Popular culture seems to support a perception that social media is the ultimate marketing solution. And email? Well email is just plain old-fashioned. It’s 31 flavors vs vanilla. And who can blame people for believing this narrative, after all social media has created a stunning level of popularity. But when it comes to return on your marketing investment, the winner is clear.
On this Elementality, Carl tells Abby why he believes email is the most underutilized, and powerful, marketing tool available to advisors. When you are given an email address, you actually receive that person’s permission to engage in a conversation. And while social media may seem omnipresent, email remains more personal and promotes closer advisor/prospect connections.
Podcast Transcript
Carl Richards:
I think of all the social media platforms, they could all be valuable. I think of their real main purpose is to get people to… Their real main purpose is to give value. And my favorite phrase of this is like, if you love this, if you like this, you would love my email. So like we’re posting things on LinkedIn and we’re saying, and it’s valuable. It’s not just like clickbait. It’s not linked to gated content. It’s literally like, here’s a valuable thing. It’s just snippet though, ’cause that’s the nature of those platforms.
Abby Morton:
Here’s a little bit, here’s a video or here’s something I wrote or.
Carl Richards:
And if all you do is view that you’re gonna think I’m valuable, like I respected the permission you gave me, like I respected your attention, like I honored it. And if you want more, if you like this, you would love the weekly email I send out.
Abby Morton:
Right.
Jordan Haines:
Welcome to Elementality. Each episode we will explore the challenges and the opportunities faced by financial advisors, and how advisors can use elements to grow their business and serve their clients better. We hope you enjoy this episode.
Abby Morton:
Welcome to Elementality everyone. I’m your host today, Abby here with Carl Richards. Welcome Carl.
Carl Richards:
Thanks Abby. I’m so excited.
Abby Morton:
I’m so happy to be here. I have to say, sitting across from you recording these episodes, I’m like pinching myself that I am sitting here in the same room as Carl Richards, let alone doing a podcast with you.
Carl Richards:
Oh, stop.
Abby Morton:
Never in a million years when I got into the industry only five years ago, did I ever think I would be here?
Carl Richards:
That’s so kind.
Abby Morton:
So, you have done some amazing work.
Carl Richards:
Honored. Thank you. Yeah. Super excited to be here.
Abby Morton:
Yes. So today we’re talking about email and how do you use your email list is marketing, right? These episodes we’re talking about recently is how to really like power up and take your marketing efforts to the next level. How can using elements in some way help you provide value and get that next client? Carl, we all know that you send amazing emails, you send ’em all the time. Probably even when you’re sleeping you have emails going out. So I’ve been excited to talk to you about emails today. So start us off, like, tell me how, like why do you think emails? Having an email list. Like what does that mean whenever we say email marketing? Like what does that really mean?
Carl Richards:
Yeah, yeah. So I remember where I was, I remember I was driving through the Virgin River Gorge on the way home from Las Vegas. So just before you get to St. George, Utah, out in the middle of the desert, there’s this big gorge. This big canyon.
Abby Morton:
Yes. It’s gorgeous.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. I was driving through the…
Abby Morton:
If you’ve never driven through there. You just need to take that drive. ‘Cause it’s gorgeous.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. So I was driving home listening to Seth Godin’s permission marketing. So this is one of his earliest books, permission Marketing. And I remember just like, I literally can remember exactly where I was in the canyon, where I was just like, oh my gosh, this is the smartest thing I’ve ever heard. And the fundamental concept around it was that there was interruption marketing and there’s permission marketing, and permission is when somebody raises their hand and says, you can communicate with me again.
Abby Morton:
Okay. I love that.
Carl Richards:
And I remember how important that concept was to me, was like, what a blessing that somebody agrees to give me a little bit of their attention. Like, gives me permission to take a little bit of their attention, ’cause it’s so valuable, like time and attention. But I remember thinking like, well where does that live? Like what does it even mean to have… So I started thinking like a permission asset. Like the permission to communicate against the most valuable thing I have. And I would submit, it’s actually the most valuable thing advisors have. I know we might need to fight about that a little bit, but it’s the most valuable thing that an advisor has, more than the business more… Because if you lose permission and you could think of it as trust, if you lose the trust somebody’s given you. And it’s not hard to imagine some things you could do that would end up on the front page of your local paper and you would lose that trust. You have nothing left.
