What Happens If You Automate Your Marketing? Watch This — Emily & Alan Braithwaite | How To Start with Email Automation, What Information to Collect When Building an Email List, What KPI's Measure Email Success, How A/B Testing Improves Emails (#335)

In this podcast episode, we discuss how to automate your marketing and take control of your online ecosystem. We explore the impact of automation on marketing efficiency. Our featured guests on the show are Emily and Alan Braithwaite from yellowtuxedo.co.uk 

Topics discussed in this episode:  

• How to get started with email marketing automation for ecommerce beginners 
• Why email marketing should be a higher priority in your overall marketing mix 
• What information to collect when building your email list and why simplicity matters 
• How integrating design tools like Canva with email platforms can streamline your workflow 
• Why personalization is crucial in email marketing and how to achieve it effectively 
• How AI is shaping the future of marketing automation and email campaigns 

Links & Resources 

Website: https://www.yellowtuxedo.co.uk/
Website MailerLite: https://www.mailerlite.com/a/coffeebreakpodcastYT 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/yellowtuxedo/ 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yellowtuxedo/ 
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@YellowTuxedo/   

Get access to more free resources by visiting the show notes at
https://t.ly/KuBMX 

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Transcript

Welcome to the ecommerce coffee break podcast. This time we talk about how to automate your marketing and rule your online ecosystem. Joining me on the show today are the online visibility specialists Emily and Alan Braithwaite from yellowtuxedo.co.uk. So let's dive right into it. 

This is the e commerce coffee break, a top rated Shopify growth podcast dedicated to Shopify merchants and business owners looking to grow their online stores, learn how to survive in the fast changing e commerce world with your host Claus Lauter and get marketing advice you can't find on Google.

Welcome to the show. 

Hello and welcome to another episode of the e commerce coffee break podcast. Today we want to talk about marketing automation, email automation, and everything that comes with it. Joining me on the show to discuss this topic is Emily and Alan Braithwaite. They are online visibility specialists.

We will find out what that means and are the dynamic duo behind YellowTuxedo. co. uk, a company dedicated to helping businesses shine online. With a unique blend of creativity and tech expertise. They built a reputation for turning complex online strategies into simple, actionable steps, their passion for helping others succeed in matching only by their ability to make the process of fun and engaging.

And we will have a fun and engaging chat now. So let's welcome them to the show. Hi guys. How are you today? 

No 

pressure, no pressure. Make it fun and engaging. Who gave that bio, Claus? Was that you or did you write that? Or did we write that? Was that the one we sent over? 

No, that was from my side. 

That was amazing.

Right. We're copying that. We're having that one, please. for having us. 

Absolutely. Uh, today we're talking about marketing automation. So for listeners who are not really into deep in the trenches right now, give me a bit of an overview. What in simple terms, what marketing automation stands for. 

We have to start at the beginning when we're when we talk about what we do as online visibility specialists.

A part of what we do is helping businesses understand everything outside of social media online that fits together to help grow your business while you're asleep, while you're with the summer holidays with the kids, while you're ill, God forbid, or while you're even, you know, doing client work. So it's about understanding all of that, how that fits together and an integral part of that.

Actually, let's start at the very beginning. Gosh, no, no, we're doing it, Emily. At the very big middle of your online ecosystem that you want to be building is your website. Cause that's when you're going to sell. You're going to convert whatever conversion is to you. Hopefully it's a sale. Um, and, and that's where that's your shop.

That's your physical premises for you're trying to get people to get to. Okay. And then on your ecosystem, you have an inner circle and that inner circle is your macro content. So podcasts, video. blogging to a certain extent. Pinterest could sit in the macro content one as well. Uh, you also have your preferred social media platform because on your preferred social media platform, that's where you're really nurturing that audience and you're going to get to know them, let them get to know you, personal brand and all those things.

And the third part, which is the automation part we're going to talk about today on the inner circle, is email. Um, because email was really, it's, well, it's top of the tree. It has to be top of the tree. Because it's the only true non algorithmic platform that someone has to give you their email address.

