Navigating the Email Marketing Maze: Mastering Automation and Client Personalization for Business Coaches

Ever felt lost in the labyrinth of email marketing platforms, not knowing which path leads to business growth? I'm Caroline Balinska, and I'm here to be your guide out of confusion and into clarity. My journey with a diverse set of businesses, including a restaurant's bespoke marketing system to a fitness coach’s tango with MindBody and HubSpot, has given me unique insights into the email marketing maze. We'll dissect the pros and cons of various platforms, including a critique of HubSpot's cost versus features, and why all-in-one platforms could be the game-changer your business coaching needs. Prepare to unlock the secrets of selecting a system that not only resonates with your coaching style but also your wallet.

Automation is the magic wand of the modern business world, and in this chat, I'll show you how to wield it. I'll illuminate the pivotal role of an integrated marketing hub that I personally vouch for, one that knits together email marketing with landing pages and the brainy touches of AI. Experience a live product demo tailored to your business, helping you see how seamlessly it can dance with your current operations. By the time we're through, you'll be equipped with the know-how to truly personalize your client's experience and embrace the efficiency that technology offers, all while enjoying more precious moments away from the screen. Join me in transforming not just your business, but the way you live your entrepreneurial life.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Each episode will unravel the strategies, tactics and insider secrets to elevate your marketing to new heights From lead generation to automation, to positioning yourself as the expert to client retention. I've spent years in the trenches learning the ins and outs of the marketing world. Now I'm here to share my knowledge and invite other experts to help you create a thriving and fulfilling business that you're passionate about. This is the More Clients, less Hustle podcast. We'll be turning your business dreams into reality. Are you ready? I'm Caroline Balinska, your host. Let's dive in and transform your coaching business together. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm so glad to have you here today.

Speaker 1: 0:43

I want to speak about email marketing platforms. I think this is a really important topic. I get asked about it all the time and I think a lot of people are really confused about what actually works and what doesn't work. I want to get into a few of the top ones and what you should look out for and what. What makes a difference If you're a business coach, if you're a fitness coach, if you're a life coach, then understanding the different platforms is really important. So these days, there tends to be a little bit of a movement towards individual platforms for individual business types. I'm working with a restaurant at the moment and there's one that's called Seven Rooms for Restaurants and we've decided to steer clear of that one because of pretty much the pricing A lot of them. It's just the fact that they do have individual areas that work well for that particular type of business and they've almost templated out a system that works for that type of business and that can be really fantastic. And if you want something that's just set and forget and is really easy to set up, then sometimes those are better. But if you look at the cost overall, it can get really, really expensive. Now, when you're starting out and you're using something that is super expensive and all of your money's going into the platform, it's really a waste of money. So this particular restaurant I'm working with, we're building out the system ourselves on the marketing hub that I use and it's working really well. We can create anything she needs in that and more so. Sometimes these systems are quite locked into a particular style that you can't move away from.

Speaker 1: 2:21

And then we have platforms for fitness coaches. Now I'm working with a fitness coach at the moment who's using MindBody for her platform and while that's really good in a lot of aspects because, once again, it's built especially for fitness coaches. It has not got some of the features that she does need, so she's using my platform, the marketing hub, for some of the other things that MindBody can't do. So a lot of these platforms can do a lot for that particular business, but these days, when we want our businesses to be unique, we have to also be aware that not everything can be done through some of these platforms. Now that particular fitness coach before I started working with her, she was also using HubSpot.

Speaker 1: 3:06

Hubspot is one of those platforms that is good for corporates is the best way I can say it. I don't want to get into putting it down. I think it's got a lot of good features in a lot of ways. However, I'm not a fan of HubSpot personally, and the reason for that is is that, first of all, I find that their landing page system is terrible. I've been using a lot of things in my 20 plus years in digital marketing and HubSpot I think is one of the worst ones, and the pricing, I think, is terrible. So when that client of mine was using them, she was paying a couple of hundred a month for their platform and she didn't even get to do A-B split testing, and that was to me, and she had a small list under 2000 people, and To me, that's really appalling that she doesn't have the opportunity to split test and the pricing for split testing was going to send it just through the roof.

Speaker 1: 4:08

Split testing is really important. If you can't split test on your system, then you need to know that you do need to do it. If you can't split test now and right in the beginning when you're setting up, it's not the first thing you should be thinking about. However, as you grow, you should be thinking about split testing your emails, split testing your landing pages, so then you're actually sending out the right information to the right people and knowing that you're doing the best job you can. A lot of the more well-known ones are MailChimp, constant Contact, omnisend. There's different ones for different reasons and they all have their place for certain reasons.