Carl Richards:
So I was like, “Okay, if it’s the most valuable thing I own, where does it live?” I understand on the balance sheet it could be under a goodwill, but where does it actually live? And that’s when I was like, well I think the best place for it to live is in my email list. Like, you’ve given me permission to communicate again. The problem most advisors, and I know, like if you are sitting at your desk right now listening to this, do me a favor and reach down with your left hand and open the top drawer of your desk, and what are you gonna find in there? And maybe times have changed, maybe this is all in our iPhones now, but most of us are gonna find a pile of business cards.
Abby Morton:
Yep. I know I have one sitting on my desk.
Carl Richards:
Yeah, that we exchanged at some event, or we met someone and they said, “Hey, here’s my card. Stay in touch.” And our version of taking care of that permission that that person just gave us is to put it in the top drawer of the desk. Right? And I was like, what an underutilized asset. And we can talk about why email in a minute, but that’s the underpinning is like, look, you gave me permission to communicate again. I’m going to treat that sacredly with the trust and the respect it deserves. And I’m also gonna take you at your word, like, I’ve got something valuable to share. You’ve said I’ve got permission to send it to you. What’s the easiest way for me to get it to you is in an email. And since I know you’re gonna ask why email, right? Let me just quickly… If you had built your business on the platform called MySpace, you’d no longer… And most of you listening don’t even know what I’m talking about.
[laughter]
Carl Richards:
Imagine if you built your business on something like imagine like a social media platform like with a little blue bird like Twitter and you built your whole business on it, ’cause that’s the way the world’s going. And then something crazy like a really eccentric billionaire decides to buy it. I mean, this is just really far out there. Like it would never happen and change the way it’s used. And suddenly you find that it’s really not very valuable. And to be honest, could not even, it could go the way of MySpace it could be gone. Imagine if you be your whole business on Facebook? All of those places you’re renting real estate, in an email list, you own it. That was the big difference to me, is I’ve seen MySpace come and go. I’ve seen my… I had people tell me, Facebook, you’re not even gonna use the internet soon. It’s only gonna be Facebook. Twitter, now I’m at the point where I’m like, I don’t even know if it has any value anymore.
Abby Morton:
It’s in a limbo state. Yeah.
Carl Richards:
But the whole time my email list has been growing. There’s 50,000 people on it now. And it converts if that’s what we care about. At a 10 to one compared to any of these other places. So that’s why email.
Abby Morton:
So I wanna back up just a minute.
Carl Richards:
Yeah please.
Abby Morton:
To talk about this, like words you used of this permission asset. Would you say that like MySpace is an example of permission asset at the time when it was big and then like Twitter, it’s like the place where you’re communicating and interacting with your people. Further define that for me.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. So somebody could give you permission to communicate with them again on Twitter by following you. That’s a little exchange of permission.
Abby Morton:
Okay.
Carl Richards:
And you can see how would you value the difference between the permission you got on Twitter by somebody following you compared to sending them an email. Like it’s just not even in the same world. Do you know what I mean? In terms of value, sending them an email is so much more valuable ’cause you know they get it versus some… So yes. That’s another way you could think of somebody raised their hand on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook or MySpace or TikTok or any of these and said, I’m gonna give you permission to communicate with me again. By following you.
Abby Morton:
And so then we take what an advisor could do. Let’s say they’re on Twitter and they get these followers. Are you then saying they take those emails or find the emails of these people through Twitter and like put them into their email database, whatever it may be, and communicate with them in that way? Or do you feel like, well they follow me on Twitter so I can only communicate with them through Twitter.
Carl Richards:
Yeah, I mean it’s kind of a hybrid of what you just said. So I think of all the social media platforms, they could all be valuable. I think of their real main purpose is to get people to… The real main purpose is to give value. And my favorite phrase of this is like: If you like this, you would love my email. So like we’re posting things on LinkedIn and we’re saying, and it’s valuable. It’s not just like, you know, clickbait. It’s not linked to gated content. It’s literally like here’s a valuable thing. It’s just snippet though, ’cause that’s the nature of those platforms.
Abby Morton:
Here’s a little bit, here’s a video or here’s something I wrote or…
Carl Richards:
And if all you do is view that you’re gonna think I’m valuable, like I respected the permission you gave me, like I respected your attention, like I honored it and if you want more, if you like this, you would love the weekly email I send out. So I’m thinking if you were to think of this as like hub and spoke. All these social media platforms serve a purpose. So does going to the rotary club. I think all those as hub, sorry, as spokes out on the hub. The center of that is my email list.
Abby Morton:
Is your email list.
