78: Uncover the 5 Myths Holding You Back from Email Marketing featuring Kate Doster

What’s holding you back from making moves with email marketing in your business? You know it’s something you should prioritize, but you still feel held back from taking action. If you want to step up your email marketing, this episode is for you. Kate Doster, online business pro and host of the Do The Brave Thing Podcast is here to help you blast through the limiting beliefs holding you back from email marketing and shift your mindset for taking action!

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Dolly DeLong
Hello, and welcome back to episode 78 of the Systems and Workflow Magic Podcast. I am your systems and workflow BFF, Dolly DeLong. And if you are here today, I just wanna say thank you for entrusting me with your time. Now you should know, if you have been listening to this podcast that I am currently in the middle of an email marketing series because I want you to know that you too can take the baby steps to start incorporating email marketing into your own business regardless of what industry you are and regardless of your, company size, whether you are running the show on your own, you have a team of two or you have a team of 20 people. In my mind, there is a system in workflow for everything, and with email marketing, people tend to overcomplicate this topic, and I don’t want you to be intimidated by this topic at all.

I just want you to start, I want you to start shifting your mindset, shifting any negativity you may have around email marketing, and just start implementing. Email marketing into your business, even if it’s once a month. Just start. 

So today’s guest is someone I have been following for quite some time. She is the one who taught me the power of strategic list growth through bundle collaborations. And I am also an avid listener to her podcast, Do The Brave Thing podcast, and through her, I have been connected with some of the best people in the online space. And so today’s guest is Kate Doster. 

Just in full transparency, this is a separate recording from me and Kate’s main talk about email marketing. We were experiencing some technical difficulties so we had to record this three times, you all. Three times just to bring this Systems and Workflow Magic Podcast to you. So, we made it happen. So I just wanna give a shout-out to Kate for being so flexible and fun to chat with.

But today’s topic is all about shifting your mindset and limiting beliefs around email marketing because we all have them. Regardless if we know that or not. It might be at the back of our minds, or it might be at the forefront of our minds, and we are fully aware of what is holding us back from email marketing.

So Kate is going to share five truly amazing points with us in this episode. So please tune in, take lots of notes, and of course, give her a follow and subscribe to her podcast after you listen in to this episode, and then send us a DM and let us know which point really stuck out to you! 

I am going to be honest with you about point number two — I won’t share it with you right now, but point number two is something that I am still working through myself and so it was really nice like hashing it out with Kate. I told her at one point in the podcast, I was like, this is like an email marketing therapy session with Kate Doster. So it was very helpful just to voice out my own frustrations with what is holding me back from really pushing myself with email marketing.

And so you all are in for a treat today. So without further ado, like, let’s dive into episode 78 of the Systems and Workflow Magic Podcast.

Kate, thank you so much again for being here on the podcast, and I am thrilled you are here and that you are going to be helping the Systems and Workflow Magic audience start shifting their limiting beliefs about email marketing. What would you say are some top limiting beliefs when it comes to email marketing from your experience?

Kate Doster
That people hate getting emails! But the truth is, they hate getting bad emails, and we can definitely make sure that we don’t have you guys sending any bad emails.

Dolly DeLong
So would you say that because people hate getting bad emails, people just assume, oh, they’re gonna hate getting emails from me because I don’t know how to write an email?

Kate Doster
I think that that’s exactly where it is, because I feel like we’ve all been on somebody’s email list where, and this is how we’re gonna break down, what’s a good email, a bad email, where they’re emailing us maybe like several times a day, especially like marketers.

I feel like, especially if you are in a niche where you’re dealing with more consumers, that’s just not something that’s, you know, good or maybe like you’re on say Sephora’s, and again, they’re emailing you every single day with a new makeup item or this sort of thing. You’re just like, man, like I’m not, I’m not into this.

So it sort of leaves a bad taste in your mouth, but you have to realize that you do not have to operate like those other people. What makes a good email is something that you find interesting, something that is fun to read, something that is useful, and something that you’re kind of focused on right now, something that is a priority, and I think especially when it comes to, say unsubscribes, people get really, really afraid about sending emails because they’re afraid of getting unsubscribes and this goes into the second mindset thing. They see unsubscribes as almost being an attack on their character. I’m not good enough. I must suck. This stuff is bad. I’m the worst. And you can see this in two different ways because it depends on your personality. You can be sort of the Pollyanna approach, like, oh man, you know, they already have amazing photography and I did my job and it’s great.

