TCC Podcast #410: The SCORE Method for Emails with Kennedy

If you’re struggling to get the people on your email list to buy your products and services (or you want to help clients sell more to their lists), this episode is for you. We asked Kennedy from Email Marketing Heroes to be our guest for the 410th episode of  The Copywriter Club Podcast. Kennedy shared his SCORE method that helped him increase his own sales by 1700%. Want to know how he did it?  Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript and get the secrets.

 

Stuff to check out:

Email Marketing Heroes
The Copywriter Club Facebook Group
The Copywriter Underground

 

Full Transcript:

Rob Marsh:  After recording more than 400 episodes where we’ve told the stories of hundreds of copywriters and shared many of their processes and secrets for finding clients and getting things done, I think my favorite episodes are those that lay out a playbook for doing something specific. Those episodes are like audio masterclasses where you get almost step by step instructions on how to do something differet. We’ve had a couple of episodes like this lately… and today’s episode is another one like that. We’re getting very specific with email strategy and a formula that could increase your sales—or the sales of your clients—by close to 20x.

Hi, I’m Rob Marsh, one of the founders of The Copywriter Club. And on today’s episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, I interviewed mind reader, mentalist and founder of email heros Kennedy. Kennedy’s been a friend for a few years now. He spoke at our Copywriter Club event in London last year and shared a bit of what we talked about on this interview, so I was thrilled when he agreed to join me here to talk about how to string together email sequences in a way that massively increases revenue. If you apply what Kennedy shares in this episode, you could double or triple what you charge clients for emails and strategy simply because you’ll know how to drastically increase the results you get from your work.

Before we jump in with Kennedy…

I want to tell you about the next couple of guest expert trainings happening in The Copywriter Underground. In case you don’t know, The Underground is our community for copywriters who are actively investing in building their business and writing skills. It includes monthly group coaching where we help solve the stickiest challenges and problems copywriters are facing in their busienesses today. It includes a massive library of training all focused on helping you grow your skills and get better at things like finding clients, conducting prospecting calls, writing hooks and leads, creating frameworks and processes for getting things done and so much more. And each month we bring you a new business focused training to help you add to your skills and grow your business. The nexd training scheduled for September is all about Pinterest Marketing. And our guest expert for that is last week’s podcast guest, Heather Farris. I asked Heather to customize what she shares so it’s directly applicable to copywriters and content writers. And she agreed. She’s going to show you how to use Pinterest to create long-lasting funnels for your services. And in October, today’s guest, Kennedy is going to return to share something we touched on in today’s interview: creating the perfect lead magnet… so you’re not just adding people to your list, but you’re attracting buyers who want the solutions you have to their challenges. But here’s the thing with these unique guest trainings… they’re for members only. The only way you get these behind the scenes secrets is to join, which you can do at thecopywriterclub.com/tcu. Do it today, so you can join us for these upcoming, business changing trainings.

And now, let’s go to our interview with Kennedy.

I want to start the way we usually do. And that’s just with your story. And you’ve got a little bit of a different story. You are not a typical copywriter. In fact, I don’t even think you call yourself a copywriter.

Kennedy: I don’t even think of myself as a copywriter at all. I feel like I haven’t really earned that prestigious title.

Rob Marsh: You do a ton of copywriting. So, you know, it’s, it’s obviously it’s in your wheelhouse, but how did you, how did you become, you know, the head of, well, I guess the head hero at email marketing heroes. The superhero.

Kennedy: Yeah. I mean, so basically my, as you said, my background is kind of a bit unusual. I started off never wanting to get a job. And basically all I’ve done is I’ve spent, I’m, I’m 40 years old now. I know I don’t do it. Right. But you look so young.

Rob Marsh: Yes. You don’t look a day over 37, 38. Yeah.

