[00:00:00] Mia Fileman
Are you tired of empty promises and stolen ideas? Me too. Got. Marketing is a podcast for marketers and small brands who want real talk and clever strategies without the bs. Running an online business is hard, but everything gets easier when your marketing starts performing. I am Mia FileMan, your straight shooting campaign loving friend here to talk marketing, running a business, pop culture, and everything in between.
Let's dive in.
Hello, friend. We are gonna roll with the punches today because my big, beautiful external microphone is not connecting to my laptop. So I'm using el lapel microphone and it just needs to be okay. Today we are gonna talk about email marketing, and [00:01:00] specifically I'm going to share our top five emails that we've sent across Campaign Del Ma and unpack for you what made them so successful.
But I wanna start by saying that I am not a good driver. Like a car driver in the slightest. I also still count on my hands, despite the fact that I do actually have a commerce degree. I cannot draw or do any kind of art to save my life. I think I can sing, but my kids absolutely disagree and I cannot, DIY, anything for shit.
I'm pretty good in the kitchen. However, I cannot bake, and I'm telling you all of this. I want you to believe me when I say there are definitely things that I'm not good at, but when it comes to email marketing, I am really good and it's not something I was born with or something [00:02:00] that I learned at university because, and this is where I'm gonna really show my age.
I'm too old for email marketing. It didn't even exist when I was in uni. I have become really good at email marketing because one, I decided that I needed to be as a marketer knowing how much of a good return on investment emails give. I decided I was going to make email my bit and two, just by doing it every single week for the last three years.
And this has just been something that I have worked on and it is a skill that I have sharpened. So for the last three years, I have written a weekly email called The Weekly Roundup, and it goes to our entire database for campaign delma. And we have [00:03:00] yet to peak because 2025 is our best year yet. Today I'm gonna walk you through our top five emails, the ones that people opened, clicked, replied to, and most importantly, the ones that resulted in a conversion into our membership marketing circle.
So let's first start with understanding how we measure success with email marketing. Because there are a few metrics, right? Like the ones that I just mentioned. Open clicks, replies, sales. For us, the two big ones are replies and enrollments opens and clicks are nice, of course, but replies to me means connection.
And actually, when I look at our data, I've seen that if someone replies to our emails and then I reply to them. There is an [00:04:00] 80% chance that they go on to buy. In my experience, only 20% of people who we have had a one-on-one back and forth with aren't customers of campaign. Alma. That is massive. The other reason why I prefer to look at replies and sales is that open rates.
Are incredibly unreliable, especially since Apple introduced the Apple mail privacy protection where people could opt out from being tracked. This means that your open rates are often more inflated than in reality. Also, someone could open your email just to delete it. They didn't actually read it. So we wanna look for more meaningful metrics like clicks or purchases.
One of the things that we do to properly measure success with email marketing is that we worked with Brooke Huckabee from Penn [00:05:00] Analytics to incorporate UTM tracking on the links within our emails, but also we've configured our Google Analytics in order to pull in our email marketing data. So this helps us get much more reliable analytics and statistics when it comes to our email marketing.
So, uh, just to give you a little bit of a sense of what we're talking about, I'm gonna go through the top five emails. Here are the stats for the top five. I'll tell you the subject line, what the open rate was, and what the click through rate was, so that you can see what we're working with here. Okay. So the email titled One Star Review had a 69% open rate.
And a 23% click-through rate, just so we have a bit of a benchmark generally for service-based businesses, which is me and online [00:06:00] businesses, anything over a 20 or 30% open rate is pretty good. So a 69% open rate is massive, but like I said, it's not wholly reliable. And then when we look at benchmarks for clickthrough rates, anything over a 5% clickthrough rate is pretty good, and a 23% clickthrough rate is fricking awesome.
So yeah, I'm pretty good at email marketing, but just remember what I said. There are plenty of things that I absolutely suck at that particular email. One star review also had 18 replies. All right, moving to the next email. Radical honesty was the subject line. 71% open rate, 13% click through rate. Our third email that we're gonna look at popular or paid was the subject line, and it had a 76% open rate, [00:07:00] 17% click through rate.
Nine replies the price of revenge, 76% open rate, 17% click through rate. And then catfished in Paris, 73% open rate, 2% click-through rate, and a whopping 27 replies. So those are some pretty juicy numbers, especially in today's inbox environment where people are so over receiving email communications from brands daily or twice a day.
Here's what I wanna say at this point, that. Sometimes the emails that get the most replies aren't always the ones with the highest open rates. Sometimes it's the more provocative debate starting stuff that gets people hitting replies. For example, we sent an email called Do I Weigh in an email [00:08:00] where I debated whether to enter the screen time conversation.
