How To Create A Frothing At The Mouth Email List With Plain-Text Emails | Christian Simovic

Matt Edmundson

00:00:07.120 - 00:03:48.750

Welcome to the E Commerce Podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmondson. The E Commerce Podcast is all about helping you deliver e commerce wow to your customers.

And to help us do just that, I'm chatting today with Christian Simovic from Honey Badger Marketing in the Land Down Under. Oh yes, we're going to talk about how to create a frothing at the mouth email list with plain text email emails.

And if that title doesn't intrigue you, I don't know what will.

But before Christian and I jump into that conversation, let me suggest a few other podcasts that I also think you'll enjoy listening to because we have loads of them now, Christian, on the website we've got a lot. So check out why everything you know about email marketing could be wrong. It's one of my favorite titles ever with Gabby Rapone.

She was an absolute legend. Love Gabby. Check that one out. And also check out the five Essential Emails for Successful E Commerce Email Marketing, which is no mean feat.

I think I did that one actually. So check out those episodes.

You can find these and our entire archive of episodes on our website for [email protected] and whilst you're there on our website, why not sign up for our newsletter if you haven't done so already?

Basically, if you're on our email list, we email out all of the links from today's show, the notes, the transcripts, all of the things that Christian's going to talk about. It goes straight to your inbox. Totally for totally for free.

Whole thing's amazing how it all works and we don't spam and all that sort of nonsense, but we do try and be helpful in what we do. Now, this episode is brought to you by the E Commerce Cohort, which helps you deliver e commerce. Well, the cohort is underway. Yes, it is.

And if you're involved in e commerce, it is something I honestly think you should check out. It is a lightweight monthly sprint.

Basically every week there's something around the topic of e commerce for you to get your teeth into, which will help you grow and develop your own e commerce business. Whether you're just starting out or if you're like me, you've been around e commerce for a while.

It's just going to help you focus on all aspects of e commerce in a way I've not seen many things do, if I'm honest with you. It prevents you getting siloed, it prevents you getting left behind. There's all that CPD and all that sort of stuff going on.

It's just a beautiful thing and it is a membership. So do check it out. Honestly, if you're involved in E commerce, I can't recommend it highly enough.

And you can find more [email protected] that's ecommerce cohort.com I'm in there doing stuff. There's a whole bunch of other people in there doing stuff. Come find us, have a conversation.

And if you've got any questions about Cohort, then why not email me directly mattecommercepodcast.net with any questions you have because this is an awesome thing, let me tell you. So do check it out. Ecommerce cohort.com Now Christian Simovec is a plain text email marketing specialist. I like you.

I'm intrigued by plain text, especially because I've not done plain text emails for years. Right. But Christian is a specialist in this area.

He prescribes daily emails for his clients, sends out daily email marketing tips himself via his email list. I'm going to give you the link on where to sign up obviously later on. His clients have ranged from small organic skincare brands to reality TV stars.

I think I'm more intrigued about the small skincare brands than the reality TV stars, but maybe that's just me. All of that said, Christian, welcome to the show. Great to have you, Bert. Thanks for joining us.

Christian Simovic

00:03:49.710 - 00:03:59.710

Hey Matt, pleasure to be a part of the show. And firstly, I just want to mention I thought my title was going to be pretty interesting, the Frothing of the Mouth.

But that everything you thought was wrong about email marketing, that probably takes the cake in titles.

Matt Edmundson

00:04:00.910 - 00:04:02.650

Yeah, you can that one going forward.

Christian Simovic

00:04:06.010 - 00:04:08.170

I'm gonna steal. I'm very sorry Gabby, but yeah.

Matt Edmundson

00:04:10.490 - 00:04:19.290

Yeah, I'm sure Gabby won't mind. She's lovely actually. So tell me Christian, about Honey Badger marketing. What does it do?

Christian Simovic

00:04:20.330 - 00:04:23.610

Yeah, so I guess the origins. Do you want to go in my origin story or more?

Matt Edmundson

00:04:23.610 - 00:04:26.010

Yeah, let's do it. Let's go for it. Yeah. Yeah, why not?

Christian Simovic

00:04:26.890 - 00:05:23.640

So obviously I do email copywriting as a freelancer slash agency role. But if anyone knows me, I was into drop shipping. I think in around November, December 2021.

That's when I kind of got in and you know, like you know all 22 year old kids, you know, who think about drop shipping, oh, it's just easy money. It's just you just set up a website, you get traffic and you get money. Well, that's obviously not how it works. I learned that the hard way. Actually.

Not really the hard way. I didn't really spend any. That's the thing, I can spend any money on ad.

I was just really, you know, anyways, you know, so when I was coming up with my products, I was like, well, I need to actually like kind of, I need to have words that sell. And I kind of stumbled upon copywriting through that. And I think I was reading the Gary Halbert newsletter and a few others at the time.

And then I kind of pushed aside dropshipping and E commerce and then I kind of focused into copywriting. And to this day I still do E commerce copywriting because I do have a passion for E commerce and maybe one day I'll do it, I'm not sure.

But now I've got my site here.

Matt Edmundson

00:05:24.280 - 00:05:31.770

In the email marketing copy. So what is it about copy that draws you in? What do you find exciting about that?

Christian Simovic

00:05:32.730 - 00:06:02.690

I think so, like I'll go more deeper into my origin story. So I used to be, I was never a real estate agent, but I've always worked in the real estate kind of industry and the whole agency commission sales.

I just love being a salesman and copywriting is, I mean, I know it's a bit of a try. Everyone kind of says it, but it's true. It's salesmanship in print to an extent.

So you are, you're applying the fundamentals of salesmanship and understanding the psychology of why we buy and then applying that to the written word. And that's just a, you know, and it's just a fun thing to do in my opinion.

Matt Edmundson

00:06:03.010 - 00:06:12.850

Yeah. And I think actually, Christian, if I'm honest with you, it's almost like a lost art because what is.

And this is why I'm intrigued for this conversation.

Christian Simovic

00:06:12.850 - 00:06:13.090

Right.

Matt Edmundson

00:06:13.090 - 00:07:49.650

But what I've, what I've noticed over the years is email marketing has become lazier and lazier and lazier.

And what I mean by that is it's just like I'm going to throw some products on a page, I'm going to discount it by 10% and I'm going to email that out and that's just what I'm going to do. I don't really have to. And I can get plugins now if I've got a Shopify store that would almost do this whole thing automatically.

I don't even have to figure out the products. I'm just going to get some bot to crawl my database, figure out what you've bought and I'll email that to you. And I think you should buy it again.

Right. A lot of automation, but no real Sort of creativity in the copy, certainly in the newsletters, in the offers.

Maybe I see creativity in the segmentation, in the, in the sequences, but I don't tend to see it in the actual just plain old marketing anymore.

And I remember the days and the reason I'm saying this is because before this recording I was actually on your website having a little look at your landing page and I remember the days, I want to call them old school days. Maybe it's showing my age a little bit where long form copy was the thing to do.