Kennedy: Yeah. Um, but I always, all I’ve done up to this point is avoided getting a job at all costs. And so that began with I got interested in unexplained stuff when I was a kid. I subscribed to a print magazine called, it was called The X Factor. It was all about unexplained stuff like UFOs and aliens and Area 51 and stuff that was unexplained. I was always interested in that stuff. And that led me to magic and to what is known as mentalism, which is magic using your brain, using deductive reasoning, statistics, influence, persuasion, psychology, body language, understanding other human beings, and understanding yourself, so memorizing ridiculous amounts of information. And so I one day decided to do a show at my local pub upstairs in this function room of this pub. And I did a show. I was asked by somebody. I didn’t just show up and randomly do it. Somebody asked me to do it. And it went well. People were like, oh, that’s quite good. I thought, oh, this should be fun. So I did another show. And I ended up being a full-time after-dinner corporate entertainer where I performed for corporations such as Yahoo and all the big companies that you’ve heard of. at their conferences and awards dinners and product launches and all those sorts of things, getting to fly around the world and do all that sort of good stuff. Ended up even headlining on some cruise ships, which has meant I got to go to amazing places like Antarctica. I went to St. Petersburg. I’ve been to some incredible, incredible places. Burma, doing the show, which was great. I was getting paid to travel, which was great. I then ended up coaching other entertainers on how to get gigs, how to charge properly, how to attract different types of gigs, whether they were working at trade shows or even family entertainers at restaurants and stuff like that, all across the whole spectrum. But part of all of that was I had to figure out how do I communicate what I do so people will go, oh, I think we should hire that. Because back then especially, people didn’t know what a mentalist was. They didn’t know what it was. They were like, so is it like magic? No. Is it like psychic? No. Is it like this? Is it like that? No. It’s like it’s this other thing. So figuring out the words to communicate. And I think I have one of the first direct response Websites in my entire industry. Everybody else was like he’s fantastic. You should hire him. Whereas I was like You know, would you like to make your next event? The one that everyone’s talking about guaranteed, you know, like I mean it was back in the the 2000s, you know, so So I was just caning it with that stuff and I applied it to advertising and stuff like that and that’s how I ended up really understanding what copy is, what words can do, and of course, applying all the know-how of psychology that I’ve been using on stage to do that. And then eventually, Somebody said, I know you’re speaking at these events for entertainers and performers, but this is a generic business, small business conference for people who sell coaching and online courses. Do you want to come and speak at that about this marketing stuff? And I said, OK, let’s do that. Why not? It’s an audience. People will clap and fill up my ego. That’ll be lovely. Thank you. They’ll make me feel pretty, which I need all the help I can get. So I thought, yeah, let’s do that. And from then, it really, I mean, I don’t like getting on sales calls, although recently I’ve been doing a bit of that just to do a bit of market research and force myself to get out of my comfort zone. But in general, I don’t like doing sales calls. But I do like the idea of being able to email people and be able to move people from where they are to closer to buying something. And I’ve always really enjoyed that. Even as an entertainer, I had automated upsells When somebody booked me, funny story, actually, I remember this charity. It was like some pets charity. They helped do pets and animals. And they talked me down on my fee, talked me down, talked me down. And basically, I ended up halving my fee for these people. I was like, yeah, OK. I get off the phone. I forgot that I had an automated upsell sequence for everybody who booked me. because it’s automatic. I wrote it years ago, which is the great thing about automation. And the next thing I know, a few weeks go by and I get an email from them saying, yeah, that sounds great. And I’m like, what are they saying yes to? I look through the history of what they’ve been receiving. They’re saying, yes, I want you to do this extra special routine in your show. And they ended up paying me more than my original fee that they’d already taught me down from. That’s amazing. Yeah. So they’re good negotiators. I’m a better email marketer.

Rob Marsh: I love it. We’re definitely going to talk about email. And I mean, you’ve done some amazing things in your business that I’ve seen. And I really want to dive deep on that. But before we go there, I told you this before we started recording. I’ve got this thing about mentalism. I love Derron Brown. You know, I’ve watched all of his specials. I’ve read several books. In fact, I was talking with another copywriter, John Bejakovic, a while ago, and we were talking about one of Darren’s books. And he said he’d been told by several A-list copywriters that copywriters aren’t allowed to talk about that book because it reveals so many psychological secrets that, you know, they want to keep, they basically want to keep those secrets to themselves, it’s funny. And I’m glad that John and I were the ones that maybe, you know, start talking about this a little bit. But mentalism obviously has tons of crossover, you know, with the psychology of persuasion, with copywriting, with communication. So can you just give us some of the stuff that you learned as a mentalist that you apply in your copywriting and in things that you do with your clients today? That’s a weird question.