Carl Richards:
So everything you’re doing, like if you’re presenting at the Rotary Club, you’re saying thanks for being here tonight, I respect the trust. You know, like you’re respecting the trust, you’re doing something valuable, and then you’re saying, Hey, by the way, I send out a weekly email or a monthly email, you can sign up here. And you’re not doing that without their permission. Like, I’m not going and finding the emails of somebody on LinkedIn and putting them in. I’m saying, Hey, if you want that opt in, here’s where you go.
Abby Morton:
‘Cause it comes back to Seth Godin and what he taught of they’re giving you permission.
Carl Richards:
For sure.
Abby Morton:
I want you to communicate with you because I see value in what you have to say.
Carl Richards:
For sure.
Abby Morton:
And I think I’m gonna get something out of it.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. Just real quickly, one of the stories he tells is, if you go to Grand Central Station and you walk up to people, strangers in Grand Central Station and you say, “I have a $20 bill, I’ll give it to you for five bucks.” Everybody’s going to run from you. [laughter] If you go to your neighbor and you put $20 in their mailbox and you do that for four or five days and then you go and knock on the door and say, Hey, I’m the guy that’s been putting $20 in your mailbox. I have another $20 bill, I’ll trade it for five bucks. They’re going to do that. So the idea of continually dropping valuable stuff and then, and Gary Vaynerchuk called it Jab Jab, Right Hook or left hook, which I didn’t love, but the idea was like value, value, value ask.
Abby Morton:
Yeah, I like that. Well I think that reminds me of another story. We had Natalie Taylor on the podcast, it’s probably about a year ago now, but I remember something I learned from her too, of like, she’d been doing this FinTech thing for a long time and she decided she wanted to get back into practicing as an advisor. And she just said, I just was always building this email list, and once a week I’d send an email or once a month. She’s like, it was never like a very consistent thing. It was just like, I thought I had something valuable to say, so I’m gonna email my list and say it. And so then when she wanted to open her practice, she had this email list. Already ready to go. She said, Hey, I’m opening my doors. Would any of you like advice and people, I don’t know that they came pouring in, but it was like, you know, an instant, I don’t remember how many clients, but let’s say instant 10 clients just from this email list that she had been building over time. And I just thought that’s interesting. I also liked the fact that she said, and I’m interested on your take on this. Is I only said something when I had something to say. Sometimes it was a weekly thing, sometimes it was every month, but sometimes, it went six months and I didn’t worry too much about the cadence. Do you feel like you should worry about the cadence? Like what’s your take on that?
Carl Richards:
Yeah, look, I love that and I humbly like sort of… I’ve done it a different way. And the different way is I feel like if I wait till I feel like I only have something valuable to say, I probably will never say it. Because I’ll always be, that’ll always be my place to hide. Now having said that, I have friends that send out emails and they say reliably inconsistent, which I think is great. I have a buddy who sends out an email that that’s what it’s sign up for my reliably inconsistent email.
[chuckle]
Abby Morton:
I like that.
Carl Richards:
Which is really cool. Right. It’s fine. And then the other thing that forced me to do was like, wait, it was every Thursday, this email’s going out at 10 o’clock every Thursday. People came to expect it, if I missed Thursday and went even like, went to like one o’clock, I got emails that said, Hey, where’s my email? Right. So I like the idea of like, I’m expecting it to come. It also forces me, I realize the pressure that puts on, like I don’t have anything to say. You do.
Abby Morton:
I mean that’s how I… I’m like, I just, I’m afraid to go like start my own thing. Like what would I say? Like I’m just little me. Right? It’s hard to feel like that. But maybe you’re right that you need to know the personality type that you are. If you’re like a Natalie Taylor, like can be inconsistently inconsistent, but still do it, then do that. But maybe like you, you needed to have this cadence of like, I know what’s happening and I gotta do it and that’s what I need to get it out the door of.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. And I promise you if I had said like, well what do I feel like I wouldn’t have… I would’ve never sent an email every week. But that’s been the most valuable. Like, I can’t even describe, I mean, it’s changed my entire career.
Abby Morton:
Talk to me about that.
Carl Richards:
My entire career.
Abby Morton:
Like why does an email, how has an email list changed your career?
Carl Richards:
Just purely putting yourself at risk for good things to happen. Do you know what I mean? Like consistently playing in traffic. And so for me, it changed my career as an advisor. I can remember Rob, there’s a guy named Rob. I would send… So the way this started is I would sit in my office and I’d have a list of clients and prospective clients on like a piece of paper. And I would read things in the morning, like the news and the whatever, and I would try to match things up. I’d say, I remember her name wasn’t Christy. It was, what was her name? It was Christy. Christy was a technology sales rep for a big storage company. And I remember reading an article about something around sales and thinking Christy would love that.
