Steve Olson
• 10 min
Why Lack of Segmentation is Killing Your Email List (And How to Fix It Before It's Too Late)
Steve's Private Podcast
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Raw Transcript:
I don't know what episode this is. It's been a while since we recorded, maybe even 30 days. It's been that long since I've recorded an episode. My apologies for some of you that were listening before, and then all of a sudden you're like, where did this guy go?
Did he lose his microphone or what? No, I didn't lose it. We got busy and it fell by the wayside, but my commitment here is that we will kick this thing back off so that for those of you that do find an immense amount of value in this, we can continue to do so accordingly.
A good friend of mine, last 10, 15 years, Sharan Srivatsa, sent out a podcast, or maybe it was an email, or maybe it was a YouTube video. I can't remember which one of the mediums it was, but he talks about his 10 steps to conquering email.
It's a great podcast if you haven't listened to. I will link below in the blog post if you guys are watching this on the site. And you can go listen to his.
It was like all 10 steps, totally spot on. And he has context that I know that most of you guys don't have. Mine is a little bit different than his in the sense of what we email.
I don't email nearly as much as Sharan does. And for context, I 100% should. In fact, when we ran Kingston Lane together, for about a year and a half in the middle of that venture, we sent an email every single day, seven days a week for like 600 days straight about one little tiny strategy you could take away and implement into your business.
And I wrote the majority of them. Sharan definitely did write a bunch of them as well. And it was a challenge. It was the crazy hard to do. He says in his podcast that he couldn't find a difference between sending an email every day versus three to four days a week.
I totally agree with that. I don't know that there's that big of a difference. However, there is a tremendous difference in one a week versus four. It's a humongous difference because now we can't just barf on them once a week.
Now we have to be strategic around what we send. The whole process around email marketing, I wanna add something to what he said in regards to how we think about it in our business and the team that we run and some of the advertising and follow-up that we do.
And I'm gonna create another podcast episode maybe later on today talking about the five things I would do the first 48 hours. When you get a new lead,
I'll give you guys that whole roadmap and we can kind of dissect what that looks like. If you wanna triple your lead conversion, look for that in a future episode.
Hey, I wanna interrupt you really quick and let you know that coming up really soon, we have a five-day build your personal brand challenge. It's an hour and a half a day every single day.
With me, I'm gonna give you all the materials up front so you can execute and then use the live sessions to get you unstuck and build a very simple, scalable personal brand in as little as five days.
Click the link if you're watching this video on the site below or you can go to stoleynetwork.com forward slash challenge. You can learn more there.
Is that most of us are just using email as a single broadcast tool. And while you can be wildly successful with a single broadcast tool and what I mean by that is that 1,000 people join your email list and 1,000 people get the exact same email.
That would be like a broadcast tool. That would be the same of you getting on top of a pedestal with a megaphone and telling everybody in the audience one message irregardless of where all those people were in their buying, selling, or not in their real estate journey whatsoever.
The power of email marketing, whether you use Kit or you use MailChimp or you use Keep or you use HubSpot or Marketo or Beehive or any of the big email newsletting platforms is boils down to one simple term and that's segmentation.
Your ability to segment your list based on their motivation or their desire to make a move will be the difference whether you have a conversion rate of 1.5%, 0%, 1%, 3%, 10%, whatever the number is.
The gap between where you are and where you want to be is segmentation. Well, you're like, okay, well, how do we segment my list of 10,000 people?
Like I can't call them and ask them. And you'd be correct. You cannot call them and ask them. But what you can do is when people opt in and listen, an email list of people that email you normally at your Gmail that you're just adding them automatically to your list,
I'd still do it. But the value of that subscriber is almost zero because they didn't explicitly say they want that email. We really want them to be fully opted in.
And it's hard in real estate because we have a lot of communication every day. I think that we get more email every day than most people get like in a month. It's crazy how many emails that we get.
But at the end of the day, if you knew the people that we're gonna buy within the next zero to 90 days, 90 days to six months, six months to a year, anytime after, or never going to buy a home, right?
Let's say they're in their home and they're never gonna move. If you just knew that about your list, then we can have a dynamic footer. What do I mean by a dynamic footer?
Meaning the call to actions below your email signature, your super signature, or whatever you wanna call it, can be dynamic to that group of people, will immediately give you a lift in conversion.