Kennedy: No, it’s the same thing though. It’s the same thing because communication is communication, right? So what we’re doing by email, on a website, on a sales page, a landing page, in an ad, in a VSL script, in a video ad script, whatever we’re doing, we’re doing the same thing. We’re taking people from, first of all, getting their attention and making sure we have their attention. Then we’re probably building up some kind of trust. So let’s think about a typical show for a mentalist, a mind reader, or anybody doing that kind of thing. The first thing I’ve got to do is got to get their attention when I walk on. Otherwise, I’ve lost the room. I can’t impact anybody. I can’t even make them laugh. And I certainly can’t influence them to do the sort of fun psychological games that I’m going to play with them. The second thing I’ve got to do is realize the audience is wondering, yeah, but is he any good I’ve seen the fact that he’s performed in Las Vegas, and he’s done events for this company and that company, and done all these things on the BBC TV, and consulted for all of these big magicians that you’ve seen on TV when they were doing mentalism stuff. But they’re still going, yeah, but is he any good? Will I like him? 

So the first thing we’ve got to do is build that trust. Because if you’ve ever been to a comedy club when there’s that that second or third act on the bill, who’s usually the one trying out. They’re a newer act. They’re a new person to the comedy scene. The reason the compare, the MC, doesn’t say, this person’s brand new, is because if that’s ever happened, the audience gets tense and goes, oh, I hope they’re not rubbish. I hope they’re not crap. And it’s really difficult for the audience to relax until they realize they can trust this entertainer, in this case, to take them on this journey. And no matter what happens, this person can handle it. 

So that’s why the beginning of a show for me is when I’m the most interactive with the audience. It’s when I’m talking directly to people in the front, chatting about this, being very off the cuff, talking to people, because I’m building up this, hey, you can trust me. No matter what happens, we’re going to have a good time. I’ve done this a lot. It’s going to be great. And I’ve got some really exciting stuff prepared for you. So that’s the same thing that we do in copy. We tell people, you can trust me. I’ve done this before. These are my credentials. This is the struggle I’ve been through. And this is the journey I got to getting to this point that allows you to now trust me. 

So we’re building trust. And then what have we got to do? We’ve now got to present problems. Well, the problem in a mentalism show is going to be, hey, you’re thinking of a word or a phrase from one of the Shakespearean sonnets, and I’m going to apparently telepathically, or using some other psychological skills more likely, I’m going to pick up on what those things are. Well, that’s the problem. That’s the problem that we’re setting. We’re teeing up a problem. It’s the same when you’re writing an email. You’re saying, hey, if you’re a coach right now who’s struggling to get to consistent 10K months, then there’s only one reason. I’ve set up the problem. So it’s exactly the same. 

And then we’re going to go into some conditions So if I just go over to the person and say, hey, give me the book with the sonnets in it and have a look at which words you’re thinking of, then it’s not very interesting. I’m going to set up the conditions. They are going to be, I’m going to be blindfolded. I’m going to put a bag over my head. I’m going to be outside the room. I’m going to be in a different room. I’m going to do it over the phone. What are the conditions? And this is the same in copy, right? The conditions are going to be, would you like to solve that problem without having to do cold calling, without having to? So what are the conditions at this point? It’s exactly the same. They run in parallel. 

And then of course, we’re going to start introducing some unique, interesting, innovative hook, a unique mechanism. It’s called in copy, but it really should be called a unique mechanism in performance as well, which is the unique way you’re going to apparently figure it out. And in my case, I’ll come up with something really ridiculous because I do a very lighthearted kind of act, right? So mine will be by sense of smell. So I’m going to sniff your wrists to figure out which Shakespearean sonnet you’re thinking of. Or I’m going to use the cunning use of balloon telepathy, and I’ll blow up a balloon and rub it on your face. I’m coming up with some unique, interesting thing because Let’s take it back to really much simpler entertainment, like magic, like magicians. How many times has somebody said, pick a card, and you take a card, and if every time all they do is find your card by going, that’s your card, at some point, it’s going to get very boring. We’ve seen that trick a lot. Whereas the whole point of performance is to dress that trick up in new clothes. So it’s the same in writing. It’s the same in copywriting. It’s especially the same in constructing email campaigns that you have to redress your campaign, your promise in new clothes. That’s why sometimes someone might do a Jeff Walker style product launch formula type launch, but the next three months later, four months later, they might do a challenge, or they might do a wait list, or we have to constantly be redressing these things up. Otherwise, we lose the attention of our audience. 

