Thanks for having me, Derek. Pleasure to be here.

Sure, happy to. Around 1995, I was just about graduating college, and was just getting started in business. My wife–who was not my wife at the time, of course–and I were working together and we always knew that we wanted to work together, so we spent a lot of time at Barnes and Noble leafing through the back of all of these business magazines, trying to pick something that we wanted to do.

We actually became resellers of a product that was teaching people how to get started in direct mail marketing. We bought a package that said all you had to do was run some ads, drive people to a voicemail script, use that voicemail script to get people to raise their hands, get a sales letter to them, and if they were interested, they’d send you some money.

It sounded like pie in the sky, because we’d been trying all kinds of things for the past year. All kinds of rubbish, a lot of $39.95 money orders. But this thing actually worked. We were doing everything offline, though. We’d place ads in penny savers, and we’d get people to raise their hand, send them sales letters, and they’d send us money back in the mail.

All this time, though, I was still working my full time job as a network engineer. I had a degree in psychology but I was in the computer field.

I said to myself, if we could just lower our expenses–I was talking to other direct marketers and they were saying that breaking even, which is what we were doing, is pretty darn good. So in 1996 we ran an ad on AOL classifieds, which unfortunately you can’t do anymore. But it was $13 for this ad, and it started on a Sunday, and it would run from Sunday to Sunday, starting at 11AM. At around noon, we got our first sale. $13 investment, $97 sale.

I think we made $800 off that one ad. So we kind of threw away the voicemail, and decided to be online entrepreneurs. That’s what started it.

I’ve also had one foot in tech and one foot in the marketing world. It’s a unique perspective because most people are either one or the other, but I’m hardcore in both. I’m starting to get to the point of teaching myself programming.

I leverage all of my network engineering skills to build servers for the company, all that. But I can still get down and dirty with ROI, lifetime value, all of that. I’ve always lived in both worlds and it’s kind of my sweet spot.

For years we were doing that, and then we turned our business into a software company through strategic alliances, and joint ventures, which I became really good at. We taught that for years, and wondered if we’d continue with software or if we’d move into information products.

We kind of had both for awhile, but years of doing business with our ecommerce platform called Goldbar One for many years. We had a lot of customers come to us and say “I like what you’ve got, I’m good with the shopping cart, I’m good with the affiliate software, what I really need is somebody who is a marketer like me that can help me deliver this huge list that I’ve got.”

That’s kind of been my life in marketing. Customers will tell you what they want to buy, and if you don’t deliver it to them, someone else will. That’s always been my mantra, give the people what they want.

We weren’t advertising, I wasn’t trying to compete, I was very happy with the boutique company that we had. Our clients were happy, and they kept me paid by referring people. That was how I got to where I am today.

Now we’re about to show everyone what’s under the hood, with our next version, EM13. We’re going to be able to get high volume marketers the delivery that they should be getting.

I consider us a hybrid. You have your ESP with a shared pool, and they have their free trials. Then you have Aweber, which is a little bit more geared towards people that are only in email marketing. Then you have MailChimp and ConstantContact which is more for small businesses with less online marketing savvy.

I don’t like that model. I feel that people get better results from leveraging their own domains and IPs. Exacttarget is more what we look for. I give people the service, make it easy, but you don’t use a pool of IPs, it’s all your own dedicated space.

I did see that void a few years ago that you either had to be an expert or a guy that put your whole life in the hands of the ESP. But we’ve all heard the horror stories of being kicked off and not knowing why.

When you cross the line into that hardcore spammer territory, I get it, but I really don’t support that draconian kind of model when its people that are just making genuine mistakes and can be taught to market better and keep the ESPs happy.

Most people just trying to do business online just make mistakes!

I kind of agree with you.  I might ramp up if I have a launch coming up or something. But I’ll tell you before hand, and I’ll reward you after. Free content or webinars or something like that to let them know that you appreciate them.

I think it’s more important to be consistent with your style. When you change it, that’s when you create cognitive dissonance. That’s when people expect something, but don’t get it, and their brains get a little confused. As marketers listening to this podcast, that’s the worst thing you can do. You want your people to get exactly what they’re expecting.

If they don’t get what they’re expecting, you need to let them know and explain.

I do agree that daily can sometimes push it. There are businesses that I consult for that work with that model perfectly. Matter of fact, if you look at big corporations, I see their email style, and it’s pretty well every day. There’s not a ton of content in there, either.

Whatever your list expects, if you deliver that regularly, they will be happy. So will the ESPs. As long as you stick with it, you’re fine. I’ve seen amazing marketers that will email sometimes ten times a day leading up to the launch. I expect that their bills skyrocket during that period. Complaints must shoot through the roof. It’s not the fault of the recipient, it’s the fault of the sender.

Exactly. That goes back to mistake number two, advanced segmenting. You just interviewed Chris Lang, who’s just coming on board with us, and I’ve known him a long time. One thing he and I have talked about a lot is identity.

Once you know those little bits of data like the NFL does, you can tail your emails to those specific interests to be more personal. What big corporations like Nordstrom could do better is survey their subscribers on their preferences, and delivery emails that are tailored to people. Your open rate would skyrocket.

