Marketing consultant, Leticia Collins is our guest for the 420th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast. She’s an expert in community-based email list growth, so it’s no wonder she added 4300 people to her list in less than a week. Want to know how she did it? Then this episode is for you. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript.
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Stuff to check out:
Leticia’s websiteThe Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground
Full Transcript:
The money is in the list, or that’s what we’re told. And before you can work on getting some of that money out of the list and into your business, you need a list. If your list is small, you need a bigger list. If your list is full of the wrong people, you need to find the right people. As a business owner, one of your big challenges is your list. And knowing that, would you like to hear how you can add hundreds, maybe even thousands of qualified names to your email list in as little as a week?
Hi I’m Rob Marsh and on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I talked with marketing strategist Leticia Collins. Tish is a successful marketer who has worked hard to grow her list. And in this interview, she shared how she added 4,300 subscribers to her email list in one week. And triped her revenue in the process. If you want to grow an email list full of potential clients for your business, this episode is for you.
Before we get to that though… you hear me tell you about several resources that we’ve put together to help you build and grow a writing business. I’m going to quickly list a few of them here so you can get the help you need… we have a free facebook group called The Copywriter Club. You can find us on Facebook and request that we add you to the group where you’ll find seven years of threads about all kinds of copywriting and business questions.
Obviously you know about this podcast. You’re listening to it right now and there are more than 400 interviews with successful copywriters and other experts in our backlist. Once you’ve listened to this episode, scroll through to find interviews with people like Seth Godin, Jay Abraham, Jereshia Hawk, Joanna Wiebe, Todd Brown, Kennedy and so many others. Honestly, it’s the best free library of copy, content and business ideas that you’ll find anywhere. And it’s at your fingertips. Take a minute now to subscribe on your favorite podcast player so you don’t miss another episode.
And right now you can get our free, 36 page mini-book called How to Find Clients when you go to thecopywriterclub.com/findaclient . I guarantee you’ll find at least one and probably 5-10 ideas you can use to find a client for your business. We’re here to help you build a business, so be sure to take advantage of all the free resources we’ve provided for you.
And now, let’s go to our interview with Tish Collins.
Welcome to the podcast, Tish. I want to start with the question we always start with, which is how did you become a content creator, a digital marketing strategist, business mentor, all of the things?
Leticia Collins: Hi, well firstly thank you so much for having me on, it’s so lovely to be here. And I got started in business, I started my business back in 2019 and I never really saw myself becoming a business owner at all, I kind of fell into it. It started when I went to university, I studied journalism and creative writing and one of our assignments, one of the very first assignments was for us to start a blog. I had always wanted to do that. So I was really excited about it. I started my blog and it was going to be like a portfolio for when I became a journalist. Obviously that didn’t happen. Um, but what did happen is I began to grow my blog. I grew my Instagram. I started working with brands and I kind of started my first business that way. And then after a few years I began to get some questions about how I was getting paid to work with brands and growing my Instagram so fast. And so I thought, you know what, there is a bit of a market here. There’s people who want to learn how to do this kind of thing. So I started my first proper business as an influencer coach. And I did that for a little while. And then I kind of started to realize that actually working with brands is great, but it’s not a sustainable form of income. And so I started teaching these people how to actually create their own products and services and how to monetize that way. And it just kind of snowballed into what I am now, which is a marketing strategist for online business owners.
Rob Marsh: I love that. I want to know a little bit more about the whole influencer coach thing, because obviously there are a lot of people out there who would like to be influencers. There are a lot of copywriters, marketers, freelancers who maybe they don’t want to be influencers, but they want to be able to do the things that a lot of influencers do, that is grow their audience and share their expertise. So maybe just as in a couple of minutes, you can tell us, what does it take to really be that kind of an online presence and almost influencer?
Leticia Collins: Yeah absolutely um I think I mean the main thing about influencers and content creators is that they are a personal brand right so it’s a lot of sharing your personality like behind the scenes of your life and what you’re up to and I think that actually having a background in that really helped me when it came to build my business because I already had a personal brand, I already knew how to grow that and so I was able to lean into that with my business and really connect with my audience. So yeah I think if you’re wanting to be an influencer content creator then it’s definitely about building a strong personal brand and just not being afraid to show up and share like the real and raw version of you because that’s what people really like. It’s the authenticity and the things that people can relate to.
Rob Marsh: I sort of question this a little bit because there are a lot of people who don’t want to share that, you know, behind the scenes kind of stuff or be raw and vulnerable. And I’m sure that you don’t need to share everything, but is that really a requirement or can you build an online brand without going so deep in your personal life?
