Rob Walling has hit two home runs launching software apps in very crowded marketplaces, namely SEO and e-mail marketing. His most recent success, Get Drip Email Marketing was launched without writing any code. Even after his successes, Rob still battles the voice of doubt but manages to push through to run 2 products, write a book, host a podcast and run an annual conference.
Rob is kindly sponsoring 2 x 1 Year Pro Plans of Get Drip worth $1200 each! For your chance to win simply leave a comment below the video and tell us how you have used e-mail marketing in your consulting business.
Congratulations Gretchen and Chandler. Rob has named you the winners of this awesome prize! (August 29)
Some of the highlights of this episode include:
Here are Rob’s answers to the questions in our Elevation round. Watch the interview to get the full scoop.
You can reach out and thank Rob on Twitter @robwalling or softwarebyrob.com
Rob suggested I interview David Hehenberger from Fat Cat Apps, keep your eyes on your inbox.
Hint: to enter the competition, leave a comment below the video and tell us how you have used e-mail marketing in your consulting business.
10 Responses
Hi Troy & Rob,
I always discuss email marketing with existing and prospective clients, especially when talking through their reasons for actually requiring a website in the first place.
If they’re in business, they need customer. Even if they don’t know it, they need a website to generate new leads. What better way to generate new leads than having your website collect them (in an ‘opt-in’ mailing list) and then mailing them on a regular basis.
There’s a definite progression in the discussion with any client and it’s nice to see the light bulbs going on as we talk!
Hi, Troy. Rob is one of my online heros. His podcast and book “Start Small , Stay Small” encourage me to do my own SaaS. Mail-Right.com. Guest what its in the email marketing area!
Yes I’m crazy but I pretty sure sure that its going to be successful. I
also built the SaaS using WordPress as an application which has
interesting!
I should be launching Mail-Right.com in the the next couple of months.
Hello Rob and Troy –
Great stuff as always Troy. Like you I was early on the getDrip wait list!
My agency focus is really promoting client sites now – growth hacking of sorts – so I have been using email and MailChimp autoresponders specifically for an awfully long time. I’m a big fan of RetunPath – I use email a great deal! It’s not just communicating by email it’s Over Communicating!
Hi Troy and Rob,
Great interview, guys.
Would LOVE to win a 1-year Drip Pro Plan.
Four months ago I started a daily music marketing newsletter. It started as a way to keep sharing information with past students from the online music marketing course I teach for a music school. I use it to share tips, tricks, and curated music marketing news from other sources.
I also do consulting for bands/musical artists. So I decided to build up the list to anyone looking for help in this area as a way to attract consulting clients and eventually offer products. I’ve experimented with Facebook advertising, Twitter Lead Generation Cards, and even creating a resource guide to give away as a free download in exchange for signing up to my newsletter.
I plan to transition from solely email to a WordPress blog and would love to expand into drip-style automated email marketing courses establishing my authority on various topics w/in the are of music marketing.
Hi Troy and Rob
Very fascinating stuff to listen to. I’ve heard before that the money is in the list but after this episode I’m convinced one more time. I’m not even sure, if I’d finally start if I win – but hopefully this would speed me up.
Troy, man, this Rob guy is a genius, this has been one of my favorite episodes ever: pure gold, and as you say, it’s not bad for a free podcasts!
What I’m starting to implement in my business is refocusing everything so we can be “internet coachs” in that way I’m implementing a series of free “programs” that the visitors can opt-in in the home page, the copy is in spanish bu it’s something like this:
“Start working with one of our internet coaches, for free, and let him help your small business get more revenue”, then they can choose between 4 different programs.
Work with a coach in:
1: Your website
2: Email marketing
3: Social networks
And when they roll up, the emails nurturing campaigns start to go on: they are a series of topic oriented recommendations send by one of our coachs (me) about the topic they choose, and I encourage them to ask me questions and solve specific problems…
This has starting me to give some real relationships that’m really exited about!
Had to listen twice as several times the discussion had me thinking so hard I lost the thread! An excellent guest and an excellent podcast. Thank you.
I am still experimenting with email marketing. The best thing so far has been a sequence following up an ebook download which offers supplementary content and ideas to chapters in the book. That has worked well and opened up conversations.
A newsletter project seemed to be falling on deaf ears but, on the plus side, it didn’t cause a mass unsubscribing so perhaps it was just ‘ho-hum’.
I think about the emails I subscribe to and receive. A few I read straight away, some are filed for future reference, some go into the read when I have a moment file (and I rarely have that moment). For me, it’s how to be become a ‘read straight away’ for my clients as opposed to the ‘when I have a moment’. How to do that? But I think the answer was in the podcast – niche down and be the expert.
Thank you again for such an excellent interview and to Rob for being so honest about his own endeavours.
Great podcast! Here is one way we have used email marketing in our business…
We offer site care plans, so when a client signs up for a package, we go through a sequence to get them set up and then drop their email into a special mailing list along with their name and web site url.
Adding an email to this list triggers an immediate follow-up email, letting them know their site is now in our system and we have completed security checks and created a full backup. We also explain that we will send an email just like this one out each time we do any updates on their site. We stress how important it is to read the emails each time so they know what was upgraded (WP security patches, etc.) and also so they can review their site to make sure we didn’t miss anything.
For each update, we create a humorous email with a related image and send it to the entire list. Example – when we updated to fix the recent WP vulnerability, we titled the email “Whew! That was close…” and had an image of a bomb in the body of the email. We then explained in non-techy terms that their site was now protected from that threat.
The name and web site adds a personalized touch to these emails and they can click right on the link in their email to see their site.
Now here’s where we market… we also use these emails to mention articles on our blog or new services we offer. We often get replies back on these emails (more than our regular opt in list) asking questions or generating additional business from an existing client.
Super cool interview – You’ve spelt Academy, Acadamey
I really enjoyed this episode (which is not at all related to Rob mentioning me :P). I’ve been using Drip for a couple of months in my WordPress business and I’m really liking it so far.
Also, I’ve built an Easy Digital Downloads – Drip integration for internal use which I’ve just released for free. If anyone’s interested: http://fatcatapps.com/edd-drip/