[Fully Managed] Allison Hardy Ep. 148

Daniella (Host): Hello everybody. Welcome to the first 100 podcast. This is where we explore the journey of entrepreneur ideas, business owners, agency leaders and loads of different types of people as they share with us their strategies, the challenges and the triumphs that have led them to secure those first 100 customers. Those first 100 followers. That first 100 mark. I am your host, Daniella, Penji’s Partnership Coordinator. Today I’m joined here with a very special guest, Alison Hardy. And how are you today?

Allison Hardy: I’m good. Thank you so much for having me.

Daniella: Thank you so much for being here. Very excited to be on with you. For anybody that doesn’t know about you, doesn’t know where you are. Can you give us a little bit of a rundown of you and what you do?

About Alison and Her Business

Allison : Yeah, sure. So I am an email marketing strategist. I say that I help our course graders and membership site owners enroll new clients into those programs on autopilot through the power of email marketing. I’ve been in business for only eight years. I’ve had multiple iterations of my business. But the journey to entrepreneurship has really informed where I’m at today.

Daniella: Amazing. Yet so very interesting with email marketing. Can you tell us a little bit about how you help your client with email marketing? Do you help them develop strategies or is it more like, you know, like a whole campaign? How did you even choose to focus specifically on email marketing and not other kinds of marketing?

The Origin Story: Why Email Marketing?

Allison: Yeah, I really got super invested in email marketing in 2020 when the world shut down. My kids were home for 18 months. I had a two year old and a six year old at the time. My husband was a chaplain at a hospital and then he got put in the COVID wing. And so like it was just a wild time and I’d always been pretty good at email marketing, Like it was a very it was like I find a lot of people are really like, stressed out about it. For me, I was never like super stressed about and it kind of just felt like a conversation to me.

So I went from like having like 5 to 6 hours a day to work to like having one. So I needed to figure out a way so that I could still sell without like being on or required to be on and show up at a certain place in a certain time because I was toasted and I had no brain capacity to do that. And lights were super inconsistent with two little guys at home.

So I just needed like a way so that I didn’t have to be on in order to sell. So I developed an entire email marketing ecosystem, I call it, where they’re nurtured and the leads are nurturing their pitch to their and ready to join other things as a whole process.

And I started getting results, which was really amazing and one that started getting results. I started getting those results and people started to be like, Can you do this for me? Can you do this with me? And so then for you, work was kind of born from that. And then from there I started a membership where I teach people how to do it.

Target Clientele

Daniella: Interesting. So does your clientele kind of range between just like normal people who want to do email marketing for themselves? Or is it more geared towards business owners and, you know, people from like more agency and business type of things?

Allison: Yeah, a little bit of both. I’ve had agencies ask me to like, teach them my methods, and I’ve had business owners and course creators and coaches and experts. I’d be like, Can you just do this for me? And then some people, you know, just don’t want me to do it for them. They want to learn. So those folks also would like to learn also.

Getting Those First Leads

Daniella: So I think they when I’ve spoken to people who sort of start kind of their own endeavors, they always tell me, I always hear the same thing of like, you know, getting leads at the beginning is the hardest, right? Like getting those first few customers, clients, whatever it is. How did you get through that hurdle? How was that experience for you?

Allison: Yeah, so you’re totally right. So email funnels, email marketing there has to actually be able to send it to you, otherwise, like it won’t work. So important as the emails are, you actually have to have those leads coming in for sure.

So two things that I really lean on that I we go all in on our Facebook ads because I do think they’re like email marketing, how you’re able to sell on autopilot. I think you should be able to generate leads on autopilot so that if you want to take a day off, a week off, a month off, if you’re doing other things like your business is still churning and burning in the background. And so there’s still leads going into that funnel that you created.

I hear a lot of people say like, you know, my funnel just isn’t converting. And I’m like, Well, okay, let’s look at your funnel, of course, but then let’s also look at your lead gen. And most people just aren’t generating enough leads to make it so that their funnel can even convert. So that’s something really important to think about. So that’s why I think Facebook ads are really, really important and having that automated lead gen

And then something else I really lean hard on is collaborations. I find the online space to be pretty lonely sometimes. Yeah, and I so having like a group of people who can be like, Hey, let’s do this thing together, like I have an idea you want to talk about. It has been really, really beneficial not only for lead generation but for also just like not feeling alone in the online space. And that’s a big motivator for me just as a person.

Daniella: And legion can be very tedious. I think if you’re doing it yourself all the time and you’re just like manually searching for like, you know, trying to like, decipher this person, it’s like a good option for a leader or not. It can be really draining.