Speaker 1: 4:43

However, what I'm finding since 2023 is that there's a real movement towards a one-stop shop with platform access to many, many different features. This is why I've actually taken on the marketing hub. That's why I promote it. That's why I'm so passionate about it. That's why inside my Ignite program you know, I talk about the marketing hub. I talk about the fact that we have all the templates built into it for especially female entrepreneurs. It does everything, and the reason why I love it so much is that you don't need to be logging into three or four different places. You don't need to be going to something like ManyChat to do your DMs automated DM funnel and then going into, say, say, mailchimp and then logging in somewhere else for landing pages. You can do it all. It actually builds out membership areas and it builds out calendars, so you can have calendars and everything's in one spot. And this is all based on AI. So it's definitely the way of the future. It's definitely the way that we are moving towards.

Speaker 1: 5:49

And when you are as busy as I am, as a mom with a child who I don't want to spend my life looking in and out of places, trying to set things up in all different places. I just want a one place that I can do everything. That's why I promote what I promote, because I know that there's so many different options out there that do a lot of little things but don't do all the things in one place. Another really good strategy that I have been working with a lot of my clients on is creating the sort of email membership. So you've got sort of a membership through an email and then they can go into sort of a membership area and the marketing hub does all of that. So we can create all of that for people that they go in and they get an email. Then they can go into a members area. They can get the information. You can put videos in there. You can do chat in there as well, so people can talk to you and ask you questions. You can have chatbots popping up. We've got AI chatbots so you can have like a chat bot that actually answers the questions for you. You can pre-program the answers in there. A big thing that I'm seeing with people is that they're setting up on their website a chat bot and they're not doing FAQ pages. And usually what I'm finding one of the biggest problems for leads is is that they're trying to ask a question and they're not finding the answers, and then they're asking a chatbot, but the chatbot is actually not giving them instant answers. So we actually are able to put that all into one thing where they can come to your website, ask that question, get the answer instantly, get sent over to an FAQs page if they need to. Everything's in one place.

Speaker 1: 7:22

We do the email marketing we do from a calendar booking instead of just having the old fashioned way was using Calendly. We would set up a calendar booking page and then Calendly would send out one email or two emails to say this is your appointment. Coming up With the marketing hub, we build it all into one, so then that goes into a complete email funnel. All the emails look the same. You could have the same template. You can have all the information going through. We have notifications. We can have any sort of connection of email notifications to you as the business owner. You can send an email notification, one to you, one to say your VA who's working for you in the Philippines. You can send an SMS to yourself. You can send an SMS to the person that's booked with you. You can send emails off the back of that. You can split test emails. You can send people to landing pages that split test. You can send them to a membership area, a free members area, a paid members area. There's no extra cost in setting up. You can have 10 different membership areas. You can have free areas and paid areas and there's no extra cost Every single time someone pays you online, you can have an instant invoice go out to them as well.

Speaker 1: 8:32

It's all built into one place. Everything is built from, say, one template. That's another thing that I'm finding a problem is that you have all these different templates from different systems. You've got the Calendly template of the email that goes out to book your calendar booking request. You've got another template that goes out from an invoice system. You've got another template that goes out from another sort of email. Then you've got this sort of template and everything's messy and looks different. So you can make them all look the same by just having the one set of templates all in one place. Also, your landing page looks the same, so you can have everything matching and making sure that there's an ease for yourself. You can look into your workflow and see everything in one place and you're not thinking okay, if that booking person books a calendar request there, then they get that particular email. Then what happens in the next part?

Speaker 1: 9:25

This is all in one, so you can look through one particular funnel and see when someone books with you, from the time they are a lead all the way through. Everything's in one place. When you look at their contact information. You can see where they came from. Did they come from social media? Did they come to a landing page first? You can see everything in one place. You get all their data in one place. You don't need to worry about connecting things with Zaps. There are some very unique things that you might want to use Zapier with, but generally speaking, we do everything through one system. You can also integrate things like Google my Business, so if you want to get a review on your Google my Business, you can have that all integrated into the same email system. You can have reviews going through Trustpilot, but all of the emails can look exactly the same and I think that that's really important.

Speaker 1: 10:14

There are a couple of these email platforms that talk about doing membership email systems and yes, they do do that, but then they don't do other things really well. They don't do good landing pages. There's a couple. I think it's Beehive. I think that they've got a really good actual email system. I think it's really robust. But the landing page I'm not a fan of the whole business setup aspect of it. I don't think is actually a really good business aspect the way they set it up. It is good for someone who only wants that in their business. If you're not a life coach, if you're not doing anything else, where you just want to have one newsletter that goes out and you charge money for, then a system like Beehive would work really really well for you. However, if you want to have other aspects to your business coaching or services then something like that just does not work for your particular business. So be really aware of what you're trying to achieve and how you want to go about running your business and what else you want to add to it later on If you want to add layers to it.