And of course, then there has to be the payoff. in which case it’s going to be some kind of a revelation in a mentalism show of, this is what you’re thinking of. Or in an email, it’s like, hey, we can solve it using this system. Click here, and then there’s going to be an action. We’re going to go and find out what that action is going to be. We’re going to click the link or whatever it’s going to be. So lots of parallels there between the world of performing as any kind of performer, not just a mentalist, but with copywriting, with email, or with any of it.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I love the comparisons that you draw as you go through there. I wonder, one of the things I didn’t hear you mention that we hear a lot in direct response marketing in particular, risk removal. How do you do that as a mentalist? Or is that even because I’ve paid money for a ticket to the show or because I’ve walked up to you on the street? Have I already surrendered that just by participating?

Kennedy: Yeah, I think there is a level of risk, especially like there’s a there’s definitely a thing I started to have to handle, I would say, in the last six years. And that is for the booker, really, and that there is a fear and a resistance to hiring a mentalist that is, are they going to reveal something that’s inappropriate for the circumstance? So if it’s an ideal, most of my work is corporations, right? And there’s always been corporations. I have to remember, and I’ve seen a lot of performers forget this really important thing. And that is, those people in that room, they have to go back to the office on Monday, and they know each other. They have to deal with the backlash of anything that I do. And that’s why there’s a strict policy in my show of, I don’t reveal any personal information about people on purpose. And people are like, oh, you should be telling people about their star signs and their ex-partners and all this sort of stuff, because it’s personal. I’m like, that’s fine if it’s a public show where they’re paying tickets. I don’t do public shows where people buy tickets. I do stuff for corporations, so I’m more interested in randomness. And also, hey, today, I could go on to Google. I can go on to any social media platform and find out pretty much more impressive stuff than I could figure out using my mentalism skills. So also, it’s a little bit of a defunct thing anyway. So yeah, there is a level of risk reversal or risk removal. 

The other piece, actually during the show itself, There is a risk for participants who are going to feel embarrassed or that, and that’s going to cause a lot of friction for a performer. So I have seen other performers, and I’ve been this performer and I was less experienced too, where people would refuse to get up on stage. And the reason that happens is because you haven’t reduced or reversed or removed the risk of participation. So that’s the reason that in my show, I’m constantly setting up the premise of, If you are on stage, that is the safest place. They’re the only people I’m not poking fun at. If you’re in the audience, I’m going for it. I’m saying anything I want. So the safest place to be. And that’s why when I get somebody up on stage, I shake them by the hand. I use two hands. I look them right in the eye and I say, thank you so much for being here. There’s nothing embarrassing about to happen. This is going to be really fun.” And I am then true to that. And remember, a huge piece of risk reversal and risk reduction is not just saying the thing, but following through with what you say. When you say it’s a dollar trial, make sure it is a dollar trial. And making sure that if you say there’s a guarantee, that you make it very easy. 

I mean, a mistake I see way too often is people say, hey, there’s a money back guarantee. You’ve got 60 days and it’s unconditional. But they’re not telling them in the sales material how to take them up on that guarantee. So in all of our sales material, I’m always like, if you don’t like it, for any reason in the next 60 days, drop us one, and I love this line, you’re welcome to use it. I say, drop us one email to the email address, and we will send you a refund before we even ask you for a reason. So now I’m proving the risk is reversed, right? We have this phrase that we teach in writing email specifically, which is SIPI, S-I-P-I. Say it, prove it. If you say you’ve made $2.4 million, show me a Show me a graphic that proves it. Show me a screenshot. Show me something. Say it. Prove it. Because we live in a world which is so skeptical now. So if I say, hey, I’ve just been speaking at this amazing event. I’ve just shared the stage with Stephen Bartlett and Ali Abdaal and Jasmine Starr and Ryan Dice, you can bet your bottom dollar right below that is a photo of me either with those people or on that stage. Because I want people to realize every time I say something, it is true.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, yeah. I don’t have anything to add there. It’s too important to miss, but you’re right. And something that I think, especially in sales materials, we miss a lot. Okay, before we leave mentalism altogether and move all the way into email, what’s the weirdest, funniest, I don’t know, most embarrassing moment that you had on stage as a mentalist performing?

Kennedy: I can tell you the most high pressure one. Okay, let’s do that. Yeah, the highest pressure one, I didn’t find out until I was in the room who it was for. So it was like ABC Limited, and I was like, I don’t know who that is or whatever they were called, some random name. And I found out actually when I got there, it was for the British Secret Service. And I’m thinking, these guys know this stuff, like this is how they operate, you know? So I was, I was terrified. But of course, I couldn’t take any photos. I’ve got no evidence that you know, I could.

