It’s true. The more you email, the more replies you get. And once you start getting those replies? True again! You’ll eventually get some wanker in your inbox trying to insult you or hurt your feelings. Why? I don’t know! But here’s what to do about it.
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Transcript
What’s up, my friend, Liz Wilcox here, and you’re listening to episode 66 of the email sound booth podcast. Oh my gosh. I’m so excited. We’re getting closer and closer to a hundred. Should I do something special for a hundred episodes? Uh, you know, email me of course. Uh, and let me know what I should do for a hundred episodes.
I am getting excited about it. Anyway. Feeling blessed, feeling lucky that you’re here with me today. Uh, but I’ve been seeing a lot and maybe, you know, at the time of the recording, you know, we just passed Black Friday. A lot of people are doing like 12 days of deals stuff. It’s the holidays. And I’ve noticed in my own inbox and I’ve noticed in our email sound booth, Facebook group, um, that people are getting a little sassy, a little snarky in the inbox.
They’re hitting reply. They’re not being nice. So what the heck do you do when you get a nasty. reply, right? Well, there’s a few different options. Um, number one, and this, my friend, Aman Ismail, uh, another amazing email strategist. And, uh, she has this amazing, uh, agency, if you want someone to write your emails for you.
Um, She just ignores them. She straight deletes them. She says, nope, not today, Satan. Delete, delete, delete, right? So that is one option. You can ignore them. You can delete them. Now, my, my suggestion is if that feels right to you, That feels right to you. You do not owe anyone your time when they are coming at you sideways, right?
Uh, if they’re not respecting you, you don’t really owe them any respect, right? You are a business owner. I know that you’re listening to this podcast. So that makes you, you know, a respectable and respecting human, right? So if somebody’s coming at you sideways, you don’t owe them anything. You can straight delete, right?
If they’re just, you know, you’re an a hole or I don’t like you or whatever. Now I have a bit of a different approach because I cannot, and maybe this is my background, maybe, maybe I get it from my mama. I cannot just sit back and. You know, let people, you know, walk all over me. Uh, I believe that bullying exists only in spaces where we allow bullying to exist.
I believe anyone that’s coming at me sideways in my inbox, and this ain’t anything but anything, that I’m smarter than them and I can shut them down. And not in a, you know, I’m going to one up you, but in a. Let’s, it’s a come to Jesus meeting, so to speak. Uh, so I usually let something sit for a couple hours, up to 24 hours.
Now, if they’ve insulted me, whatever, I usually delete it. Like if they say, you’re an idiot, delete, whatever. I. Have reached the point in my life where I don’t have to defend myself. I can clarify for you if I think you’ve misunderstood But I will never defend myself against someone who thinks I’m an idiot or You know, what whatever words that’s it.
That’s a nice word, right? But if you are insulting my product If you’re insulting my business, my policies, uh, the people that work for me or the people that are in my community, you’re darned, Taten. I got something to say about that. Because I will always defend my community. I will always defend my employees.
Um, and I will always, uh, defend my business, right? That’s my livelihood. This business supports three households. I, you know. I have to defend, but rather again, I use the word clarify. I prefer the word clarify, uh, cause I’m not going to war. I’m not, I’m not going to war. I’ll go to war for my community and Patricia who works for me.
Right. And is also my biological sister. Um, but I’m not going to go to war with you about my business or myself, because I know there’s no way you could win. You’re not even penetrating this, like, you know, you might think you’re a Trojan horse, but that, you know, I’ve got one up on you. So I will clarify, for example, um, actually just yesterday before recording this, someone emailed me and said, I joined your list on this date.
I find it super annoying and aggressive that you’ve been emailing, I’ve been emailed six times, you know, and it had been like, I don’t know, three weeks. So they really weren’t even getting all my emails, right? Um, or they were mistaken. They probably got emailed 10 times, but they only saw six. Uh, and so I did clarify for that person because my reputation is very important.
I don’t want them to go into a Facebook group or something and say, Oh my gosh, this person daily emails, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They didn’t warn me. which is not true. I did warn everyone about the daily emails that I’m running currently. So I just clarified and I said, you know, Hey, Liz, uh, you know, you’re welcome.
Oh, they, they had announced they were unsubscribing. And I made sure that they were unsubscribed. I said, you know, hey Liz, it’s your absolute right as a consumer to unsubscribe from any emails you find irrelevant or annoying. But I do want to mention in all the emails that I’ve sent since said date, there has been an opt out button in every single email.
