“Business as usual” is dead. It’s important to keep a pulse on current events around the globe and curb your marketing from time to time, as we don’t want to appear insensitive or otherwise aloof. Here are a few examples of when email marketers have paused email campaigns and promotions.
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Transcript
Hey friend, this is the fresh princess of email marketing speaking. You are listening to episode 23 of the email sound booth podcast. Lucky me. Now today I do want to get a little serious and talk about email and the world, right? I mean, we live in such a modern world that is so connected. It’s really important nowadays to ensure our business is aware and adjusting When certain current events occur, right?
Natural disor Let me start over. I meant to say natural disasters and social injustices, war, elections, etc. All of these things, they do affect us. They affect our customers, our potential customers, the economy. And sometimes they should affect when and how you do business. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m very much a person that lives on the positive side of things.
And I believe it was an old Warren Buffett quote that says, when people get scared, I get greedy. So this isn’t an excuse to stop doing business, but it definitely is a, I don’t know, sort of a yield sign, a yellow light, um, That when there’s a natural disaster or something like that, that affects a large segment of your subscribers or something around the globe, uh, that you know, is weighing heavily.
on your audience as a whole, we do need to slow down. You do have the responsibility, absolutely, as a business owner to take these things into consideration when it comes to your email marketing efforts. So here’s a few examples so you can see what the heck I mean, what I’m talking about. So I’ve DoYouEvenBlog.
com, Pete McPherson, and he was doing this very big launch, right? It was, I think, his biggest course to date. It was something like a 4, 000 thing, you know, uh, on how to teach evergreen, uh, funnels to folks. And the day of his launch was also the day that Russia announced the invasion of Ukraine. So I remember I was in a mastermind with this guy.
He was freaking out, you know, and like, what do I do? You know, is it insensitive to keep rolling? I really need this cash I’ve been building up, you know, he had the pre-launch where it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming, and now all of a sudden it’s here. But also is this. incredibly monumentous, uh, you know, global event, right?
So what the heck is a guy to do? So Pete and I and our other Mastermind members, we decided, uh, And I mean, ultimately he decided, right? I take a little too much credit. Uh, he decided to go ahead with the launch, but he was going to curb his expectations around engagement and sales simply because the world seemed to have, you know, turned its head around to watch and discover what was about to happen.
Uh, but he did go ahead with his launch, uh, because he is from, um, The United States the majority of his audience, you know, they they had been waiting for this and You know at the end of the day, I believe he believed there was It wasn’t going to end anytime soon and he still had you know, he has to feed his family Like I said, it is your responsibility as the business owner to be aware and to adjust when necessary But also as the response or also as the business owner, I know that you have a lot of responsibilities You know to the people and things That are around you when you turn off your computer, right?
So that’s the first case. I had another, uh, very close friend named Chelsea Brennan and she had a membership for moms, uh, that wanted to get their finances together for their family. And she had this big membership challenge, which of course in the back end, uh, you know, it was a challenge and at the back end she was going to promote, uh, her membership.
And this was also around the time of the, uh, The George Floyd, what should I call it? Gosh, it’s tragedy, right? Um, so she decided because it was such an intense close to home, close to heart incident on top of many other incidents. Uh, that were happening at the time and have happened for generations, right?
She postponed the challenge altogether, um, of course if people said, Hey, uh, where’s the challenge? What’s going on with the membership? She let them in, but she wasn’t doing any active promotion. In fact, she emailed, uh, her audience and said, Hey, in light of recent events, I’m, you know, very. I’m not going to be much in my feelings tormented by this situation, so I’m just going to call, you know, call it off for now.
So that was the right move for her, her business, and her audience, right? And now, uh, let’s talk about a more recent event. I’m recording this October 11th. Uh, 2024. There was two major hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico that affected the southeastern, uh, side of the United States. We also have an election going on right now that’s very heated in the United States.
There’s just, I mean, and, you know, on top of all the wars that are going on, on, you know, dot, dot do Right. The World at the time of this recording is a heavy place. Oh yeah. I didn’t even mention, um. I think we’re in a recession. There’s just a lot going on, right? And so the plan was, and if you’re not watching this on YouTube, I’ll just point and tell you, I have an entire year, my entire 2024 mapped out.
And the week before October started, I was supposed to be working on daily emails. So sending my audience, starting October 1st, sending them daily emails to prep for Black Friday to get more top of mind, more credibility. etc. etc. Now with everything happening, I just felt, I don’t know, it wouldn’t be prudent, right?
Uh, it, it just didn’t feel right to me to start not bombard, but start to amp up my emails in a time when a lot of people are feeling overloaded, right? So what I did instead was actually start this podcast for the people that want the content, uh, you know, want to hear from me every day and, you know, can do so in a very easy format, right?
In this, you know, press play, go on a walk, do the dishes, Drive carpool, you know, whatever it is you’re doing right now. So I was able to switch up my strategy still have daily content and You know still be aware of That a lot of my audience is overloaded right now. I will say I am also planning on, I’m not, I’m not completely canceling the daily emails.
I’ve also delayed them. So starting mid October, probably around the time you’re listening to this, I will have implemented and started, uh, the daily emails. So let’s sum that up. There’s no right way to do things when it comes to this stuff, but experts. Email marketing experts, they really do agree. And I’m talking big experts, experts in big tech and work with corporations, right, all the way down to you and me, we as business owners and email marketers can no longer and should no longer.
Ignore what’s going on in the world. There’s no such thing anymore as business as usual when we live in this modern global society and, you know, we have modern global events and issues coming. Right? Of course, you are the business owner. It’s up to you to decide what’s right for you. You could do like my buddy Pete.
and continue on, but curb your expectations because you know people are distracted, or you can take a step back entirely like Chelsea did. Postponing emails and, you know, changing my strategy from daily emails to daily podcast episodes, like I’m doing in 2024 around Black Friday, that’s also an option for you.
And last, something I haven’t brought up is a simple acknowledgement of events and shifting your tone may be enough, right? Maybe you’re starting a challenge, you know, a major hurricane hits, you know, a very large area that your audience is in. Maybe don’t send an email. Woo hoo. It’s finally here. I’ve been waiting for this day forever, right?
Maybe we change the tone. We say hey the challenge is here I know there’s a lot going on in the world right now And maybe you can’t make the challenge the way I thought but I’m going to press on Because I know at the same time these terrible things are happening You have mouths to feed. Okay, let’s go.
Or what, you know, you have goals to achieve. Okay, let’s go. Right? So honestly, I want you to trust your gut with this. And when in doubt, you can always go into our email sound booth Facebook group. Oh my gosh, there’s so many smart cookies in there that will help you You know figure out what to do gauging the collective is always a really good Answer and i’ll put that in the show notes.
I’ll put the link to the facebook group Okay, and if you’d really like help, you know email marketing membership for nine dollars a month is always here for you, right? Not only do we discuss this type of thing all the time in our live q a’s I also have a template Directly for this thing for when the world feels daunting and you have no clue what to do With your email list in quote unquote times like these, right?
That’s 9 a month link in the show notes, right? Okay. That is it for today. As always come back and share in the reviews of this podcast, how this episode helped you today. And I really do hope this one did help you. It’s not a topic talked about enough. But it’s really, really necessary. All right. I’m Liz Wilcox.
You are awesome. And I’ll meet you at the next episode of the email sound booth.