Meaning if your call to action below your signature is always schedule a call with me, schedule a call with me, schedule a call with me, that's a lost opportunity for all the people that aren't gonna buy until next year because they don't need to schedule a call with you right now, or they don't need to download your.
Free buyer guide PDF or you know three things I would learn about the spring market before you buy a home those are all going to be lost opportunities for that list because they are disqualified or Unqualified from being able to take that decision on the email, right?
Could you change the actual content of the email is there content that you would write for only the people that were buying in? The next 90 days is there content that you would write only for the people that were buying on the next six months or six? months to a year or after a year and the answer would be
100% yes, the content would be different. That is the power of email The email is you could do great with a broadcast tool and it will work But once you understand the power of segmentation
Then it gets really important So let me give you a really quick activity that you could do right now to segment your list So let's say that you have an email that you're sending out Thursday at 2 o'clock and it's about whatever right whatever in the real estate
Market and you have your super signature Maybe this week instead of including the super signature you included a simple four links and say hey We want to make sure we're getting you the right content if everything worked out exactly to plan which in parentheses
We know it never does if everything worked out exactly to plan When would you next be considering a move in the next 90 days? six months to a year or within six months six months to a year after a year completely unsure and in your email marketing
Newsletter software or subscription whether that all of them that I gave you earlier HubSpot MailChimp kit keep all of them can do this, right when they click that link You can apply a tag to their contact record and now, you know, everybody in there is this
You can put something in the content of the email says hey, by the way If you're considering a move the next 90 days I wrote this and you should take a look at it And when they click that link, maybe that goes to a YouTube video or a blog post or whatever
You can tag that link click Because now what what like people that don't want to move right away like I still want to know what this is So is it a hundred percent accurate? Nothing's a hundred percent accurate, right, but it's better than not knowing anything
So if there was one change that you can make to your email marketing part right now is to focus on everybody that comes In how can I segment them?
Like one of the questions we asked in the Carlsbad report. Do you live here? Yes, I live here I live here part-time. I vacation here. I don't live here like I want to know that because if you don't live here if you don't live here part-time if you don't vacation here and
Somehow you saw one of our ads in Plano, Texas And you have no desire to live or know anything about Carlsbad report Like I'm probably going to take you off the list
Because I'm only looking for real estate clients as it pertains to that certain thing We do a lot of events in the real estate space a lot of virtual events and it would blow you away How many people come into our ads and they we ask are you a real estate agent and they say no?
Okay, why are you joining this event? This is for real estate agents only it's really important to ask these questions Now if they're if they're not vacationing or part-time and they just say no what I erase them
Probably but I would I definitely would not send them content as if they were buying a home in Southern, California The next 90 days because it's incongruent with what with why they're there Segmentation is one of the easiest things that you can do right now to increase the conversion on your email list
Sharon said this in his podcast. I agree with it a hundred percent. I'll regurgitate it here even with all of the noise with all of the message that we get every day and the phone and text message and in messenger and Instagram and Facebook and tick-tock and
YouTube Email by far without a shadow of doubt is our number one Communicating messaging platform exists. It outperforms the phone it outperforms SMS and outperforms social it outperforms everything email is the number one Conversion communication channel for us. I'm sure it's the same for Sharon and I know what a lot of you guys are thinking
I'll leave you with this Steve I need to get out their phone number because without their phone number They're not a good lead and if I told you over the past 12 months alone How much stuff I have personally purchased because of an email marketing campaign or going back and forth with somebody on email alone
I mean, it's not hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's a lot. It's thousands of dollars worth of stuff, right? I paid for HubSpot the CRM that we use I committed to this was two years ago
I committed to thirty one hundred dollars a month to HubSpot two years ago Never even met the guy in a zoom or anything. It was on email only Right a forty thousand dollar thirty six thousand dollar annual commitment every single year
Never met with him never spoken him on the phone went back and forth on email. I read a deck He sent me a demo video. That was it. I signed the contract and we move forward Stop believing that this is 50 years ago and the phone is the key to all sales. It's a key to some sales
It's not the only key to all sales emails by far the most powerful communication Communication marketing platform if you do it, right and you segment any questions, let me know
I'd be curious to find out what it is if you're watching us on YouTube or in the blog comment below Let me know your thoughts and we'll respond. All right. See you on the next one. Talk soonI don't know what episode this is. It's been a while since we recorded, maybe even 30 days. It's been that long since I've recorded an episode. My apologies for some of you that were listening before, and then all of a sudden you're like, where did this guy go?