And there was a real art to doing long form copywell, an art to sort of writing stuff that made me want to read what you wrote more than just like a quick 140 character sound bite. Do you know what I mean?

And so I'm really intrigued by this that actually you're into email copy and this was sort of an avenue that you chose to sort of express your craft or your art kind of thing.

Christian Simovic

00:07:51.060 - 00:09:14.780

Yeah. And I like how you kind of just said like I'm just going to rip into shreds about emails. I do agree with you on that.

And I guess it kind of stems from the whole short form versus long form copy. I guess I kind of come more from the direct response world of things like the Ben Settle, Gary Halbert kind of way.

And you know, the emails that I write for my clients, 500 to 1,000 words.

And I know a lot of people, a lot of email marketers might think that's ridiculous and no imagery, no real graphics or anything, just really just plain text.

And the whole point of that is you can't like you're kind of mentioning long form, you know, you can't really be persuasive with short form copy in my opinion and in the stats opinion but as well just my opinion. So yeah, long form really is the way to go. And I think a point you kind of meant about like just bringing that copy.

You know, it kind of goes back to a lot of people believe in branded copy and having like really short, not short headlines, but they think that shorter is better. And that's not always necessarily wrong or right. It's just, it's more of an, on a case by case basis.

But I'm going to be biased here and I always think that long form works better. You can kind of, you can, you know, we're talking about, you know, the whole like copywriting framework problem agitate, solution.

Well you can't really do that with 100 words. You know, I've seen a lot of PAs or problem agitate solution examples on HubSpot for example. And it's just 50 words and it's just boom, boom, boom.

That's. It doesn't really get into the specifics of why I should buy this product, the problems I'm facing, you know, that kind of stuff.

So I really like that about the whole email and then I try and put that into emails.

Matt Edmundson

00:09:15.290 - 00:09:34.490

Yeah, no, that's pretty. So you're Talking about a 500 to a thousand word email.

And one of the things that we've noticed with one of the E Comm companies that I've got is we do like the lazy in effect I really need to be careful. They're not. Jen puts a lot of effort into our emails. Actually she's not lazy at all.

Christian Simovic

00:09:34.490 - 00:09:35.210

I didn't say that.

Matt Edmundson

00:09:36.970 - 00:10:20.550

I definitely know she's not lazy but we do the sort of the offers and the promos and once a quarter I do an update email. So it's kind of like an update from Matt, you know, the MD of the company sort of thing.

And they are 500 to 1,000 word emails and when I started doing them I thought this is a bit nuts really because who's going to read an email this long and you know to this day there's some of our highest performing emails is when I just write an update I don't even try and sell people anything.

I'm just writing an update about the company, about what's going on and people read those things and they email in and go thanks for the update Matt, it's awesome, really. And it intrigues me that actually long form content seems to outperform even in that context.

Christian Simovic

00:10:21.590 - 00:11:10.460

Actually I want to make a point you just mentioned when you do your emails like from the founder types of emails from Matt addressing the people, that's kind of. And when people respond that's really the crux of plain text emails is that it is a more personal, engaging environment.

Because a lot of brand center emails they use the words like hey guys and then we. And they use a lot of words and they're not even just words but like let's say that from the sender name is like it's not the founder's name.

It's like, you know, you know, I don't, I'm trying to think of a brand name, let's say from Nike's support team. It's not really personal. Like I know this is, this is coming from a marketing team that's not really personal.

Whereas when you max the founder of the Matt the founder of the company send out an email to everyone, plain text, you know, using the words you and I speaking to them on a one on one, you know, kind of format. That's a lot more effective and it really does help to build a loyal and engaged list in my experience.

Matt Edmundson

00:11:10.940 - 00:11:37.820

Yeah, no, that's brilliant.

I'm smiling when you called me Max there because Sadaf, who you spoke to, the show's producer, she and I often laugh because a lot of people, for whatever reason call me Max. I don't know, maybe it's the way I say Matt, when people say who I say mattmondson, they go Max. And so it comes out a lot.

And so it's a little internal joke we have here Sadaf and myself about. So she calls me Max. And so I call her Sardof sometimes.

Christian Simovic

00:11:38.010 - 00:11:38.410

Just because.

Matt Edmundson

00:11:39.050 - 00:11:39.930

Why not? Right?

Christian Simovic

00:11:41.130 - 00:11:50.010

I just want to say I saw the. When you was talking about your story, I heard, for some reason, I instinctively heard Max.

I'm like, I'm gonna play, I'm gonna say that I'm just gonna go for it. And I realized my mistake. I'm like, oh, crap.

Matt Edmundson

00:11:52.570 - 00:12:53.710

No, no, it's totally fine. You're not, you're definitely not the first person and you won't be the last Christian to call me Max. But yes, no, that's fine.

If you want to call me Max, I have no issue with that. It's a cool name. Actually. I quite like Max. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got a friend, actually not related to anything we're talking about here.

I've got a friend who called his son Max after the movie Gladiator, Maximus Decimus Meridius, just so his. He's trained his son in that, that whole speech. My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, which I think is hysterical. Anyway, so plain text email.

So plain text emails. Why plain text email?

What is it about plain text email which draws you in versus using the standard traditional e commerce kind of marketing with images and offers and grid layouts and graphics and logos and colors and all that HTML stuff? What draws you in about it?

Christian Simovic

00:12:54.190 - 00:13:03.150

Yeah. Okay, so I'll ask you, I'll ask the audience this question as well as you, Matt. So Matt, do you like salesmen?

Like, do you like when they come onto your door, knock on the door, do you like when that happens?

Matt Edmundson

00:13:04.910 - 00:13:05.870

Yes and no.

Christian Simovic

00:13:06.750 - 00:15:54.730

Okay, well, most people say no. And I'll say, why? Most people in the audience will say no. You know, if for example, I come up and go, hi. Hi, Matt. By the way, my name's Christian.

I live down the street. I'm selling some water purifiers. Would you like to buy some? Most people say no because salesmen are annoying for the most part.

And this kind of stems from advertisements. You know, most people don't like reading advertisements. They really don't. They hate being sold on things but they love buying.

It's kind of a weird psychological thing. But I'll go back to the advertisements thing and if so psychologically speaking we hate advertisements.

And you know, like I always do this on my calls with people. Like I just show them the promotions tab in Gmail. I just show them.

Every single, you know, every single Ecom brand is pretty much in the promotions tab for a lot of reasons. But one of the big reasons they use photos and you know, I'll speak more about the psychological stuff.

When you open an email and it just has someone's logo, someone's photo, 10% off banner, you know, that kind of traditional stuff, it's very obvious that it's an advertisement or at least I'm about to be pitched to buy something.

So from a psychological point of view, you know, a plain text email is a much better approach because people like, obviously people know that it's an email from a marketing company or from, from an E Comm brand but you know, from the get go when I'm not instantly just inundated with pitching number one. So that's one reason for playing text.

