EP. 101- SEND MORE EMAIL!?! [GUEST EPISODE] w/ Mary Keough

Welcome to do this, not that, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately.

You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins and pitfalls to avoid. Also dig into life, pop culture and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that. Welcome to do this, not that.

And I'm excited for two reasons. One is we have an incredible guest and two is we're going to talk about email.

And I always get excited we talk about email, but more importantly, it's who is here to talk about email. So we have Mary Keough here.

Now if you don't follow Marin LinkedIn, you are not using LinkedIn properly because she is one of my absolute favorite followers. She's crazy smart. She shares like these takes on things that you just don't see anywhere else. And who is she?

She is the director of product and content marketing at a company called Colab Software which powers engineering teams and all their design efforts. But the real secret sauce is that she makes marketing interesting when you're marketing stuff that is hard to make, really fun and exciting.

So I'm so excited to have her here. Mary, welcome to do this, not that.

Thank you so much Jay. Super excited to talk today.

Excellent. So we are going to talk about email and I guess the first thing before we get into email, I want everyone to hear your origin story.

How did Mary become Mary?

Okay, I'm going to try and do this in 60 seconds or less. So I'm going to give you the fast paced career journey of Mary Keough.

So, so I started out as a technical writer actually for a B2B manufacturing company. So they were in OEM made and manufactured big spray systems and then tiny little spray nozzles.

So was hired there to write a bunch of educational content for engineers. So got really used to how to make really boring content somewhat interesting to engineering folks.

And from there some of my managers saw a lot of potential in what I was doing. So they were like hey, we think you would be really great in marketing. And I was like I've never considered marketing but sounds really cool.

So started doing some stuff within marketing. Email was a huge channel for me.

Virtual live events was a huge channel that we capitalized on especially during COVID and from there got hired into corporate marketing at the same company. So I was in a smaller division, got promoted up into corporate and then ended up in an agency back to SaaS.

So my journey has been a little bit of everything, but always stayed in that industrial manufacturing niche which is where I am today with Colab. We sell into manufacturing companies.

I think there's a lot of people out there that are listening right now. They're like, oh yes, this is going to be great.

Because they don't have somebody on from some big direct to consumer brand or some B2B brand that everybody knows that doesn't have to be try to figure out how to get people's attention. This is.

Everyone's going to feel very seen that you're out there driving demand and interest in a B2B sector that can be hard to get people to engage. So we're going to dig into that. So let's talk about email. You are bullish on email.

Why so number one, I'm bullish on email because it's where I got started. So it was a huge distribution channel when I was in manufacturing. Why was it a huge distribution channel for me? Because it's free.

Manufacturing companies love distribution channels that they have to pay almost no money for. So I capitalized on a lot of the content in email way, way back in my early days of marketing.

And bonus, if you do really well at email, it's also a highly visible channel, especially to your internal company and then of course your external customers. So a lot of folks were seeing what I was doing with email, getting really excited about it, seeing the positive impact from that.

So higher open rates, higher click rates and that's where I built trust and credibility in that manufacturing organization. So I was able to experiment more and really develop my marketing career from there.

So I'm bullish on email because I think it's a under leveraged opportunity, especially for people who are maybe just looking to make a larger impact in their organization. So that's number one and number two, it fricking works.

Like email is a distribution channel that works especially if you are really diligent about culling your email list. So making sure that email list is always staying nice and fresh and then making sure you're putting out some really.

Great content, you just shared something. We're going to dig into some specific tactics and stuff that I think are going to blow people's minds.

But you just shared something about email marketing that I have 100% never considered before in doing this for a really long time, which I'm just curious about.

You said that by doing email marketing in your company, higher ups, everybody is really seeing the marketing efforts that you're doing because a lot of times they're on the lists that you're emailing to. And I guess my question is on the positive side. If you're doing really cool email marketing, they're like, wow, this person's crushing it.

They're smart, they should be doing other stuff. So it's like an internal PR win for you, for your career. But does it also have a lot of cooks in the kitchen?

Like, when you're doing a lot of email marketing, are you getting a lot of heat? Hey, why aren't we doing this? Or a lot of opinions and is it annoying? Do you ever face that?