Allison: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So I’m always about like, how can I make this not draining? How can I make this process? Not one that I loathe. And so what does that look like for me? You know, anything That’s a healthy question for most of us to ask. Like we all need to generate leads. We all need to sell. Well, like, how can we do those things in a way that, number one gets you results. But also number two, like doesn’t totally suck while you’re doing it.

Email Marketing vs. Other Marketing Channels

Daniella: Yeah, for sure. And I’m also interested with email marketing. How is that differing from like I would say, like the success that you see through email marketing? Is it different than the success that you see through maybe social media marketing, you know, content marketing, which is really popular right now, or traditional marketing like billboards and TV commercials, is how do you measure the success of a campaign with email marketing?

Allison: Yeah, well, I can’t speak to the billboards and commercials. I have never gotten that. But I can speak to the social media aspect of things. So I think social media has a time and a place for sure. I think that it’s an amazing way to connect with people. I think just with like the ability of ads, like we have a really cool way to like expand our reach without, you know, like having to like, do that manual work.

So I think there’s lots and lots and lots and lots of pros of social media, but social media is also not geared towards sales, it’s geared towards relationships. And so it’s harder to get people off of that platform and into like another place like a sales page, for example. So while I think social media has a time and a place, I don’t think it should be where you’re doing the majority of your sales.

And number one, because again, it’s not set up for sales, but number two, like this happened, you know, when I was first starting my business, Facebook pages came out and a business for Facebook pages came out and they were, you know, the hot thing like everybody was like, oh, my gosh, you have to get the page because they got crazy reach.

And then Facebook decided to roll out ads, which are wonderful and great. But as soon as they did that, our pages just tanked. And so if I was only relying on the pages, that was like my only way to generate leads. Like you were dying, you were like, dead in the water. So social media is constantly changing and it’s not geared to bring you off of the platform.

So like from my perspective, if we’re making smart decisions, if we’re looking at like what actually gets us results, what is designed to move you off a platform, what is designed to show up consistently in your inbox, for me, that’s better. Email marketing.

Personal Experience with Email Marketing

Daniella: Yeah, that’s very interesting. I remember like my first job and this is kind of like a tangent, but I you remember when you said that. I remember when I started working, I was kind of like the assistant of the marketing team. So I was and I was very new, so I didn’t know anything about anything, right? I was just kind of like there.

And I remember they told me something about email marketing and how they were trying to do this campaign, and they needed me to do this for like the company. And they kept thinking to myself, like, this is ridiculous. Like, who does this? Like, this is such like an old people thing because I don’t know, I guess I thought of it like in this sort of like, who is checking their email unless it’s like, strictly necessary, you know, winning for me.

And like, I would also think like, oh, I’d, if I get like a newsletter or something, I just like, write it off as spam. I’m not going to sit down and read it right. Oh, and I remember like the people there, they were like, No, I think this is like a very sort of useful mindset that you have because you’re very young and you’ve always been like a student, so that’s why you think of it that way.

But like when when you move out into like the business world, it’s very different. And they sort of like started explaining how much of things to me. And it really opened my eyes to like now I had been viewing things from like a very young perspective, I guess, and yeah, and you know, like I wasn’t interested in email marketing and I think like it’s it really opened my eyes to like how this is a great alternative to marketing that is very overlooked because it’s not necessarily the flashiest, right?

Allison: 100%. It is not necessarily flashy. So you’re totally right. Like I can go into someone’s Instagram account and I say they have 100,000 followers. I’m like, Oh, they must be legit. But I mean, but that could not be true. That’s sort of a very much so like a vanity metric, But I don’t know if that person has, you know, the size of email lists.

So like, it’s very you can be emailing, you know, one or 100,000 people, like it doesn’t really show. So it can be sometimes like not as exact like as a flashy of a platform. But if we’re talking about like conversions and sales and things like that, it’s, it’s the place to be.

Daniella: Yeah, for sure. And it definitely also I think it simplifies a lot of things. I think social media requires a lot of work with content creation, right?

Allison: Yes, absolutely. And a lot of people get stuck on that like content creation hamster wheel because they think they’re supposed to, but they’re not actually, you know, like I find a lot of this is I find so like, maybe your experience is zero. But what I find is a lot of people are like on this hamster wheel like because there’s there’s a post like they’re doing all the right things, but they’re not actually doing the right things that actually get them result in their business.

So they’re doing these very, like, public forward facing things. But there’s nothing coming from that, though. There’s nothing coming from their social media posts out there, stuff coming from it, then that’s great and awesome and you should stick with it. But they’re often leaving out the things that actually get them. The result they’re looking for, like email marketing. Because again, the social media is the very like forward facing, very obvious way you’re growing your business.