And I was kind of mentioning as well that like personal, like personal one on one connection, you know, would you send an email to your mum, your mom if you're American or your dad, you know, would you stand, would you send like you know in, in fire, like fire sale emojis and 20 off and you know last Sunday deals like, and you know like logos and stuff. No one does that personally. So why would you send that to your customers? That's kind of my question.

Another reason for plain text as well is from a deliverability point of view. You know, Gmail and Yahoo, they have to scan for images. Now I don't know all the technical side of things, I'm not going to lie.

But you know, from a, from, you know, if you have images and newsletter kind of themes, a newsletter themed email, they really do end up in the promotions tab or worse the spam tab. And you know a big crux of it is email deliverability.

You know, if you're not in the primary inbox, you're not getting as many eyeballs as humanly possible because you know, no one I mean I don't and I. Most people don't that we don't check our promotions tab. Like that's just that.

And whilst I'm kind of talking about this, there's a concept that Gary Halbert had, the whole like this is more about direct mail, like actual physical letters but you know, he was sending out letters and this whole concept of the A pile, be the B pile and the B pile or the A pile, I don't know exactly which one it was but one of the piles, I'm going to say the A pie was advertisements and this was very notorious. Like you could just tell it's junk mail and then there's another pile which is the B pile which is like your personal stuff.

Personal, you know, from your mom, your brother, whatever. Most people chuck out the junk mail. They don't even open it.

And that's kind of the point, you know, if you've got an email that just screams advertisement, either they're not going to open it or they do open it. It's just not, it's not the same from a psychological perspective. Sure, a long winded way of saying that.

Matt Edmundson

00:15:54.730 - 00:17:00.970

But yeah, no, it's fair comment because I sit here and I'm smiling because every morning I open up Gmail and I check my emails and I've got the tabs, you know, the inbox, the social and the promotions. I open up the promotions, there's at least 100 emails which some have accumulated overnight.

Now I appreciate I'm slightly odd because I get people's emails just because I want to see what they're doing. There is that sort of learning factor with it. But I will quite happily go through all 100 emails.

I'll select all, you know, on the, on the promotions tab and I'll just scan down the list and I'll untick the ones that I want to keep and I'll just delete the rest. Right. And the whole thing takes like 30 seconds. So if I am not captivated by your subject line or, or in fact I rarely look at the subject line.

It's more who's sending it. I'm kind of curious. I want to look for different companies. Just how my brain works. There's a strong chance it's getting deleted and not opened. Right.

So I get this whole you don't want to be in the promotions tab and you want to be in the main tab. So does sending plain text emails then mean I'm more likely to get in the main sort of email tab on Gmail?

Christian Simovic

00:17:02.100 - 00:17:55.010

Yeah, For Gmail. And yeah, I, I'm not sure about Yahoo but and to be fair, who uses Yahoo. But a bit of a. Bit of a stab at people who use Yahoo.

I apologize but grow up. But yeah, Gmail definitely does. They definitely do penalize for photos and newsletter. Kind of like the newsletter graphics, that kind of stuff.

Very good English there. But yeah, they definitely do penalize and I've done my own testing as well.

And you know, moving from my clients doing more the traditional style across the plaintext, we're hitting the primary. Not all the time because a lot of the time you know, spam filters are hit.

You know one of my client, he does one of my clients, he's more of a like a hunting and like a hiking kind of store with a bit of a pro firearm lean to it. So naturally we do trigger a few spam filters or promotions filters, whatever you want to call it. So that's kind of unavoidable there.

I mean I guess it could take it out but that kind of spoiled the fun I guess defeats the challenge.

Matt Edmundson

00:17:56.450 - 00:18:12.450

So you're hitting the primary tab more often. What software are you using? Send plainer text emails?

Are you just using the same email like Kajabi or activecampaign, the same systems that people would use to send their newsletter style emails or are you using something different?

Christian Simovic

00:18:13.570 - 00:18:57.990

Yeah, so for me, pardon me. For me personally, I use Aweber or Aweber but my clients, they're normally on Klaviyo so I just stick with Klaviyo.

Most of my clients or they also using the Shopify email as well. So most of my clients are on Shopify so it doesn't really make sense. You know, they've been using Klaviyo.

It's a pretty effective system, very good segmentation. So I quite like Klaviyo for my clients. I found deliverability is fine in regards to all of the major, major providers.

You know, mailchimp, activecampaign. I'm trying to think of a few others. Klaviyo got me on the spot. You know those ones, they all, they're all pretty fine.

They're all pretty good for deliverability. I have no problems with them. Maybe if you get some dodgy ones, I'm not sure I can't vouch for them. But do you do your due diligence on that one?

Matt Edmundson

00:18:58.150 - 00:19:19.950

Yeah, it's good to know that Klaviyo does that.

One of the things that I've noticed actually from blogs that I've sort of subscribed to is there's been a marked shift from the send the blog post with the image header with a nice HTML formatting to actually more and more coming through as plain text emails. And I think partly because of what you've talked about, because of deliverability issues. Right?

Christian Simovic

00:19:20.910 - 00:19:53.000

Yeah, yeah.

And another point as well, to mention because you're like, I'm not trying to make fun of customers here, but a lot of them have like a short attention span or they don't want to take a certain action where. And people are lazy to an extent.

You know, if you put in a link saying, hey, check out my blog, you know, like, you know how some people do a little teaser and then, you know, click here to read the full story. A lot of people kind of go, well, can you just put the whole story in?

Because I don't want to click a link, which I know that sounds really like, petty, but seriously, like, I instead just put the whole blog in. Unless it's. Well, no, even still, I just put the whole blog in. It's a bit better way to do it, in my opinion.

Matt Edmundson

00:19:53.480 - 00:20:26.480

Yeah, no, interesting, interesting. Something else to test. So you're using plain text and it's interesting. The question is, why would you use it over traditional methods?

Whereas I would say plain text is actually traditional because that's how when we all started out, that's what we had to do. We didn't have such things as HTML newsletters. I mean, it rocked everybody's world when we could add an image to an email. Jeez.

So we're going back, I think, almost to the early days of text messaging. The sort of very traditional. Where would you use plain text emails in an E Commerce context?

Christian Simovic

00:20:27.600 - 00:20:46.400

Yeah. So I actually have an E Commerce or hunting client. I'll continue with that story. So I use purely plain text for him.

I don't have any images unless it makes sense.

So, you know, if you've got like a weight loss company or if you've got any kind of before and afters, then it does make sense to use the photo there because it actually is a very. It's a very persuasive image.

Matt Edmundson

00:20:46.480 - 00:20:46.960

Yeah.

Christian Simovic

00:20:47.040 - 00:22:03.610

You know, but when it. When it comes to. And I would risk a little bit of deliverability for that.