Carl Richards:
And I would say, Christy, read this article, thought of you. And I would send it. And I did that every day for like a half an hour, every morning I would just try to match people up. And Rob got one and I sent a couple different things to Rob. And then I went to visit Rob once at his office and they had this big open floor plan. And we were walking around and people were like, Rob was introducing people. Carl’s the one that sends me those emails that I forward to you. And people were like, well, can I get those? And I was like that’s super fascinating. That’s when I put them all on a list and sent out one email of valuable things. So, it over and over. If I were to have like, and we’ll talk about this at some point in the future, but if we were to have a breakfast meeting, for instance, like how am I gonna invite people to the breakfast meeting? Right. Well, I have an email list. And then beyond that, like just like the book, the New York Times column, I’m not suggesting that’s anybody, it was certainly wasn’t my goal. I would’ve never dared have that as a goal. But it only happened because of the email. The book only got published because I had an email list. Right. I bet I’m sitting here talking to you only because Reece read an email.
Abby Morton:
That’s true. Yes. Okay. So interesting. So when you have this email list, I’m thinking you just, you do a newsletter, like does it have to be a newsletter? Like how do you figure out these things to say? We’ve talked a little bit about that. Like you have something to say, you’re an advisor, you know? And you even gave a good example of, I’m just reading things in the news and matching it up with people. But let’s say I decide to do this every week and I’m doing this consistent thing. Is it always just labeled as my newsletter and…
Carl Richards:
Yeah. Here’s the way I would think about it. This is the super simple way to do this. I was super creative in what I called mine. I called it the weekly letter. It’s just a crazy idea, right? So I started the weekly letter. Here’s the super simple way to do it. Do you read things? Yes.
Abby Morton:
Yes.
Carl Richards:
Do you think about what you read? Yes.
Abby Morton:
Yes.
Carl Richards:
What if you just kept a notebook? Like I have a crazy idea. Apple Notes, there’s a… I don’t know if anybody knows this. There’s a really complex tool, like really sophisticated tool on your iPhone called notes. If as you’re reading, what if you just, and you could use a physical notebook next to where you read, you could use click up, you could use Trello, you could use Evernote.
Abby Morton:
Whatever you want.
Carl Richards:
Whatever you want, right? Whatever you want. And please spend 17 months debating which one to use. ‘Cause that’ll give you a great place to hide. So that’s a great idea.
Abby Morton:
That’s the tip. Don’t hide, get going.
Carl Richards:
Yeah, yeah. So Apple notes or go buy yourself a cheap notebook at the news, at the whatever, steal your daughter’s one from school. So you write down what you read and what you thought, just a sentence or two about it. That’s number one. The second thing you do is do you talk to other humans, namely clients or prospective clients? Yes. Pay attention to the questions they ask you. When they ask you a question, write down the question and write down the answer. And then when it comes to be Wednesday night, it’s Thursday morning at eight, ’cause your email goes out Thursday at 10. You open the notebook, you have eight things in there ’cause you read five and you had three conversations. You pick the three that mattered the most to you. One of them should not be related to money at all. Right.
Abby Morton:
Interesting. Yeah.
Carl Richards:
And I always found those to be the ones that people responded the most to. Like, I love this article about Jimmy Butler’s playoff run, like whatever it is. And then two of them are related to money in some way. It could be like somebody wrote something really good about how to behave in a scary market. It could be that some idea about a different way of thinking about retirement. So then you open your newsletter thing, and please spend 24 months debating which service to use. Or you could use MailChimp or ConvertKit. Right? You open your newsletter thing, you write, here’s three things I read this week. I think you would find valuable. You put the link in a sentence and that’s all. That’s like the whole pressure. Like what you’re gonna find is that sentence will grow to two or three. It might even grow to a paragraph.
Abby Morton:
I could really send one sentence with a link.
Carl Richards:
100% so.
Abby Morton:
That doesn’t feel like… How is that even doing anything?
Carl Richards:
Here’s the deal. You will find over and over and over think of all the time I spend wondering what I should pay attention to, if I could have a trusted voice in my life that serves as a curator. And I can’t tell you the number of clients that said I’ve stopped paying attention too much in the news because I know if it’s important for me to be thinking about, it’ll show up in your weekly letter. If that’s all you do.
