The Best FREE Marketing Tactic In The Galaxy – With Björgvin Benediktsson

This is the six figure home studio podcast, episode 70

number one resource for running a profitable home recording studio. Now your hosts, Brian and Chris Graham. Welcome back to another episode of the six figure home studio

podcast. I am your host Brian Hood. I'm here with my bald and beautiful coast, Chris Graham. Chris, how you doing today buddy? Oh Hey Brian.

I'm great and you know why I am great. Why? Because this weekend we get to hang out again, which means we will have hung out every two weeks for three weeks in a row and we had only met in person one time before that.

They were taking our relationship to the next level.

I love it. It's true and I'm pumped because you are taking your relationship to the next level with your fiance this weekend.

A segway dude, that's like next level. Wonderful pro shit right there. Yeah, I'm getting married Saturday. I'm kind of nervous but really excited and I'm just ready to get it done. The pending, like all this stress and all this stuff that comes up before the wedding, like all that stuff is always fun to deal with it as if I've done it. I'm a regular, but this is like the kind of stuff before any big project starts, which I would call our wedding definite project. Sure. Yeah. I'm excited. It's all I'm trying to say.

Yeah, I'm pumped, man. For those that might have missed earlier, I have the honor of being a groomsman. Oh, I got all my clothes. I bought brand new shoes, a brand new bell, a brand new strap for my watch. We did your bachelor party about a week ago, which was freaking Yosemite. We talked about that on the last episode. I think. Well, if you guys didn't catch that, I highly recommend that you go to Yosemite and I highly recommend that you do it when they're having more snow than they've had in the past 40 years.

Yeah, that was a heck of a trip. Awesome. Coming from someone who's from Alabama, I'm not used to snow. Well. Let's move on to our episode today because we have an awesome guest on the show today. His name is Bjork Vin. been@dixonfromaudioissues.com Bjork and welcome to the podcast man.

Thank you. Great to be here. And I am very familiar with the snow, so

want to put that up. Here's the thing, let me just stop you right there. There's always like people like me from the south who like, there's like an inch of snow. It's like the end of the world. We're not doing anything. But then there's always that one guy in the group that's like, oh I don't get why all these people like I don't like the old grizzled snow veterans. So that's you Bjorkman near the old grizzled snow veteran.

Well it's not like Bjork ovens from somewhere where there's so much snow that it's in the name of the country. Your arguments from Iceland. But now I live in Tucson, Arizona. That's like 300 days of Sun and most, you know it goes up to like 110 degrees in the summer. Cool. And if it drops down to below 40 degrees Fahrenheit here, I just fucking hate it. I tell everybody when I'm complaining the snow or

complaining about the temperature, I like, you're from Iceland, Blah Blah Blah Blah and I'm like, I didn't move to the fucking desert to speak, hold and had come here from Iceland, from the motherland to still be cold. The reason we got Bjorkman on the show today is because he is in our opinions, the master of email marketing. We talked about this a little bit last week with Joe Gilder. We talked about building a mailing list. It's been a very effective part of Chris' grams marketing for his business and we thought we'd bring Bjork on to talk to us about why email marketing is so powerful and in how you can incorporate it into your businesses.

Let me tell you a little bit more about who Bjork Vin is. So Brian and I met through a mastermind group. That Lid Shaw of the recording studio rockstars podcasts puts on and it's a bunch of like audio guys who have blogs, youtube channels or podcasts. And for some reason lidge invited me despite the fact that I had none of these things at the time and I was in a little bit of a weird position and that Chris Graham mastering was very successful and I had a humongous email list. It was like 30,000 people that had signed up to create an account on Chris Graham mastering over the past. At the time, I guess it'd be like eight years or nine years or something like that. And I was absolutely terrified to ever email everyone in the list because I thought I would get like branded as a spammer and ostracize and I had a lot of fear issues. And the first time Brian Hood came to Blammo was because Bjork vent invited him.

So just so you guys are aware, Bjorkman is single handedly responsible for the formation of this podcast by introducing me to Chris Graham. Just so everyone is aware. This is true. It was like love at first

because we went down spreadsheet tangents.

I like being the connector, you know? Yes. So back to your story, Chris, that was a reference to the go giver.

It's incredible. Also the reason for this podcast. And so I was on this blammo mastermind call and one of the things that are good about a mastermind is that you can be vulnerable and open about the things that you are struggling with. And I knew because I'd heard everybody on the blammo mastermind call talk about email marketing and I'd heard a lot of other people talk about, oh it's the number one marketing channel for almost all businesses. It's the cheapest marketing channel, it's the most effective. And so I kind of got my courage up and I said to the group, I said, well guys, I have something to confess. I have an email list with 30,000 people on it to people that have sent it to my website. And I have never emailed them. I remember that moment

that was just, Oh God, what are you physically feel ill? So it was

magic moment cause it was when I met Brian, but Bjorkman took me under his wing and started coaching me on how to use that email list. I'll never forget sitting that first mass email that was like, hey, like you might've signed up up to an including eight years ago. I'm going to begin to email you guys sometimes with helpful information about mixing your songs and stuff and it was so scary and like I emailed like 30,000 people and like six people were like, this is spam, which doesn't do anything.