Rob Marsh: I’m sure you did. Sure you did. You believe you.

Kennedy: Yeah, that was really, really scary. But I think it’s one of my favorite. I think I went down the best at that gig. It was definitely one of my better gigs. They were so on board. They were just really, really good people. So that was a pretty high pressure gig.

Rob Marsh: All right, let’s talk. Let’s talk about email, because I think that’s probably more applicable to what most people want to hear about. I want to hear about the mentalism. Maybe they do, too. I don’t know. But obviously, in explaining what you do as a mentalist and booking gigs, you got pretty good at this whole email thing. Kind of walk us through that part of your story.

Kennedy: Yeah. So, I mean, I realized that when people are going to start sending inquiries through my website, I would have to start talking to them and following up with them. And I got really sick of typing the same thing. And sometimes when I was typing stuff to them that these people who are inquiring, it would convert and sometimes it wouldn’t. And I was like, I need to do something about this. So I started creating just canned responses inside of my Gmail account. And when somebody would inquire, I would just click that canned response and realize that certain responses would do very, very well. I was like, hmm, that’s interesting. And then I realized the people who were a no or who didn’t reply, they needed some following up with to keep them warm. And that was the thing, I think, that led me to being one of the busier corporate guys. It wasn’t because my marketing was better or my lead generation was particularly better. It was marginally better to begin with, but people started seeing what I was doing and copying it, of course, because they saw how busy I was. 

But then I realized I had to follow up with people. And the real thing that made me that busy was the fact that if somebody said no this year, for their event, they went with a different option, whatever reason, I had an automated follow-up sequence that would tee them up for booking me next year. And that’s when, for the first year, I was just as busy as everybody else. But in year two, year three, year four of being a full-time performer, I was really busy doing three shows a week. It was because of my ability to follow up and to follow up hands-off. because it was all automated. Wait 360 days, and then automatic email to Rob that says, hey, last year we didn’t get to work together. It’s Kennedy, the mind reader. I’m just wondering, how’s things looking for this year’s conference? Really simple, very conversational style emails, not corporate, not newsletters, not any of that stuff. And then I would get the bookings that year. And they’re like, oh yeah, actually, we’re going to be having the meeting next week. Good timing. And I’m like, oh, it wasn’t by accident it was good timing. It was because I waited almost a year until you were organizing the event again. 

So I had a piece of data that I was really leveraging. Yeah. And then, and from then on, I then started growing this following of other entertainers who wanted to know how I was doing this, and I ended up launching a physical print newsletter, which was, I think the price, and it was like 130 US dollars. Basically, it was 82 pounds a month. in British pounds, because I used to sell in pounds, for this physical print newsletter with an online community and monthly trainings. And so that’s when I really got my teeth stuck into real email marketing, growing a list. I grew one of the biggest lists in that entire niche at the time. I think there’s people who’ve got much bigger lists in that niche now. I’m no longer in it, but at the time. And then, again, moving people through into enrolling in this membership. And that ended up me hosting an offline event, an in-person event, which was a content event with an offer at the end to enroll more people into the whole thing. And that’s really where my email marketing chops really got sharp.

Rob Marsh: And then that led to email marketing heroes. So obviously you went from helping other magicians, other entertainers, and now you’re working with all kinds of businesses, moms and pops, corporations, you know, really broad range.

Kennedy: Yeah. I mean, a lot of our clients are coaches, course creators, membership site owners, copywriters, and in-person facilities. Yeah.

Rob Marsh: Amazing. Okay, so let’s talk about email specifically. We’ve actually done, I don’t know, we’ve probably done 30 or 40 episodes. I mean, we talked to copywriters, copywriters write emails. So we’ve done a lot of talking about emails. But I’m curious, you know, from your perspective, where you’re seeing it, both as a writer yourself as a business owner yourself, but as somebody who’s got exposure to all of these other businesses, writing emails. Let’s talk first about some of the mistakes people make, copywriters, coaches, others in their emails. And then maybe we can talk about some specific campaigns. You’re brilliant at naming campaigns. We can talk about some of that stuff too.

Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, some interesting mistakes. I mean, one of the things I have the benefit of is unlike a lot of people, I’m not seeing lots of copy. I’m just seeing lots of emails. So I’m really able to talk to what works specifically in email in a much deeper way than most people will think about it. Because all I think about is how to make sure our clients, our members, our customers are getting better results with their emails. I think I think one of the things to think about that’s really, really important when you’re doing your own email marketing and when you’re doing stuff for clients is to really think about from the moment that someone joins your email list, the moment someone joins your email list, they are the most likely to buy. You are the most exciting, interesting person in their inbox only until the next person whose list they join, right? Because when someone joins your email list or a client’s email list, if you’re writing emails for a client, at that moment, that lead, that person, that human being has a problem and they believe you have the solution to that problem. That’s the only reason they join your email list. If they didn’t have a problem and they didn’t think you could maybe help them solve that problem based on the lead magnet, the freebie, the gift, the way they get onto your email list. If they didn’t believe that, they would just keep on scrolling, or at least they’d bounce from the page. The only reason they clicked the ad or clicked a bit of content, clicked the link in bio, got to your landing page and decided, yeah, I’m going to buy access to that information with the currency of my personal email address, which comes right to my phone, The reason I do that is because I’ve got this problem, and I think you’ve got the solution to it. So when somebody comes to one of our lead magnets, they’re dissatisfied with the level of conversion from their email account, right? So we don’t help. We have small programs about list building and all the kind of things. But the thing we are brilliant at and the thing we obsess over is converting more of your existing subscribers to your existing offers. So when someone joins our email list, my headline is like, ugh, why aren’t my emails making sales? That speaks exactly to the problem. So they’re joining the list for that reason. And so whatever your client does, whatever you’re doing, then that’s the reason they’re on your email list. And that means you’ve got a bunch of people on your email list, and some of those people have an urgent problem now. And people who are coming to my world are the people who are like sick and fed up of trying to grow their social media and convert off DMs and trying to do it one-to-one and sales calls. And they just, they know they’ve got this asset of either a few hundred or a few thousand or a lot of thousand people who they know, they’ve seen everybody saying their money is in the list. And they’re like, dude, I don’t want the money in my list.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, there’s no money in the list.

Kennedy: Yeah, yeah. Well, the money is in my list. It’s not in my damn pocket is the problem. It’s in the list. It’s in the wrong place, right? The money is in the list. It’s in the wrong place. That’s the motto that we go by. So we have that moment of time when we have their attention to help them solve that problem. And every day that someone’s on your email list, the less likely they are to ever become a client, ever buy something from you. There are, of course, always outsiders, outside statistics around some people need nurturing for longer. That’s true. But in a world of direct response style, have a lead magnet, you’re bringing people in. People are joining at the point that they have the problem. For the most part, I would say 70% of the time. Sometimes we’re opting in for things which we for a problem we might have in the future. Of course, there is always about 30% of people doing that. 

So with that said, One of the mistakes I see is that there is not an immediate automation in place that tells people what your products or services are straight away. And you don’t have to do a high-pressure sales job on them at all. What you can do is just say, welcome to my world. Here’s some ways of engaging with us. And some of them are free. Here, we’ve got a podcast. It’s called The Email Marketing Show. Go listen to that. Here, we’ve got a free community. It’s called The Email Marketing Show Community. And oh, if you want to jump ahead and you just want the best information to get your email marketing turning into more sales, here’s our Email Hero Blueprint. That’s email number one that somebody gets. Because the way I think about it is this. Somebody hops into the emergency room, right? Somebody goes in to the emergency department at the hospital. Their leg is hanging off. There’s blood splurting up the walls. And they’re like, I need to see a doctor. I need to see a doctor. And the doctor comes in, sits down, and says, hi. Let me tell you my hero’s journey. I got into medicine because I’m like, oh my God! And before you even get to telling them how you can help them, this poor guy’s bled out on the floor. There are subscribers who will bleed out before you get through nurturing them to death. Because they’re the people who need your help right now.

Rob Marsh: Yeah, I mean, it’s eye opening in so many ways. One of the things that I noticed that you do, or you teach, and you do it as well, because I’ve been on your list for a long time, is different from what most of us do. And that is, we might have that sales sequence. We’ve got, you know, somebody signs up for the list, we deliver the lead magnet, we give them that first four, six, maybe even 10 emails and then we drop them onto our regular list, which maybe it’s daily, maybe it’s weekly, maybe it’s as frequently as we think about emailing. It may not be that often. You guys don’t do that. You guys hook together sequence after sequence after sequence in a way that seems to lead to people buying not just that first five or six days, but then again after 10 days or 14 days or whatever. Tell us about how you guys do that.