I was asking fellow parents of school aged children, whether they were going to give their kids a phone and at what age they were gonna give their kids a phone and how they feel about their children being on social media. This particular email set off a massive amount of email back and forth in my inbox.
I got so many replies because people had opinions that they wanted to share when it came to this conversation. Another email. The subject line, your Stripe screenshots don't impress me much. I shared an example of a very phony post that I saw online, and then people replied with their examples that they've seen of online marketing fakery and outright shameful conduct, and it's the kind of thing that people don't wanna name and [00:09:00] shame publicly, so they probably wouldn't have.
Done a post themselves or tagged me or replied to seeing this kind of content, but in an inbox environment that is one-on-one that's pretty safe. I've said multiple times in my emails that if you reply to me, I will not just automatically share your emails. I will ask your permission. People felt comfortable opening up and sharing their examples of really dodgy marketing.
And then anytime we share a campaign film. Like in good company or the sailing video, I also get a lot of replies, people giving me their opinion of our latest campaign film. And that's because I am the campaign lady and they know how important it is to me, and they want to share their views and celebrate my campaign films because at the end of the day, this is a community and we do support each other.
So, uh, the lesson here is that while open and [00:10:00] click rates are nice, our replies are where the real connection happens. And that's when people stop passively consuming your content and start engaging with you one-on-one. And honestly, some of our best client relationships have started in my inbox from a reply to one of my emails.
Alright. Let's get into these five emails, one by one and unpack why they were so successful for us. Okay, so email number one, the price of revenge. That was the subject line. One of our best performing emails came from one of the worst experiences in my business life. I had a horrific experience with two.
Seven figure female entrepreneurs who treated me appallingly. And I was not just sad, I was angry, [00:11:00] vengeful, even. But sitting with that, I hated who I was turning myself into. So I chose a different kind of revenge, thriving. This email worked because it was so real and honest. I think a lot of people toy with this idea of getting revenge and it was also very vulnerable.
But it also tied back to my values of building Campaign, Delmar Building Marketing Circle, and how important community and ethics are to me, and how values driven. I try to be in everything that I do. And so the lesson with this particular email is don't be afraid to use the tough stuff. Don't be afraid to be really honest with your audience and admit that you are flawed, [00:12:00] and sometimes you do fantasize about getting revenge against people who have really, really hurt you.
Everyone probably sits with those feelings so. If you are sitting there going, oh, people are gonna judge me, they're gonna cancel me because I'm having very human feelings. Please know that they are having those feelings too. Okay. Email number two, popular or paid with a question mark. And I really pose this question because I see it as something that we do need to discuss.
There is a lot of people online. Who are marketing in a way that is not going to get them paid, but is going to make them popular. And we all need to sit with this question and decide really in the deep of our core, are we chasing popularity or are we chasing payment? Because those things are different.
I'm sorry to say. [00:13:00] And this particular email was me admitting my Achilles heel, which was comparisonitis. While I don't have imposter syndrome, and I know a lot of people live with this and are riddled with it, I suffer from comparisonitis as many of you listening do to, especially when it comes to my Instagram following.
I constantly compare my 6,000 Instagram followers to people with 50,000 followers or 175,000 followers, and I'm constantly questioning. Why my content isn't more popular, why don't I have more followers? I think the content is good. I spend so long on it, and you know, maybe I suck. I wrote about the tension between wanting to be popular and choosing instead to be paid, and I have to keep coming back to this myself because three, four [00:14:00] years ago I decided I wanted to be paid and paid.
I am very well. And what that looks like for me is prioritizing email marketing, prioritizing pr, podcasting, things that give a better return on investment than just acquiring followers on Instagram. And I, and I know this subjectively, but I do sometimes need to go, but Mia, remember, you are choosing to get paid, not choosing to be popular.
And this particular email landed because it was painfully relatable. Everyone compares themselves online and when you name that, you give people permission to admit that they do that too. And also I feel that this email was quite successful because. I didn't provide a solution in this email. Now I am a marketing trainer.
I'm a marketing advisor. I'm a consultant, so giving advice is what I'm paid for. And a lot of my emails, I do give advice and I, I kind of come with an answer, but [00:15:00] with this particular email, I had no answer. And I actually said that, Hey guys. Just questions today, no answers. And I think that that worked really well as well because I don't have all the answers.
I don't know everything. I don't know the solution to ending my comparisonitis once and for all, and actually it invited my community to come back and they give me advice and and helpful suggestions, and I received some incredible suggestions in the replies. To my comparisonitis. So it really fostered that two way of giving and sharing.