Look God, six people out of 30,000 yeah, like so

credible response rate and I was blown away. They're like all of a sudden all these customers that I hadn't talked to him like five or six years where like I'm going to hire you this week and it was just this crazy explosion of growth for my business. Like I was on another podcast at the time called the guitar knobs. I had no idea what I was doing and I just like stopped showing up to record because I had so many more mastering projects. I could only handle mastering and no other extracurricular activities

just to like emphasize the importance of these like 30,000 emails that he has access to because he's engaged with those people before even if it was one time, you know? Yeah. And so like when you're ready and you're like pretty advanced with your email marketing and you know that you have an email marketing system that works and like a funnel that works, you have the ability to put a lot of people through it without just kind of getting overwhelmed. But then you might want to do like paid advertising or things like that. And I do a lot of paid ads. I spent uh, over a hundred dollars a day on advertising on Facebook and Instagram just to get people onto my email list and sort of grow my subscriber base that way. Giving them helpful content and like free PDFs and ebooks in that sort of stuff on audio issues. Just to put that into perspective, 30,000 email subscribers to me is worth, because I pay a dollar to two to $3 per email on Facebook advertising. That means that if I would've paid for that list, I would have paid 30 to 90 grand for that list of emails and knowing that I can make a return on my investment. And he just has this sitting around. It's like finding a $30,000 under, you're like cushions of your couch.

Yeah. Yeah. That's the, the numbers are right on there. The growth was bananas after that. And I think, let me bring this home for you guys listening, cause I know some of your thinking like email marketing. What are they talking about? How does this help me? And I think the vision I want to cast for you guys is what email marketing is. I'm going to kind of define it and then we're going to have Bjork vin just freaking blow our minds and drop wisdom nuggets all over us. So that sounded gross. I don't want no, leave it. We're going to live it. So

with email marketing, it's amazing because when people come to your website, if you give them something free, my thing is the free mastering sample. If you give them something for free, they'll give you their email address and once you have their email address, if you continue to serve them by providing value. You know, if you're a mix engineer, you own a recording studio. It could be like, you know, song writing tips or it could be tips on how to record better vocals, you know, fill in the blank. There's any number of ways that you could provide free value to your potential customers. And if you have this giant email list and you're trying to fill up your calendar with paid gigs and you have some openings, you can email the whole list with, you know, cool, interesting information that my whole list will love. And by the way, I have this week available in a month. It's this massively powerful channel that you own. So Instagram, youtube, Facebook, all of these things you can build a huge following on there. But if they change their algorithm, you can no longer reach your audience. Email marketing is so much cheaper to use and you own it,

right? Why build an email list? People ask and the thing that I think is so important when it comes to email versus something like social media or posting on Facebook or posting on your blog and hoping people will see it that way, is that even if they're your greatest fan, even if they're the like love everything you put out and will eventually buy everything you publish a, they don't check your stuff every day. They don't go on your website every day and like Facebook, certainly not going to show them your stuff every day. Your stuff's not going to come across their Instagram scroll while they're on the bathroom every day, but everybody checks their email at least once a day if not incessantly throughout the day. We still do that. There's definitely been an increase in sort of the like people just getting exhausted with emails. But at that point it becomes even more valuable and more important to be better at email marketing and be better at being authentic, sharing yourself, sharing your stories, creating a relationship with your fans and your subscribers because it gives you direct access to your fans, to your subscribers.

It's trackable, you know exactly like how many people opened stuff. You can create a bunch of systems around that sort of stuff and you can keep in touch. It's like the easiest way to keep in touch. And I like thinking about it as just sending people letters. You know, people have been sending letters and the last hundreds and hundreds of years people have been sending letters to each other and this is just me sending like, hey, here's an update of what's going on with me. And like you said before, you might mentioned something valuable. And then you mentioned something that is maybe something that a small percentage of them or your audience or your subscribers might be interested in knowing more about and therefore possibly becoming your customers.