Kennedy: Let me tell you why. Before I tell you exactly how you do it, let me show you how impactful this was for our business. Obviously, I’m about to share with you some numbers, and I just want a full disclaimer. I’m not saying anyone else is going to do these numbers. This is not me. It’s also not me showing off. Because for some people, these numbers will be tiny. For some of these numbers will be astronomical. But it’s not about what the numbers are. It’s about what they mean. So I asked one of the members of our team to grab me just a slice of time, a few months of time, and tell me how much money just the sales sequence that people went through made us for this particular one offer. And the number was 27,000 and something, right? It was 27 and a half grand, but let’s just say it was 27,000, okay? And this is for one program in that period of time to these subscribers, using that one sales campaign. 27 grand, hey, not to be sniffed at. Most people would be pretty okay with that. I’m over the moon with that. That’s absolutely great. 

Then I said to the team member, OK, compare that to that was just one campaign. That’s a campaign we have called the Overture, right? It’s a six-day, very simple campaign. And the campaign has two things in it, like all good email automations has two elements. It has emails and wait times between emails. That’s all automations should be, by the way. Everybody overcomplicates segmentation and all this stuff. Please don’t. You don’t need to. 

There’s only two segments of your list, by the way. Quick tangent, there’s only two segments of your list, people who haven’t bought and people who have bought. That’s the only two segments most of us need. Unless you’ve got a million subscribers, unless you’re a corporation where you’re having to really divide the list up. But really, if you’re doing less than $3 million a year in revenue, I don’t think you need more than two segments. I think you need people who have not yet bought, and the only emails that should go to those people are. emails to get them to buy for the first time and turn them into a customer rather than a cost that you’ve already spent. And the second bunch of people are the people who have bought and your job is to send them offers, which allow them to spend more and get more from you and learn more from you. That’s the only two segments we need. 

So somebody joins the email list, The first sequence they go through is a welcome sequence. We call it the getting-to-know-you sequence. It’s a four-day sequence, right? So us getting to know them, them getting to know us. Next, they go through a six-day sequence called the overture. At that point, in this period of time, of this particular one product, we made just over $27,000. Lovely, great amount of money. That’s great. But then if we eke out the other campaigns, and they go through a content-led sale sequence, an objection handling sales sequence, and I’ll go talk these on in a second, a risk reversal sequence. So three more sequences for the same period of time, same email subscribers, same offer, didn’t come up with a new product. Because we know putting a product together is loads of time, loads of energy, getting the sales page written costs a fortune from you flipping copywriters, you know what I mean? All that stuff, all those expenses, didn’t need any of those things. That made, same product, same subscribers, that made $500,000.

Rob Marsh: Okay, so just to be clear, they were going through four to six emails before, 27,000, and then you added, it’s probably, what, 30, 40 emails through each of these specific sequences. It’s not just random emails. Right, yeah, they’re not random emails, yeah. And you basically 20Xed what you made.

Kennedy: Yeah, I mean the increase is 1,800%. Yeah. It’s an 1,800% increase. Or to put it another way, if I just continued doing what everybody else is doing, which is just doing one sales sequence and then into the newsletter segment, I would have been leaving 94% of the money still in the list.

Rob Marsh: Okay. Yeah. So here’s a reason that people should continue listening. Let’s walk through what, like, what are you doing in each of these sequences? And, you know, again, anybody who’s listening might be thinking, well, I don’t have my own list. This isn’t useful. If you can do this for clients. Oh my gosh.

Kennedy: I mean, clients, they’re going to love you and retain you. Or if you do a rev share with clients. Exactly.

Rob Marsh: This isn’t a $50 an email or even a $200 an email kind of work, this is highly challenging for your business, for sure.

