Email Marketing & Copywriting That Sells with Allison Carpio of The Conversion Kitchen – Podcast Transcript

 

SPEAKERS

Allison Carpio, Lexie Smith

 

Lexie Smith 

I met Alison through a praise Santos who was a fabulous guest on Season One of the show. Specifically though I attended one of Alison’s email marketing master classes was immediately drawn into her expert use of puns naturally, and I knew I needed more of this woman in her expertise in my life. So Alison, welcome to the show. Before we dive into all things, email, where in the world are you currently? And what do you like to do outside of work for fun?

 

Allison Carpio 

Thank you for that intro. I was cracking up the whole time. You can’t see my face right now. I’m in San Francisco, California right now. And you know, I love I mean, I talk about food a lot. So I actually love cooking hosting dinner parties last night, my friend made some dumplings, and we played some games afterwards. So I know a lot of food stuff, especially like living in a big city. We’ve got a lot of food options out here.

 

Lexie Smith 

Do you have this might be a very hard question. But like a favorite or top recommended San Francisco restaurant.

 

Allison Carpio 

Right now, Yes. The one that’s like really hot and trending right now is called good good culture club. It’s by the same people at Lee holy hill Yacht Club. And it’s like Asian fusion done really nicely. It is also a lot of like Filipino influence. So I’m a little bit biased. I also know a lot of the people who work there and who designed the menu. So it’s really nice, but I mean, the food’s really good. It’s very inventive. They’ve really mashed up a couple of things and just like thought of things that you never would have thought of go together. Their cocktail menu is really lovely. You just feel like you’re on vacation and even just the whole vibe and design of the restaurant like it’s it’s a lot of fun. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like going there. And it’s one of those places that’s kind of hard to get into so like if you don’t have a reservation just show up at 4:45pm

 

Lexie Smith 

Be ready and on call. You know, I wish I was a good cook slash like to cook but I’m not full transparency. I like eating food and really good at that part. I was just got back from Denver. I was staying with my friend I’m sure you know her Emily Merrill.

 

Allison Carpio 

She Yes, Six Degrees Society. Small World.

 

Lexie Smith 

Her husband is an unofficial five star chef. Like not really. That’s not his real job. But really he could be and was concocting all these like five star meals every single day and was so invented. We have like peanut butter, cauliflower, rice, Asian fusion bowls like, wow, my house. We’re like, chicken and asparagus.

 

Allison Carpio 

Yeah. That’s amazing. I love I love that I love when you know, like the guys are just these really creative chefs and just take care of that. That’s amazing.

 

Lexie Smith 

Yeah. So I wasn’t anticipating giving Emily’s husband, Greg, a shout out but Greg, thanks. Okay, so, Thomas show, you know, I read your very impressive bio, but I want you to walk us through your career high level up until today.

 

Allison Carpio 

So I mean, let’s say like five or so years ago, I was working at tech startups, I was in marketing, I did a little bit of copywriting, content, marketing, product, marketing, all of those things. And I wanted to do my own thing I just really wanted to, because in 2016, in the fall, I went to Spain for three months. And I told my job at the time, I said, Hey, I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time. I still want to work here. Like, do you want to keep me? And they’re like, Yeah, sure, we’ll keep you and I was like, Cool. So it was the first time I ever did fully remote work and was location independent. This was 2016, September, so Oh, almost six years ago. And I just didn’t want to come back into an office anymore. So I made it like a point to build my own business started on the side. And marketing was something I still love doing. So I really focused on that I focus on copywriting I focused on marketing strategy. But over the years, I really noticed something that in a lot of, in a lot of clients I worked with, especially the service providers, the solopreneurs, the coaches, the consultants, they didn’t really know much about email marketing, but they were really good about showing up on social. And, you know, it’s not that they didn’t know much about marketing, and they knew that it was important, but they didn’t really know what to do. So what they would end up doing is just like not really doing anything about it. But there’s so much opportunity there and I happen to knew a lot about marketing, email marketing for my clients and for my own business. So I decided like I’m gonna I’m gonna start teaching all this and really focusing on this. So I wrote a book about it, I launched a podcast about it and that is when I help clients would say,

 

Lexie Smith 

okay, so you did remote work before we were all forced to do it. So you Like the trend setter, I just want to give you the shout out for that. The rest of the world followed suit, thanks to the little thing we all know is the global pandemic, yo. Okay, so email marketing, first everyone listening? Who is thinking this topic doesn’t belong on a PR podcast? I am so excited to re educate you on why it does. So you might have heard it before, maybe not. But my personal definition of PR is, quote, The Art of cultivating opportunities through relationship building and maintenance. Now, there are many different tactics one can use to go about building said relationships. Right drumroll, one of which being email. So, Alison, I’m curious straight up. If you agree with me, do you think email marketing can be used to develop and maintain relationships?