Leticia Collins: I don’t think that you need to share everything. There’s a lot that I don’t share, but it’s a lot of like the small snippets. So speaking about business owners specifically, it’s the simple like, what are you doing today? Like what’s going on behind the scenes in your business? Are you recording a podcast episode? Are you working on a product? Like that kind of thing. And also just sharing your personality. And that doesn’t have to be like, uncomfortable it can be within your copy you know your writing you don’t have to get on video all the time but within your writing just injecting your personality and kind of like words that you say quite often or things that are going to make you relatable and just not sounding robotic right?
Rob Marsh: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Because again, yeah, I don’t want to share everything. But I do think that there’s a way to talk about the things that we do in a more authentic or raw way than just, you know, posting up, you know, lead magnets or whatever.
Leticia Collins: Yeah, no, definitely.
Rob Marsh: So let’s talk about how your business works today then, because you’ve got a couple of different things that you do and a few different services. Who’s your typical client and what’s the kind of work that you’re doing today?
Leticia Collins: So I typically work with online business owners, so coaches, service providers, and course creators. And I help them with their marketing and business as a whole, but I’m specifically kind of looking at helping them create a digital product or course so that they can, so they don’t have to rely on one-on-one services all the time and trading time for money so they can kind of make I don’t want to say passive income, but maybe more like leveraged income where they’re not having to show up all the time. And I also help them to grow their audience so that they have someone, their ideal client to sell that offer to.
Rob Marsh: So let’s talk about offers first, because again, this is the work that a lot of the content creators and copywriters who are listening right now do for their clients or they want to do for themselves. What are the first steps? If I want to build my own product or have my own digital products to sell, where should I start? And maybe there’s a process for doing this properly.
Leticia Collins: I think it does help if you’ve worked one-on-one with clients for a while before so that you know what the process is yourself so you have like your own defined process and then kind of just pay attention to what you’re always teaching again and again. Is there something that you could actually package up and put your framework into its own product or course so that you can then market that to more than just one person at a time. So I think that’s the best way to get started is to pull from your experience. And as you notice, you know, the same thing coming up over and over again, you’re going to realize that there is actually a market for this and be able to sell that in a one to many format instead.
Rob Marsh: I’d love to get your thoughts on this because I’ve seen this happen over and over where somebody like, let’s say it’s a copywriter, uh, they’ve been doing copywriting for a while. They’ve had some success in their niche and they think, Oh, I’m going to start selling templates to copywriters. And, uh, you know, maybe they sell a few, but it doesn’t go quite as well compared to Maybe a similar copywriter who does the same thing, but instead of selling templates to other people doing the same work as them, they sell templates within their niche to business owners who need this thing. Do you have thoughts around where is the better market and should you start in one and move to another?
Leticia Collins: I think it really depends on your business, but if you’re a copywriter and you’ve been working with a specific niche, I think it’s always best to start out with selling to that audience that you’ve already created. And then as you build that and get like a better understanding of how running a digital product based business works, then Perhaps if your next goal is to work with copywriters and you do have that understanding and experience then that can always be a route that you can go down after.
Rob Marsh: OK, yeah, that makes sense. So as you’ve built your business, you know, I’ve been watching what you do for a while. I’ve been on your list for a while and seen, you know, you’re doing a lot to grow your own audience. You know, tell us about your efforts there. And hopefully there are some tips here that we can steal and use in our own businesses.
Leticia Collins: Yeah, I’m trying. So I started my business back in 2019 and it took me quite a while to actually get to the point where i had like a solid audience and i i think i used to struggle a lot with growth i had a community on instagram um but nothing like i didn’t really have an email list so it got to 2022 and i had around 700 people on my email list and I just said to myself one day I want to make 2023 the year that I really grow my email list and that’s what I really leaned into that year. So I started 2023 with 700 subscribers on my email list and by the end of the year I had over 7,000 subscribers. Okay that’s big. Yeah, it was a big growth and it all came because I decided that I was going to lean into the power of collaboration. So I was really leaning on other business owners, supporting them, having them support me and we were leveraging each other’s audiences to grow and that definitely was, still is the biggest way that I’m growing my audience.
Rob Marsh: So before we started recording, you told me that you actually grew your list by 4,300 subscribers in a single week. Tell us a little bit about that.