Speaker 1: 11:19

I'm all about automating as much of your business as possible. That is like my number one goal. I just want to help as many people automate as much as they can. I'm always automating as much as I can, and the reason for that is I want to spend my time making content like this and I want to spend my time talking to actual clients. I don't want to spend my time looking through emails trying to work out you know where does this email go and who do I have to send another email to and when do I have to do this and what do I have to do next. I just want everything in one place altogether. I have a set of templates and then it just goes through a workflow and everyone gets an email based on where they are in the workflow and then, at different points, I will get a notification oh, you need to create a video for this person or you need to. You've got an appointment coming up with this person and I can actually get on calls and then when my staff say to me hey Caroline, this person's reaching out and asking you a question personally, can you answer it? I have the time to do that and that's how I want to run my business. I want to make my business as genuine as I can for who I am and automated as much as I can so I can spend time doing the things with my daughter that I don't have to miss out on. I don't have to think back in five years time hey, I could have spent more time with her. I'm going to set up my business as automated as possible.

Speaker 1: 12:38

So my boat is, I live on a boat and it's moving quite a lot. Right now you can see me completely moving backwards and forwards, getting a little bit dizzy. Actually. It's a funny time of the year. We don't usually have this many waves at this time of the year, so, yeah, some more coming through again. I'm just literally just moving like this if If you can't see me, if you're listening on the podcast, I'm just swaying backwards and forwards from the waves. They're getting quite big. So that is about it when it comes to what you need to think about.

Speaker 1: 13:14

When you are searching for a new email provider, when you have got a small list, you shouldn't be paying a lot of money for all of the features. That's part of why I love the marketing hub and how we've actually worked. The pricing is that we want to help people based on how many emails that you have. The more emails you have, the more potential you have to make more money. It's a numbers game. So if you have less than 50 people on your email list, then you're paying less than $50 to actually use the platform and you get all of the features.

Speaker 1: 13:45

I really, really dislike, say, for instance, the HubSpot that charges you for the features the good features only if you buy the most expensive package and what they say is, for example, that client of mine she has 2000 people on her email list and then she's told well, if you want to. Client of mine, she has 2,000 people on her email list and then she's told well, if you want to be successful, you have to pay the equivalent of someone that has 5,000 people, or 10,000 people, on their email list. I don't think that that's a fair way to do it. I like the sliding scale type of system and that's how we work it. So if you have a small amount of email subscribers, then you pay a small amount of money for all of the features.

Speaker 1: 14:25

If you have a lot of people on your email list, more, because you're going to use all of the features more and you're going to actually make more money so you can pay more. So I would rather charge people a starting off price where you know if you've got less than 50 people on your email list. That's why we've got the Ignite program and we help you build that up and the program is completely free to join because, the way I see it is, the more I can help you get more people onto your email list that are paying you, then you're going to enjoy the features more, you're going to use them more and you're going to love the actual system. I want everyone to be able to get as much use out of all the features as possible. We offer a 14-day trial. So if you want to try us out for 14 days, you can and you're even welcome to sign up for MailChimp and Constant Contact at the same time and see the different features across the board and see what you can actually get. I can guarantee that no one's offering all these features. The system that we're based off is a system that has I don't even know over a million people using it. They've got such a huge team of people building out the backend at all times. We actually build our system off the fact that we are all about the program that we offer around the marketing hub. So we built out the platform around the base model and then we offer all these private templates that we actually created ourselves the workflows we created ourselves, landing page designs. We also have a program that's involved in the actual implementation of it.

Speaker 1: 15:59

You get 24-hour, seven-day-a-week help if you want it. I'm all about helping as many people as possible build the best possible business that they can, and if you're using things like AI, if you're using automation, if you're using templates that are known to work, then you're going to get a lot more success. You can go out and do it yourself and start from scratch. You can try something like MailChimp for free, and you can see that you need to still understand how to use the program. You're not given any sort of live help. You're not given any sort of even real video help. You've got to go and find it on YouTube yourself. You have to try to make it work into your business. We offer all of that help included and it's a very low 14 days, completely free, when you sign up, try it out, implement everything that you want to implement. Get our team to help you. Sign up, try it out, implement everything that you want to implement. Get our team to help you. If you don't love it, you can leave and you don't pay a cent.

Speaker 1: 16:53

I want to show people that there is a way to automate 80% of your business 80% of it and have really good templates in place that will help guide you to the next level. And if you have any questions about anything, reach out to me. I do do one-on-one calls before you even sign up. I can walk you through it. We can give you a demo or just sign up and try it out yourself and see what the difference is between something like HubSpot or MailChimp and our system and see which one works best for you, because, at the end of the day, you need to use what works best for you, not something that everyone else is telling you to use, but just sort of think through the whole big picture.

Speaker 1: 17:30

When we do a demo, we explain, we find out what you're doing in your business and we walk through. Well, these are the features that will work really well in your business, so don't feel overwhelmed by having too many options. We'll actually take you through a demo to understand what you need for your business, what will help you, which part of the email system will work well for you, how you can use that with what you're already doing in your business, how to go about everything that we do. We can actually help you through and we can talk about each aspect of it. If you want some more help, leave a comment underneath this video or reach out to me privately. Check out my website, jump on a private demo, call with me and I'll take you through everything that you need to know. Until next time, have a great day.