 

Allison Carpio 

Absolutely. And the way I like to look about look at email marketing. So think of social media as like this party you’re hosting, you can kind of come in and come out, people are going live, there’s a lot of notifications happening, you’re meeting other people, you can kind of see who’s there at the party. But email is a lot more intimate. It’s like you’re having a one on one private dinner with someone. So if you think about people joining your email list, for example, like it’s a lot more personal, they’re joining you for dinner, and you know, you can only you could talk to each other, it’s really personal, they could reply to it, you’d have conversations and you know, when you think about like people where they read their emails, like it’s an intimate thing. So it’s definitely, it’s amazing for not only getting clients and getting conversions in your business, but especially with the relationship building, because it’s such a, it’s such a personal, intimate space to be in.

 

Lexie Smith 

I am a sucker for great metaphors and visuals. So thank you for that. I love it. And it’s so ties into your business. So I’ve alluded multiple times now that you’re a master at puns, right? And I feel like this is serving you up. Now, before we get into all things email marketing, tell me specifically, what is your business? And what do you do? How do you work with people?

 

Allison Carpio 

Yep, yep, so I’m this, this is called the conversion kitchen. So I help all my clients with growing their business through email. So part of that is figuring out their email strategy and how email really fits into their overall marketing. It’s not just sending emails here and there, or just like randomly sending out emails, like we really have a strategy around it to make it more sustainable, because I’m really all about that sustainability and marketing and getting off the content hamster wheel. doing more with less, less pressure, less hustle less grind, and getting more results out of it. So there’s a strategy piece and that’s going to help with that. And then we go into the, the how you’re going to be growing your email list how you’re going to be, you know, attracting clients onto your email list, engaging with them, connecting with them, and then eventually the conversion piece. And a lot of that is there’s a lot of copy in there. So we’re going to be you know, doing a lot of copy, but also, again, a lot of strategy, putting all of the building pieces into place. So that email is really working for you in the background.

 

Lexie Smith 

Okay, ready for this. So guys, you’re gonna first go to happy hour at the PR bar, then you’re gonna go to dinner at the conversion kitchen.

 

Allison Carpio 

I love it.

 

Lexie Smith 

I love it. Thank you. Okay,

 

Allison Carpio 

so the crawl really, you know, really.

 

Lexie Smith 

So now that we’re all on the same page, that email is important email is intimate. Let’s go into a bunch of different email marketing questions. One and this is a big one I hear I’m sure you literally hear this all the time. How big of a list? Do you need to utilize email marketing as an effective PR and marketing strategy?

 

Allison Carpio 

So it’s, I actually have a podcast episode on this.

 

Lexie Smith 

Oh, give it a shout out what is your show by the way, we’ll link

 

Allison Carpio 

it’s called hello delicious emails. So head on over to hell delicious emails.com It’s also on my website at the conversion kitchen.com too. And there is no magic number. It’s kind of like like, you don’t need a big list. Like I have a client for example, who she launched a her VIP packages to a very new list of less than, like 200 people. And she sold out her VIP packages simply because she was really nurturing the list. She was emailing lists, she had that strategy, you know, like it just does not matter. There are people with lists who have 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of people who you know don’t have those relationships and may not get similar or or you know, linear results from that. So don’t ever let that stop you and the way I like to think about it, especially how PR and email marketing work together. are, the more visible you are. And if you’re very strategic about it, like, you’re going to grow your email list because of it. So don’t let that stop you and use PR to advantage because I actually say like when I sit down with my clients and strategize like okay, what are some ways that we can grow the email list? PR is a really big part of it. So we want to make sure that when you are getting visibility that people are opting in or the right people are opting in. And the two can work very beautifully together.

 

Lexie Smith 

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes. All the yeses. So one thing I tell some of my clients, when I’m going to just give a use case that product based businesses, let’s say they’re not launched yet. Why would I go for press? What do I do with press? Send them to somewhere where you collect their emails? Right, such a good strategy? I, the workshop that I attended was on this topic. So it’s a question I definitely wanted to bring up today, you have something where you talk about four flavors of emails that sell when you give us a high level overview of what those flavors are.