Leticia Collins: Yeah. So like I just said, 2023 was the year of growth. I was contributing to bundles, I was participating in freebie swaps, I was speaking in summits, I was just doing everything I could to grow my list and in August I decided that I had gotten results from contributing to bundles so I wanted to actually host my own bundle event and I’ll quickly explain for those who might not be familiar with bundles but a bundle is a collaborative list building event where a group of experts within a similar industry or niche come together to serve a common audience and each business owner will contribute one of their paid offers usually priced between $9 to $97 and they’ll give it away exclusively for free for those who sign up for the bundle. And then the bundle is open for a limited amount of time and anyone who registers is then able to sign up for the gifts inside. So when someone signs up for your gift they give you their name and email address and so you get to grow your email list with targeted leads. Now as a host you have the opportunity to grow your email list even more because you are getting the emails of every single person who signs up for that bundle. They’re going straight to your email list, you don’t have to wait for them to opt in to the gift you contribute. So I hosted my first bundle, it was called the Balanced Business Bundle and we had I think 40-ish contributors. It was open for a week and in that week we had 4,300 people sign up for it and that was all organic so I managed to grow my email list by over 4,000 people organically in one week so that was a major boost to my email list.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that’s amazing. Were you able to track those, uh, new subscribers to like sales or, you know, how long they stick around? You know, what does that look like long-term?
Leticia Collins: Yeah. So I still have stats in my email provider. I had a tag created specifically for the bundle. And, um, so I’ve seen through, I think, how long has it been over a year now? I still have quite a few of those on my list still. Um, In the weeks following, I gained two private clients directly from that event, who I’m actually still working with now. And over the following months, through my emails and them just being in my world, I enrolled hundreds of new students into my courses and digital products. It was a major growth, not just for my audience, but for my business and my revenue as a whole. And I would say that that is all down to email, you know, having a strong welcome sequence in place and then nurturing them with regular emails and selling regularly too.
Rob Marsh: We’ve participated in several bundles and I haven’t seen 4,300 people join our list, but we’ve seen big bumps in our list when we do that kind of thing. So I like it. But one of the things that occurs to me is that for most people, these happen by invitation, right? They wait for a bundle collector to reach out and say, Hey, do you have something? Would you like to participate? And I wonder, you know, if somebody’s thinking, well, this would be great. How can I get on some of these people’s radars? How do I get noticed? So they’ll reach out to me. Is there an easy way to do that? Or do you just need to watch for bundles happening? You know, what would you do?
Leticia Collins: So I think if you’re looking to be invited that it helps to see, you know, if, is there a bundle that’s happening like annually or quarterly or something like that, that you can kind of email the host and be like, I would love to be considered for the next one. And a lot of the times they’ll have a wait list or. something in the email software that software where they can reach out to you when that happens. So that’s one option, but there are also a ton of Facebook groups that people who run bundles specifically post in to find contributors and there’s often an application process. I think that I don’t find that a lot of bundle hosts actively reach out to people anymore and it’s mostly through application where they’re posting it in a Facebook group or somewhere like that. So I would say to go to Facebook groups and browse directories. I actually, in my membership, we have a directory that features different bundle events, different summit events, and so I’m always looking in these Facebook groups and adding that to the directory so that members can easily go and apply for them. So if you’re if you’re in those Facebook groups, then you are going to see those opportunities and it’s really easy to apply.
Rob Marsh: And if I’m thinking, OK, I’d like to actually host my own bundle like you did and get the full benefit of this event. What you know, again, what are the best practices and how should we get started with that?
Leticia Collins: That is a good question. I would say that you need to really have a feel for how bundles work first. So make sure that you’ve contributed to bundles, you understand how it works, you kind of know the process. And then when it comes to hosting your own bundle, the key is to just kind of be organized. So I would start with coming up with a theme. It does help to have something that is more niche so that you’re going to attract the right person because you don’t want a ton of unaligned people coming into your audience, you want people who want to learn about what you teach on specifically. So if you host a bundle then I would make sure that it’s specifically on what you teach on and targeted towards the audience that you want to have in your audience. So that would be the first step. And then the next step is to put out the applications, you know, post in those Facebook groups, find people to contribute and actively reach out to anyone who you feel is the perfect fit for, or has the perfect target audience for what you want as well. Um, and then just being organized is another tip. I think bundles are a huge thing to run, there is a lot that goes into it, and I, my very first bundle, I think I had about 10 or 12 contributors and that was enough. So now I’m running bundles with like 70 contributors, but I would not have been able to do that beforehand without having that experience first. So I would definitely start small and get a feel for it. And then the thing with bundles is that it is a repeatable process. So once you’ve done one bundle and you have all the assets, you have the to-do list, you have like everything in place, then you can just duplicate that and repeat it again and again.
Rob Marsh: And I know that obviously you can set this stuff up with basic website builders, but are there any specific tech tools that help manage this process? Or is it just use the tools that you have?