But when it comes to logo, like a logo or just, you know, a photo of the brand, I would never include that because again, so I'll kind of mention as well, you know, again, people don't resonate with brands as much as people think. Like a lot of people think, oh, it's the Font or it's the color or it's.

Is it Montserrat or Calabri or whatever, you know, like that I don't feel like brands, you know, we don't feel a sense of connection with brands when that happens. But what we do feel a sense of connection with is when a brand.

For example, Matt, when you're talking about, you know, having a personal from the founder type email, that's a lot more personal. Now to get back on your question about when can use it, I personally don't see a time when it's not applicable.

Like it will always work obviously for some companies, like I'll go with weight loss, you know, before and afters. They're very. It's pretty crucial to have a photo there because that is a lot of the persuasion is through that.

But even still, you know, for most brands, a lot of brands might think like, oh, I need photos to convince people. I've never had that the case.

You know, a lot of the times they'll read my copy, they'll click the link and then they'll still see an image anyways on the landing page. You know, people don't buy based on images, people buy based on emotion. And that's the whole point of long form copy.

It's to build and kind of get people not crying but emotional to an extent about.

Matt Edmundson

00:22:03.610 - 00:23:23.070

Yeah, yeah. You want them to feel something. Right. And you can. And words are a beautiful. I mean this has been around for thousands of years.

We use words, you know, to. Poetry is made of words, Shakespeare is made of words. And so, you know, words work, don't they?

I'm intrigued because I was smiling when you were talking about the logo.

I have this thing whenever I do coaching with clients and I come across their website, the first thing I do is minimize their logo and I follow it up with the statement no one cares about your logo other than you. Right? They just don't. And if you look on Amazon and if you look on Apple, you look on Nike, look at how small their logos are on their websites.

It's unbelievable. Now you could say, well they've got massive brand recognition. If you're a small brand, don't go for brand recognition because it's just not worth it.

Right. Just go for being memorable. Go for just so I get what you're saying about logos and that makes me smile.

And they don't buy it because of the pretty colors etc, etc. So have you. Is there a case then? I guess for I have an E commerce store. Right. I Sell stuff online if I want to get started. But I'm slightly nervous.

Can I split test?

Should I send, you know, part of this audience my traditional newsletter and part of them a bit more of a long form content email and just see what kind of results I get?

Christian Simovic

00:23:23.790 - 00:23:46.750

Yeah, absolutely. Testing is great.

I think testing to an extent, you know, a lot of people, if you've got a very small sample size, like 50 or 100 people, then it probably isn't the greatest sample size, like for testing purposes, but absolutely. A lot of my clients go, I don't, I don't believe what you're saying. Okay, well, we'll do a test and see what happens. So 100%.

That's more than, more than I think you should test anyway. So yeah, no problem with that.

Matt Edmundson

00:23:46.910 - 00:24:26.890

Okay, so let me run through some quick fire questions for you before we get into actually how to write a plain text email, you know, and some of the methodology you use because I'm curious to see how your brain works, Christian, if I'm honest with you. But before we, before we get down there, what are some of the common misconceptions or hang ups people have about email marketing?

Like you mentioned in or we mentioned in the bio, you're a proponent of emailing every day. And instantly, if I'm honest with you, there's a little, there's a little voice inside my head going, alert, alert. Do you know what I mean?

Dive, dive. Don't go there. So should you email every day?

Christian Simovic

00:24:28.090 - 00:25:01.230

Yeah. So I'll answer the first question because you kind of alluded to it. Like how do you write emails? I guess. No, it's not a good way.

I'll talk about the daily. So daily emails, basically the thing is, if you're sending again, 20% off hard pitches every single day, I 100% agree. Daily emails are not really.

They're not ideal at all. In fact, you probably get a lot of unsubscribes and unsubscribes aren't necessarily bad. I'll kind of mention that in the future.

But in terms of daily emails, why they're effective and why they're good and I'll try and it's kind of hard. Do you mind if I just say how do I write an email? Just like my kind of way about it, just so I can provide a bit of context.

Matt Edmundson

00:25:01.860 - 00:25:07.700

No, let's do it. I mean, let's go there. We can always come back to these questions and I can grow you about this for now. So let's have at it.

Christian Simovic

00:25:07.700 - 00:27:04.190

Yeah, sure.

So in terms of making a memorable, memorable brand and writing emails, a lot of the thing is, you know, writing a long form email, I like to talk about people's pains or people's, the market's problems. So for an example, I'll use one of my clients again, I'll use this hunting client because it's the easiest one I could think of.

I wrote his emails yesterday and there's an issue of waiting times in New South Wales in terms of the firearms registry and applying for licenses and that kind of stuff.

There's a long waiting time and there's a lot of pent up angst and frustration and not rage, but like a lot of, a lot of annoyance with the bureaucracy. And I kind of, I like to take sides in email marketing in sort of saying like, hey, I'm a brand, I'm for this kind of person.

If you're not for that kind of person, then you probably shouldn't be on our list and in for that, for, you know, our list. You know, they are angry at the firearms registry for whatever reason.

And I go into forums, I go into Reddit, I just read their opinions and then I write an email about it, pretty much agreeing with them, just kind of ranting and raving about the problem. And so I kind of set up the whole thing with, you know, here's a little story about this. This guy took him three months to get his firearms license.

And then hear the comments, people kind of getting angry with it. I kind of agreed with him.

And then I said, look, you know, we're selling a slingshot, which is legal in New South Wales and you know, you don't need a license.

I was saying, you know, having a firearm is great and all, but you know, an even better way, you know, to get something right now you can still kind of scratch that itch of shooting tin cans or whatever it is. You can like buy a slingshot. You can kind of see the way I framed it there.

So when you write like that, a lot of people respond back to our email saying like, yeah, I really agree with your take, man, I really like it. You know, I kind of, you know, I can't agree enough with it.

So like in terms of writing daily emails, you know, if you're writing again, if you're just writing, not writing for the sake of writing, but if you're just writing, just hardcore sales pitches, they do get very tiring quickly. But if you're writing fun, informational and entertaining, more importantly, entertaining content.

Entertaining content can be anything but if you're writing entertaining emails that segue, segue into a product, you really can't go wrong. Daily email, in my opinion.

Matt Edmundson

00:27:04.750 - 00:27:15.200

And so the emails you send out daily, whether it's for the hunting company or whatever it is, they're all 500 to 1,000 words long or there's some shorter, some longer ones. How do you do that?

Christian Simovic

00:27:15.840 - 00:29:03.610

Yeah, so generally speaking I do the short. So the thousand word ones are more for setting up a big problem. And I'll kind of mention that in a little bit.

But like, so these kinds of, the normal, the daily correspondence, about 300 to 500 words, give or take. It can vary. Some of them 100, some can even be 10 words. Honestly, we did one.

This is a cool like little trick you guys can use or a little hack, I guess it's called like a deliverability booster email. Basically you don't actually pitch anything in your product, you just ask them a simple question.