I think at this point it's really important that we put ourselves, I'm going to put myself in the our listener shoes as best as I can. We have so many different listeners in so many different backgrounds and John was in niches that there's no way I can put myself in everyone's shoes, but I'm gonna put myself in what in my mind, our Avatar is, I am an average home studio owner. I'm doing this maybe part time or even full time. Let's just say I listened to last week's episode with Joe Gilder. I have started building an email list of some sort by giving away some sort of free thing by giving a call to action that specifically request them to go take an action on my website to download that free thing. Go listen to that episode. It's gold when it comes to building a mailing list. So now I'm building this mailing list. I'm Chris Graham. I don't want to get to the point where I'm Chris Graham of 30,000 people in my mailing list and I've never emailed them. What do I start doing as I'm building a mailing list without a being annoying, be running out of things to talk about and see without pissing actually that's the first thing. See, but while still making some sort of income, making it worth my time.

Right? So like the best practices is how to not be annoying. I feel like is being personal, you know, being yourself, being authentic from my point of view. Like I like sharing stupid stories. I tend to share a lot of stupid stories about what happens to me and then I sort of related to something that might be interesting to them about audio or mixing whatever. If you're a home studio owner, you can think of it as, you can talk about any cool story that happens in the studio.

You can create fomo for people on your email list. It's Fomo is fear of missing out if people don't understand that,

right? So it's like this stuff is happening in the studio like every week or I'm thinking about these funny things. And if you're known to be like a funny and personable guy, you just try to make that shine through in your emails so that you create a relationship with the people on your email list and then you share it, your sessions, you share things that you've worked on. If you've mixed the record, you can write an email about how you did it and if the musicians are bands are on your email list at that point they might be interested in contacting you in working with you.

So when you talked about sharing personal stories from your day to day life or from your week to week life, is there some system or some method you use to start tracking those potential stories that you can flesh out later? Like do you pull out an Evernote file? Are you doing voice memos? Like how are you, cause I know you write out a lot of content, so the average person probably just doesn't know the way to even start storing those things for later.

Sure. Well, there's a few different things I use Wunderlist and I jot down like I just have a list that has posts slash story ideas. These range from like one of the things I really liked doing is using analogies. So how one thing is like something completely different. An example I use all the time is how audio editing is like doing the dishes. If cooking is like mixing because you have to do the dishes before you start cooking or you have to prep the meal before you start cooking it. It's even worse if you don't do the dishes after cooking your meal. Then you'd have to do the dishes before and after cooking. And I think audio editing is one of the most boring parts of audio production and that's why I think that that analogy works so well. It's like you gotta do your audio editing so that you can make your mixing more fun.

So you're just tracking these ideas and wonder list and that link to that. We'll be in our show notes. For those of you who go to the six figure homes, studio.com/seventy that slash seven zero there'll be linked to that specific APP. I think it's desktop. An iPhone, correct.

Yeah. And then I keep track of all questions I get. So if I get questions from subscribers, I keep the track of that. Anytime somebody sends me like a testimonial or I find a review on Amazon for one of my books, I keep track of that so that I can, you know, say Benjamin, I really liked step-by-step mixing and it helped him do x, Y, and z. Then I can structure an email based on that archetype and I talk about, well usually say Benjamin, like he really learned how to use compression very effectively and maybe I'll share a little snippet from the book. You know, something to give them a sneak peek into the book. And then if you're like Benjamin, I don't know why his name is Benjamin, but whatever, then you might want to read this book as well because it sort of puts them in the same camp as my previous customers.

One of the things we failed dimension when we introed you is that not only have you probably sent more audio related emails as far as email marketing goes than anybody in the face of the planet. You are also one of the best selling authors in the audio, like how to book space on Amazon. You get a bunch of bestselling books on there about recording and mixing and editing and the whole nine yards. So the argument is like a particularly impressive dude because one, he's an amazing marketer too. He's an amazing audio engineer and three, he speaks like what, five, six languages?

I only speak three but I know six.

Okay, so his native language is not English yet. It's his business is English and it embarrasses me because he's so much better at it than I am. I've been doing it for 36 years. That's the truth. I commented on one of your posts the other day on Facebook about how impressive your English skills were and I definitely had some grammatical errors. Yeah, I noticed that. Let me kind of pull this in. Let me create a scenario here.

Okay.

So earlier today I had a conversation with a good friend of the podcast, Andy Reed up in Bay city, Michigan. He owns a very successful recording studio up there, which is super impressive because Michigan is not like a massive market. It's not like a super amazing place to run a recording studio. But Andy's doing great. Let's use Andy's since he's top of mind for me as an example here. So Andy's in Michigan, Andy has figured out some sort of newsletter or some sort of reason to get people to sign up. So let's say he does something like the Michigan Music scene newsletter and it's basically, you know, he is writing about things that are going on. Hey, this record came out to really big deal up in Travers city and in this record came out that's doing really, really well from grand rapids and hey, they're building this new venue in Anarbor, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah.