Leticia Collins: I think you can mostly use the tools that you have. I host my bundle on my website. You obviously need an email marketing software, most business owners have that, and if they don’t then they definitely need to get one. For the checkout I do like to use Thrivecart because I can also use their affiliate software and I like to use an affiliate link for my contributors so that I can track who’s getting the clicks, who’s getting the sales, you know, and also see who’s not pulling their weight and promoting because that is always, like with bundles they only work if everyone pulls their weight and does promote so if you’re seeing that someone isn’t promoting then you can reach out to them, you can ask them what’s going on, and if needs be, then you could remove their gift if they’re not promoting, but yeah, that is a big one. And I haven’t used this myself, but another tool that I have seen a lot of bundle hosts using and finding really helpful is a tool called Spread Simple. There’s two, there’s Spread Simple or Softer. And they just create a really easy database of all the contributors gifts that allows registrants to search through and just easily find everything.
Rob Marsh: It makes sense. You know, I can imagine a lot of businesses should be contributing to bundles, even if they’re not hosting their own. It seems pretty easy when you have a small product, in that’s related to everything else there to help grow a list. So, you know, hopefully this is something that opens eyes for a few additional people to participate in.
Leticia Collins: Yeah, and one of my favorite things as well is that actually you don’t need to have a load of digital products but a lot of the time you could just if you’ve got a course or a signature program you can often just pull a lesson or a module out of that and submit that to a bundle and that’s not available on your website but it is still a paid offer and if you’re contributing that for free then anyone who signs up is going to get like the foundations of your program and see exactly what it is like to work with you and then you have that able to kind of pitch them afterwards and be like you’ve got a small snippet like this is what you’ll get if you if you work with me so they can then go on and decide to purchase the full thing. So I think that’s actually one of the best ways to contribute to a bundle.
Rob Marsh: And then obviously it’s not just about getting these people on your list. You want to be able to follow up. You hopefully have things that can help them solve additional problems. So as far as the follow-up email sequences, what do you recommend there?
Leticia Collins: Again, I think it depends from business to business. I personally, so as an example from my business, I have a membership called the Audience Growth Club. So it’s all about audience growth. So when I’m contributing to bundles, I am contributing gifts about audience growth and often it’s a masterclass from that membership. So I’ll contribute that. and then I will have a tripwire on that gift that will then offer them a deal if they were to join the audience growth club there and then and regardless of, well if they take me up on that then obviously they just go straight into my normal emails but if they don’t then they’re entered into my welcome sequence and I share a little bit about me, my journey, I deliver them some value around the topic of audience growth and then after a little while of just nurturing them, getting to know them and forming that connection I will then start to talk about my membership and release the pitch sequence and after that I will add them to my regular email list and I will send emails you know to maybe three times a week sometimes but it’s just always about keeping them nurtured and delivering that value so that when they are ready, regardless of whether they join in the pitch sequence or they don’t, um, I’m still delivering them value and giving them that opportunity to purchase.
Rob Marsh: We maybe have, uh, answered this question in some ways because we talked about the 4,300 subscribers, but what other results have you seen in your business since you’ve been focusing on business or on audience growth?
Leticia Collins: Through all of the collaborations that I’ve done, I would say the biggest thing is that I’ve been exposed to a whole new audience. When you team up with a competitor, you are able to get in front of their audience, and while they’ll likely have a similar audience to your own, they won’t have the exact same people in their audience, so you have the opportunity to reach ideal clients who may not have found you before. Another thing I’ve noticed is that it’s really helped to establish my authority and build trust. For example, you know, if you appear as a guest on a podcast, you can use the opportunity to establish yourself as an expert and authority and a thought leader within your industry. And on top of that, when you’re collaborating with established business owners, you are also being promoted to their audience and their audience already know and trust them so it’s likely that they’re going to trust anyone that that business owner collaborates with and think that they’re also trustworthy so that’s an immediate credibility boost for you as a collaborative partner. And we just spoke about the sales but another thing is with collaboration is that It saves you a lot of time and money. If you wanted to grow your audience by yourself, you would either need to dedicate a ton of time to do this or throw money into paid marketing and ads, but leveraging someone else’s already warm audience, that allows you to grow quickly and save on that money and save on that time that it would have taken if you were to do it by yourself.
Rob Marsh: And do you also do ads for your bundles when you, uh, when you launch, are you doing, you know, Instagram or Facebook ads or anything like that?
Leticia Collins: I don’t know. I focus primarily or solely on organic marketing.
Rob Marsh: Are you posting on Instagram about the bundle? So you’re using your organic reach to advertise that.
Leticia Collins: Yeah. I mostly post to my email list, but when I’m running my own bundle, it is a lot of the contributors sharing and doing that organic promotion for me so I don’t, I do promote the bundle but I don’t need to be like doing anything else extra to promote it.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I’m trying to remember how I first saw you and what you did. And I know, you know, some of the earliest contacts that I have from you are regarding the Simple Business Bundle. And I’m thinking I must have seen it on Instagram or something like that and clicked through to see what you were doing. So yeah, as far as like getting the word out, it feels like there’s a lot of work there. But again, it can really pay off, obviously.