So for this market, you know, we're based in New South Wales and the National Rugby League, the Grand final was on two weeks ago. So I simply asked, hey, who do you think is going to win? Parramatta versus Penrith. That was the two teams playing. I didn't.

There was no call to action, nothing. It was literally just a plain text email from the guy, 10 words. And the amount of responses we got was ridiculous. And it just.

And the reason why we want responses because firstly they responded because they think it's like I'm writing to them personally, which I'm not, I'm sending to 5,000 odd people. But you know, another reason why we want responses is because we can be put in that primary inbox. So that was that. To go back to daily emails.

I'm trying to just not lose my train of thought.

Daily emails, the whole point of it is that, you know, on any list you've got the hyperbuyers and then you've got, you know, the people who are a little bit skeptical and you know, you can, you can send emails to the hyperbuyers and they'll buy pretty much straight away. It really doesn't matter what you send, they just want the product.

But the hyper, the, the non hyper buys the kind of, the skeptics, they need a lot more convincing, they need a lot more time before they buy.

And I know I've seen on some people's list, you know, it might take 110 days, 120 days before someone actually like that's the average it takes for someone to buy on, on some. One of my Friends lists. So that's kind of the whole point of daily emails. It's kind of like a rock, you know, how like a water cuts through rock.

It's not just one go, it's. It's just gradually over time. And so that's the whole point of daily emails.

Matt Edmundson

00:29:04.490 - 00:30:14.190

So you're sending out these daily emails.

They're plain text emails, they're various lengths, some short questions, some sort of 3 to 500, some 500 to 1,000, depending on the kind of content you're sending out. What's going to work, what's going to resonate with your audience? It's got to be information or educational type stuff. It's got to engage.

It can't just be pure sales because no one cares. Right. So you're sending out these daily emails.

One of the things that you said, which I thought was interesting that I wanted to circle back to is you take sides in the emails.

And I was talking to Adam, who was until recently actually he's moved on to bigger and better things, bless him, the marketing director of one of the companies I'm involved with. And he was talking about how as a brand we need to become much more polarizing. We need to sort of take sides, take a stand on something.

And so the fact that you've mentioned this intrigues me.

Is this something that actually as brands we should do is sort of almost take sides in things and sort of become a little bit more polarizing rather than beige and trying to be all things to all men.

Christian Simovic

00:30:15.310 - 00:32:35.230

Yeah, so that's.

This kind of brings up a point I always see a lot of, you know, whenever you go to some an E commerce store and they'll say, you know, 10% off and join the tribe.

And you know, I love this idea of a tribe, but the reality is, you know, like, in order to become a part of a tribe, you need to feel like there's a group of people that you're in. And if you're appealing to everyone, then you can't. There's simply. You just can't have a tribe for everyone.

You have to pick a side and an example of this. You don't have to be really controversial. I mean, an obvious example is Alex Jones.

He's probably too far, but like, maybe let's talk about golf, you know, and so, you know, in the golfing niche, there's, there's like, maybe there's a lot of different buyers, but let's just say you've got the golfing purists, you know, the guys who don't like laser range finders. They don't like fancy gizmos or doodads. They just like the purest sport of golf.

And then you've got the other guys who are golf like technicians and they love every little trick and hack and any kind of thing to one up and get better.

And you know, if you're a golfing E commerce store, you could say, you know what, I'm gonna pick the purist side and then I'm gonna write purely for the purest and I'm gonna start. I'm not saying to rag on the technical side all the time, but you don't even have to rag on them, you know, if you don't want kind of controversy.

But you can always just say, look, we're for the pure side. We're going to stock purist stuff only. And the whole reason why we do this to be polarizing is because, you know, building a loyal and engaged list.

There's this kind of factor, it's called like the know like and trust factor or KLT factor. A lot of brands have no and trust, but they don't have like, you know, do you like. I'll give you an example. Like, I don't really like Coke.

The brand like Coca Cola. There's nothing to like. Now when we talk about Elon Musk, very polarizing figure. I personally don't. I don't like him or hate him. I don't.

I'm pretty indifferent to him. But, you know, a lot of people don't like Tesla because it's the brand Tesla. They like Tesla because it's Elon Musk.

You know, it's this polarizing dude. He just says what he wants. Same thing with Donald Trump. Same thing with any kind of really out there politician, really.

So building like a loyal and I guess.

So the whole point of why you should be polarizing because when you build like an in group, like a people, that's for me, like, let's talk about the golf purists. All of a sudden, the golf purists on your list, they start to like you more. And when they like you more, they will buy more.

They will have either either more increased average order volumes potentially.

But more importantly, when they like someone and they like to buy from them more often, you know, as a golf purist, I'd rather buy from the guy who talks the stuff that I agree with and I actually like than the guy who's just shilling me stuff or, you know, just a corporate brand.

Matt Edmundson

00:32:37.190 - 00:34:29.230

It's interesting, isn't it this whole polarization thing and taking sides and actually one of the things that I came across recently was something called the Trust report from Endelman.

And it was a really interesting survey, 38,000 people, something like, I mean a lot of people around the world, Australia, the uk, New Zealand, Thailand, I mean all kinds of places. Right. So they did this survey and they were, they were asking people about trust. Who do you trust? Right.

And obviously, as you would have predicted, given the times which we're living in, our trust of politicians is falling at a rapid pace. What's interesting is when they start talking about trust of companies, like do you trust companies?

And the big companies are losing trust in the eyes of the consumer.

What is gaining trust are the smaller brands who stand up and not only try and sell you something, but have a cause, have a just cause which they're involved with. Right. This comes down to the polarization, so taking a stance on certain things.

So a lot of consumers now think companies should take a stance on say salaries and the environment's a popular one, like you know, whether or not it's sustainable and so on and so forth.

And you can either be pro sustainability or you could give a flying flip, but it in effect creates a tribe like you say, of people and actually it starts to build trust. And it's something that I think the stat was something like 60 odd percent, 70% of consumers think companies should be doing this more now.

I mean it's a lot of consumers that think that. Right. So I'm intrigued by this whole polarization thing thing, you know, and, and how. So how did you, how else have you seen that work?

You talked about it with the hunting thing. Where else have you seen that work?

Christian Simovic

00:34:30.430 - 00:37:02.880

Yeah, and I actually wanted to mention as well, just because I kind of thought of that idea. You talked about the corporate world and a lot of trust is kind of falling.

The bigger brand, probably a good example would be like greenwashing, for example.

Like a lot of the brands, the larger brands like to talk about wearing environmentally friendly, sustainable, but in reality their practices are pretty, pretty negative. So that's kind of a mention. I want to talk about that. Well, a good example.

This is actually kind of one of my mentors, I guess I'll talk about Ben Settle. A lot of his kind of email newsletter is very polarized in the sense that he doesn't really cater towards beginners and newbies.