So all of a sudden all these people in Anarbor who are musicians began to subscribe to this newsletter because it addresses something they're interested in. Now, the other thing that's happening to that's interesting is everyone that would subscribe to a music scene, email letter in Michigan for Michigan is also a potential customer for Andy. So as Andy builds this list and cultivates a relationship with them, he also has the ability to at the end of an email say, hey, by the way, for any of you musicians looking for recording studio, Yada, Yada, Yada, Yada, Yada. So it's this amazing thing where by giving away something for free by serving people, he now has this huge platform that he can use to generate business for free for his recording studio. So let's put ourselves in Andy's shoes here. Bjorkman if Andy wants to build this newsletter and get, even if it's just hundreds of people, even if it's like the right hundred few hundred people in Michigan that are all in like influential bands or whatever, that's still a really valuable email list if they're all perfect high dollar customers for him. So what advice would you have for someone like Andy that's trying to build an email list to get more customers for their studio?

That idea for newsletter is so cool because it starts with value. It doesn't start with selling services. It starts with how can I, how can I bring something to the community that people want to be a part of? Right. So it starts with that. And then one of the things that I think is very important is the consistency. So like there's no need for a newsletter every day about the scene. There's a need maybe every week, every other week, whatever the scene sort of commands, right? He could make it even sort of like the newsletters were stand on its own as its separate entity, which is sorta does from the beginning and be like sponsored by Andy's studio.

Ooh.

Even though he's technically the same entity, it could be like brought to you by Andy's studio. I don't know what we would call that create all this good will for Andy's studio because all the musicians that are being featured on here are getting shout outs from something that the entire scene finds valuable. It's creating all this goodwill and one of the things you cannot buy, you cannot buy goodwill. You cannot buy like public relations, you can certainly buy it or hire a publicist, but that's an entirely different beast, you know, like getting goodwill from being like the dude in the scene that talks about the scene and loves the scene so much. I can't make a fist for gap. You know, you could obviously advertise the newsletter but like I think it starts with value and is consistent and it becomes an integral part of what the scene, I guess demands or wants and then inserting his personality into it, becoming sort of the voice or the authority on the scene that commands if more attention for all the bands that are around there. But he might at that point become the person that they talk about amongst themselves. It becomes a word of mouth kind of thing because they're never really talking about the studio and never really talking about the guy that's always trying to like record them or trying to like hit them up for, you know, wanting to do their next mix or whatever. He's become the guy that loves the scene more than the scene loves itself almost, you know?

I see this in the real estate market a lot and because I'm not like a marketing mind, I always am noticing things. I'm always analyzing things in what are people's motives in certain scenarios, and I go to live meetups here in Nashville that are real estate related and there are always what I call hawks, like circling the room. There's always that mortgage broker. There's always that insurance guy. There's always that insert ancillary service related to real estate and or realtors and they always hang out in these groups, not necessarily too add value and gain value from the groups, but to sell their services to these groups. And there's two separate groups within that. There's the groups that are just trying to sell their services and hock their shit at you. And then there's the group that sponsors the group. They're the one that makes the group possible.

They're the ones that actively invest themselves, are actively participating in. They're adding value, they're having conversations, they're speaking and educating at these events and there an integral part of the actual group itself and those are the people that actually get hired. When it comes time for getting title insurance, for getting a mortgage broker, those are the people that always get hired. So when we take this back to the studio world, especially related to this newsletter idea that Chris is talking about here, if you are essentially associated with a positive thing in your industry building that goodwill Debbie argument was talking about that cannot be purchased, it cannot be sold. It is one of those things that you have to build yourself and it isn't free. It doesn't cost any money, but it isn't free because you have to put yourself, you have to invest yourself into something and you have to actually give a damn and not have some ulterior motive.

Now it's this tricky dichotomy because you have, there's always on the back of your mind, you do want the business, you are in business for one thing and that is to like actually make a living doing something you love to do. But the second side of that is you to be willing to provide value with no strings attached. And I see this in the real estate market all the time. People that always have that string attached to anything they do in those people never succeed. It's always the people who are open handedly giving things away and not expecting anything in return. Those are the people that succeed. And it's the same in the music industry as well.

And going back to Andy as well as one of the things that I really like creating and what I see most brands kind of fail out because they just simply don't have them are like welcome sequences. Ooh. So these are automatic emails sequences that are created and crafted. Let's be honest, like these are crafted things. These aren't just haphazard emails that are thrown out. Like my welcome email sequence is very, very long actually. But it's all the best content and all the funniest stories and everything like that. Let's kind of clarify what you mean by a welcome sequence. For those of us that have no idea what email marketing is, what is a welcome sequence? So like, let me put that into perspective using Andy's analogy as well. I would say that a welcome sequence is basically a simple system that introduces you at your brand, what you do, how you do it, and why you do it, and what the subscriber should expect to get.

