[Transcript starts at 0:40]
Hello, hello, hello. My podcast people and thank you for joining me for yet another episode of my most favorite podcast. Today we are answering the question, how important are email subject lines? If you're tuning in watching, giving you the listen on the drops, it is Monday, April 7th. We're in April. Folks, welcome.
Hopefully you're not having a ton of showers. I don't know what it's gonna be like for us in April, 'cause I'm recording this at the end of March, but it's been raining, so you know, it is what it is. But before we talk about those email subject lines, let's do a few life updates. I like giving them, hopefully you like hearing them.
And then we'll get into the full episode. So life update number one. Kim. Kim Ress. She's a professional volleyball player. She's comes to stay with us tonight. So again, I record this a week before. Um, but she's coming to stay with us. And it's really nice to be able to share what we have. Lex and I, you know, really enjoy that.
I've talked about this before, plenty of times in the episode, uh, on the podcast. And it's just nice. We have, we have this big house. We have a, a guest room. That was a big thing we were looking for when we were looking at a place we rent. Um, but when we were looking at, for a place to rent, we wanted an extra bedroom.
Um, so there's four bedrooms here and that fourth one is. For guests, um, volleyball is going well. Lex and I are really hitting our stride. We, we are partners when we play, um, and it's going really well, right? We've, we've, we're clicking and the vol the game is slowing down. When, when you're learning volleyball, you kind of go through these, like, it's not, I don't wanna say peaks and troughs, but like, I'll say like peaks and plateaus maybe.
Um, and. When the game slows down, that's a good thing. It's like you have more time to make decisions. You, you're not just like reacting. Um, and it, it's nice. It feels like, okay, it feels rhythmic. It is. It's a nice place to be. So the game is slowing down again, which is nice. Uh, finally, really leaning into hand setting.
If you play volleyball, you understand? Um. So between that and just the physical preparedness that I feel like I have from lifting more, I think it's really helping my knees feel good, my body feels good. Hand setting just like allows me to like touch the ball more. Um, and the best way I can explain this is if you play basketball, imagine.
Doing everything with like your arms, but then when you shoot, then you use your hands, right? If you had to dribble with like your arms, your forearms, and then you pass with your forearms and you defend it with your forearms, but then it comes time to shoot, you gotta use your hands. That's basically what volleyball is, right?
When you play volleyball, you pass with your forearms, you, you know, you're blocking. It could be forearms, it could be your hands, um, your setting. If you're, if you're not hand setting, you're using your forearms. And so, you know, you're defending using your, your, your forearms. And so then when you go to actually hit, then you have to use your hands.
And it's kind of like, that is not, it's not a bad thing, it's part of the game, but if you could use your hands, in my opinion, you can use your hands more, that's better. Um, so hand setting definitely gets me like physically into the game more and it's been really nice. Um, that, and again, with like just the physical preparedness, I, uh.
It's good. It's very, it's very, very good. Um, so speaking of the physical preparedness, continuing with Aaron's program, it is going really well. Um, not gonna lie, I'm already wondering like what comes next. I know he, he does have another program. Um, and I still have six weeks left of this one, but I'm definitely in my mind like, oh, I, I'm thinking about it.
Um, so there's a very good chance I will just not have a very good chance. I will buy his next one. Um. And then perhaps by the end of that, I think it's, I think that one is like a 12 week one. This one's a 10 week, I think that's 12. Maybe a little longer 'cause there is a break in the middle of it. Um, but my point with this is that perhaps by the end of that I'll be wanting to program my, for myself and knowing how to program for myself, like feeling comfortable with it.
Um. It might also be, you know, necessary for me to program for myself just so I can make it more specific in terms of like body parts that I wanna focus on. Um, but I definitely already have a preference for how I wanna set things up. I'm really liking having quads on a Monday. Um, I have an, the upper body program day is on, it's called Upper Body Volume.
That is on Sunday, it's on Saturday or Sunday, kind of the way that I do it. Um, it's just really nice with my schedule and so I definitely have developed a preference for this and I can take that with me moving forward. The business lesson here, uh, is that, as I've said a million times, people will pay you to say it again.
People will pay you to do things that they don't know how to do. Um, people will pay you to do things that they just don't want to do, right? I, I didn't know how to program in this way, and I'm willing to pay him. And if I'm less, like I don't really wanna get back to programming myself, I will pay him. As well.
