October 21st to the 23rd. It's a completely free three-day online event designed to help you grow your digital business with practical, actionable strategies. You'll hear from more than 15 inspiring speakers and get a chance to learn, connect, and take your business to the next level, all without leaving your home. Don't miss it. Grab your ticket today at gillianperkins.com/sss-register. Again, that's gillianperkins.com/sss-register. I can't wait to see you there.
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[45:05]
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Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Work Less, Earn More. Now, here's what I want you to do next. Take a screenshot of this episode you're listening to right now and share it out on your Instagram stories. And when you do, make sure you tag me at gillianzperkins so I can see you're listening. Sharing on stories is going to help more people find this podcast so they too can learn how to build their business in a way that allows them to work less and earn more and if you really love the show head over to apple podcasts right now and leave work less earn more a review to give it a boost and help even more people find it okay let's wrap this up i'm gillian perkins and until next week stay focused and take action.
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