 

Allison Carpio 

Yeah, of course, of course. And just to plug this at health literacy with.com, you can grab it there too, to see the full schpeel. The first flavor of emails is like the it’s it’s actually kind of like a nine word email, or you could think of it like a spear email, short, personal expecting reply email. And this email can be used in multiple different ways. It could be to invite someone to a an event that you’re hosting for a lunch, or it could really be a direct, like a follow up email. So a clear example of that is like, Hey, I’m hosting this masterclass, called the four flavors of emails that sell Do you want to join, let me know, and I’ll RSVP you highly effective, so easy to write. And whenever I host some kind of training for a launch, I always have that in there. Because that drives people to the launch and therefore or to the events. And that the event like there’s the selling happens there. So I always do that there. And I usually get like about half of the people who end up signing up are from that email itself. And it’s not like some 500 word email that I had to write it was just like, literally nine ish words, it was so easy. You could also use that in your welcome sequences where you, you know, just start a conversation that turns into a sales conversation. So one that I use for my own business is like, Hey, I see downloaded my training for flavor signals that sell Are you emailing your list right now. And usually people reply to that. And because I know how to steer that conversation, that will usually lead into some type of sales conversation as well. So that flavor is like a little bit more subtle. It’s not like a full on sales email. But there’s still a lot of sales flavors in it, that that come through at the end of it. So that one’s really easy to start with, I highly recommend doing that. So really easy when you could do. The second one is all about actual, like an actual event follow up email. So if someone had gone to, or someone had signed up and or attended, either a challenge that I hosted, or a webinar hosted, or or something, the follow up email is like, you know, when you’re you’re pitching your services to them, even though they’ve seen the pitch, their magic is in the follow up, because a lot of times people aren’t going to buy on the spot or fill out the application, whatever. So there’s always a follow up emails that come in there. And for the follow up emails, there’s so many different kinds of ways you can do it. My favorite kind, or like sub flavor, I guess you could say is a case study one because I love telling clients stories, for so many reasons. One, it really shows people what is possible for them. No one can ever get sick of seeing a success story because they just love you know, they love seeing someone go through the same thing that they’re going through and kind of make at the end of it until it kind of gives them that hope that whatever that they want is possible. And then finally, of course like it it positions you as the expert, because here you have this really strong proof story of working with you. So I always I always always, always have my clients highlight as many case studies as possible. And because it’s just so effective, and it’s so engaging. The third flavor, and I’m just pausing right here because I don’t actually remember but it’ll come to the third flavor. Oh, the third flavor is like a almost like the I call it the last chance Email or sort of like the after party last chance. And this one’s really important. You’ve probably seen this already. It’s like, hey, the doors are closing or you know, we start the program on whenever. But I see a lot of, I see it always done kind of, I guess incorrectly might be the best word I’m thinking of here. But I like to think of it differently. So when people think of Last Chance emails, they think of just like, you know, saying, hey, it’s last chance, Hades last chance, his last chance. Don’t forget, don’t forget, don’t forget. And it’s not just that it’s annoying. It’s just that you know, when you’re in that frame of mind of just like trying to like, push people and push people and push people, it kind of shows through in your copy. The way I like to think about it, when you’re having some sort of like, hey, heads up, like last chance thing. Think of it like you’re you’re hosting a dinner party, your dinner parties, your lunch, and your there’s going to be an after party at the bar down the street, probably the PR bar, like we’re going to the bar down the street.

 

Allison Carpio 

And you’re going at like 10pm, it’s 945. And you’re like, hey, the cars are arriving to bring us to the after party who’s ready the car is leaving in like, it’s arriving in like five minutes. And we’re gonna leave in 10 minutes kind of thing. So when you think of it that way, it feels less like you’re having to push people and you’re just saying hey, like, if you’re still interested, the cars leaving really soon, like, we don’t, I don’t want you to miss the car, if you want to join us. So like, let me know if you’re in and that kind of thing. So it’s just a different way of thinking about how to, to make sure that you’re taking care of the people who are interested before, before a certain timeline that you have for your launch or sales event. And then the fourth one, so surprise, there’s many different flavors. So the fourth one that I’ll talk about today, is your origin story. And what’s interesting about this one, I usually have my clients put this in their welcome sequence. Your origin story just really shares how you why you do what you do, really, really paints the picture of that defining moment that really pushed you to want to make a change and do something about it and likely, like create your business or offer whatever. I had a client who sent out her origin story to her email list before she you know, launch welcome sequence. And she had something like three or four calls booked just from that email alone. Because it was just so powerful. So don’t ever underestimate the power of your own story. People want to hear it they want they you know will resonate with you and you’ll just attract the right people once you get really clear on that story. And you’ll you’ll you know attract people you would love to work with.