Um, the combination of the two of, of not knowing what to do and kind of not wanting to do it, um, and, and for me is that I didn't actually know I could handle this volume. So there's a, uh, one of the sessions Aaron utilizes for one of the. Movement, you utilize what's called the Vince Gara approach, which is actually eight, eight sets.
But Aaron programs it a six by six. I would've never programmed this for myself because I, I know that I can't handle a ton of volume, especially when it's heavy load. Um, so I wouldn't have programmed this for myself. But the, this approach, the load isn't actually that heavy because you have to do six sets, six reps, and there's only 30 seconds of rest in between each set.
And so I didn't know about this and I didn't think I could do it. And so like, it's nice to have. Experimented with it now and be like, oh, I can, and I will definitely program this for myself moving forward. Of note, I went back and listened to some of the older episodes from E Train Prosper. That's Aaron.
Aaron and, um, Brian's podcast. And they talked about this approach, the Vince Garron, Vince Geronda approach, um, in 2024, in March of 2024. And this is the business lesson here, is that people will pay you to say it again. People will pay you to say the things when they're ready to hear it. People will pay you to organize it for them, right?
I am people. Um, so. We will link that episode. Thank you. Courtney will link Aaron's stuff as well. Um, but all that to say I'm really enjoying the five, the, the, uh, training. I'm enjoying training five minutes a week. I thought there'd be too much, but I was just like, whatever. I need the distraction. I'm gonna jump into it.
And it's, it's been really, really good and my body feels really good. Um, so we'll see when I go back to programming for myself. Um. Speaking of my free time, the distractions, things like that. I'm not playing guitar as much. I am still playing, but not as much. And this speaks to the fact that we cannot do all the things at once.
Right? We can do all the things. We just cannot do them all at once. Um, we do have a band practice coming up soon, but I have not been playing as much though the, I. Course that I bought is really helpful. So when I want to go and learn, um, we're going through pentatonic scales right now. If we actually finished the, the five ones that we wanted to learn, um, I will go and do that.
It's called, uh, pickup music, I believe. Big fan, 10 outta 10, 12 outta 10 recommend. Um, but I just haven't been doing it as much. What I have been doing a ton of, mainly over the past, like week and a half, two weeks, is using chat GPT, literally a fucking ton to work on my website. Um, I have a WordPress website because I got, so I got my first site website that I ever did.
I built myself on Squarespace. It's 20 14, 20 18. I needed an update. I wanted to be able to ho house, house the mafia. So AKA membership. I was selling in-person course tickets. I was gonna start a podcast. Um, and I was thinking about courses and I was just like, and, and. Uh, I had a blog, right? So I was like, I need a site that can accommodate all of this.
And at the time, Squarespace couldn't, 'cause I had Squarespace and so I knew it didn't have that functionality. Um, so I got a website built and it got built out on WordPress. I. Certain things within the site are hard coded in, namely, the front page. I can do, I have like full control over the website. My website guy is great.
Um, and we built it largely built it together. He showed me what was going on. He asked me things, I told him what I wanted. I built out the whole mafia side of things, the whole membership side of things. Um, but the homepage, it was one of the things that I, it's, it's hard coded in and just like the style of the pages and things like that, it's hard coded in.
And I was always just like, yeah, it's fine. And then I was like, you know what? I'm gonna learn how to do this. And I totally could have reached out to Joe and had been like, teach me and, and paid him to teach me. But I was like, I could, I could do this. I could figure this out. Um, so I did that. I spent the past two weeks doing that and, and leaning on chat, GPT, um, I.
And what a teacher it is, man, what a time to be alive. It will hold your hand and it will encourage you while walking you through every single step of literally everything, like literally everything, how to do anything. You can ask it how to do it. It'll tell you. You can say, what does that mean? You can input what the, the screen is showing you and it'll tell you what that means.
Like it'll tell you what programs to get, what not to get. You couldn't get feedback. You know, I could do some cross referencing with Reddit and things like that, but like. I did a shit ton. I built a, a local site. I, I duplicated my site as a local site on my, my desktop so I could mess around with that, and then I wouldn't fuck up my actual site.
Just, I did so many things and Chachi PT. Told me how to do it. It will explain it to you like a third grader. It'll give you like actual metaphors for things. And if you're like, I wanna understand this thing, not just like, do it, it will, it will do that, it will generate the code. So you actually don't have to know how to code, you just have to know where to put it.
