Chris Milham - Daily Email? Are You Nuts?

00:04  Well, hey there, my name is Chris Milham and I'm here to share with you my experience of breaking the rules by writing daily email, and to offer some ideas and insights about emailing more, whether it's daily like I do, or if it's bumping up the number of emails you already send just a little bit. Now it may seem absolutely nuts to send an email, everyday but it's not quite as crazy, quite as crazy as it seems.    

00:30  Well, first let me introduce myself a little more. I'm Chris Milham and I'm an email marketing coach. I'm married with three children and only one is left at home, so things are getting a little quieter around here. We live in a small town in New Zealand and we love the gentler pace of life here after moving from the big city. And I came into the world of online business back in 2021 after having major burnout and I needed to switch careers.    

00:58  And we like discovered email marketing. Well, I just didn't look back. And I love it because it's so much fun and there's so much potential for business growth. But after working with clients, I'm now focused on email marketing coaching. So I help other online businesses grow and engaged in profitable email list. Well, I have my own email list which is focused on surprise, surprise email marketing. And I send a daily email with email marketing tips and a bit of fun stuff as well.    

01:33  Which leads me on to share why I send daily email. Well, first, here's how I discovered daily email was for me A couple of years back i knew that email marketing was an absolute must for my business there was no question about it. And it was for typical reasons like not being at the mercy of the social media algorithms and and being able to build long term relationships with my customers on a platform that I owned. So I started off emailing twice a week and this was way back when my focus on my list was on freelance writing, but lasted about 5 weeks.    

02:14  And then I just sort of slammed up against a brick wall and my motivation was just overcome by self doubt and I was just wondering what the heck am I doing? But I kept on learning the ropes about email and also picked up writing email for clients. Then I came across Ben Settle, who is a daily email guy. In over decades he's built a thriving business around it and so I learned a lot from him, particularly on the strategy side of things.    

02:44  And I also came across Daniel Frossell. He's an Australian and he's another copywriting person and daily email was also at the heart of his business and he teaches his own method of email copywriting where he places a high, a high emphasis on entertainment. So a Long story short, I was influenced and inspired to give it another go, but this time I was like, right, I'm going to do that, do daily email there's nothing else for it.    

03:14  If they can make it work, then I can too. In no way am I failing again. Well, I tell you what, making a promise in public to do something has a very powerful effect. And when I said I was going to email every day, I didn't want to break that promise to my list. And so I did it and it became a habit. And I've been emailing daily for over 18 months now and have missed maybe 3 or 4 days.    

03:44  Like when I got sick along the way, I pivoted my business and my emails to focus on email marketing itself. And I have something I call my low stress email marketing framework and that's what I now follow in my business. And it has its influences from both Ben Settle and Daniel Russell and other copywriters such as Laura Belgrade. And I've mixed and plenty of my own take on things that I've learned from daily email in the trenches, which leads me on to some other things that I know people wonder about when they think about daily email.    

04:20  The 1st is wondering what on earth I send to my email list. Well, when people opt in, they agree to get emails with email marketing tips and offers. And just about every email I send has an offer of some sort. And there's plenty of tips to go along. But much of the value also comes from entertainment through stories, through some of them being a bit bizarre as well, Like my Chainsaw Massacre one about chopping down the trees on my property or, or the personified hamsters that I did for a bit with, you know, hamsters with talking like humans.    

04:55  And there's value and other interesting stuff that I'm sharing as well. And in fact, for an email list that's about about email marketing, I don't usually start my emails talking about email marketing. Now, the length of them varies. My emails are as long as they need to be to say what they need to say, and they're typically between 300 and a thousand Words. I don't send newsletters that are packed with links and article content i simply have a single thread that runs through from the the subject line right through to the call to action at the bottom.    

05:33  Sometimes I might have APS as well, but it means people can read it, engage with it in about two to three minutes and there's less chance of someone thinking, oh, this is just too hard, too hard to read now so I'll tuck it away and read it later, which of course never happens. And for me, writing email like this is fun because I'll tell a story or share something that's going on for me, even have a rant from time to time where something's bugging me. But it's about writing simple, engaging emails that my subscribers will consume. And when your content's consumed, people get to know you better and they they understand, they understand better about how you can help them meet their goals and it builds the relationship with them.    

06:23  Now people also wonder where I get the ideas from. Chris, how can you write every day? I'd run out of things to write well as for ideas, they come from almost anywhere. And I, I just use a notes app and whenever something interesting comes up in my day, I'll just make a note about it. It could be about my cat doing some crazy curtain climbing, or it could be something not so great, like the time that someone was on their phone and rear-ended our family car. It could be something going on in the email marketing world, like the iOS update with the AI email summaries that's that's here now.    