Or you can be like, you know what? Screw them. If they did not think that what I was talking about was interesting, be gone, and good riddance because I’m only here to help those that are ready to take action. And clearly, if they’re unsubscribing, they’re not taking action. I mean, the thing to realize about unsubscribes, in general, is that maybe, like I was saying, it’s just not a top priority anymore.

Human beings tend to lose interest in things. So maybe they were really interested in running a summit like two or three months ago. They either had the summit or they’re like, they’re onto the next shiny thing now that they wanna do TikTok or other stuff, and here’s the thing, if you’re still showing up consistently in their inbox with great quality stuff, even though they might not be into summits currently, they’re gonna tell their friends that, oh man, like you know who you should follow.

You should follow X, Y, and Z because they’re really gonna help you with your summit, or your branding, or your time management, or like, oh, they made me feel so much better, um, about my breastfeeding journey. Right. So that’s what we’re going for here. So number one, thinking that everyone hates emails and no one wants to read them. And number two, thinking that unsubscribes are a personal attack on your character because they are not.

Dolly DeLong
I love number two. Before you move on to number three, I just wanna say, I have struggled, with seeing unsubscribes as a personal attack on me. Cause I’m like, ugh, I’m not offended, but I take it to heart and I have been getting a little better at it and I see it as, I’ve tried to shift my mindset to think, okay, now even if they have unsubscribed, maybe what I have to offer is not serving them, and that’s okay. I need to serve the people who want to be here. So I’m trying to look at it that way. Also, to the people who are listening to this podcast. “Oh my goodness, Dolly. But what if they unsubscribe and then they say something mean to you?”, I’ve had that happen. I’m sure, Kate, you’ve had that happen. People just write the meanest nastiest things and you just gotta laugh.

Kate Doster
That could be number three. We’ll talk about it. 

Dolly DeLong
You just gotta laugh about it. I’ll let you share that point because somebody said something really interesting to me about that the other day. The fact that they take the time and energy to write to you something mean and nasty that they probably wouldn’t say to your face. You should just laugh about that. That’s what, how I’ve been looking at like that.

Kate Doster
Right, and I think that kind of like anything, it’s a learned skill. You’ve gotta develop that muscle to have sort of a bit of a thicker skin. So don’t feel bad if it’s coming at you. You have to realize that 9 times out of 10, the reason, why we’re laughing, is because like I know, like myself in doubt, like we don’t have time to send people hate mail.

Like how? Like pathetic. Like what are you going on that you have to do this? Right? So sometimes you just have to think that people are gonna be miserable or they’re having a really bad day and maybe your email just sort of rubbed them, the lost the wrong way or it was the, the last straw, or maybe there’s no one in their life because they’re getting kinda like crapped on by everyone else.

They figure, oh, I can attack a stranger on the internet. And so there are a couple of different ways you can handle it. Because I wanna give some tactical advice. You can feel like myself and Dolly and be like, laugh at them and then make sure they’re deleted from everything and that they get blacklisted and can’t buy from you ever again because you’re not gonna tolerate it.

Two, you can meet them with fire, which I don’t normally recommend. Or you can always ask them what their intention was behind that email or one of my friends Liz, she’ll just be like, I know that there’s a screen between us, but I did want to remind you that you were sending this to an actual person, so whatever is going on in your life to make you seem so upset, I really do hope that, this helps you gets over it, but you have to remember, I’m also a person with feelings who are just trying to help people and you know, if we don’t jive, then we don’t jive. So very rarely do I reply back to haters and very rarely do we get them because I do try to make sure all my branding, all my marketing, all my sales pages, and all my landing pages have my flavor in it. I am, I don’t have a unique personality, but like I’m really corny and quirky and I just sent out an email with a whole bunch of train puns in it today, right? So you kind of know what you’re getting when you’re hanging out with me, right? If you are somebody who is like very professional and you cater to people that are like C-suite executives and another is very serious,  I’m not the person for you and I want you to go find the person that is like, because you’re like, oh, you’re so unprofessional. 