And you can still ask it, where do I put this? Right. But, and you have to know what you want it to, to do. And you can say like, Hey, I want, 'cause what I wanted was scrolling text or dynamic text on my website, but just one part of it, um, on my homepage. And I wanted it to obviously be mobile friendly. So. I did that and I was like, how do I do this?
And it was like, okay, we're gonna go through this, this. And I was like, okay, where's the best place to put this? Do I put that in a PHP file or do I put that in the, uh, WordPress customizer? Like it'll walk you through fucking everything and it cheers you on. And you can literally be like, I'm so frustrated right now.
And it'll be like, it's okay. Like it, it's amazing. So. We did all the things. I, I spent a, I spent a lot of time, you can ask Alexa. I've spent a lot of time, uh, doing that and it's been great. It's been great for my brain. It's been great for just me in general. Um, to me it kind of feels like, you know, learning how to drive a, a, having a manual transmission versus automatic transmission, right?
If you're listening to this and you're gonna build your own website, use Squarespace, by all means. It has all the things. Now it's 2025, right? I, I already have a big ass robust ass web website. And so to me it's like I, I do know how to drive manual. Uh, to me this is kinda the difference where like, Squarespace is an automatic transmission.
It does all the things for you. Whereas something like WordPress is a manual transmission. You gotta learn how to do all the things. What I'm learning now is how to fix that manual transmission, which I really enjoy. Um, I be you, if you watch my stories, you know, I love fixing shit. I'd be up in the fucking garage putting the the door thing back on.
Learning all the things from Chachi, PT and, and YouTube and Reddit. Um, so. That's what I've been up to. Yes, I do know that LLMs as we'll call them large language models, um, like Chachi pt, they have a, um, environmental impact. I'm aware of this and I'm open to any, all and all suggestions of like better ways to go about it better, um, LLMs to use that, don't you know?
Have that kind of, um, environmental impact. Um, but I am absolutely loving using it. That aside, I am absolutely loving using it, especially, you know, in a time when people are just fucking screaming about how to have chat. GPT do your work for you. And I'm over here deep in the weeds, having it teach me how things work and I am loving it.
So let's use this AI discussion as a segue into the full topic today, which is. How important are email subject lines? And the segue is there, because I know people are trying to use chat, GPT or Claude whatever, whatever, whatever LLM you want, um, to generate these subject lines, which is fine, right? I don't think they do a great, it does a great job necessarily, but, uh, I don't think it's the best use of a ai, but this is the, this is the transition, the segue that I want, and talking about what actually matters and how important.
Subject lines even not right. So my answer to the question of how important are email subject lines, they are not nearly as important as giving people a reason to want to read. The email, right? I think that some folks believe that the subject line is what gives people a reason to read the email, and I think that's incorrect, right?
The subject line simply tells people what the email's about. Perhaps it piques their interest. Um, I know mostly it gives 'em a reason to be interested, but the reason that people read the email ultimately to quote Pu Astan, and the reason is you all right. You saw that coming. You had to have seen that coming, as I was saying, you had to have seen it.
Come on, where are my middle, there are my millennials at? So to me, who is sending the email is the most, impart, the most important part of the email, and is the most important factor in determining whether or not someone's gonna be opening that email. Whether or not I'm gonna be opening that email and reading it, right.
The this is the most, in fact, wow, this is the most important factor that determines, also determines if I'm gonna join an email list in the first place and actually stay on it. So, whose email list is it? Right from there. Yes. The subject line, don't get me wrong, it is valuable to an extent, but namely, like I said before, for giving me a reason to be interested.
Right? And it does so by telling me what I'm getting outta that email, right? Sometimes when I get out, what I'm getting outta that email is entertainment, right? It doesn't always have to be information or education. That, that's, I feel like that lends itself to a Cha a Tracy Chapman, uh, gimme one reason to stay here, right?
That's what that, that subject line is doing. It's telling me what I'm gonna get out of it. It's giving that one reason to stay here. This approach and what I'm talking about feels very on brand for me, if I may say so myself. Um, because, you know, I'm always like the best way to be doing something and by doing this thing is by doing something else, but it's the truth.