So in this case, the welcome email usually delivers whatever they signed up for. Maybe a little tidbit extra. In my case, I asked people what they're struggling with, how I can help them with our audio production by filling out a survey or they sometimes just reply to the email. That's fine too. And just in that one email, I've managed to create goodwill because I'm giving them something free that is valuable and I'm also engaging with them by asking them to engage with me. And I actually personally respond to every single server response, which is not scalable but it is worth it. And then you create the back and forth engagement with them. You create a relationship and you basically get information from them on what you can create content wise, what they want from you in the future. So just with one automatic email at the beginning of the sequence gives you engagement, goodwill, uh, a relationship and market research or customer research to further your email marketing.

And then from there, I don't believe in there only being one best welcome sequence. It really depends on what you're selling, what you're promoting, what you're doing, how you've structured your business or your brand or your studio. But it could be something along the lines of the second email, whether that's the day after or three days after, maybe it's weekly, whatever. And that gets automatically triggered. So they sign up, they get a welcome email, two, three days later, they automatically get another email. Two, three days later they get another and so on. And in my case, I like sharing my story. So I liked sharing sort of like, you know, to quote sort of the comic book style origin story, you know, like Peter Parker got bit by a spider or whatever, Superman's for Krypton and all that. Like that's the origin story, right? My or just stories like I learned live sound in Iceland and I did a bunch of live sound for an underground indie clubs and big festivals. And then I moved to Spain and studied audio engineering in Spain. And then I moved to Arizona and now I live in Arizona. I'm more as an audio educator and like a music and a mixing coach. And I'm a musician and entrepreneur and an author on the side. So it's like I was once just like alive engineer that was trying to figure out how Eeq worked, you know? So that's sort of introducing me and it's sharing a personal story and then you can go in any different direction depending on your brand.

Well, I've got an idea here, so back to Andy Reed. And so Andy's studio is called the read recording company, so check them out, especially if you're in Michigan, but let's say I'm Andy and my ideal customer is rock bands and so I think about, well what do all rock bands and Michigan want? Mm. You know what? I bet they want, I bet they want to list of all the booking agents at all the venues in Michigan. I am going to either accumulate all the information myself or I'm going to hire an assistant and I am going to say, hey, sign up for the Michigan Music scene newsletter and you can get a free list of all the booking agents in Michigan. Boom, they sign up for the email list. Every potential band that wants to work with Andy in Michigan is like, oh, I want that.

Awesome. Signed up. Boom. They get an automatic email. It's got all the information in there, it's completely free. A couple of days later and he has another email that goes out automatically that maybe is like bonus. Here's the list of all the venues in northern Ohio and Northern Indiana, which is the states to the south. And then continues to, you know, three, four days later, it's like, hey, here's my five step guide to how to get a show for your first time at a new venue. And so he starts sending these emails out and he is training people that, hey, when I email you, it's the good stuff, right? You're going to want to open these emails. It's the really good stuff. It can really help you. And then occasionally as stuff happens, say a new venue opens up or there's a battle of the bands or whatever, and he's sort of a news organization as well.

So he's sending out these on automated emails that are like, okay, cool, I've got 500 people on the list. This thing happened that they should all know about. I'm going to tell them. And I love your idea about like, you know, the Michigan Music scene newsletter sponsored by the read recording company. That is freaking cool. And eventually Andy's got this massively powerful tool. Rican occasionally just hop in and be like, hey guys, you know Andy from the Michigan Music scene newsletter here, you know I also own the read recording company. If anyone's looking to record, I do have availability the second week in August. Boom. Yeah, exactly.

And doing that on a limited time basis and also for a limited time be preferable to, if you can introduce scarcity elements of like book before a certain date you get maybe like an extra song mixed or

free mastering of or maybe like extra half day in the studio or an extra mixed revision or whatever. Just to give people an incentive to buy now as opposed to like buy whenever they may need to do so in the future. And one of the things that Andy could do too is because he's sending out all these great tidbits and that people know that they want to know more about it also gives them an opportunity is like, Hey, I've been sending you this because I knew that you were telling me that you wanted to know about more venues to book at or this, that and the other thing. What else can I do to help? Like what else can I share about? And if he collects these responses via a service software of some sort or whatnot, or just manually via email, sooner or later he's going to start noticing a trend.

Okay.

And at that point it's like, oh, the thing that people are most often asking for is this, let's make content about this. Or let's do another curated list of the best amp techs. Or like the best Luther's to set up your guitars. Or even just a guide on how to do to yourself, you know? And he can put that in the rotation. He can put that in like an automatic rotation. And at that point it just serves as a content or a piece of value.

Yeah. And what's so cool about to say two years, if Andy can craft an email sequence that provides incredible value, say it's five emails long or 10 emails long, say it's one email a day, you hit on this as well. Like the consistency I think is really key. He should send out at regular intervals, say every Tuesday or something like that. Or every other Tuesday or the first and the 15th of each month. So it begins to set that expectation of here's when to expect it. But he also sets that expectation of like tons of value. These are, if you want to be part of the Michigan music scene, you sure as heck better have read the most recent email. And if he does that, then man, what an amazing and powerful position to be in for him to not only get more customers for his recording studio, but I can definitely speak on behalf of Brian and I for the podcasts.