It’s like, well, the seven figures in my bank account don’t seem to think I’m unprofessional, so I don’t need to worry. But, I also don’t need to justify that to you. So like, why don’t you go and do your own thing? I’m gonna go and do mine. 

Like I said, the only time that I think that I replied back to a hate message was they were attacking my audience and that I will not stand for like you can say whatever the hell you wanna say about me. Pardon the swearing everyone, but the second you go after them, it is mama bear mode.

I do not think so. And it was actually around the topic of unsubscribes and they’re like, I can’t believe it. People need to hear that. Getting unsubscribes is a good thing and they’re taking action. Everyone knows that you’re supposed to be sending emails, like, why would they be coming to you if they weren’t actually gonna send stuff?

 And it’s like, Nope. So that person got a reply back, and then I’m like, don’t worry, you’re never gonna hear from me again because you’re officially blocked, so it’ll be cool. 

Dolly DeLong
I will admit Kate, sometimes I will take screenshots of people’s ridiculous, not that I’ve gotten a lot, but the three, let’s say three in the past year, and I’ll send it to one of my online biz friends. We just share everything together, and we will laugh about it. That is how I, um, tend to cope with when I get frustrated, I’m like, okay, how can I laugh about this?

And we’re like, and ironically, the person’s name is like some memeable name. And I, that is what, how I cope with the, the haters.

Kate Doster
Yeah, and again, you’re gonna get better at it as it goes, but you also have to remember that you and your emails and all that, it’s not who you are as a person. Your business is a part of you, even if it’s a personal brand.

So again, if you need to for a while to develop that thick skin, you can think of it kind of like the character that, Hey is Dolly DeLong that is Systems and Workflow, the character that is Kate Doster .com, right? It’s not Kate Doster. They don’t see me 24/7. They don’t, even though I’m very much online as I am in real life like you just, you can’t take this amount of corniness out of a person.

I think that that is just really something to focus on and like I talk about in that email, I. Unsubscribes mean that you actually took an action, especially to your weekly newsletter because if you never sent an email, then nobody would be able to unsubscribe in the first place and that number in your convert kit account means nothing if you don’t have a relationship with those people.

And I’ll be so mad if I’m gonna allow you to let a few bad apples ruin your chance to be able to make somebody else’s day better. Because even if you can make somebody else’s day better by sharing a chicken stew recipe, just so now they don’t have to think about it with dinner, but like Sally is like, you know, chickens have all these probiotics and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Like I don’t care. Sally can go and have her fit wherever she wants, but I’m gonna talk to Susan and Marie who are just like, I can’t even tonight and I have to feed everybody. So do not let those bad apples, or being afraid of those sorts of hate emails prevent you from actually making somebody stay a little bit better.

Sometimes it’s just an escape for them just to hear about the latest romance novel or how to water paint some hills to make them look nice with dimension and highlights. It doesn’t have to be, you know, Oprah-level, mind-changing, just, just a little something to make their day better.

Dolly DeLong
I love that, this is more of a therapy email marketing therapy session with Kate Doster.

Kate Doster
Well again, these are the things that Dolly and I can’t get you to hit send and to do the things that we actually are talking about in her upcoming summit, spoil the alert like, it’s not gonna work. We need y’all to follow through.

And most of the time, the reason why we don’t follow through if should really boil it down is there’s something in our brain that’s like, ooh, this is not safe, like, who are you to talk about this? Or you’re not good enough. So we need to address the tactical and the mindset portion so we can just have you guys go at it with every tool in that toolbox.

Dolly DeLong
Awesome, and that’s why I’m so excited to have you a part of the summit. And since we are talking about the summit, do you mind sharing a little bit about what you are gonna be talking about at the Systems and Workflow Magic Summit, the email marketing edition?

Kate Doster
Sure. So we are gonna be talking about sales emails that actually sort of convert.

So I know that we have other people that are gonna be talking about connecting the emails and stories. Um, and those things are all really great as well, but sometimes you just sort of need the click. So we’re gonna talk about some practical ways to actually get the click, but we’re also going to still be talking about ways to structure sales emails that make you feel good to send and make people feel happy to read.

And also be like, and I want this really bad because the one thing that I wanna help you guys get away from is, oh my goodness, I love all of your stuff. But then like, they don’t love it enough to like open their wallet. Not, not everyone has to pay us, but like, you really loved me as much as you, and I have this amazing thing over here that’s gonna help you like a million times more than all my free stuff.