Leticia Collins: Well, the beauty of it is that you’re not having to do all of that promotion yourself because I’ve just, I just wrapped up a bundle last week and we had 70 contributors and every single contributor sent two emails minimum and some of them promoted on social media as well. So that was thousands of people hearing about the bundle without me really having to do anything other than supply them with some swipe copy to get the word out there.
Rob Marsh: And so typically, you shared the 4,300 in one week. Typically, what kind of growth would somebody see for participating in a bundle like this? And I know it’s probably going to range, if only 12 people are participating versus 70, obviously the potential audience is significantly smaller, larger, whatever, but what should we be able to expect?
Leticia Collins: It definitely does vary, um, I’ve had contributors to my bundle add thousands to their list, I’ve had them add hundreds, um, but it depends on, you know, how many people contribute to the bundle, like how much competition there is and how niche it is, but I think it also depends on your specific gift, so is it something that a lot of people are going to want to opt in for? I mean, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to only get a few, like a hundred subscribers maybe, from a bundle, because if you’re delivering, you know, a niche gift, you only want your ideal client on there. So if you were to then get like 500 subscribers, but they’re not your true ideal client, then it’s kind of like, what’s the point in having those subscribers? So Yeah, I don’t think there is like a defined answer. Yeah.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that makes sense. And it might not be really a fair question because the results are going to be so all over the place that it could be really hard to predict other than to say, there aren’t a lot of downsides here, you know, as far as growing your list. And so, yeah, even if you only got 20 new people, that’s 20 new people that you can influence and interact with.
Leticia Collins: exactly yeah and like i say like giving giving a niched down gift is probably the best way to go because you’re not going to get every single person on your list you’re only going to get the people who are actively interested in what you offer and so whenever i’m helping my students contribute to bundles i always say like sometimes they say i want something that’s going to reach the masses and be attractive to everyone. And I’m like, no, like you don’t, you actually don’t want that because you just want your ideal client, not everyone. Otherwise, you know, email lists aren’t free. And if you’re having to keep on paying, like depending on how big your list is, then you want to keep it to your ideal client.
Rob Marsh: One other thing that I see with bundles, and this probably becomes problematic in some ways if you’re participating in a really large bundle with 60, 70 people in it, is standing out from all of the other products that are there. I haven’t seen this a lot, but it feels like really paying attention to the name of your product or the hook for why they might want your product. It’s really critical, especially if you’re, I mean, you’re almost competing against everybody else in the bundle.
Leticia Collins: Yeah, no, 100%. And I think the main thing to really look at is your graphic as well. What can you do to make your graphics stand out from the rest? And I think it’s always good to have a little bit of color, have a bold title or like a description of what the gift is. And I think it’s also good to have an image of yourself because that’s instantly going to draw the eyes to your gift as well. Right.
Rob Marsh: Yeah. Yeah, that’s good advice. So we’ve talked a lot about bundles, but what are some other ways that business owners can grow their audience organically?
Leticia Collins: There are so many ways to collaborate. I mean, it can look anything like podcast guesting like we’re doing here. It could look like hosting a joint live training, speaking in summits. That’s something I’m really leaning into at the moment as well. Even affiliate programs are a great way to collaborate. And those are just a few, but yeah, there are so many ways.
Rob Marsh: And as far as finding these kinds of opportunities, is it similar to bundles where you’re looking at Facebook groups, you’re looking for maybe recurring summits and asking to participate? What is your recommendation there?
Leticia Collins: Yeah, so for summits and bundles, I’m always looking at Facebook groups. And there are a lot of Facebook groups out there specifically for collaborations. So there are podcast guesting groups, there are bundle groups, there are summit groups. Facebook, I think, is just such a goldmine for finding these opportunities. And also just, if you see someone in your industry, your niche, who has a similar target audience to your own, don’t be afraid to reach out and see what you can do. I love hosting freebie swaps. So if those listening don’t know what that is, it’s just kind of when two business owners will share their lead magnets with each other. And then they’ll promote those lead magnets to their audience to kind of cross pollinate And it’s a really simple collaboration that you can do in like 20 minutes So I love that as an easy way to collaborate and a lot of the time I just reach out on Instagram and say look like I’d love to collaborate. Here’s my idea Would you be open to that and nine times out of ten? It’s gonna be a yes
Rob Marsh: Yeah, this is something that I’ve seen a lot of. We’ve been approached, we’ve talked with other people about list sharing and sharing lead magnets. One hiccup that tends to happen with that is some people have really large lists and some people have very small lists. And sometimes it’s a little hard to ask or to you know, um, ask somebody else if your list is super small to share theirs if it’s large. Um, so as far as like finding people who are the right people, um, you know, what, what do you tell your clients and the people in your membership?