I'm like, this is kind of what we do. You know, the podcast is a freeway that we try to help as many people as possible and serve as many people as possible. And it just continues to open the most weird and unexpected doors for us in our businesses and in our ability to be friends with cool people. So this is an interesting idea that I think so many of our listeners could just immediately be like, Hey, I could do that in uh, North Dakota, boom and off to the races. You go and now you suddenly have the ability to drum up business for your studio, but you also have the ability to do a lot of other things that you want to host a battle of the bands or say you want to launch a music festival or say you fill in the freaking blank. You have this email list that loves you, that opens your emails

and you can hit out of the park. I thought I would say basically people might be listening to this and go like, either I could do that, or it's like, oh, that sounds way too complicated. Or I dunno about crafting something. Like I don't know how to write something like that or whatever. You don't have to do that. Like I've 10 years of experience doing this and I'm still learning. If you can tell your friend a story of what happened to your last weekend and you can write five emails to your friends, you can do an email marketing sequence. If you want to like an advanced tip, make an email marketing welcome sequence. That is a series that continues on to the next email. Say you start in email one, you start telling a story, you leave the story with a cliffhanger. If you want to know what happens next or if you need the next information in the sequence, open the next email.

Yeah, I think Griffin is touching on a very important thing here that definitely needs to be addressed and I, as I listened to this interview myself, I think this is a lot of work because I see from both sides I have a studio and to be honest, my studio, I do know email marketing at all and I'm just fine. So just so everyone listening knows, it's not 100% necessary that you do this, but it is very powerful and I've seen it on the other side with a six figure home studio where content is my main strategy. I know that is very effective and I know that it's a lot of work to set the stuff up, not only from a technology standpoint but from just a time suck of actually putting the pieces into place and learning how to do this well. I've seen that a lot of shitty emails in my life from people who try to do this and are terrible at it.

So my thought goes to immediately what's the 80 20 principle for email marketing? What is the 20% that I could do that's going to give you 80% of my results? And I think you Kinda just touched on it there it is. Finding just a simple email sequence that gets people warmed up to who you are, provides value to them and then hopefully if you can set a longterm one keeps you top of mind for this band or musician so that when it comes time for them to book a studio, you are the last name they have heard of when it comes to recording studio and that is by itself. Terrible email or not. It is a very powerful thing to just be top of mind.

The thing is like it's top of mind awareness because coke doesn't spend billions of dollars or whatever on advertising every year because they think that everybody's going to like immediately go and buy a coke when they would see a coke commercial. Yeah, it's the fact that whenever they're thirsty they think of a coke top of mind. I say this in jest, but I email a lie email every day and I tried to have a ratio of like value or information that is entertaining plus a little sales pitch at the end. What's the ratio? It's usually you know, 70 30 it's usually just you know, some value and then if you like this or if you wanted more tips like these checkout Dadada and maybe I'll add a testimonial or add a little bit extra there psychology wise. But basically this main strategy is just be top of mind and follow up until they either don't need you, which is fine or they've become your customer and like your stuff, which is better obviously, but you know you're not going to convert 100% of your subscribers to customers.

It just will not happen. You know, you should be lucky with like one to 5% and people don't unsubscribe to emails like en masse. They'll in subscribe for a multitude of reasons. Like I unsubscribed to emails that I like just because I'm like, I don't really need this anymore. You know, like this is just cluttering up my inbox. Maybe somebody was a musician and now they're not, you know, there's no reason for them to be on your email list at that point. I think this would be a good time to kind of talk about the technology behind actually putting together an email list and an autoresponder sequence. Because for a lot of people, I'd say probably most people listening to this podcast, this is a foreign language, a foreign world. They don't understand even the basics of, and that's not an insult, it's just this is not what we learn as audio engineer's.

It's not sure as shit isn't taught in audio schools anywhere, but it's also not tight on youtube videos. This is not part of the traditional business model for recording studio. Most guys are not doing this. So again, it's just untaught. So what can someone do quickly and easily to get started? As far as technology wise, if you're starting from scratch, I always recommend MailChimp even though I don't use it because it is free up to 2000 people. If you have more than 2000 people on your email list, well once you have more than than 2000 people on your email list, you should have also dedicated the time to know how to get an Roi on the $30 a month it costs or whatever. Yeah. But if you're starting from scratch, get a MailChimp account and first figure out who your audience is and how you can serve them and then if there's a quick solution to their problem, make a list of some sort of going back to read recording company.