He kind of, he doesn't really make fun of people, but he does, I guess, troll people. If someone, you know, has a silly question he's not afraid to roast them in the comments. I'll give you an example from my other client.

I'm not gonna say his name, but he has like a. Like a psilocybin, which is. He doesn't like the term, but magic mushrooms, essentially. It does sound a little bit derogatory, so I get that.

But yeah, so basically, magic mushroom company, and we kind of in our emails, like the villain. So this is a good way as well to kind of build a tribe is to have a villain.

And in our case, for the, you know, for magical mushrooms and the alternative health sphere, Big Pharma is a perfect villain. You know, that is the ultimate villain. And I want to go back to the firearms one, the villain. My case was the firearms registry.

And let's say in the case of. Let's say in the case of like an E commerce company, just a generic one, you know, the villain could be dropshippers.

You know, in the hunting company, when I did an email kind of just saying that dropshippers, the whole process of what drop shipping is and how it kind of not riling up the customers, but getting them to understand what, you know, what drop shipping is and why it's ineffective compared to E commerce and just showing them the negatives and kind of painting the dropship as a bit of a villain in this case. But yeah, the magic mushroom one, that was an awesome villain. Big Pharma was a great villain.

And I don't always like talking about pains because, you know, you don't want to always be depressing. We live in a very, very fractured society nowadays. Especially after Covid, a lot of people still are kind of depressed and very isolated.

So I like to provide uplifting stories. And one of the stories for this psilocybin magic mushroom company was we did a story of this woman named Janet Lai Chang.

She was someone online, and this was kind of her effects. She basically told the great benefits she got from. She received from. It's called microdosing or magic. That's what the whole.

The whole thing is microdosing.

And it's kind of just an uplifting story of how she went from, you know, depressed, nearly suicidal, to, you know, just feeling alive with energy, talking to people. She even spoke to. Apparently she spoke to a barista at an airport for like four hours straight. She was just that full of energy.

So I like telling those stories as well. And it does hit a problem the market is facing as well at the same time.

Matt Edmundson

00:37:04.160 - 00:37:29.830

So, I mean, magic mushrooms aside, having a villain, I think is Quite an interesting idea. Who's the villain in the story? And I think about every well written story, there's always a villain, right? There's always the arch nemesis.

And so when you're writing these stories of heroism, have you come across a guy called Don Miller? Don Miller's a really interesting story brand.

Christian Simovic

00:37:29.830 - 00:37:31.270

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt Edmundson

00:37:31.270 - 00:38:17.960

And his whole theory isn't it, is that when you write, you write as though the customer is the hero, not the brand. You're not trying to make the brand be the hero. He likens it to Luke Skywalker. He's like, the brand is Obi Wan Kenobi. The customer is Luke Skywalker.

Right. So you're writing them into your story as the hero. But he always talks about the villain. Who's the villain in the story? Who's the Darth Vader? Right?

Who's. Who've we got to overcome? And that can be people, that can be other companies. That can be a particular problem. It can be a limiting belief.

There's all kinds of things that that villain can be. And that's part of the story of being the hero, which I think is quite interesting.

So you send out daily emails, which I'm really intrigued by, actually. Do you get many unsubscribes?

Christian Simovic

00:38:19.090 - 00:39:49.290

Yes, we do. And I'll be very blunt. So a lot of people go, you know, unsubscribes. Wouldn't you get a lot unsubscribes? That is very true.

But, you know, checking the klaviyo, the software, what we noticed when we first doing this, because I was worried the first time I ever did this, I'm like, oh, crap, we're getting like 1% unsubscribe rate, which sounds really high. But the reality was we checked out all the buyers, although the buyers. I'm doing air quotes.

If anyone can't read that every single person who unsubscribed had never even bought a product, or if they had, they hadn't bought since 2018 and they bought a $30 item five, four years ago. You know, this whole concept of, you know, like, oh, we don't want to offend, you know, like, we don't want unsubscribers.

I understand where that's coming from, but it's not really coming. It's coming from a bit of like a, like, you're playing to lose, not playing to win kind of mindset. Like, instead of what.

What I personally think and what I've done with a few of my clients is that, you know, get those people off the list because they're never going to buy anyways. That's the best sign that they're never going to buy.

Unsubscribe straight away and then fill up their place with people who are going to buy, whether that's through paid advertising, SEO or whatever. Just constantly build the list. Constantly build a list of buyers, which is even more important.

You know, a lot of people like to think like, oh, I've got a 10,000 or 20,000. 20. I had one client, she had an 8,000 person list and that sounds really impressive, but none of them were buyers.

They were all just a mishmash of random people. And you know, when we're emailing, the results weren't great because they just weren't buyers.

I'd much rather have a highly responsive list of 3,000 or 4,000 people than 10,000 people who are just kind of there for the ride and not really responding or not buying or anything like that.

Matt Edmundson

00:39:50.170 - 00:40:14.550

That's really interesting. I like your theory on unsubscribes. And do you then segment, do you send the same email to everybody on the list or do you go.

Because like with Klaviyo you mentioned, or Klaviyo, however you pronounce it, you mentioned that it's got good segmentation, which it has. We use that ourselves.

Do you send the same email to your best customers that you do for those that haven't bought from you since 2018 and bought ones for 30 bucks?

Christian Simovic

00:40:15.590 - 00:41:21.200

Yeah. So how I segment is I said I've got. Klaviyo's got great segmentation but I don't really take full advantage of it.

That's something I should be trying to do.

But I normally have a buyer's list, a non buyers list and then like a hyper buyers list, which is that kind of that VIP buyers, maybe they've bought three or four times more. Generally speaking, everyone gets the same list and everyone gets the same email.

And I'm trying to experiment a bit and actually kind of writing a second email, like two emails in a day for that hyper buyers list or potentially let's say. So it kind of depends on what you're selling for E commerce.

Like let's say there's like the flagship product which is let's say a slingshot, you know, and you get everyone on your list, everyone. So once they buy that Slingshot, then they get moved on to a new product, maybe like some kind of an upsell.

I'm trying to think like slingshot coaching or Slingshot whatever. But Like, I'm trying to think of another way.

So maybe the buyers, or the buyers in this case, and then the non buyers would get just the normal standard daily email, whereas the hyperbuyers might get a more expensive up, like, what's the word? High ticket product, or maybe even a second email. That's something I haven't really toyed. I'm kind of thinking around as well on the go.

But to answer your question, I send right now. I just send the same email to everybody.

Matt Edmundson

00:41:21.200 - 00:41:22.200

Send the email to everybody.

Christian Simovic

00:41:22.760 - 00:41:25.320

Okay, so probably not that segmented, but still.

Matt Edmundson

00:41:25.810 - 00:41:43.010

Okay, I've got here a little note saying, ask why sad. I've put this in. Why using spell check can make your emails less profitable. Yes, I am super intrigued by this because I spell check everything.

Like, because my spelling is awful, awful. So I use it all the time.