Leticia Collins: Yeah, I get that. And it can be awkward to ask, but what I would recommend is to put together your own little application for if you want to do freebie swaps for those freebie swaps. Um, and then in that you can ask, you know, how often do you email your list to make sure they’re active and what is your current list size so that you can make sure it’s not going, it’s going to be a mutually beneficial collaboration, you know, it’s not going to be one sided. So I think applications are probably the best way to go.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, that makes sense too. And another thing you might want to ask about is open rates, because a list of, say, 10,000 with a 15% open rate is not the same as a list of, say, 5,000 with an 80% open rate. Yeah, absolutely.
Leticia Collins: But at the end of the day, I think a lot of it is about trust as well. Like, there’s no way to really truly know, but you’ve just got to trust that the other person is honest. And even if they’re not, like, it’s not going to be a major loss if you’re not, like, if it’s just a freebie swap. It’s not a, it’s just like, you know, you’re helping each other out. So I think that’s always a good thing to do anyway.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, agree. Okay. I would love to shift our conversation just a little bit away from this, you know, audience growth and talk a little bit more about some of the services that you offer. Specifically, you know, one of the things you help clients with is marketing plans. And there are Again, a lot of content writers, a lot of copywriters who would love to go broader with their services than just writing the copy. They’d like to start helping with the strategy, with the planning, with figuring out what needs to be added. And so this is a really broad question, but how do you approach these marketing plan type clients? What’s your process there?
Leticia Collins: Yeah, the 90 day marketing plan is actually something that I introduced recently. So I’ve been working with my first few clients and I have been loving it so far. So we always get on a call first so I can really get to know them and their business and what they’re currently doing. And then I’m asking them, you know, what are your goals for the next 90 days? And sometimes they want to launch, sometimes they just want to increase sales naturally. And so we’ll go with whatever they have that goal for. But I always suggest because, you know, you think of 90 days as being quite a long time, but actually in the marketing world, it’s really not. So I always suggest focusing on one main offer to drive sales to and it does depend from business to business so that might not be great advice for one specific business but that’s why we have that call at the start so that they we can kind of get an idea of what does actually work for them um and yeah I think it’s just such a fun a fun way to um experiment and try new things I always have my clients trying new things and a lot of the time you know I with the with the with the marketing plan we don’t just focus on the content but also growing the audience and improving the offers as well so I’ll always go and audit their offers their sales page and see what could be improved and I just look at it from a ideal client’s perspective and deliver that feedback to them. And I really love doing them.
Rob Marsh: Do you have a checklist that you’re going through as you’re doing your audits or as you’re thinking through the plan? You know, the basically the go-tos, we know we want to, you know, start collecting emails, we want to be emailing weekly or daily or whatever, you know, or is it completely organic and you’re just coming up with something different for each person?
Leticia Collins: It is- it’s normally different for each person, um, and, you know, I have, like, my benchmarks, like, you should be emailing once a week, social media, that kind of thing, but I’ll always ask, you know, what’s going on in your real life? Like, what can you reasonably commit to? And if there’s a client who’s saying to me, look, I’m- I’m so busy, I don’t have the time for all of this, I can commit to one email a week, maybe two social posts a week then we’re going to build the plan based off that. Because I really truly believe that you should be able to build your business around your life and not the other way around and I’m always figuring out ways to help my audience with that. So if there’s something they can’t do then we’ll try and find an alternative
Rob Marsh: I’ve noticed because I’m on your list, email is a big part of what you do and how you run your business. Talk a little bit about your thoughts around email marketing, why it’s so critically important, why you email, the number of times that you do, should you be selling in every email, those kinds of things.
Leticia Collins: Okay. So yeah, I love email. I’ll start with a little bit of backstory. I mentioned earlier that I started my business on Instagram. It was the platform that I used to build and market my business on. And I’m not saying it was a bad decision because it did a lot for me. I found my first clients on Instagram, I found my first students, and I created a really great community. So I owe a lot of my success in business to social media because it really gave me that initial foot into the online world. But it also wasn’t sustainable. So after a while I found that I was creating Instagram post after Instagram post and while I was doing a great job nurturing the audience I’d built there, it really wasn’t helping me grow my audience so well. And I also started to realise that I was putting my business in jeopardy by relying so heavily on social media. I kept on seeing those horror stories of business owners who, like me, had started their businesses on Instagram and were using it as their sole marketing strategy and then they went to login one day and their entire account had been deleted which meant that they had to start all over again from scratch. And although that hasn’t happened to me, luckily, it did give me the kick in the backside I needed to build my audience somewhere that I owned and didn’t have to worry about losing. And that’s when I really started to prioritize email. And over the past couple of years, I have truly fallen in love with email marketing. And the thing I love most about it, other than the fact that you own your audience, is that email is literally the most direct way to reach your audience.