Yes. So early in my career, I faced it only when email started to become this visible channel.

So before it was like, yeah, sure, go ahead and send your emails, little marketing specialist, do your thing. We don't really care because it's email, it's free.

And then once it started to become more visible, people were noticing it, especially customers and internal folks. Interestingly, that's when more cooks started entering the kitchen, which is.

It's funny because from a logistical standpoint, if email is doing really well the way that I'm doing it, you would want to leave me alone, go ahead and keep doing your thing. But because it was so visible, because we were seeing so much success, more people wanted their opinions heard.

So the way that you can tackle that is, of course, listen, because they actually might have some really great things to add.

And especially in a highly technical space in manufacturing, I was hearing from technical experts, application experts, so they actually had some really great content to add. And I think just making sure you have a really good filter, so knowing why your content is working.

So my content I knew was working because, number one, it was valuable, like a number one, high quality, valuable content. Number two is it was easy to consume. And then number three, it did something fun. We made email a fun channel to consume. So my kind of.

That was my filter then, for any feedback I received. Is this making it any less valuable? Is it making it any less readable? And then is it making it any less fun?

And if it didn't check one of those three boxes, then I probably filtered it out.

Wow, I like that. I'm going to use those three. That's an excellent way to handle that kind of inbound suggestion box, if you will.

So let me pivot here, because you have a hot take on something I think is a hot take, and I've seen you talk about it a bunch, and people are going to be like, wait a minute, this ain't right. And that is you Talk about that. People should be sending out more email, not less.

And somebody listening is going to be like, no, you don't know how much I send out. There's no way I should be sending more. So change our minds. What. What does that mean? Should we just be sending every five minutes?

What does it mean to send more email?

So, yeah, and that's like such a great point, Jay. I've heard it from many angles. That exact point is I already send too many emails. And you know what the really funny thing about that is?

My next question, of course, is, how many emails do you send? And the I send a lot of emails, I'm quoting for those who are only listening can vary vastly depending on who you're talking to.

So one person might think two emails a week is a lot. One person might think two emails a month is a lot.

So I think making sure you have a really good definition on what too many actually means for you is a good place to start. So when I say more emails, I'll give you an example.

I think that companies, especially smaller marketing companies, B2B SaaS, who are looking to really grow their companies should be sending anywhere from three to five emails a week. That's my hot take.

Wow, three to five a week. Oh, let's break that down a little bit though. Are we talking about, hey, I have a webinar.

I'm going to send it five times to get people to sign up for this webinar. Or are we sending out different stuff? What are we doing to those five emails?

Yes, you're definitely sending out different stuff, and you're probably sending it to different lists. So this doesn't mean you're blasting your entire email list with every single email that you're sending.

So I'll give you an example of what I did at the company before Colab. So we were sending almost no emails except for, like, really crappy nurture email sequences for people who downloaded ebooks.

So what I did was say, where are our gaps? Where's our bottlenecks? And we had a really big bottleneck in product marketing content. So, like, how tos, what value does the product bring?

That kind of stuff. So the first thing I wanted to do was start a webinar series. I've seen it work before for many different kinds of companies. So we got that started.

So, yes, the webinar emails were a huge one. We did a weekly webinar.

So that actually made it really easy to push content consistently because you're reminding them that when the webinar is on Monday or Tuesday. The webinar was on Wednesdays. We're doing a follow up by Thursday or Friday. So that's every week. That's two emails right there.

Then we were also doing a tip of the week. So any feature embedded in the software overall, we were highlighting that specific feature in kind of a newsletter style email.

So that would be like, here's the problem this feature is solving that you're probably experiencing in your day to day life today. Here's how that product solves that problem, here's a video of it, here's a knowledge base article, and here's some other stuff that you can read.

So everything you would need to know about that feature was embedded in this email newsletter style.

I love that. Yeah, that's such. That's valuable. And it's also selling. It's a win. I want to circle back though.

You said the F word to start this podcast, not the actual F word, but you said the word fun. Yes. And I'm sitting here like Colab's great company, doing great stuff, but you're marketing engineers.

And I don't know if you got a roller coaster at your office or something like that, but I don't understand this word fun with related to what you're doing. So how are you making it fun? How is that possible?