Christian Simovic

00:41:44.290 - 00:42:46.330

So it comes from two things.

So number one, you know, it kind of goes down to the brand and the corporate kind of the corporate look, you know, a lot of people, whenever you see a corporate brand speaking, it's very perfect, crisp. No slang, no jargon, and it's very corporate. And that's totally fine.

But, you know, I'm gonna liken them to Dua Lipa or Brad Pitt or, you know, Chris Pratt or any of these guys. Any of these, like, famous actors, you know, Can. Can you personally relate to them?

Like, they've got a six pack, they've got perfect teeth, jizzle, chore, you know, jizzle jaw, all this stuff, you know, they. They look perfect. I can't. I personally can't relate to them. You know who I can relate to?

I can relate to the guy, you know, waking up at 3am He's a little bit overweight, he's eating ice cream, probably shouldn't. His wife's gonna try not catch him out of bed. You know, like, his wife's like, where are you? He's just getting ice cream.

Like, that kind of guy is a lot more relatable. And when you use spell, when you use typos, when you use slang, when you use. No jargon, just slang and typos.

And purposely, I don't purposely misspell, but sometimes I'll misspell and I won't fix it up. You're making mistakes in a sense that. Have you ever watched, you know, Columbo, that TV show?

Matt Edmundson

00:42:46.410 - 00:42:47.050

Yeah, yeah.

Christian Simovic

00:42:47.050 - 00:43:34.000

Like the. Yeah, you know, the detective, he kind of comes in, he looks like a bit of a bumbling fool here and there. That's on purpose.

Because he's kind of telling everyone that, hey, I'm not okay. You know, you, like the, in the, in the interrogation interview, you're better than me in a sense. Like, you're more okay than me.

And people feel more comfortable with that. You know, People.

I know this is kind of a weird thing, but when you're in a social environment, when you see someone who's really like in high school, like, let's say the really cool guy, I'm not comfortable with that guy. I don't want to say a joke. I don't want to like, say anything that could get me in trouble. You know, that's just psychologically speaking.

But when I'm with someone who I don't perceive as okay as okay, you know, then it's. I feel a lot more relaxed and comfortable. And that.

I guess that sounds kind of bad psycho, you know, from like, it doesn't really sound nice, but that's just the way humans are. And that's the whole point of spelling, spelling mistakes and typos.

Matt Edmundson

00:43:34.080 - 00:44:04.980

Yeah, it's disarming, isn't it? I mean, Columbo was. Disarming is probably the word you would, you would use. So I think that's fascinating.

So can you run us through, Christian, your process for writing an email then that, you know, customers are going to want to. Want to read that they're going to enjoy reading. What's the sort of. If I'm sat there at my computer, I'm staring at it.

Writer's block, blank screen, you know, what are some of the things that I can do? What do you do?

Christian Simovic

00:44:05.860 - 00:46:20.810

Yeah. Okay. So the answer to all your questions are in the market. And I know that sounds really simple, but it's true.

If you spend all of your time knowing everything about your market, the problems, their pains, what they want, all that kind of stuff, their little slang, their little jokes. Writing daily emails, or just writing emails in general is very easy because you understand, you understand what they want to talk about.

And this whole writer's block notion, I had that too. But the reality is, you know, when you do a lot of research and understanding exactly what their problems are, it becomes a lot easier.

So let's talk about. I'll do like a sample right in front of all of you. Let's talk about magic mushrooms, because that's what we're talking about for.

And let's talk about the pain of. So the real problem is depression and anxiety.

A lot of people who micro dose, they do it because they're depressed, they're anxious, maybe they have ptsd so the problem might be I might go on Reddit or quora or a YouTube comment and I might see a really popular trending question. Let's say the question is, I don't know, let's talk about, like, you know, like, I've tried antidepressants before and I don't feel any better.

I'm gonna try microdosing. Like, so that could be the whole point of the email.

So the email could be basically saying, like, you know, maybe you've tried, like they call SSRIs or antidepressants. You know, you've tried antidepressants before. Here are some of the negatives. Antidepressants.

And just kind of get into their head and get into their world about the problems they face. You know, again, if they've got any talking points, if they've said any opinions, I'd.

I wouldn't copy and paste it, but I'd kind of rewrite what they've said just to understand exactly what, you know, just to show that I'm on their level. Like, I'm getting in the head, I understand what's going on through them.

And then from there, like, I can't really explain off the top of my head because I'm really bad at that. But I kind of just go from there. I'll come up with a topic from the market. I'll talk about their problem.

Maybe I might even insert a story about a problem. You know, someone on antidepressants. Here's the shocking story. You know, they gained weight, they can't fall asleep, whatever.

Maybe there's a funny kind of story. Maybe there's trying to think of something else. That's what I can think of. Let's go with funny story.

And then I'll kind of just segue that into my product, which is microdosing. And then I go like, look, if you, if you're, if you're sick and tired of these symptoms, you should try microdosing.

And that's a really crap, you know, kind of like a synopsis of what I do. But that's just the general framework at this point. I kind of just go into autopilot and just write them up, I guess.

Matt Edmundson

00:46:21.450 - 00:46:42.450

So when you write and, you know, you talked about your mentors that you've looked at, is there a framework. Earlier on, you mentioned about PAs, the. What was it? The pain agitate, solution, problem agitate.

Is there a framework like that that you're thinking of when you write the email? So you've got some kind of structure to it like a beginning, a middle and an end.

Christian Simovic

00:46:43.490 - 00:47:54.390

I guess like now that I look back, I probably do. I just don't, I don't consciously think about it but I now that I'm.

Now that I kind of, the way you said it, I probably definitely to follow just a very, very like a PAS problem agitate solution. You know, there's another thing, you know, this comes from like the legendary like negotiator.

He actually, his name was Jim Camp, one of the world's most feared negotiators.

And he had this whole concept of building a vision which is essentially just pass and you know, instead of pitching the benefit straight away of my product, you know, he'd talk about, you know, just provide. And he did it obviously in selling, but he provide a vision of the problem. And that's kind of the whole point in the emails.

Like I always try to make, make sure the reader knows that hey, there is a problem or agitate their problem and then provide the solution. But in terms of frameworks, I don't have any off the top of my head.

I know a lot of copywriters out there like to do like the 18 step framework, you know, if XY if, then ZED. And that's just too complicated and convoluted even for me and especially for you know, e commerce business owners.

Like you guys have a lot on your plate and there's no point, you know, worrying so much about copywriting books. I think the best thing is just to start, just start writing and understanding your market and yeah, that's probably the best way, honestly.

Matt Edmundson

00:47:55.030 - 00:49:35.410

Yeah, I've like, I mean going back to the founder email which I, well the, the, the MD email, I'm not the founder, but going back to that email that I write, I don't have a framework. I'm just trying to be authentic and I think people respond to that. And for me that includes telling a lot of stories because I think stories work.