When someone hands over their email address to you, they are giving you permission to send your message directly to them. With social media, you’re battling against algorithms and thousands of competitors, but you can always guarantee that any emails you send will land in your audience’s inbox. Plus, I found at least that it requires a lot less effort than social media. I found myself struggling to post consistently three to four times a week, create the graphics, show up on stories, create reels, you know, all the things. But with email, I’m creating one to two emails a week, maybe three on occasion, and it feels so much easier, and I no longer feel like I’m on a content hamster wheel. And I’m getting so much more engagement and sales for my content as well. I think there’s some stats out there that say for every dollar you spend on email marketing, you’re likely to see a return of, I think it was around $30. I can’t remember the exact stat, but it was something crazy like that. So yeah, I just love how sustainable it is. I love how you’re in control and I love that you get to see a higher return as well.
Rob Marsh: And do you use a template? I mean, because I’m on your list, I see what you’re sending. There’s certain boxes here and there. Are you basically using the same things in each email or how often do you change those up?
Leticia Collins: Yeah, so I have a template that I created that’s like a basic outline of what I want my email to look like. I try to brand it to my business so that when someone opens up my email, they know that it’s from me, like it’s recognizable, it’s not just black text on a white screen. So I do that with my brand colors and my logo. And then the boxes that you’re talking about, I think that you might be referring to my roundup email. yeah like at the bottom of every email there’s like a roundup yeah yeah so i started doing that a little while ago and i initially got the idea from damaju i don’t know if you’ve heard of her but she’s a great email marketer as well and she had this thing where she was doing um I think she called it four by four footers where you just get to share your like what you’re up to that week a bit of behind the scenes share some affiliate links and so I like to do that my own version of that at the end of my emails and you know I share what I’m celebrating this week the events that I’m loving this week behind the scenes of my business like the things that are going on and I’ll often use that to share affiliate links as well. So if I’ve just started trying out a new product, I’ll link it there. Um, I’ll talk about the bundles of the summits that I’m in. I’ll talk about podcasts that I’m on and I just use it as a way to kind of increase my click rate as well because people, I’ve noticed that people really like this, this roundup style. Um, and I’ll get a lot of clicks on that.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I’m really intrigued by it because it seems like an opportunity. It’s almost like you’re sending four emails at once or five emails at once where you’ve got your main message, but then you’ve got just some fun stuff at the bottom. And I would love to have that look inside your email provider and see where are those clicks coming from? Do they come from the top of the email or do they come from those extra things that you’re adding? Which again, I really like.
Leticia Collins: Yeah, and I think that actually having that thing at the bottom that’s encouraging the clicks often encourages the clicks for the main portion as well so it’s like kind of training your audience to to click.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, yeah, I totally see that. I may have to experiment with this in my own email list and see how it goes.
Leticia Collins: You should. It’s so fun. I love doing it. And it always gives me an opportunity to actually have a look through and see, you know, what could I promote right now? Like, what could I tell my audience? And like we mentioned before about showing your personality, You can really do that here in a really easy way and that’s why I always have you know, I’m like recently I had an My section that’s like I’m excited about and I was just like I’m excited about moving into my new flat and then I got some people reply and be like well, congratulations and you know, I just love to use it to share a bit of my everyday life and to have that interaction or spark that interaction with my audience as opposed to just being solely business related.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, this seems like a really good way to do what we were talking about when we first started and that, you know, when we were talking a little bit about being that almost influencer, you know, this is a way to share some of the behind the scenes that’s not in an overt way. It’s not too sherry or too vulnerable, but just kind of fun.
Leticia Collins: Yeah, exactly. And people really do love it. You’d be surprised at what people enjoy.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, or maybe not. So I’m curious, Letitia or Tish, as you’ve built your business, what are some of the mistakes that you’ve made along the way that you wish you might be able to go back and say, I wish I hadn’t done that?