 

Lexie Smith 

Yeah, no, thank you for giving just just a taste. I feel like this entire episode is just one person after another show you’re here for it. So hi, if you’re new welcome, welcome, friends. But thank you for giving us a taste of some of the flavors I think those are absolutely fantastic. I I’m on your email list. I also want to share and like point out how you’re on this podcast today. Praise sent out an email advertising your masterclass to which I clicked to it. I went to hence learning about you then reached out to have you on my podcast. So someone else promoting your event in an email landed an opportunity to come on this show. I mean, so there’s so many things that can happen from an email, aside from just click to purchase. So if you’re sitting here thinking, you know, I’m not a product based business, like why would I do do emails? Maybe we can talk a little bit Allison about, you know, you just gave a great example of clients. What are some of the other types of businesses or things that you’ve seen happen from effective email marketing?

 

Allison Carpio 

Absolutely. So probably the businesses are quite obvious what could happen they could purchase from there. But for service based businesses, your conversions might be multiple things it might be booking a call, and therefore you know, on that call, it’s like a sales call. It could be filling out an application for something it could be even downloading something where there’s you know, downloads some kind of like scorecard or something where there’s the pitch in there. So email is actually really effective for every business out there if you have something to sell. Email is very effective for you. I’ve worked with a lot of service based businesses. I’ve worked with other copywriters who need help with their email marketing, with coaches, consultants, and even b2b SaaS, software, businesses, emails, highly, highly effective there. And I think the thing that’s interesting is like across the board, people are not really utilizing email marketing. So, you know, it’s just an easy way to stand out too, because no one’s really using it effectively. So if you can get that really dialed in into your business, like it’s, it’s a really strong edge to have in your business. And yeah, I think if you have something to sell, like, it’s great, you know, I mean, even thinking about restaurants, like they could book out the reservations, like there’s a, there’s a restaurant here called lazy bear, and they sell tickets for the restaurant. And it’s highly, highly in demand and popular. So whenever they release tickets for the month, I mean, they sell out like, really quick. And how do people find out about that they’re not just sitting there on their, you know, on their laptop, or their computer just waiting for them to release, you actually go through an email list, and you find out when those tickets are released. So it’s, it’s really effective for any business. And especially if you can really get that dialed in, it’s going to be really effective for you.

 

Lexie Smith 

Yeah, I couldn’t agree any more. One thing, I was perusing your website, and you have such great copy. There was a question there was, excuse me a line on it that said, how do you create mouthwatering, shut up and take my money copy? And I cracked up? And I’m like, I have to ask her that question. Now, I’m not expecting you to give us you know, the, we don’t have five hours like every answer that but do you have some top tips on how to create mouthwatering Shut up and take my money copy?

 

Allison Carpio 

Oh, I love that. Thank you for acknowledging that. Okay, so there’s a couple of things. The first one is to really know who you’re speaking to really know what, what’s, what they’re experiencing, and just really showing that they understand so that when they’re reading that, they’re like, oh, my gosh, she understands me, she gets it, this is exactly this is me, this is what I want. There’s that piece. And then when you are writing, my favorite way of making it sound really natural and making it sound like you because a lot of times, people and some of my clients, they will kind of sound like a brochure, or they’ll just sound like someone else. You could you could either speak into like a transcription, like otter, and then edit it so that you know, you’re not technically writing, you’re just talking to something. And then you know, editing your words after. So that really sounds like you. Or you can, you know, write it and then whether that’s you know, on your phone, because some people like to write on their phone, it feels less like you’re writing an essay, or on a piece of paper, and then read it out loud to make it sound very, it sounds very natural. But the other thing too is when you read it out loud, you can kind of tell if you’re sounding a little bored or dull, or if there’s a lot of energy and liveliness to it. And it really sounds like you because when we think about mouthwatering copy, like we want it to sound like just like you, I want to sound like a person is really speaking to you and you’re not just reading some, you know, NARRATOR or some bot generated or like some really boring bland copy, want to add that spice to it that spice level that you know you’re really after. So those are my top two things. Again, yeah, we can go for like five hours for this.

 

Lexie Smith 

Answer. Those are great. And I love that you called out otter. Another kind of hack, I offer some of my clients in that same vein who, who don’t want to carve out the time to sit down and write let’s say by lines or or pitches or any long form content. To your point can be email marketing otters, something I suggest to so you can open up your phone, record a voice memo and your phone, then set it to otter woke with it. No otter does not sponsor the show, but we will include a link to it in the show notes. It’s otter ott er.ai, I believe correct me if I’m wrong? Yeah. So that’s a great it transcripts for you. There’s a certain amount of minutes you get for free, but check it out, do a little bit of due diligence. On the systems note, one of the last questions I have before we wrap things up. Like we’d be remiss to not give a shout out to a few of your favorite email marketing platforms. Do you have you know, Top? Top three top? I don’t know, however many you want to give a call out?