Daniella: And I think very youthful audience too, which is not ideal for like a ready to buy person, right? Because if you’re looking for someone to like purchase your product or purchase something from you, the likelihood of someone buying out of like a a core group that’s like very young is hard.

Allison: Yes. Your TikTok dances are probably not going to bring in a ton of money, a ton of sales might get you lots of likes, but like maybe a lot of it.

Facebook Ads vs. Google Ads

Daniella: Yeah, for sure. It’s really interesting. And I actually wanted to also ask you about how do you think you mentioned that Facebook ads. It’s also something that you really sort of put a lot of effort into right now, or is that something that you recommend for every business owner or do you think that it’s dependent on the industry?

Allison: It’s a great question. I so I work with coaches and experts. I am a coach and an expert, so I can say from my clients it makes sense, especially because they want to be able to sell through an email funnel. And so they’re one of the reasons why they’re doing it. Emotional is they want that automated, like hands off sales.

So for them, Facebook ads kind of is in that same vein as an automated hands off lead generation. So I think for those that crew, that group of people, immigrants, I think that Facebook and in general are an amazing way to get in front of new audiences. I think they’re an amazing way to generate a relatively inexpensive lead, all things considering.

But I don’t think it’s perfect for you if you don’t have a proven offer, if you don’t have a funnel, if you’re just generating leads to generate leads like there’s no lead plan for them, I think it really makes sense for you if you have a system that you have people to plug into when you’re ready to scale it.

Daniella: So some people have also been I was talking to someone who told me that he’s a big fan of Google ads could boost SEO and he prefers Google ads over Facebook ads because of SEO. And I mean, I guess he was like a big fan of SEO. Oh, is that for you? Kind of the same? Does it differ or do you think that it really depends on who your client is?

Allison: I do think it depends a bit on your client. I have in dog interface and Google ads personally simply because I have a system that works and like if it’s not broken, I’m not going to fix it type of thing. But I have heard amazing results and I have a colleague that’s like a Facebook or Google ad expert, and she talks about her clients often, what sorts of results are getting.

So I don’t think it’s a bad idea. I just don’t know a bunch about it.

The Future of Email Marketing

Daniella: And do you think, like in your experience with email marketing, do you think that it’s still useful or do you think that it’s sort of dying down? I’m asking because I think like sometimes we worry that there’s certain things that are sort of becoming outdated and the world is moving like this lately. Yeah, yeah. And all of this changing technology is just like advancing so quick.

Do you feel like, you know, since it’s your room, that this has influenced the way that you would do things, do you think that eventually your email marketing is going to go away or do you think that this is just boosting email marketing more?

Allison: I don’t think email marketing is going to go away simply because it’s been around for quite some time now and it hasn’t gone away yet. Whereas like if we look at platforms like Instagram or Facebook, like they are drastically different from what they were when they first rolled out. So and I mean, email marketing has changed, but not as much as those platforms.

And I always go back to the idea that like, everything’s a good idea, right? So like, it’s a great idea for you to have a TikTok account. It’s really good for you to do Facebook ads. It’s really good for you to be on Instagram like it’s everything’s a good choice. It’s just a matter of like, is it a good choice for you?

So looking at your goals, how you want to show up, how you want to you know, there are people what do you want to do every single day in your actual business? When looking at those things, It’s really important to like match the the method to those motivations because I think like you can get yourself matched with a platform that’s maybe not the right for you and it’s going to feel like a freaking chore.

You’re not going to want to show up, you’re not going to do it. And I’m not saying like it’s always going to be rainbows and butterflies with whatever you choose, but like, it’s just important to know, like how you are motivated and how you want to show up and being able to try different things out on the platform.

So like the way that I emailed five years ago, this is very different than our email today. And so being able to evolve within those specific platforms I also think is a very important part of this.

Budgeting for Email Marketing Campaigns

Daniella: And the last question that I wanted to ask you is about budgeting for email marketing campaigns and ad campaign. That’s a big struggle for people who are about to start because they’re not sure how to allocate a specific budget or where you know, that range should be. What is your suggestion for people who are in that space trying to figure that out?

Allison: Yeah, so you don’t really know until you do it. And I hate this answer because it’s like a non answer, but a couple of things to think about is if you’re looking at your email funnel from download Elite Magnet to when you pitch someone, your program, what’s your conversion rate? So if you’re converting at 5%, let’s say you get 100 people into that funnel, okay, 5% is five people. While it’s your program is $500, it’s 20 $500 in sales. Cool. Okay.