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We are capped at 45 members, so apply to join today. All right, email three. The subject line was radical honesty, and this one was really fun. I basically dropped 10 brutally honest opinions about marketing. Things like discounting because you're a new business is the fastest way to stay broke or. We don't need another regurgitated Adam er update.
Now Adam er is the head of Instagram and he does an A video every week or every fortnight sharing the latest updates on Instagram. But for whatever reason, every [00:17:00] social media manager and Instagram coach in the world also feels like they need to. Share Adam's updates, even though we all follow Adam on Instagram and we can hear from him directly.
We don't need to get it through a third party. Yeah. I really question this strategy of just regurgitating what Adam has already shared. So this email worked because people crave straight talk, especially from brands like mine where we've set up the brand personality and tone of voice to be straight talk.
If people don't like brutal honesty, they don't listen to my podcast. I don't read my emails. I don't follow me on Instagram. They want someone who is much nicer and kinder. Not that I'm not nice or kind, but that they're not ready to hear the harsh truth. And [00:18:00] so when I do play to this brand personality, it works because people expect that from me.
They like that I cut through the fluff. If they want fluffy, they'll go somewhere else. And it sparks a lot of replies. People were also sharing their radically honest take. I shared 10, and then I said, well, how about you? Do you have anything that, if you weren't gonna hurt someone's feelings, what would you say?
That is just harsh but true. Right? So the takeaway here is one, don't be afraid to share the truth. People will unfollow you if they don't wanna hear it, but you need to be okay with that. We can't be for everyone. I believe that strong opinions are sexy, but also make sure that you are constantly aligning with your brand personality and tone of voice.
What would be more jarring, I think, is if I were to write an email that was overly flowery and fluffy and [00:19:00] there's enough for everyone and you don't have to worry about competition. Like, yeah, and, and the is a beautiful. So much honesty and like people would be like, she's, she's fallen and hit her head.
This is not Mia. Right? I am not going to sit there and blow smoke up people's ass. And if I did, that would actually be far more jarring than me being brutally honest. Okay. Email four was titled One Star Review. Friends, I did it. I finally got a onestar review, and when I saw the notification come through Apple Podcast, my stomach absolutely dropped, and I thought, oh, this is terrible.
By the way, getting a onestar review on your podcast is really, really, really bad for your podcast ranking. Then I read the one star review [00:20:00] and it was so unhinged that I actually laughed. Instead of letting it crush me, I decided to reframe it. One star reviews can actually be anti-marketing gold, and I'm sure you've heard me talk about this before.
They show you that you are not for everyone, which is the whole point of brand positioning, right? That particular email where I shared my one star review performed like crazy because it took something that everyone fears in their business and turned it into a win. Plus, let's be honest, people wanted to read the one star review.
They wanted to see what was written. And I'm going to share my top five emails in the show notes. So if you wanna go and see what was written, you can click the link and, and you can have a look at the My my Beautiful One Star Review. Okay. And the last email in our top [00:21:00] five emails that I'm gonna discuss today, the subject line was called Catfished in Paris, and this was by far the crowd favorite.
When I was 25 years old, I moved to Paris for a guy I met in Thailand. He turned out not to be Brazilian Ricardo, but Moroccan Rashid, and I found out that he didn't actually live in Paris after I arrived, but that he worked in China. Classic Mia move. So, uh, I, this is an embarrassing story, right, because I was so young and silly and in love that I actually moved across the world for a guy that was completely lying to me about who he was and where he lived, but.
It also, this story and this situation led me to landing a [00:22:00] global marketing job at ic, the pen, lidar, and Shaver company living in Paris for almost three years, changing the course of my career and making me into the woman and the entrepreneur that I am today. And so. Yeah, I was happy to lean into the embarrassment of, of this particular story.
Why did this email work so well? Because it was a story. It was a proper rom-com. It had a plot with a messy middle, and a really satisfying ending. And we know that storytelling is magnetic now. I really need to tell you that Catfished in Paris was an email that I sent two weeks ago. So that isn't the best part of this situation really, because after [00:23:00] three years of writing an email every single week, you might be thinking, well, surely the well is dry.
Surely there's no more stories to tell. Surely she's hit her peak. But no, I feel like I'm just hitting my straps. I've been in business and marketing for 22 years. There are many, many, many more stories. And so this is the thing to inspire you. You don't need to get to a point where you run out of good ideas and you use them all up.
If anything, you will continue to improve like I have, and I'm really proud of that. Okay, so what are the patterns? In these top five emails. So what do these emails have in common? Number one, vulnerability. You know this, people want the real stuff, and I'm not talking about fake vulnerability. I'm saying real vulnerability.