Did he lose his microphone or what? No, I didn't lose it. We got busy and it fell by the wayside, but my commitment here is that we will kick this thing back off so that for those of you that do find an immense amount of value in this, we can continue to do so accordingly.
A good friend of mine, last 10, 15 years, Sharan Srivatsa, sent out a podcast, or maybe it was an email, or maybe it was a YouTube video. I can't remember which one of the mediums it was, but he talks about his 10 steps to conquering email.
It's a great podcast if you haven't listened to. I will link below in the blog post if you guys are watching this on the site. And you can go listen to his.
It was like all 10 steps, totally spot on. And he has context that I know that most of you guys don't have. Mine is a little bit different than his in the sense of what we email.
I don't email nearly as much as Sharan does. And for context, I 100% should. In fact, when we ran Kingston Lane together, for about a year and a half in the middle of that venture, we sent an email every single day, seven days a week for like 600 days straight about one little tiny strategy you could take away and implement into your business.
And I wrote the majority of them. Sharan definitely did write a bunch of them as well. And it was a challenge. It was the crazy hard to do. He says in his podcast that he couldn't find a difference between sending an email every day versus three to four days a week.
I totally agree with that. I don't know that there's that big of a difference. However, there is a tremendous difference in one a week versus four. It's a humongous difference because now we can't just barf on them once a week.
Now we have to be strategic around what we send. The whole process around email marketing, I wanna add something to what he said in regards to how we think about it in our business and the team that we run and some of the advertising and follow-up that we do.
And I'm gonna create another podcast episode maybe later on today talking about the five things I would do the first 48 hours. When you get a new lead,
I'll give you guys that whole roadmap and we can kind of dissect what that looks like. If you wanna triple your lead conversion, look for that in a future episode.
Hey, I wanna interrupt you really quick and let you know that coming up really soon, we have a five-day build your personal brand challenge. It's an hour and a half a day every single day.
With me, I'm gonna give you all the materials up front so you can execute and then use the live sessions to get you unstuck and build a very simple, scalable personal brand in as little as five days.
Click the link if you're watching this video on the site below or you can go to stoleynetwork.com forward slash challenge. You can learn more there.
Is that most of us are just using email as a single broadcast tool. And while you can be wildly successful with a single broadcast tool and what I mean by that is that 1,000 people join your email list and 1,000 people get the exact same email.
That would be like a broadcast tool. That would be the same of you getting on top of a pedestal with a megaphone and telling everybody in the audience one message irregardless of where all those people were in their buying, selling, or not in their real estate journey whatsoever.
The power of email marketing, whether you use Kit or you use MailChimp or you use Keep or you use HubSpot or Marketo or Beehive or any of the big email newsletting platforms is boils down to one simple term and that's segmentation.
Your ability to segment your list based on their motivation or their desire to make a move will be the difference whether you have a conversion rate of 1.5%, 0%, 1%, 3%, 10%, whatever the number is.
The gap between where you are and where you want to be is segmentation. Well, you're like, okay, well, how do we segment my list of 10,000 people?
Like I can't call them and ask them. And you'd be correct. You cannot call them and ask them. But what you can do is when people opt in and listen, an email list of people that email you normally at your Gmail that you're just adding them automatically to your list,
I'd still do it. But the value of that subscriber is almost zero because they didn't explicitly say they want that email. We really want them to be fully opted in.
And it's hard in real estate because we have a lot of communication every day. I think that we get more email every day than most people get like in a month. It's crazy how many emails that we get.
But at the end of the day, if you knew the people that we're gonna buy within the next zero to 90 days, 90 days to six months, six months to a year, anytime after, or never going to buy a home, right?
Let's say they're in their home and they're never gonna move. If you just knew that about your list, then we can have a dynamic footer. What do I mean by a dynamic footer?
Meaning the call to actions below your email signature, your super signature, or whatever you wanna call it, can be dynamic to that group of people, will immediately give you a lift in conversion.