Yes. So we're doing GIFs, memes, funny images, funny videos that we're finding.

And go figure, engineers are people too, so they actually like gifs and memes like everybody else does. So we have a lot of freedom in our marketing department to experiment creatively with things like that.

So we include a meme or GIF in almost every email we send at Colab.

Wow. So how do you win the internal battle? Cause I'm with you. To me, humor is such an essential part of marketing.

I don't care what audience you're going to, but a lot of people listening may be like, there's no way, nobody. My company's not going to go for that. There's no way. I want to do it. But how do you win the.

I want to incorporate actual humanity into our marketing, into our emails. How do you win that internal battle?

Yep. So the one thing you can do is send them this podcast and let them know that Mary Keough did this and she said it worked.

So that's a really good way to do it. Another way is of course, where it's just experimentation. Right.

Hey, let's just try this with a small niche segment in our customer base who already loves us, so there's very little risk here. And we just want to send them like a newsletter update. So maybe we're releasing a new product, maybe we're updating the product.

We just want to let them know. And we're going to let them know with this very minimally funny meme. So you're going to have to tamper your expectations a little bit.

You're probably not going to be able to do anything too wild in your first experiment, but. But just seeing the engagement rate so making sure those engagement metrics are going steadily up, I think that's a great way to do it. It's just.

Can we do a small experiment?

I think that's a great point to start out small and trying to win the day there. And with everything you're talking about, send out more emails, injecting humor, especially with the audience that you're marketing to.

I would imagine you get some unsubscribes, you get some people saying, hey, this ain't my speed. I'm not into this.

Do you have like just internal, everybody has thick skin and you have great management of expectations or do you turn a blind eye to unsubs? Like, how do you feel when you see unsubscribes?

Yeah, unsubscribes don't bother me. That's a really great point though, because I think it can be really scary.

So when I was at the manufacturing company, that was one thing I really was pushing. We had this gigantic email list and we would send an email newsletter once a month and then some product updates in between.

We weren't doing any segmentation, so. So we were blasting our entire list with every single email that we would send.

So the one thing I wanted to do was segmentation and the second thing I wanted to do, we didn't have any like automatic workflows for culling the email list. So I wanted to do just like a backend refresh of the email list and it was going to involve cutting the email list by a third.

So like 33% less people. And that was really scary. It didn't end up going through because it was so scary.

But I was able to push segmentation, which definitely helped with our open and click through rates.

Yeah, people should not be scared of unsubscribes. They're not. They're just not a bad thing.

No, not at all.

Yeah, it could be a win. So I want to go on a totally off topic that I didn't tell you we're going to talk about, but I Wanted to ask you.

I think that you do a great job with your personal branding, like what you're doing on LinkedIn.

And for a lot of people, they think I can't go out there and share a lot and I won't get anybody interact because I'm not the vice president, Apple Computer, I have a billion followers. I'm uncomfortable. Like, empower everybody. How did you really get going on LinkedIn with your personal brand?

Because you have an incredibly engaged following your posts. Get like bananas engagement. How did you do that?

Yeah. So I think where you want to start is what are you using LinkedIn or your personal brand for?

So I wanted to use mine to educate marketers specifically in the industrial and manufacturing space because it's so underrepresented, presented in the public visible domain, especially like social media and LinkedIn.

So I just wanted to share things that were working for me, things that I were doing and things that I was noticing as trends in marketing and manufacturing. So I think that's the number one thing, is you have to have a goal. So my goal was education for this very small niche audience.

And from there I knew three things were really essential to, to growing, of course, my personal brand, but also making sure people were actually like reading and engaging with the content. And so I've narrowed this down to three things.

So you want to have really high quality content, you want to be posting that quality content consistently and you want to have reach. So in the early days, and this is especially true for what you just said, Jay, which is I just want to get started. Like how do I get started?

You have to grow your audience.

So that's the first thing you're going to want to do, is just connect with a lot of people, especially in the area that you want to educate or grow your personal brand in. So that was the first thing I did, was just connect with a lot of people in marketing, sales, manufacturing, industrial.

And that helped me get over that like little hump, which is I think like 500 to a thousand people who are like in your network. And from there that's when I started the brand. Posting quality content and posting it consistently.