Right. The best way to get the outcome that you want is by doing the most to lay the foundation that is conducive to said outcome. Alright, so think about your own behavior here, folks, right? Whose email lists do you sign up for and stay on? Whose email list are you still on? Even though you haven't read their shit in a long time, but you're still on it just in case, or like, because you have no reason to unsubscribe.
You're like, Hey, I like them. This thing hasn't been, you know, the subject line tells me that this particular email isn't, you know, for me, but I'm still staying here and I'm still reading the subject line. Right. And I will open an email when I have the time or when it's most relevant to me. I, whose emails are you reading?
Even if it's just intermittently? When you look at the answers or you think about the answers to those questions, I, they're rhetorical, but you know, maybe make it not so rhetorical. When you look at those answers, is it about the person, is it about the content, or is it about the subject line? What's keeping you there?
Probably about the fucking subject lines. Right. So for me, right, when we're talking about a personal brand, it's obviously about the person, and then secondarily, it's about the content that they're sharing. I don't care about the subject line, be completely honest, and I'm annoyed by grimy share. I don't want bait and switching.
I don't, right? If it's a bigger brand like a or a business, then it's that I trust that brand. Because of the content that they put out. So an example here would be Morning Brew. I is an email that comes every day. Um, I'm not even sure how I found it. It might have been through a podcast. I don't really fucking know, but I subscribed because of the content.
I checked it out, checked it all, like, um, you could like read the articles before you subscribe. And I was like, yeah, I do want this, this coming to my inbox. And I keep reading it and I have it unsubscribe because they're true to their word. I trust them. They do what they say they're gonna do. They deliver information.
It's important to me. It's quality information and they're not always telling me shit. They do have like, you know, ads and stuff in there, but it's fine. I expect that. Whereas there's a similar, um, email called snacks and it sucks. I, I subscribed to them first and their shit was just so subpar. Like these emails that these, these articles that you're linking to are just like poorly written.
They're not actually super helpful. The information presented is very rudimentary. It's not necessarily, um, you know, I don't wanna say breaking news, but it's not necessarily like. Topics that are, are super relevant and are super, um, uh, what is the word I'm looking for? They're not super relevant to what's going on right now.
So I was like, this, this sucks. Right? They didn't do what they said they were gonna do. They said they were gonna provide the daily snack, send the email each day. It's gonna have this type of content, but I'm like, it doesn't, it's content sucks. I so. When it comes to the personal brand, yes. First and foremost, it's about the person.
If it comes to the bigger brand, then it's secondarily about the brand, but I like the brand because of the content. It's still a trust factor. It's still about them. I. So to provide you with a few tactics and not just make this like some super like 30,000 foot view approach, like a few tactics when it comes to email marketing.
Number one, if you have an online business, yes, you should have an email service provider, an email marketing service provider. I personally recommend Kit former known as ConvertKit. I will drop my affiliate link below. That means that yes, I'll get one penny if you use that and you sign up. Okay? Number two, you need a domain email address.
Well, I said that weird. You need a domain email. Domain email address, uh, to send things from. So it helps you send a reputation. So. For me, like Shante at the movement, my show.com info at the movement, my show.com, whatever that at the movement, my My show.com. That's the domain, and so it's a domain email address.
You will need that in order to send emails from ConvertKit. You can get one of these through Google. I will link that initial and it says, well, through Google Workspace you can get other places. That's where I prefer to get it. Okay. Um, yes, I believe that they are in cahoots with Squarespace. So if you go through Squarespace, there's something there.
But again, I don't have Squarespace, so I can't say for certain. Um, but either way, we'll link a place where you can get it and it's like, I don't know, $6 a month or something like that. Number three, be the first person to join your own email list. You have to be on it. Number four, write consistently.
Excuse me, lemme back that up. Number four, write first, then write consistently, then write in your own way, right? No one wants to go into an empty store, meaning people will be like, I'm just gonna invite people to my email list, and I'm like, are you sending emails? Start by sending emails. You send emails first, and then you invite the people.
Once a month is fine to send out emails. You don't send it more than that. Yes. Ultimately, I like to be able to work up to once a week if it fits their style and it fits what they're capable of. But it's up to you, right? Share this in your own voice and in your own style. You will figure this out as you go, but the best example I can give you is like if you are on my email list and on Lexi's email list, you said they're very different, right?