If there is a list of venues or list of whatever. In my case it's like a quick solution, but it's actually like a list of Eeq tips. So I offer list of Vq tips for anybody who subscribes to the email list and then I have an origin story or an intro sequence. So you just have to write five emails to a friend and be fun and friendly and offer them something cool. And then once you have that, you set that up in Mailchimp, you subscribed yourself, you go through the sequence first, you make sure it all works and it makes sense. And you have your calls to actions correctly, do all the grammar and the syntax and you know, spell check and all that sort of stuff. And then you create a landing page using something like, well, lead pages or any sort of landing page software out there, wix and Squarespace, those all integrate with MailChimp.

So worst case scenario you can. Perfect. Perfect. Yeah. So you just make a page on your webpage that, you know, the easiest would just be do like headline that has the benefit driven headline that offers whatever it is that you're giving away free, uh, the benefits of getting that thing by signing up our call to action that says sign up, you know, and like get my free checklist or like I want the free checklist or whatever and then a link to sign up. Whether that's an opt in box where you sign up directly on the page or a link that

pops up. Something. I think everyone here has at least experienced this from the other side. So I think everyone understands that side of things.

But the thing is that it doesn't matter which way you do it, as long as you have one way that works, you know you can always get better. You can always tweak your landing page. I'm constantly tweaking my copy, my software, my email sequences, my headlines, all this stuff. So if you think you're going to set up like the perfect landing page with a perfect email sequence from the start, you are diluting yourself. I think you should start somewhere and just go from there.

Well I think one of the core things to kind of bring home, just to make sure everyone that's listening gets this as we preach on the podcast all the time, the thing that we're talking about here, first and foremost is serving other people. And I think one of the biggest mistake audio engineer's make, and this isn't just us as audio engineers, this is everybody, is they have this like, well I want to, I want to get paid what I'm worth. And that's all about extracting value from other people because they deserve it. They have this sense of entitlement. What Bjorn is preaching here and what we preach all the time in the podcast is completely the opposite. It's fine people who have a need and serve them and the biggest way that you possibly can. That's what I'm freaking doing right now with this podcast is Brian and I are trying to serve you guys by teaching you valuable information that could help you.

And we believe that if you do that, if you go out and help as many people as you possibly can, ideally through mass media like email marketing or podcasting or blogging or youtubing or something like that, and it generates a lot of opportunity for you to convert those people into customers in the future. And this is a service mentality, not a what am I worth mentality and everything that we're talking about kind of comes back to this and Bjorkman mentioned it earlier, he hinted at it earlier, this book the go giver, which is just a massively awesome book about this thing about serving people and about putting you in a position to think about how you can serve people. If you could serve a lot of people, you're going to find a way to make margin to make profit and the extra in the outside in the margins of whatever you're having to do to serve people.

Yeah, no, exactly. And like you know I hinted at, I didn't mention the book, but like start small and do it like a little bit at a time and, and that goes back to like the, you've all read. The one thing is that the reason comparison syndrome when you're comparing yourself to somebody 10 years into the future will crush you is because you don't have 10 years of experience now and you want it now. You want to be able to do it now instead of starting with the first thing that gets you closer to those 10 years and that's the only way you can do it. I mean there's shortcuts and you can, you know, learn from experience and learn from books and learn from mentors that teach you how to avoid certain things. But nothing's going to happen unless you start doing one little thing at a time.

It's awesome. Or Bjorkman for our audience, they've listened, they've heard their thinking, Huh, maybe there's something to this email marketing thing. Where can they go to learn more? So I have a cool domain that I just bought. Yay. I don't know if you guys are in the domain buying business. Oh I am, but it's right. Awesome. emails.com and that will redirect you to my personal sort of email marketing coaching page, just where you can sign up to my email marketing manifesto and it gives you sort of like my short ebook, if you will, that tells you exactly how I structure my email marketing and what I do to get to where I am today. I'm at a hundred subscribers plus per day now, so I hope that that's a big enough of a number to sort of qualify me as somebody that knows how email marketing works. But if you go to write awesome emails.com/podcast if you go to that URL without the www just straight into the address bar, it will send you straight to the landing page where you can sign up and get that free email marketing manifesto.

Now wait a minute [inaudible] I feel like maybe this whole free ebook thing might be a scheme for you to email market to people. Oh my gosh, application. Yes. Well funny you should say that because this is actually a brand new experiment because I really, really love teaching people how to do this better and I really, really like showing my systems and how I structure things. And this email list is actually brand new. There is not a welcome sequence. There is nothing there. It is actually just one email and guess what it does, it gives you the free thing. It introduces you a little bit to who I am and it asks you about what your need help with. How can I bring more value to you as an email marketing expert if you will. And one of the things that I'm going to do in March is I'm going to do a 31 day strategy or 31 day challenge if you will, to build a better email marketing campaign. And I'm going to teach you how everything that I do throughout the entire month of March, I'm taking this course called 31 days to build a better blog and I'm using

that course to teach you, uh, in 31 days how to be better email marketers. So what you'll get by signing up to the email list is hopefully value. I don't even have a product yet, but I will help you out if you open the emails.