Abby Morton:
Interesting.
Carl Richards:
If that’s all you do, let alone as you write your one sentence and it grows to two or three, no pressure, don’t worry that, that has to happen. But it will just naturally start growing. People will, you’ll start injecting your own voice and your own thoughts and then that serves this amazing purpose. People want to know how you think before they hire you. They want to stalk you a bit.
Abby Morton:
Yeah, they do.
Carl Richards:
Right? They and they don’t have any other way to do it. So they read. And then the last bit is two things have to happen. In order for somebody to hire you, they have to know that they have a “problem” and they have to believe you have the solution and we have to have those lines Cross. I don’t think it’s very fun to market problems. But what’s problems show up in people’s lives through life? What’s really valuable…
Abby Morton:
Unfortunately.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. I mean, and by problem, I literally just mean like something to solve. Like in the math sense, not necessarily bad, it’s just something to solve. So when the something to solve comes up that is related to money, what we wanna do is you are in their minds. She said, ‘I’ve been getting Carl’s email for three years.” So if we can just do that at scale, right? You’ve got a 100 people and then 500 people and then a 1000 people. And the PS says, “Hey, by the way, if you find this valuable, don’t hesitate to hit forward and share it with a friend.” You’re not saying please share it, you’re just saying hit, don’t hesitate. And so it grows and it compounds and it grows. Man, I wish I would’ve started this earlier. Like I wish I would’ve started this early. 50,000 people is… I should be at half a million if I had started five years earlier.
Abby Morton:
Well, and I keep coming back to this. It’s actually something I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this concept of like, there’s no unique ideas. Everything that’s been thought is out there today. And I think you’ve just given me permission to not feel like all the pressure’s on me by myself as this little lonely advisor. Because really all I’m doing is finding the content that other people are already putting out there and just giving, passing it on, like hitting that forward button, right? Like curating the list, like you said.
Carl Richards:
Curating. Yeah.
Abby Morton:
So I’m not having to come up with all these original ideas all on my own. I’m just sharing other content. Now if that’s your bread and butter and you have these lots of unique ideas and you want to write a two-page newsletter that’s all unique ideas, I think you’d find an audience who’d wanna read that too.
Carl Richards:
For sure. What I’m trying to give people is the gateway drug. I know people who’ve done this. Look, I’ve been teaching this for a decade. Almost no one does it because it sounds… It’s just like too simple. But everyone, every single person who has done it has thanked me. Because it compounds. And they wake up and they’re like, “Geez, I’m 700 people get my letter every week. I get new clients every month from my letter.” And some of them are still doing, here’s three things I read this week.
Abby Morton:
That’s amazing.
Carl Richards:
I get some of those emails. So if that’s all you did, it would be valuable. And the other… The only the last bit I’ll mention is you have so much valuable to say, like I know you… Don’t feel pressure, but the story you told about diversification, the example you used about how to pay for school, the way you think about budgeting, the story the client just told you, all of that, we just want it out of your head. And you don’t believe it’s valuable because you’ve been doing it for so long. That’s a classic sign of imposter syndrome. So you’ve been doing it so long, you discount its value because you think everybody must know this and you’ve forgotten nobody knows what standard deviation is. Right. Normal people don’t think about volatility, you know? And so if you can just remember what it was like to be new all of that stuff’s important.
Abby Morton:
Well, and remember what it’s like. Yeah. The things that are in our heads are not in our client’s head. That’s why they’re not… They’re coming to you for help, right? So just exposing that.
Carl Richards:
Every client meeting is a story. Right. And you don’t have to say, “I met with John and Jill Smith today.” You can just say, “I was having lunch with a friend. And this conversation about how to think about life insurance came up, and we talked about this, this, and this. They found that helpful. I hope you do too. Have a great week.” Right. That’s as hard as this has to be.
Abby Morton:
Amazing. Simplicity, right, is I think what I gleaned from this, because I’ve just always thought an email list and newsletter is so overwhelming, and I’m not a writer, so there’s no way I’d wanna do that. And you might have convinced me today that I could actually do it.
Carl Richards:
Yeah. Amen. For sure. That’s super good.
Abby Morton:
All right. That’s all we have for you today.
Carl Richards:
Thanks.
Abby Morton:
To find out more about elements, go to getelements.com/demo. Elementality’s executive producers are Reece Harper and Carl Richards. Elementality is produced by Tad Henderson and directed by Abby Morton. Have a good one.