Email Marketing with Kennedy and Rob

Rob and Kennedy are fresh from a live event talking about email marketing. Now we have them to talk to us too! They’re from the North of England, but Kevin came across them from a podcast from Chicago! Wow.

How did you both meet?

They have quite a story actually. They both have an entertainment background. Rob was originally a stage hypnotist and Kennedy has worked as a mind reader. They met through the mutual world of entertainment in a magicians conference almost 20 years ago now.

At the time, they were both trying to build their businesses and market themselves so they could charge more. Email marketing became a big part of that.

What got you into marketing?

When signing up to a marketing agency separately, Rob and Kennedy realised they were on the same page. They both realised there was a gap between people enquiring to book them and actually booking them as entertainment.

Rob realised they could plug that gap with a series of automated emails. Consequently, it just became a question of doing that.

Aweber was the tool.

Eventually, that led into the world of digital publishing, digital marketing, email marketing, etc.

Rob got lots of questions asking how to become a hypnotist and how to attract business. Kennedy was being asked how his diary was so full. And so they both started publishing content addressing these two markets. It became an information course, if you will, that filled the gap when they weren’t performing. An extra revenue stream.

 

Email marketing is just storytelling. That’s all it is. Tell stories, make people like you, give value and when they’re ready they will buy.

Rob says that he tracks his data and knows that once he gets people through the door, they return rate is really high AND those customers bring new people with them. So, for him, email marketing is al about keeping his customers up to date up until the next show.

It’s about consistency and sending regular communication.

Would you class them as newsletters or just ’email stories’?

If your email marketing comes down to one email, the best thing you can do is to stop email marketing. Single communications does nothing. In the fast pace of our world, 12 touch points are a minimum before someone buys or considers buying from you.

Kennedy and Rob email 365 days of the year. Every day, they get up and think about what’s happened the previous days. In the news or economy, etc. Nothing to do with business. THEN, he thinks

“what is the business lesson coming from this?”

That will be packaged as an email. It looks like an email a friend might have sent. Imperfect action.

The big thing people forget about in regard to email marketing is that the email itself has to be valuable. Otherwise, people are going to unsubscribe.

Unsubscribe

Rob and Kennedy have two lists. One where people subscribe knowing they will get an email every day, and one where they get the shiny freebie and the email every day is an aside note.

Is the unsubscribe rate different for those two lists?

Never tracked! It’s a great question, but they don’t track it so wouldn’t know. Rob and Kennedy don’t pay too much attention to their unsubscribe rate because they’re not that interested. Because, if someone wants to show themselves out the door, then that’s okay.

They’re not trying to build a subscribers list but a customer list. The chances are that if someone subscribes they were not really going to buy from them anyway.

What’s the present and the future…

Rob and Kennedy are very passionate about not teaching ‘A’ way of doing email marketing. They teach frameworks for YOU to figure out how YOU do email marketing for your business and your audience. You have to find your way.

As for the future…

Obviously at the moment, their performance careers are suspended due to COVID-19. Their real focus is on growing The League and their podcast, The Email Marketing Show. The League has only been around for 4 months so Rob and Kennedy have some hefty goals for that. Also, another big focus is their software programme.

Top tips

Kennedy’s top tip is to look at what everyone is doing in your market, and do the opposite.

Rob’s second tips is this: Think about how you can email without basing it on what you do. Email marketing is not about you emailing everyday about your services (whatever they may be). Find the fun, quirky, off-the-wall stuff that happens to everyone and make it into a lesson that is relatable to your list. Be unashamedly you in everything that you write.

Kennedy says: make moving people onto your mailing list, because you own that data. That data is yours and can be used to build a business that is yours. Your mailing list. Your business. Your land.

If you want to listen to their podcast and thus get to know them better, you can find them on iTunes and Spotify or any other podcast-listening service, as The Email Marketing Show. And, if you want to hang out with them on their Facebook group, you can find them at robandkennedy.group. It’s completely free and you can access great lives and resources about email marketing.

If you want contact Graham, you can find him on finelyfettled.co.uk. You can also contact Kevin by going to his site, kevinappleby.com.