Meaning if your call to action below your signature is always schedule a call with me, schedule a call with me, schedule a call with me, that's a lost opportunity for all the people that aren't gonna buy until next year because they don't need to schedule a call with you right now, or they don't need to download your.
Free buyer guide PDF or you know three things I would learn about the spring market before you buy a home those are all going to be lost opportunities for that list because they are disqualified or Unqualified from being able to take that decision on the email, right?
Could you change the actual content of the email is there content that you would write for only the people that were buying in? The next 90 days is there content that you would write only for the people that were buying on the next six months or six? months to a year or after a year and the answer would be
100% yes, the content would be different. That is the power of email The email is you could do great with a broadcast tool and it will work But once you understand the power of segmentation
Then it gets really important So let me give you a really quick activity that you could do right now to segment your list So let's say that you have an email that you're sending out Thursday at 2 o'clock and it's about whatever right whatever in the real estate
Market and you have your super signature Maybe this week instead of including the super signature you included a simple four links and say hey We want to make sure we're getting you the right content if everything worked out exactly to plan which in parentheses
We know it never does if everything worked out exactly to plan When would you next be considering a move in the next 90 days? six months to a year or within six months six months to a year after a year completely unsure and in your email marketing
Newsletter software or subscription whether that all of them that I gave you earlier HubSpot MailChimp kit keep all of them can do this, right when they click that link You can apply a tag to their contact record and now, you know, everybody in there is this
You can put something in the content of the email says hey, by the way If you're considering a move the next 90 days I wrote this and you should take a look at it And when they click that link, maybe that goes to a YouTube video or a blog post or whatever
You can tag that link click Because now what what like people that don't want to move right away like I still want to know what this is So is it a hundred percent accurate? Nothing's a hundred percent accurate, right, but it's better than not knowing anything
So if there was one change that you can make to your email marketing part right now is to focus on everybody that comes In how can I segment them?
Like one of the questions we asked in the Carlsbad report. Do you live here? Yes, I live here I live here part-time. I vacation here. I don't live here like I want to know that because if you don't live here if you don't live here part-time if you don't vacation here and
Somehow you saw one of our ads in Plano, Texas And you have no desire to live or know anything about Carlsbad report Like I'm probably going to take you off the list
Because I'm only looking for real estate clients as it pertains to that certain thing We do a lot of events in the real estate space a lot of virtual events and it would blow you away How many people come into our ads and they we ask are you a real estate agent and they say no?
Okay, why are you joining this event? This is for real estate agents only it's really important to ask these questions Now if they're if they're not vacationing or part-time and they just say no what I erase them
Probably but I would I definitely would not send them content as if they were buying a home in Southern, California The next 90 days because it's incongruent with what with why they're there Segmentation is one of the easiest things that you can do right now to increase the conversion on your email list
Sharon said this in his podcast. I agree with it a hundred percent. I'll regurgitate it here even with all of the noise with all of the message that we get every day and the phone and text message and in messenger and Instagram and Facebook and tick-tock and
YouTube Email by far without a shadow of doubt is our number one Communicating messaging platform exists. It outperforms the phone it outperforms SMS and outperforms social it outperforms everything email is the number one Conversion communication channel for us. I'm sure it's the same for Sharon and I know what a lot of you guys are thinking
I'll leave you with this Steve I need to get out their phone number because without their phone number They're not a good lead and if I told you over the past 12 months alone How much stuff I have personally purchased because of an email marketing campaign or going back and forth with somebody on email alone
I mean, it's not hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's a lot. It's thousands of dollars worth of stuff, right? I paid for HubSpot the CRM that we use I committed to this was two years ago
I committed to thirty one hundred dollars a month to HubSpot two years ago Never even met the guy in a zoom or anything. It was on email only Right a forty thousand dollar thirty six thousand dollar annual commitment every single year
Never met with him never spoken him on the phone went back and forth on email. I read a deck He sent me a demo video. That was it. I signed the contract and we move forward Stop believing that this is 50 years ago and the phone is the key to all sales. It's a key to some sales
It's not the only key to all sales emails by far the most powerful communication Communication marketing platform if you do it, right and you segment any questions, let me know
I'd be curious to find out what it is if you're watching us on YouTube or in the blog comment below Let me know your thoughts and we'll respond. All right. See you on the next one. Talk soon