So then if we look at that and that’s like tried and true and relatively consistent, and then you start to spend money on Facebook ad looking at those numbers. So let’s say you’re getting $4 an email address on Facebook ads and people and it’s $400. So you’re spending 420 500, and that seems pretty good. I would be happy with that. So it’s like knowing those sorts of numbers and again, you don’t know until you actually do it, but also there’s industry standards you could work towards and assume that you’re going to get when you first start out. So like your life, your email funnel is converting. You know, you’re like, okay, I should convert around 5% if you make some educated decisions there.

And I would like at first I wouldn’t spend Facebook ads. If it’s a new campaign, I would just generate those leads manually. So maybe it’s your existing email list, your Instagram followers, wherever it is that you hang out so that you’re not fronting that money and you’re seeing just profits come through. And then once you have those results, putting money on some Facebook ads or other, you know, generated leads.

Daniella: Platforms think, yeah, I think like just sort of making educated guess can be scary for people right.

Allison: Now it’s super scary but like again you don’t know it until you you do it and it’s like it’s a risk you have to take but like also knowing that you’ve put your best thing forward, you’re doing the best you can, you’re doing the work that matters. I think it’s also really important to remind yourself when those mindset gremlins start to creep up.

Daniella: And I mean, even if your campaign doesn’t don’t do well, I think it helps you for data.

Allison: Exactly. Yes. So you can also then, like, troubleshoot. So maybe you guys, ten people to click over to that sales page. And if no one bites, that doesn’t mean that the funnel is broken. It’s the sales page. So you can use like the data to inform your decisions if nobody’s opening the emails. Okay, time to change the subject lines. Like there’s so many data points that you get with email marketing that helps you like decipher what’s actually going on, that it’s a really great platform for those numbers and to make those educated, data driven decisions.

Rapid Fire Questions

Daniella: Main thing. Yeah. So as and I have some rapid fire questions for you and it’s been great talking to you and I kind of just wanted to ask you some questions. They’re really short and they’re all about marketing, so you should be able to do this. Are you ready?

Allison: Oh, I’m ready. I’m excited.

Daniella: Okay, let’s see how many we can get through in your minute. I’m just going to put a timer here on my phone. Okay. All right. Let’s do this favorite marketing tool right now.

Allison: ConvertKit

Daniella: SEO or paid ads. If you had to choose one

Allison: paid ads

Daniella: that social media platform for growing a brand.

Allison: Instagram.

Daniella: Most underrated marketing strategy.

Allison: Asking questions.

Daniella: Most overrated marketing trend.

Allison: I so on trending audio on Instagram.

Daniella: Email marketing better a live.

Allison: Tour but a lot.

Daniella: One mistake businesses make with paid ads.

Allison: Oh being too broad in general.

Daniella: Key to writing high converting ad copy.

Allison: Oh. Leading with a solid yes or a solid hook that ends in a yes.

Daniella: Long form content or a short short form content. What’s more effective.

Allison: And I think long term, long form content and then chunking up into short term content, short form content.

Daniella: One type two, lower cost per click ads.

Allison: Oh, make it worthwhile. Like make it interesting. You get like the does do these people actually want this thing if they do qual if they don’t like that’s fine too.

Daniella: Best time to run a digital campaign.

Allison: Any time because it’s digital doesn’t matter.

Daniella: First thing you do when optimizing a website.

Allison: Oh first thing you do in optimizing a website you look at load the time. This is a lesson I learned recently.

Daniella: Mean how do you stay updated on marketing trends?

Allison: Oh, that’s a good question. I listen to a lot of practice. I also am in a mastermind, so people, you know, share with the world. Right now.

Daniella: Time we only have one more question. So you did really well.

Allison: Right?

Daniella: You did really well and had people who like you get like they start talking a lot for one question and then we finish and then I’m like.

Allison: A fucking rapid fire.

Where to Find Alison

Daniella: People also like short answer. So thank you so much for doing this. Alison Before I let you go, though, I wanted to give you space to tell our audience where they can go find you if they need help with their email marketing funnels and anything for stories to tell us.

Allison: Amazing. So I have a free resource. It’s called the $80,000 email template. It’s the singular email that brought in $80,000 in sales last year. You get the actual email, you get a plug and play templates for you to use in your next open sequence or your next funnel, and you get an explanation as to why the strategy works.

That at Allison Hurricane four, it’s like 80000 email. You can grab it there. And then I hang out mostly on Instagram, so come find me. Alison underscore, Hardy underscore.

Daniella: Awesome. Yeah, I will be adding those links to the description of this so that the people that are watching can click and they can just go ahead and find you. It’s been great having you today, Allison. Thank you so much for doing that.

Allison: Thank you for having me. My goodness gracious. It’s been wonderful chatting.

Daniella: It’s been wonderful. Thank you, everybody. I will see you on the next episode.

Apple

Amazon

Spotify