 

Allison Carpio 

Yes. So I in full disclosure, I don’t have an affiliate link yet. I probably should. One of my business coaches was like you might as well but we’re not yet. I highly recommend and I just migrated to this year to Active Campaign before I was using ConvertKit ConvertKit is really simple. It’s really easy to use. But Active Campaign is great because it has a lot more flexibility and even if you don’t need those robust features like it’s still good, because it just the way that the way that the automations work and automations can be so frustrating. Let me tell you how many times I’ve had autumn nation flout flubs or like, you know, people got the wrong emails at the wrong time, like, follow up, sit and go through. Like, it’s really frustrating. So you want to make sure that that works well. And it makes sense and Active Campaign I can easily say is like, the one that is going to be good for scaling with you. Or if you’re even ready to scale, like, it’s really great for that support is amazing. deliverability is great. If you must use a free one. I think MailChimp is the only free one, if you absolutely must. But don’t let that stop you. I don’t recommend MailChimp necessarily. But if you know, if you’re not ready to invest in a tool yet, then by all means go for it. A lot of people use it still in their business years later, so. But if you do have the funds for it, and if you’re willing to spend on it, I highly, highly, highly recommend doing so. And I recommend Active Campaign.

 

Lexie Smith 

I have shopped quite a few email marketing platforms. I know a lot of solopreneurs are fans of flow desk in MailChimp, I haven’t personally loved either. I’m on. I’m on ConvertKit. And I don’t like it. And the only reason I’m still on ConvertKit is just the amount of effort at this point to get off of ConvertKit. I’ve heard Yes, about active campaign. So

 

Allison Carpio 

well, when you get to that point, let me know. I mean, I could give you some tips like Yeah, it took me a little bit like I mean, luckily my assistant helps me but I also had a ton of different forms. But that’s because you know, I’m an email marketer, but it it’s not as painful as you would think. But you do want to allocate a little bit of time for it.

 

Lexie Smith 

Kaylee who’s my podcast manager so she’s on this call with us it’s also helps me with emails and I bet she’s like twitching her eye going lazy don’t switch us again. Oh, she just chatted. We can work on that lol everyone behind the scenes in real time.

 

Allison Carpio 

Hey, good job, Kaley.

 

Lexie Smith 

Okay, so I know you could appreciate a good pun. Since we’re both on the pitch in and sipping podcast. We now have to talk about what we could find you sipping so what is your favorite beverage alcoholic or non alcoholic? Of course.

 

Allison Carpio 

You know, it’s summer and in summer I tend to like stay out later go out more and drink more. Well, look, we’ll talk about something alcoholic. I actually really love Korean flavored soju because it doesn’t get me hung over. Like ever no matter how much I drink and I can’t drink much and I get junk pretty easily. But like cheese, my favorite flavor it’s really good with some Lacroix. And you know there’s a lot of different flavors but I really liked that one and again emphasis on the no hangover

 

Lexie Smith 

even do you have to buy that at a specialty market or wherever? Yeah,

 

Allison Carpio 

probably like a Korean store. But if you go out for like, you know, Korean barbecue, they usually have it there. And even my dad who like He only loves wine and he’s very particular about the wine. He drinks like he actually really likes it, which was pretty surprising. It’s fun for the whole family if you will.

 

Lexie Smith 

A little family and fun the next morning which is here. Yes. Oh, man, you know, that is definitely a first for this show, which is super fun. So being flavored, you said soju

 

Allison Carpio 

Yeah, just make sure you get the flavored ones because like the unfavored one just is it just seems like rubbing alcohol. So fair enough.

 

Lexie Smith 

Good tip. Good tips. I love it. Last thing, Allison where can people go to connect with you to learn more about you and conversion kitchen?

 

Allison Carpio 

So the conversion kitchen.com Go ahead and go over there. Listen to my podcast. It’s called Hello delicious emails. It’s on Spotify and Apple. And you know, come say hi to me on IG at Allison Carpio if you’re listening, I just love hearing from listeners. Come say hi, slide in my DMs. I’d love to hear from you.

 

Lexie Smith 

Amazing or sent her an email a yes. Yeah,

 

Allison Carpio 

I’ll read every one of them. Perfect. Well,

 

Lexie Smith 

thank you so much for coming on the show today. And you this has been such a treat. Yes, I’m like wait for it. Cheers, everyone.