Well, there's an interesting thing there with bureau vin. If you go to his page again, that's right. Awesome. emails.com/podcast you will be taught by Dorfman but you can also learn by watching what he does because he's going to be doing exactly what he's talking about from this episode. He will be practicing what he preaches so you can see both what he's teaching in his emails, but also what he's doing in these emails. From a strategy standpoint.

You can sort of reverse engineer it by just sort of looking at poking around the page if you will. Well, and let me just further endorse you as in my opinion, I very strongly believe this, we were talking about this at Nam recently, is that in the recording industry, I think you are the number one guy for email marketing. I don't think anyone has anywhere near as much experience as you do and that's not something to underestimate. That's not something to shake a stick at. I definitely, from my unexperience, you have had a huge impact on me learning how to write decent emails and the benefit to my business was just bananas. It was tens of thousands of dollars in extra business just from like random people that had forgotten about me. That's awesome man. It was just the weirdest thing where like when I started learning how to tell stories and add value, this sort of service mentality, this is all pre podcast guys.

When I started learning how to tell stories and add value in that way, it was wild to get responses from people. It was so weird that like instantly worked there. It was like, oh, weird. That guy hasn't booked to mastering project in four years and he just randomly booked a mastering project after getting this email because it made him like me and remember me and freaking wild stuff. So this email marketing, this is a little different from the stuff we typically preaching the podcast, but it's not to be underestimated, nor is Bjorkman skill in this area. So I'm sure if you guys sign up at right, awesome. emails.com that it's going to be an amazing thing for you guys that are thinking about getting into email marketing for your business. You're giving me way too, any accolades here? I'm blushing. I'm blushing. I'm literally read.

Aw shucks. I do want to mention, I remember when we were digging into that storytelling stuff, which I think is very important, like to write and send out five emails. You have to be able to tell stories and I remember that story about the two guys were one of them just make some music to 80% of his ability and then publishes and the other one like just strives for perfection every time and just doesn't get as far because quality, we'll sort of follow quantity if you at least have a certain threshold and I feel like 80% as you said in that email was a pretty

good way of putting it because if you make a song every month at 80% and then you release it, then in a year you've done 12 songs and you're 80% in January versus your 80% in December is just night and day versus the one guy with the hundred percent perfection mentality that's still struggling to get the snare drum right in July.

Yeah, and I think there's take home for us and this as well, and I'm speaking of somebody who had crippling fear to even sort of dabble in email marketing because it sounded evil. But this idea of like just get started. Just start on a small scale to a small experiment and be okay with the fact that it's imperfect and get over your fear of man and this idea of like,

oh, they're all going to lose everything. Oh Gosh, I'll have to live in

box in the street. Just get over this irrational fear and take a risk by serving people. Go Out, find a way to serve them. Not everyone's going to love it, but that doesn't matter. It's not how many people hate you. It's how many people love you that determines your success

because you know what? The worst thing is going to happen. Actually nothing. That's the worst thing is that is that nothing will happen. At which point you're at the same point as you were before, but now you know something and you're like, oh, okay, well maybe that didn't work or maybe I should try a different strategy.

You know, really the worst that can happen is that you learned something.

If you've been listening to podcasts and thinking, man, I wish I could get some one on one help with this business stuff. I have been taken on

just a couple people as one on one coaching clients. It was something I just wanted to kind of dabble with and it turns out it's like my most favorite thing I do each week. It's Super Fun. So if you would like one on one business coaching to help apply some of the stuff you're learning in the podcast, checkout Chris Graham, mastering.com/coaching to fill out an application. I would love to hear from you. And one last thing before you guys go. This is a really important piece of the podcast. We need a favor from you so that we can help you more. We have a survey that we have put together to help us get to know who you are, why you listen to the podcast, what we're doing well, what we could be doing better, all those things and you can reach it at the six figure homes, studio.com/survey or six F h s.com/survey it's really easy.

It's really short. It's going to help us get to know who you are, how we can serve you better, what we can improve, all those things. So please check it out. It is absolutely, I mean this from the bottom of my heart. The biggest thing you can do to help this podcast get better, to help us get you better information and hopefully to help us get guests who can blow our minds with awesome wisdom of knowledge and stuff. So check it out. Six three grams studio.com/survey like I said, this is a big deal. This survey can really help us take it to the next level and apparently it's a normal thing to do on podcasts like this and is super duper helpful. So check it out. Six figure home, studio.com/survey thank you so much, guys. Have a great week.