If the message to the market is a match, you’re going to get buyers way more than if you follow a scammer’s model. You leverage quality instead of quantity.

Then you might also have the classic case if you’re in the middle area, like the friend zone–that’s the worst place for email also. Nothing segmented, kind of bland–never prompting any kind of action. That to me is worse than being polarizing. If you’re polarizing like Ben Suttle is, he gets told all the time what he’s doing wrong. But the fact is, you wouldn’t know what he’s doing wrong unless you were reading everything.

Yes! You don’t unsubscribe, but you don’t engage.

We do tail our service to high value marketers.

We’re talking 1 million to 10 million per day.

A few hundred thousand is our low end customer. That kind of person is concerned with ROI. They’re spending a lot on their mail, and on their other business expenses, it’s a large investment. And I don’t mean to alienate people that are not playing at that level yet. That kind of person is usually interested in mailing out really aggressive emails to get the click..

Even though they’re working with me, not all of my clients listen to me. So they send stuff out, and I’ve seen the tricky click kind of thing, like a controversial subject line, or walking the fine line of compliance. They’ll send far shorter emails, even though I’m quite the storyteller. I think the more you tell, the more you sell. I know you get that.

The people that are really getting the most interaction are not necessarily the short ones, it’s the longer emails with stories to tell that have more to them. That’s not to say every long email isn’t selling something. But you should be entertaining in every email that you send. You’re going to get opens, reads, clicks, and purchases.

The guys that are getting the best response are the guys that are getting the storytelling down. Shorten the links, though. More links, you’re going to wind up in the spam folder. Tell more, longer content, but only one or two links.

I don’t mean email gibberish, really tell a story. Tell people something. Gmail might see you as something to say to their customers. ESPs are measuring how long people spend on your emails. They claim that they want to protect their customer’s inboxes, but they use it to advertise too.

Those ads put dollars in their pockets. The longer you read, the more chance you have to be presented with an ad that you might click. ESPs will reward the sender for keeping people on that email. Longer emails will benefit you several-fold. I’ve seen that across the board.

This is an old school thing that I’ve been playing with. For those that don’t know what Derek is talking about, this pertains to counting across the line of text, each character, including spaces. I’ve always been stuck on 60.

I think this is because of our friend and mentor, Corey Rudl. Corey taught that many years ago–type out sixty characters, and use it as a ruler. I like that approach. I think it looks more natural. It’s also best for mobile readers. If you’re going into fancy HTML, I would hire a web designer who can build you a responsive template so it will look the same across every platform.

I think it’s more important to see how well the email will look in as many mail clients as possible. That’s really important. If you use HTML, you need a responsive template. Because most people are on mobile, now!

Most people are opening on iPhones, Outlook, and Gmail. I’ll talk to Internet marketers all the time, and everyone assumes that Gmail has 60% to 70% of each list. But there are niches where Yahoo and AOL is their bread and butter.

So the guys on Microsoft, you’ll find that there are niches where guys are only interested in selling CPA offers, and they focus on one specific ESP. So we’ve had to get really good at figuring out what delivery looks like for each ESP.

You have to make sure you have really clean HTML, and if you’re not going to do HTML, you need to copy and paste your text into TextEdit, clear the format, and then send that out. It’ll be the cleanest HTML you can send out–it keeps your emails very light, and will be appreciated by the ESPs.

It’s atrocious.

Absolutely. I live in Trinidad and Tobago, and up until a year ago, in Trinidad, everyone had a Blackberry. Up until 2 or 3 years ago, Blackberry was the leading device in other parts of the world. Now Android has taken over.

I’m fine with it as long as it’s not abusive. Everything you add to an email adds to its filesize. The more images you add, the bigger the email gets. If you’re adding images, good HTML code is super important. So a lot of people have images turned off by default. If you wind up in the spam folder, you’ll want to A) include a link to tell people to turn images on, because that gets you straight out of the spam folder. You also want to use ALT tags. ALT tags are the HTML way of saying what the image was trying to say in the email if they don’t display.

So if you have a picture of Mickey Mouse in your email, and someone doesn’t see it, you might lose half the battle if your intent was depending on this picture of Mickey Mouse. So you say, ALT Text, picture of Mickey Mouse. Then people know what you’re wanting to say.

You could even make your text, “turn on your images, because you’re missing this!” To get people to turn them on.

I’m good with images, as long as it’s relevant to the email. Don’t use style sheets. They’re a waste of time. They never render properly. Just use simple HTML. It’s one of the best things that a marketer could learn for themselves. HTML is becoming a lost art.

You can go to EM13.com, which is probably the best place to go. Or you can look me up on LinkedIn or Facebook, Marc Goldman. I’m really active in the Online Marketing Superfriends Group on Facebook. We’d love to have you as a client on EM13, though it’s not ready for anyone. We’re also rolling out an SMTP provider as well, that’s testing really well, that’s coming soon in 2016.

Thank you! I had a lot of fun, I’d be happy to come back if you’d like.