Kennedy: It really is. And that’s what we do now. We do revenue shares with clients now. We used to have an agency where we only purely did writing for people. And now we do it on a very odd occasion, but mostly if we’ve got bandwidth, we do it on a revenue share because of the kind of impact this can have. So yeah, the way this works is rather than them coming in, the new subscriber coming in, they go through, well, the worst case scenario is they come in and they get on your live list and they just get whatever email you happen to be sending. And that’s where this idea of what we call the score email engine, and I’ll teach you the whole thing. I want you to make sure you’ve got all this to go and use. That’s where this score email engine came from, because I joined someone’s list. It was a big guru. You’ve definitely heard of them. You’ve seen their ads. They’re doing the whole thing all the time. And they were running a challenge. So I opted in for that email list. And the first email I get from this guy was, bonus number three is expiring at midnight. I’m like, huh? What’s bonus number two? What’s the product? What even is the product? I didn’t know what the product was. So I was unable to buy because I had no context. So what we’re going to do is take the best performing email sequences, the best performing email campaigns, and make sure that every single new subscriber goes through your best stuff. 

If they happen to join your list on a day where you’re feeling a bit rubbish, or you’ve had a bad morning, or you don’t feel very inspired that day, or it’s just not the best email ever, they don’t suffer from that. They get the best chance of enrolling. And that was the results that it got for us. 

So the first thing they’re going to go through is that welcome sequence. Okay, great. The next thing we’re going to go through is this sales sequence. And that S, the S for sales, is the S in SCORE. We’re going to build up this. Is it an acronym? I can never remember that word. S in SCORE stands for sales. And that is literally showing up and saying, hey, I’ve got this thing. It’s going to help you solve the problem you joined my email list for. Go check it out. And it hands them straight to that sales page that you’ve got. And it’s just a direct sales sequence. Nice and easy. Then, because we don’t want to just be beating people over the head with, hey, you should buy this. No, really, you should buy this. That’s not going to work. 

So what we’re going to do now is the C of SCORE, which is a content-led sales sequence. It’s a content-led sales sequence. It is a sales sequence, but it is content-led. And that might be Hey, I’ve just made this video. I’ve just written this post. I’ve just put together this Google Doc. It’s a piece of content that they can go and engage with. So you’re building up some goodwill. You’re building up your authority and your knowledge. Your knowledge is going into their head. You’re building up some desire through that piece of content. So they might click and go read your Google Doc. Well, the people who click to look at your Google Doc, if you’ve named your Google Doc something that is high intent, like, here’s the five reasons that nobody’s buying from your emails, or whatever it’s going to be, we can now segment those people and be like, OK. We’re now going to show those people, because we know they’re interested in that particular topic, we’re now going to put them through a conversion sequence within that content-led sequence. So your content-led sequence is made up of two pieces. It’s made up of the content, and it’s made up of the conversion part. And only the people who engage with the content ever see the conversion part. Everybody else who’s like, that topic doesn’t really excite me. That’s cool. They don’t even know there’s an offer that you’re just a nice person sending content out. All right. Yep. Yep. So that’s the C. 

Okay. Next, we’re going to go into the O of score. And this is the objection handling sequence. So at this point, there are a bunch of people. who are fixated on a reason why they can’t and why they can’t now. So we’re going to have an entire sequence, not just one email of your sales launch, which is what most people do dealing with objections. We’re going to have a sequence, which is all about dealing with objections. But it’s not just about dealing with objections. It’s about understanding their objection and then dealing with their objection. And here’s a really good format. for that. One is, what I like to do is I like to send them a survey. So think about it. They’ve received, in the first sequence of six emails, they’ve received links to a sales page. Okay. That’s a bit salesy. It’s for the people who are the eager, urgent buyer, the person with the leg hanging off and the blood flying everywhere. That’s helped that person. The person who needs the content is a person who needs, is what I call the researcher, the person who wants to understand a bit more. But they’ve been sent a nice link to a nice video with a bit of content. Lovely. So they don’t feel like they’ve been beaten over the head. And then we’re going to shake up their psychology again. We’re going to reset their attention, which is what we need to be doing. The reason people stop reading your emails, the reason people start unsubscribing is because you’ve no longer got their attention. We need different email sequences in order to reset people’s attention. It’s the reason like partway through a show, if you go and see any kind of show, a comedy show, a musical, a play, a mind reading show, whatever, they’ll change the pace. They’ll make it light. They’ll make it dark. They’ll make it funny at some point. Just before the big crying, awful, tragic song in Les Miserables, there’s the comedy song. There’s a reason for that. We’re resetting attention. And TV shows on Netflix do this all the time. They’re resetting attention by changing pace, changing the temperature of things. So what we’re going to do here is we’ve sent them to a sales page, we’ve sent them to a video, we’re going to reset their attention again by asking a question. That’s a very different vibe. So I’m like, hey, I’ve made this one question survey. IR