Leticia Collins: Oh, well, firstly, I think my biggest mistake would have been, you know, relying on social media so heavily. When I first started my business, I do wish that I’d started my email list sooner. And I wish that I had focused on or used collaboration as a way to grow my email list sooner as well. I don’t like to say that they are mistakes but they’re more of a learning curve that I experienced or a lesson that I’ve learnt. Something else I have realised recently is that it’s okay to experiment and pivot and I think when I first came into the online business space I struggled with this. I thought that I had to box myself in. I saw so much content about the importance of niching down and that old saying of if you’re speaking to everyone you’re speaking to no one and while I do agree to an extent I also think that when you’re first starting out it’s okay to not have it all figured out. It’s okay to experiment and figure out what path you want to go down. And, you know, we spoke earlier about how much I’ve pivoted from an influencer coach to social media and content creation and now into business and marketing and since then I’ve had the honour of working with all different types of online business owners in all different areas of their marketing and from doing that I found that actually I’m multi-passionate. I have learned that there are certain areas of business and marketing that I don’t like to teach on such as ads on LinkedIn, for example, and I’ve learned that I love to help online business owners create digital products, but I also love to help them create funnels, and I love to help them grow their audience and improve their email marketing. So I’m multi-passionate, but my overall passion is helping online business owners create a simple business that doesn’t require them to be glued to their desk. My passion is helping these business owners create sustainable and scalable businesses and that is my niche. So some people might say that being multi-professional is a mistake or that you know we should niche down more but I found that that’s what works for me and that’s what I enjoy and I don’t personally want to put myself in a box.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I think that’s fair enough. We talk a lot about niching and the importance of that, but niching only, well, niching works, but it works when it works, right? Like, you know, if you want to go super narrow and you can connect with that kind of an audience, then great, do it. And you’re doing fine. But if you want to go wide and you can connect with a broader audience there, and that also works, then lean into that. So it feels like you have a niche, but it’s wider than just industry.
Leticia Collins: Absolutely. And I did kind of kick myself a lot when I first started my business because of that, because I really thought, you know, I have to be really niched down. I have to speak to just one specific person, but that does work for a lot of people. And it is a really good strategy for a lot of people. But for me, it doesn’t work. And over the years of having a business, I realized that, you know, I like to break the rules. I like to experiment with different things and that is what works for me and so I think the ultimate lesson is that you know yourself and your business best and you should trust yourself to kind of have that intuition and follow the path that you want to create for yourself.
Rob Marsh: So I guess I could just check the last couple of emails that you’ve sent to see what you’re most excited about coming up but what’s next for you and what are you excited about in your business?
Leticia Collins: Oh so like I mentioned earlier, I recently launched my membership, so I’m just excited about getting to support my members inside there. I have a few other ideas for things that I’m- I’d like to create over the next quarter, but to be honest, I’m- I know it’s only October, but I’m getting really excited for December and just having the Christmas season and all the holiday content and just getting to have A bit of a rest as well because as much as I love to work I love to rest and just take some down time. So I’m really excited for that Amazing.
Rob Marsh: Well tish I really appreciate you taking some time to share so much about your business if people Want to connect with you want to get on your list and see what you’re doing You know with your emails or are interested in some of the programs things that you’re you provide where should they go?
Leticia Collins: Yeah, so you can connect with me on Instagram. I’m at marketingwithtish. And if you want to join my email list, I actually have a free resource that shares 18 ways that you can collaborate to grow your audience. And it gives more details on each of the strategies as well. And you can get that at latishajcollins.com forward slash collab if you want to dive a little deeper.
Rob Marsh: Yeah, I’ve seen people selling entire courses on this kind of thing. And the fact that you’re offering that information for free is pretty great. So I encourage everybody who’s listening to check that out and keep up with what you’re doing. Thanks, Tish, for spending so much time and sharing so much about your business. Really appreciate it.
Leticia Collins: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.
Rob Marsh: Thanks to Leticia for sharing so much about how she’s grown her list through bundles and other community-based email sharing programs. I really enjoyed this discussion. Tish’s ideas around coming up with content and putting your own personality on it are the kinds of things that more writers need to be doing. And I think there are a lot of ways to apply the list growth strategies that Tish talked about as well. Finding a bundle that includes your ideal clients is a good first step, but what if there isn’t a bundle out there that works for you? I’d suggest maybe you should create your own. Why not be the person who gets five or six or maybe even more influencers who are working in your niche to share resources and lists with each other to create some momentum and energy for the services that you all offer. It might be the start of more than just a list growth initiative. You might find partners and others who can help you grow in so many different ways.
If you don’t have a group of other copywriters and content writers to partner with, that’s where a group like The Copywriter Underground could come in handy. There are several other copywriters in The Underground working hard on growing their businesses and their lists, and it just might be the place where you could find your list growth partner. If you’re not a member already, you can learn more at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. Like I was saying, there’s a lot we can all learn from Letitia. I’ve even borrowed the idea that we talked about from her emails, using my own emails once or twice. Be sure to connect with her on Instagram at MarketingWithTish, that’s her handle, and grab her 18 ways to collaborate to grow your audience freebie at LetitiaJCollins.com/collab.