I have a lot of anecdotes, a lot of stories in mind, and Lexi is like, here's a tip, here's a tip, here's a tip. Neither one is better than the other, and they're both very true to how we show up in the world, right? That's what I want out of your email list.
Number five, focus on opening rate. Not number of subscribers people get. So caught up in the number of subscribers. Subscribers, I don't care about that. Focus on your opening rate, and I wanna see at least a 50% opening rate. And it's not gonna come from fucking subject lines, it's gonna come from how you are showing up and people want to be part of the thing.
That you're doing. People wanna hear from you. They like you. They believe in you. They trust you. They wanna learn from you. They wanna hear from you. That's how I need you showing up at the other places where you're gonna ask for them to give you your email, which is, excuse me, where you're gonna ask for them to give you their email address, which would be on namely social media or your podcast, right?
Other places where you get in front of people. Number six, join my maestro male fam. If you wanna see this in real time, you know, play by play. You can do so by going to the movement, my show.com/email-list. If you're not on it already, would love to have you. If not, that's fine too, right? Autonomy is sexy.
Number seven, if you wanna learn more, you want more information around email marketing, things like that. I have a 90 minute self-paced mini course. It's called What the Fuck Is Email Marketing. You can check that out. We will link that in the show notes. Thank you, Courtney. So when creating this email, I was creating this email.
Wow. When I was creating this episode, I very intentionally didn't title it how to Write Better Subject Lines, or How to Get People to Open Your Emails. Since the election, my emails and my podcasts have had a, you know, a political slant. Um, since that time. Um, they've had a very, you know, what's going on in the us, what's going on in the world?
Slant. They've had a, am I making things better or worse? Slant. To that end, one of the biggest issues that I see. When it comes to titles like that, and when it comes to the, the, the discussion around email marketing is that the real problem and the real reason that folks aren't opening emails or signing up for email list is because it's become so transactional and they're only part of the transaction, right?
So you, as the business owner, if the only reason that you are. Having an email list and the only reason that you're writing is so that you can sell shit. I don't judge you, but I do believe that that in and of itself is creating an obstacle for you to overcome and the best and most clever subject lines in the world are not gonna solve that problem.
Would you wanna talk to someone who only calls when they want something? No. To be clear, it is perfectly okay to use your email list to sell, and that is my preferred way of selling, but I do believe that the benevolence piece has to be there. So talk about a bunch of times. There are three parts when it comes to building trust, competency, integrity, and benevolence.
Competency. You know what you're doing. Integrity. You do what you say you're gonna do. There's a congruency there, and benevolence, you have my best interest at heart. Those things to me need to be front and center. They need to be foundational. I think people skip over that and they're just putting out emails to try and sell shit.
There's no connection to the audience. There's no, Hey, I actually have the audience's best interest at heart, which the best, their best interest. Maybe it's for you to sell something. Maybe it's for you to provide a paid solution, but probably isn't always that. And if all you're doing is being like, what do I want?
What do I need that you're, you're missing that benevolence piece. I think that creators in general, business owners, I won't say creators, I think business owners and not so good business coaches, they're really emphasizing this like transactional side of things. And that's the problem. And no amount of using chat GPT to come up with a subject line is gonna get people to open it, right?
You are dealing with people, you're dealing with humans. They have feelings, emotions, thoughts, needs, wants, expectations, dreams, desires, day-to-day activities. They have those as well. Are you addressing that? Are you mindful of that? How's that come into play? Is there, is there a relational aspect to this or is it purely transactional?
So when I was saying before of, you know, if you want this thing, do this thing, where do we start? We start with building this foundation, right? And it's those three pieces, the competency, the integrity, the benevolence piece. How are you stringing up? Why do you have this email list in the first place? What are you writing?
Why are you writing I, as far as the subject lines, just tell people what the email is about. It doesn't have to be super fancy. Alright, that's all I got for you. This is a fun one as always, endlessly, endlessly appreciative for every single one of you. If you got questions, comments, concerns, thoughts, additions, subtractions, anything you have asks for, for podcast episodes, whatever I love.
Hearing from you. I heard from, uh, a couple of you after last week's episode, and I was like, that's dope. I, I really do love hearing from you. So shoot me a dm, uh, shoot me a text. What is my name? 3 1 0 7 3 7 2 3 4 5. I love to hear from you. Alright, I'm gonna wrap it up there as always, endlessly appreciative.
Until next time, friends maestro out.
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