So up until probably like a month ago, I was posting on LinkedIn four to five times a week and just trying to get, yeah, as much value and as much content as I could get out there.

That's not easy, but what you're doing is great. And I think it people should follow you because your content, but also to see how you do what you do and how you're building Your network?

Cause I think it's. It's exciting to watch. All right, let's go into something completely ridiculous.

So the last segment of this thing is called, since you didn't ask, we talk about things have nothing to do with engineering and B2B marketing and whatever. And I could be wrong, but I think your dream would, other than what you're currently doing, would also be to have a food truck open a diner.

And what I want to know is you must then watch the Food Network a decent amount or something. Like, where are you getting your inspiration, that of your food journey that you want to do?

Yes. So Jay's absolutely right. I've had this dream since I was, like, 16 or 17, so in high school, wanting to open this diner called Hash Browntown.

And the goal is that you can get potatoes any way you want them. So every dish is a potato dish, and you can have them anyway. You can have a baked potato, tater tots, french fries, put anything on top.

So I came up with this idea because you're 16, 17, you have your license. What's the first thing you want to do is just you want to go to a bunch of places with your friends.

You just drive around and go eat really crappy food. And what I noticed is there's not a lot of, like, potato options. You just have french fries and tater tots, and that's it.

And I was like, what would be awesome is if we could just go to this place that had any kind of potato. So there it is.

And have you done anything with this passion, or are you just out there frustrated with no Hash Brown Town?

I'm still out there frustrated with no Hash Brown Town. But I have done some very preliminary research. Once, I believe I said this to Jay once.

My rocket ship career in marketing really takes off and does its landing. I've researched food trucks. I know the basics on how it works. I've got the. I got the basis down. I got the foundation.

You have to apply for the great food truck race on the Food Network.

Yeah.

You seen the show?

No, I haven't, but I've heard of it.

This is a show where you compete. You have a food truck, and you compete in whatever. But I want to understand something for real.

I would walk up to your food truck, and it'll be called Hash Brown Town. Okay, and so, like, what, you would have a baked potato, a hash brown, and fries? What am I missing? What other versions of potatoes can I eat?

I don't even know.

Oh, my goodness. Shake. We have Mashed potatoes. We have waffle fries, tater tots, curly fries, sweet potato fries. Jay, the possibilities are endless.

Oh, my God. How did I like just all those Escape my brain Now I'm hungry. This is terrible. And there's poutine. We can go global. That would be amazing.

Although I think waffle fries are overrated. But that's my own. That's my own belief.

You probably Chick Fil a. Chick Fil A is not going to like that.

I know Chick Fil A will be very angry. This has been amazing, Mary. Break it down. Where can everybody follow you? Find out about your podcast, your world, what can they do?

Yes, please, please follow me on LinkedIn. Mary Keo. Jay will put the stuff in the show notes.

And then I also have a podcast I do with two of my very dear friends, Aaron and James, called the Purposeful Marketing Podcast. That's on Spotify, Apple, all the podcast networks. It's a super chill podcast.

We just pick a topic that day and we created it because we were sick of the structure of most podcasts. So we just wanted to pick a topic, talk about it with a couple other marketers who are in different spaces.

And I want to clarify something. Here's how you spell Mary's last name. Because my last name is impossible to spell and Mary's name, you would not spell her.

It's K E O U G H. K E O U G H. Find her on LinkedIn. And her podcast is great because this podcast will give you anxiety. Okay. It just is. Ah.

Her podcast is very relaxing and you'll learn and not want to go and just take a nap afterwards. It's wonderful. So check it out. Follow Mary. She is awesome. Mary, thank you for being on do this, not that.

Heck yeah. Thanks for having me, Jay.

Awesome. All right, see you later, everybody. You did it. You made it to the end. Nice. But the party's not over.

Subscribe to make sure you get the latest episode each week. For more actionable tips and a little chaos from today's top marketers. And hook us up with a five star review.

If this wasn't the worst podcast of all time. Lastly, if you want access to the best virtual marketing events that are also 100% free, visit guruevents.com so you can hear from the world.

World's top marketers like Daymond, John, Martha Stewart and me. Guruvents.com Check it out.