Thank you for the feedback. I will try to make it more obvious in the future. And so this isn’t me bowing down to them and it’s not even a way of like, you know being snarky back like hey You know You should have just read the email and you would have gotten an opt out button. Duh Like it wasn’t you know, I didn’t mean it that way.
I just wanted to clarify for that human What the heck was actually reality? right For example some other people there was someone who said That they wanted They basically wanted a year free into my annual pass because, uh, they hadn’t used it in like four or five months. Uh, my sister Patricia emailed back and said, yeah, actually we’ll give you four or five months, uh, for free.
We understand. You know, things happen. We want to be one of my, uh, values in the business is radical generosity. So she was responding in that. Now, this person came back incredibly rude and said, I don’t understand the problem. Why can’t I just have a year? First of all, this person did not even say there was any sort of emergency.
They said that they were traveling the world, uh, and just didn’t have time to focus on email marketing. So within, uh, Patricia’s full rights, uh, and reasonable actions to say, Oh no, sorry. This is a subscription like Netflix. When it expires, it expires, right? When you stop paying, it expires. Uh, but she didn’t, she was extremely generous.
And so, uh, again, Patricia is not just an employee. She is my sister and I will defend her with my life. Uh, so I came, I actually made a loom video. I found it to be very nice. You don’t have to match their energy. That’s the important part. If you’re going to reply back or if you feel like you have to, especially in this situation, This is a You know, a customer of ours, you know, we have to keep interacting, right?
We can’t just delete and hopefully she’ll go away. Right. Uh, so I made a loom video and I said, You know, Hey, Hey, Liz, I, I don’t actually think we have a problem here. Um, according to our records, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Uh, Patricia was acting with incredible generosity, uh, giving you four or five months for free, that’s a, you know, 45 value.
And, you know, we hope, uh, you know, we’re still going to extend that offer to you, but unfortunately for the price of, uh, our offer. We simply can’t just be giving away free months, you know, in excess. You said you hadn’t used it since five months ago. We’re going to give you five months for free because we think that’s just a really nice thing to do.
So, You know, thank you so much. Congrats. Congrats on the five free months and we hope, uh, you know, you continue to use the membership and those five months get you caught up where you want to be in your email marketing. So I find that I have a superpower in turning people around. Now that person never replied back.
Um, because what are you, what are you going to say? So I think I have a, yeah, I have a superpower in turning people around, people that ask for refunds. Uh, normally come back and buy higher priced items from me, um, or they decide, Oh, uh, I don’t want to cancel at all. Let me re up. So that’s one of my superpowers and hopefully listening to me, you know, I’m not doing this to like vent and be like, Oh my gosh, you wouldn’t believe I’m just trying to share how you can come back.
Uh, you know, especially to customers or previous customers that have been a bit snarky, aggressive, uh, or gimme, gimme, gimme type of energy. All right. The last thing I want to share about what to do when someone is just a total, you know, what in the inbox when the time is right, I’m not saying. Do this right now when you can afford it, please hire someone like patricia So you don’t have to see that crap, right?
It really does affect your energy and I know i’m the lady who tells you get replies get replies get replies But those nasty ones really do and can weigh you down, right? So when the time is right aka when your wallet is ready Hire a customer service rep and let them know the boundaries. Hey, I don’t want to see stuff like this, unless it’s, you know, in the case of that, you know, lady who was asking for a free year for no good reason.
Um, You know, I don’t want to see that stuff unless I absolutely have to get involved. Um, you know, that’s your job now. So, all right, that’s my advice. Ignore, delete. If it’s someone, especially if it’s someone that’s just insulting you or the way you do business. Delete. You know, if it’s a snarky customer, take a beat.
You don’t have to answer right now. And I also find making, if you didn’t catch this little tip, making videos. People are very disarmed, like snarky, nasty people are very disarmed online when you make a video and you look right directly at that camera. And, you know, speak what you got to speak. They’re incredibly disarmed and I’ve never had anyone come back, um, with more anger.
It’s always disarmed them and, you know, we’ve been able to resolve things. And then the third thing, of course, when the time is right, when the money is right, hire someone. So you don’t have to see that. Alright, now, if this hasn’t scared you off, if you’re still interested in growing your email list, hitting send, you already know, know, join email marketing membership.
It’s always open. It’s always 9 a month, and I would always love to have you in there. I’m going to send you out weekly newsletter. Templates, you know exactly what to say. You can minimize those snarky replies. Uh, cause you’re, what you’re sending out is tried and true. All right. The link will be in the show notes as always.
I am Liz Wilcox. You are awesome. No matter what anybody says in the inbox, and I’ll see you on the next episode of the email sound booth podcast.