Like, come on. So that is what we are gonna be talking about, or we’re gonna be talking about writing sales, emails that sort of sound like you, and being able to get higher conversion rates as well.

Dolly DeLong
And I, I promise you, to the listener who is wondering, okay, is this gonna be fluff or is there gonna be strategy takeaway points?

I guarantee you that Kate is going to have some strategy and some very juicy points to share with you, so you can take away, after 20 minutes of listening to her speak, you will have action steps because from my experience, from learning from Kate, she helps you take action.

Kate Doster
Thank you, Dolly. So good.

Dolly DeLong
Oh, well, it’s the truth. And speaking of action-taking, I know that you have your own bundle that you are leading later on this month, and if you’re listening to this live, this is May of 2023 and it’s called the Do the Brave Thing Premium Bundle. Do you mind sharing with my audience what this bundle is about?

Kate Doster
Sure. So I wanted to find resources that were gonna help people get results faster. That’s always sort of been my biggest goal because even little results, and I’m not talking about like, oh, like getting you to like your first, you know, 10K months if you’re barely making 500, right? I want you to get to that 500.

I want you to have. You know, tips and strategies and things that work right now when it comes to online business because if people are trying to sell you or talk to you about strategies that worked for them back in like even 2020, it’s not going to work. Consumer behaviors have changed. The world has changed.

Obviously, look at February of 2020 versus right now for 2023, and so I wanna make sure that you have the tools and resources to take action in a way that feels good for you and works really great for your actual brain, but gives you that sort of step ahead because, and this is something that I’ve really been speaking about recently, I think that everybody should try all the things.

I’m very into that, but it’s one of those things if you absolutely hate talking to people and being one-on-one, then you’re not gonna sell a premium coaching package because that’s not your modality. Whereas something like maybe you’re, you know, you’re really creative and you constantly have new ideas, so then obviously doing something like a more of a membership model is going to make a lot of sense.

So I wanna make sure that we are playing into your strengths and giving you things in order to get there even faster. So, I mean, we have so many things in this paid bundle. We have a subscriber strategy workbook. We have stuff dealing with Canva in general, because you know, everyone is going there.

We have something called the Profit Comeback, which is really great. We have scared to be seen by my friend Faith Mariah, which is an amazing course. Oh my goodness. We just have so many things we have just pre-sell them in there. We’ve got a Trello course in there. It just, there are so many amazing things to sort of help you in whatever facet of your business that you need.

And Dolly is actually giving us her bookkeeping templates for creative because, I know I said stick to your lane for the things that you love to do, but everyone needs to have bookkeeping. Mm-hmm. Right? It’s just, unfortunately, it is the way that it needs to be because we want to make sure not only that our business is profitable, but when it does come time to pay taxes and things like that, we’re seeing what’s going on.

I know when you were on my podcast, you shared the same thing. You are making money, and you were making money, what seemed like every single day. But what ended up happening is that at the end of the day, you were redlining and you didn’t know about this until your husband looked at your stuff, which is why you’re passionate about helping people with those systems and numbers.

 Again, that other part, right? If only I tackled math, but I’m like, well, we have Dolly that helps with math and all that backend work so it can help. And so. It is just one of those things that we are constantly trying to add new things so that way you guys get the best, best, best possible deal that you possibly can.

Perhaps there are some creators in there that you’ve been like, I don’t know, I kind of wanna test out their product. I’m not sure. It’s kind of like you would get one product and then all of a sudden you’re getting, you know, 30 other bonuses, which is pretty cool. So, very excited about the Do the Brave Thing Bundle.

You can just always head on over to katedoster.com/bundle and it will send you over either to the wait list page or also it’ll send you over to the sales page at fly if you happen to listen to this afterward. I got everybody to give me their best tip for growing their audience in 2023 things that they’ve actually implemented so far this year.

 Um, and that’s a free gift and it’s gonna be available all of the time over at katedoster.com/bundle.

Dolly DeLong
Awesome. And just as a reminder to everyone, everything that Kate and I are discussing, all the resources are going to be in the show notes and also, so you can snag your free ticket to the email marketing summit.