But I mean, I'm curious about the PAS thing. I've seen that a few times actually. I can't say as I've ever used it.

I've come across a few of them like you know, Ada, you know, the attention, interest, desire, action or whatever. There's a few, isn't there? There's a few different frameworks out there that you can look at.

But I think the bottom line is my sort of takeaway, I think from the conversation Christian is email marketing has sort of got into a bit of a rut.

And one of the things that you can do to try and do something different is the plain text emails and just try and be a little bit different in how you write them. Try and be a little bit more creative and try them and see what the responses are.

And you can do that probably with your existing email provider like Klaviyo or, you know, Aweber or a few of the others that you mentioned.

So I'm intrigued by it and I'm intrigued by how we can use this now as an E commerce brand and how we, we might sort of try and mix this up and change things around a little bit. So thank you for that. I'm kind of curious.

I asked this question to all my guests at the moment, Christian, because I'm really curious to the answer as I'm aware of time. You're standing before a live audience.

Christian Simovic

00:49:35.650 - 00:49:36.010

Right.

Matt Edmundson

00:49:36.010 - 00:50:08.860

You've just delivered your best keynote speech ever. The crowd's going wild. Yeah, you know, we're sponsored by the E Commerce cohort. These guys are sat there in front of you.

You know, all the members are sat there in front of you. You've just delivered your keynote and so you take a sort of a little bow and you go, listen, this is fantastic.

I would just like to thank dot, dot, dot, because without them I wouldn't be here. And whether that's a book, a podcast, a mentor, family member who is on your list, I'm curious.

Christian Simovic

00:50:10.140 - 00:50:52.000

Yeah, I have to say it's probably my copy chief at the moment. His name is John Brandt. He's very slept on. He's a very good writer. He doesn't promote himself enough. His name is just John Brandt, Copy.

He's an exceptional copywriter. I work for one of the like as a client. One of my clients is the Podcast Factory and he's. There's a group of writers and he's the copy chief.

And he really has just transformed the way I look at copy and more importantly, business, honestly. You know, a lot of people like to spend money on coaches and masterminds and there's nothing wrong with that.

But I don't think you can't beat like one on one mentorship. That's why it's so hard to find, though. But if you can, you know, having a mentor really is game changing for any kind of business, really.

Matt Edmundson

00:50:52.950 - 00:51:01.350

So John is your. John Brandt is your mentor then. I'm curious, what does that relationship look? Oh, unofficial, but what does that relationship look like?

Christian Simovic

00:51:02.550 - 00:51:47.870

Yeah, so for the most part, you know, it's not. We kind of met in weird circumstances.

Like, it wasn't like I was signing up for a mentor program or anything was more or less I was working for this client. We have a group of writers and then at the time he stepped up to be the editor, I guess of all of our writing.

He edits the writing and then, you know, he also does similar to me, email, freelance copywriting.

I kind of just asked him a few questions and he's very receptive to my ideas and asking questions and he's always, always free to jump on a call or you know, provide a bit of advice in, in the dm. So yeah, it's. I never like, to be honest, I never would have thought that this would have happened.

You know, it's not like, it's not like I kind of, you know, press X to get mentor. It's just kind of, it just naturally occurred and yeah, I'm forever grateful.

Matt Edmundson

00:51:48.430 - 00:52:03.950

Yeah, that's really interesting. So, John, thank you. If you're listening to the show, I'm always intrigued by the response people have when I ask them this question.

So Christian, listen, how do people reach you? How do they connect with you if they want to do so?

Christian Simovic

00:52:05.150 - 00:52:14.430

Yeah. So I have my email list. It should be in the show notes somewhere. Sign up to my email list. I provide daily. That's daily email tips.

Email tips and tricks.

Matt Edmundson

00:52:15.390 - 00:52:19.310

You have to. Right after this conversation you've got to put provide a daily email.

Christian Simovic

00:52:19.790 - 00:52:34.270

Yeah, holding me to account now. But yeah, it's daily email tips. But more importantly, more marketing tips. More than anything email and just general marketing tips.

Because marketing really is the fundamental. Email is just a tool to get you there. But you know, the fundamentals is marketing.

Matt Edmundson

00:52:35.150 - 00:52:38.270

That's great. How long does it take you to write those emails?

Christian Simovic

00:52:39.550 - 00:52:56.680

So it depends. At the start it took me about an hour or two. There was a lot of second guessing. But when you don't spell check, maybe 30 minutes or so.

About 30 minutes to 40 minutes depending if it's research topic, like research late and then probably longer. But if it's more of just a rant style email, probably 30 minutes. Yeah.

Matt Edmundson

00:52:57.000 - 00:53:46.540

Fantastic.

Well, we will of course link to Christian's links in the show notes, which you can get for free along with a [email protected] or if you're signed up to our email newsletter. We don't email you every day. Maybe yet maybe to rethink this.

But if you want to sign up to our email newsletter, you can get all of this direct to your inbox automatically as it comes out. So yeah. Christian, thank you so much for joining us. On the podcast.

It's been great and I think really challenging because what you've done here, irrespective of whether people agree with you or not, you've challenged the norm, you've challenged the default, and you've said people think about this a little bit and I've got a lot of respect for that. So well done and thank you for coming onto the show and sharing your thoughts.

Christian Simovic

00:53:47.420 - 00:54:02.700

Appreciate it. Matt. It was really Max. Matt. Good fun. It was good fun.

And I think I've got to check out Gabby's podcast to see if I can be more polarizing next time because I've got to be the most. I gotta be. I don't know who the Alex Jones of email writing. That's what I want to be.

Matt Edmundson

00:54:02.780 - 00:55:59.970

Yeah, it's good to have a goal, right? Good to have a go. There you go. So there you have it. What a fantastic conversation. Again, huge thanks to Christian for joining me.

Also, a big shout out to today's show sponsor, the E Commerce Cohort.

Do head over to ecommerce cohort.com that's all one word.com ecommerce cohort.com for more information about this new type of community that you can ambush. Probably should join.

If you're involved in E commerce, be sure to follow the E Commerce podcast wherever you get your podcast from because we have yet more great conversations lined up like today's one with Christian, and I don't want you to miss any of them. And in case no one has told you yet today, dear listener, you are awesome. Yes you are. It's just a burden you have to bear. I have to bear Krishna.

So we're just awesome. It's just the way it is and so you can take that with you throughout the rest of the day. The E Commerce Podcast is produced by Orion Media.

You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app. The team that makes this show possible is Sadaf Baylon, Josh Catchpole, Estella Robin and Tim Johnson.

Theme song is written by Josh Edmondson and my good self.

And as I mentioned, if you'd like to read the transcript or she show notes, head over to the website ecommercepodcast.net and also if you haven't sign up for our weekly newsletter, maybe changing it to daily hashtag the same. That's it from me. That's it from Christian. Thank you so much for joining us. Have a fantastic week wherever you are, and I will see you next time.

Bye for now. Sam.