07:04  Maybe it's about some world event or historical thing that gets people reading, or about a movie I watched. Well, believe it or not, I've got about a thousand email ideas waiting in the wings right now. When it comes time to write an email, I just pick an idea that comes and jumps out of me and then I start writing. And after the story or whatever I start with, I'll usually then pivot to a tip and then pivot again to an offer.    

07:35  And it's a soft selling approach, just presenting the thing that could be helpful to the person reading. And once once you get into the swing of doing email like this, it's so fun because you have a stack of ideas to start with and it's low stress because you're not trying to start with the end in mind. So I'll just write whatever and then just see what offer it makes sense to include at the end of my email. Now, of course, I can't always do this sometimes there's specific promotions going on.    

08:08  But this way is my default where I can just write the email and then see what fits. And the thing that people most tend to wonder about with daily email is about the typical marketing advice that everyone's following that says don't send too many emails in case you burn out your list and they get tired of you. Well maybe that could happen for some lists and does depend on the type of emails you send. In general this myth is passed around a lot. But try daily email like I do and it proves baseless because when people deliberately subscribe through transparent opt in pages so that they know what they're getting themselves over for, or they come on to your list through well aligned collaborations, the typical pattern is that there's higher levels of engagement and consumption.    

09:03  These subscribers have chosen to join your list because they want to hear from you and they see the value in receiving emails from you. And so you're you're serving them by showing up more. Of course, those who are half hearted about getting your emails, they'll unsubscribe. So that's OK i mean, it, it does take a bit of bravery on my part and not being needy and just being OK with unsubscribes so it's just something that happens, but I don't have too many unsubscribes. Regularly showing up in your subscribers inboxes creates friendly familiarity. Now see that you're someone who shares things that can help them and it puts a smile on their face when they're open Gmail first thing in the morning.    

09:51  This a particular Seinfeld episode that I that I love. It's about Elaine and a guy in her apartment building and the two of them used to sort of walk past in the hall and say hi there and, and, and continue on their day but for some reason they stopped doing that. And it wasn't long before the sort of tension arose between, and I think Jerry put it so well when he says to Elaine, a relationship is an Organism. You created this thing and then you starved it so it turned against you. Well, it's like this for the relationship with people on our email list.    

10:29  We create it, we feed it, and we're responsible for how it turns out. Regular positive interactions will help lead to sales and delighted customers. And my way of showing up regularly and consistently is through daily email. I love it no, I'll just keep on going with it, but I know there'll still be the skeptics who are like, yeah sure Chris can't be getting good engagement and having subscribers stick around if you're emailing so much.    

10:59  So let me just share some of the behind the scenes email stats for my list which showed things are pretty reasonable. So my 90 day stats are showing an open rate of 35 8 % and I know open rates are quite unreliable, but in the scheme in the scheme of things, it gives a an indication that things are reasonably healthy. My click rate is 4 2 % and unsubscribes are at 0 4-8 %, so about half a percent. Now of course every email list is different and how they've been grown affects the sort of numbers you get, but these sets are actually quite reasonable and I had more or higher stats before I started growing by being part of product bundles and various other collaborations.    

11:48  So I traded off actually higher open rates and higher click rates and less unsubscribes for faster email list growth. But All in all, things are looking pretty good and my sales are steadily increasing with this approach. Well, the thing I want to emphasize is that daily email for me is about long term relationship building and serving through showing up and providing value in my subscribers inboxes every day. Along the way the emails give them regular glimpses of my products and how they can help them and when people are ready to buy, they buy well this low stress approach that I follow for a daily email is great if you want to ask for the sale without ever asking for the sale, if you know what I mean.    

12:40  I like Ben Settle's analogy here. He suggests thinking about daily email like a talk show segment, whether that's radio or TV or a podcast even. Often there's a bit of entertainment and there's some information and there's always the ad at the end or the commercial break. Now people would tune in every day because they value what they're getting. And the listeners even come to feel like they they know the host so well that there is daily email.    

13:13  Well, I want to leave you with just one tip for today, and that is encourage you encourage you email more doesn't have to be daily email, but adding a single simple extra email per week can make such a difference in terms of building stronger, stronger relationships their subscribers so that they will know and like and trust us more and then we'll buy our products. Well, emailing more helps that whole process happen faster and it puts your products in front of them more often. If you want to learn a bit more about this, check out the free offer that comes with this presentation it's called email more Without Overwhelm and offers some additional guidance and insights should you want to explore emailing more for yourself.    

14:03  Let's the tip of the iceberg really on daily email and why I love it and why it works for me. And hopefully you're thinking that daily email isn't quite as nuts, quite as nuts as it might sound. Well, thanks very much and all the very best with your email marketing.