You can also check out the Do the Brave Thing Premium Bundle. And then, of course, I’ve added all of Kate’s links and resources so that you can give her a follow. If you wanna listen to her podcast, or if you want to follow her on Instagram, I have put all the links there, but just to kinda revisit the heart behind this podcast episode.

I wanna remind everyone again, just the reason why we are talking about shifting your mindsets. Around email marketing is because we want you to, like what Kate would say in her podcast, do the brave thing and actually take steps in implementing email marketing into your own business. The three points we talked about, in recap are, people hate getting emails, but the truth is that they hate getting bad emails.

So you might have a fear of sending out those bad emails. Number two, you may see unsubscribed as an attack on your character. So you need to shift your mindset around that as well. And then number three, haters in your inbox, how to deal with them, and how to like turn that mindset around as well.

Is there anything else you want to add, Kate, before we sign off for the week?

Kate Doster
Yes. I had a number four that I did want to address, and that is it is okay to tell people about things more than once. Now, we would like to think that all of our subscribers are feverously refreshing their inboxes, looking for Dolly’s name over and over, and over and over again.

But the truth is that life happens, right? Or it might have just been an email day where they had gotten a whole bunch of other emails. Right? And so now you’re over on page two. No one ever gets over to page two, especially if you’re in the promotional tab, and there’s nothing wrong with being over there.

So you want to, and I always come at this with, if I’m going to be sending an email about, say something that I’ve already talked about, say the summit that we’ve talked about, or the bundle that we’ve already talked about. I don’t want you to repeat the exact same thing and be, you need to do this. 

No, how is this coming from another angle? What is another benefit of this? What is another resource? What is another mistake that they’re going to avoid again? And sometimes again, treat people like people. Some people are just procrastinators, so like sometimes you just have to send that last email that is just, you know, we’ve been talking a lot about X, Y, and Z, and how product B is gonna help get you there.

Y’all, if you have been procrastinating, now is the time my dopamine junkies, we need to get on this train cuz it’s leaving the station. So do not feel like, oh my goodness. Like I sent one sales email about that one product and nobody bought it, only a handful of people bought it. I can never mention it again.

No, just talk about it in a different way. Feature another feature. Feature another benefit. Talk about a student. There’s a myriad of ways that you can talk about your offer. Regardless of if you are a service provider or a digital product creator, like most of my students, blogger, it does not matter. Again, even if somebody is reading all of those emails, some people are just gonna wait till the last minute.

Some people are gonna be like, oh, I never really thought about it this way before. It’s okay. Same thing with, and I guess this is number five, we’re gonna wrap it up. Even if somebody has heard you say whatever information you were sending, because it’s the, well, doesn’t everybody know this effect? I guarantee you that they haven’t put it into action and like, here’s the cool part.

If they have put it into action, they’re gonna reply back and be like, oh my goodness, I actually did this when you brought this up a couple of months ago, and here’s what happened. Boom. Instant testimonial for you. Yay! Now you don’t have to hunt people down for it because most of the time people are gonna be like, you know, I heard you say that, or I know that you could do that, but Trello, but I always forgot about it.

Thanks for reminding me. You’re gonna get more of those replies and, everybody knows that you should do this. Like, and those people don’t reply back to you. Just kick them off. They’re, they’re not cool enough to be on your list. I’m not gonna pay for somebody who’s annoying. No, you’re out, dude. You did not pass the cool kid test.

Dolly DeLong
I love that. That’s such a good reminder. So Kate, these five points, of course, will be in the show notes. Everybody who’s listening, to these will be in the show notes. So you can read it if you need to. If you can print it out from the actual blog post and look at it every day at your office and remind yourself about these.

 These shifts that you should be making in your mind, in creating positive traction for yourself as you gain momentum in email marketing. So, Kate, you have brought so much wisdom today to the podcast and I wanna say thank you so much.

Kate Doster
Thank you so much for having me

Email your list, everyone, and make sure you sign up for the summit.

There’s a link below. Super important stuff.

Dolly DeLong
Awesome. Thank you so much, Kate, and to everyone else thank you again for showing up and I hope you stay streamlined and magical with your workflows and your email marketing this week. You amazing muggle you and I hope to see you again next week for more systems and workflow magic. Bye!