It's got to feel a little bit uncomfortable for you to write this, okay? I'm not saying that you need [00:24:00] to trauma dump. I don't do that. I'm saying that there needs to be a little bit of you putting yourself out there. Okay? Don't manufacture vulnerability. People can sniff it out a million miles away.
Number two, storytelling. The details matter. That's what makes a story sticky, and it's what makes it believable. So don't just gloss over the little details really. Add some context, add some color, add some detail to make it a story. And the best way to learn this is to read stories. Go back and read as much fiction as you can.
I know the business community is obsessed with non-fiction books like James Clear and uh, Simon Sinek and you know, Brene Brown and that, and they, they're great. But actually I think the biggest gift that you can give to your content writing is nonfiction. Go back and read Harry Potter. That's what's gonna make [00:25:00] you write really, really good content and really good emails.
Number three, strong opinions. Don't water it down. Say the thing. There is too many people living in Vanilla Valley online who are wanting to. Feel things to all people and not wanna ruffle any feathers and they are just blurring into the background. They are wallpaper. Don't be wallpaper. You are going to polarize and that's okay.
Purposefully polarizing is one of my favorite things to do, and the number four replies over clicks. The real gold is in the conversation. So the biggest lesson I want you to take away from today's episode is that consistency compounds. The more you show up, the sharper your writing gets, the deeper your audience connection becomes, and the more sales that you naturally follow.
We send the weekly roundup at 10:00 AM on Thursday morning, and if for whatever reason, I miss that. I send it a day [00:26:00] late, or I end up sending it in the afternoon instead of 10:00 AM we see a dramatic decrease in our open and click through rates. Our audience don't know this consciously, but subconsciously we have conditioned them to open and read that email at that time on that particular day.
And that is the power of consistency. So if you are sitting there thinking, I wanna get good at email marketing, here's my advice, start writing. Pick a rhythm you can stick to. I started with a monthly email and then I moved to a fortnightly email, and now we do a weekly email. So once you get into a good habit, then you can increase the cadence and please just keep going.
You are going to suck at it when you first start, and I absolutely did. And when I was preparing this episode, I went back and I read. Some of the emails that I sent three years ago, which people were telling me were awesome, and I can't stand them. They're terrible. My emails are much, much better now. Okay.[00:27:00]
As I said, I've been writing the weekly roundup for three years, and this is our best year yet, I have not run out of ideas. I have not hit my pick. What's changed is that I now know deeply what works, what good looks like, what is going to be. A mere level idea and what is not going to be, and I've built a routine that makes the writing easier.
So I send the email on Thursday, which means I've blocked out time on Wednesday to write the email. I always go for a walk or go to the yoga, or go to Pilates, or go to the gym to get. Into the right frame of mind to write the email. I have playlists at the ready. My physical environment is primed for this.
My brain is primed for this. And we go, so this is the pattern that I have established. And I'm not talking about templating your emails so [00:28:00] that they sound formulaic. That's not what I'm saying. I regularly shake up. The format. It's about setting the conditions for really creative writing. The only way to get better is by doing it month after month, week after week, story after story.
There is no other way really to improve. Yes, there are little tips and tricks that of course I am going to share with you and I have shared with you, but at the end of the day, this is a muscle that you need to grow. Because I've had so much practice with this now, my emails are sharper, more engaging and converting better than ever.
So if you want to see this in action, I would love to invite you to subscribe to the weekly roundup if you are not receiving them already. One of the things that I do to get inspiration is to read other people's emails often from different industries to my own. So that [00:29:00] I can get inspiration about how people are writing their stories and the kind of content they're sharing.
Also, I teach this stuff. I have an email marketing program called Nail Your Email Marketing Strategy. It is our bestselling program. Over 300 entrepreneurs have purchased the program and it is $395. And I take you through how to build an email list, how to write emails that people wanna read, how to clean your list, uh, lead magnets.
I go through the whole email marketing process. There are 10 modules and I'm very, very proud of this program. And if you buy a ticket to Ripple Festival before September 21. You automatically go into the raffle to win this program and your chances are [00:30:00] awesome, like so awesome, like a one in 10 chance of winning this program.
So if you are on the fence about coming to Ripple Festival for one day or both days, and you buy your ticket before September 21, you have a sensational chance of winning this $400 program. Okay, that's it for today. Thank you so much for tuning in. I welcome your questions about email marketing and I would love to see you at Ripple Festival.
Outro
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Subscribe [00:31:00] [email protected]. Thank you. You listened right up until the end, so why not hit that subscribe button? And keep the good marketing rolling. Podcast reviews are like warm hugs and they're also the best way to support a small business. You can connect with me, Mia FileMan on Instagram or LinkedIn, and feel free to send me a message.
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