And when it comes to kind of marketing and building an audience and communities and whatever, whatever buzzwords you actually want to put out there, nothing is more powerful than someone going, here's my email address. Yes, please send me an email. And, um, part of the automations that then fit within that is the bit that you can start to simplify and make your life easier.

So we could 

be drinking Pina Coladas on the beach whilst people are going through 

our sequences. Excellent. Emily, email marketing. Now that's, I said, it's own owned media. You own the email list, a big advantage compared to any other platform where you basically built your house on their land. When you get started, so you're new to e commerce, you have set up your store, your website, all of that you want to get into.

It email marketing automation and then you hear one of a sudden you hear the terms of campaigns and flows and all of these people might just be overwhelmed. Where do you start? 

It's a great question. And ultimately, I think exactly what you just said there. People feel overwhelmed because there's so much.

Buzzwords, especially if we are, uh, so entrepreneurs or smaller businesses with like smaller teams that you hear all the marketing buzzwords and you think I can't do that. And really when it turns in terms of marketing automation with email, you can be talking to just one person on your list. And that's one person who's got their ears open, ready to hear what you've got to say.

So the overwhelm doesn't need to be there in terms of. From day one, and then we always say this with our clients as well, is that start that process as soon as you possibly can. And that's, we, we work with clients to be working for 20 years down the line in their business or 10 years, and they are still playing catch up with that.

Actually, as Alan said earlier, it's that non algorithmic piece where people have chosen to give you their email address. That's that warm audit. They are already one step closer to you than they are on a LinkedIn post or a social media post or grazing across your website. So really in terms of getting started, we, we said, say choose a campaign platform, like like made like we, we really, really do love made like, and we 

are, it's the bizarrest backstory.

It really is. But 

regardless of that, uh, sort of, uh, another, another platform, like I mentioned, 

it's 

what fits you. You find it, finding that platform is going to make your life simpler and, and really stripping it back. So with, with. Made light for us. One of the biggest things that we were drawn to, and it comes down to cost really for a, for a first sort of entry was that it was a thousand subscribers for free.

And that can't be shied away because actually, especially 

when you're just getting, 

starting getting going, having somewhere where you're not quite sure what direction you might be going in, what you want to be doing, how, how far spread your campaigns are going to be, or how technically advanced your, your, your funnels are going to be simply by just being, having to have a.

A function where you can put an embedded form on your website to get that email address captured and get it there for you to be ready when you're, when you're ready to work, what that's going to be is the first step. I would say just capturing those email addresses because you're otherwise you are, that's lost traffic.

That's the. Loads of people you're talking to on YouTube or Instagram or wherever that's going to be, they want to have that next step in the chain. 

You mentioned funnel. So first step is collecting email address. And I think that's where a lot of people already start struggling. Um, because it's like, where do I collect them?

Uh, how much on information do I collect them? Sometimes you see people who are just have a full form for first name, last name, date of birth, and they want to collect everything. What's best practice? To collect the email. 

I think that again, comes down to what it is you're trying to achieve. And this again, it's like we work with our clients all the time.

We, we, we work, uh, in, in ecosystem building. And the first question is where are you trying to get to? What is, what is that A to B process for you? Because if you don't know that, if you're not crystal clear about what you're trying to grow, then how do you possibly know what information to collect? So in that kind of first, yes.

First name and email as a baseline, you can have a personalized email process. And again, that's something we love with maybe like that personalization and really sort of getting into that, that no like and trust factor of building that relationship with your client and the email just to have someone to direct it to.

However, if you're trying to do more targeted campaigns, if you're looking at geographic, geographic location, I'm really kind of getting to the nitty gritty then yeah, absolutely. You need to be a bit more considerate with what fields you're putting out there to be collecting. But knowing at the same time that your audience, that person who's filling out that form is time poor.

They haven't got all the time in the earth to give you. So therefore making that as simple and as slick as possible and therefore thinking about those extra steps. What else do they need to do? Is it as simple as filling in that form, pressing the button? Are they gonna have to read more? Do they have to accept this?

What, what do you need them to do? And what's the best practice? 

No, I was linking back, like capturing information and the automation side of things. You know, but with a huge opportunity to engage with your audience is asking for something as simple as a date of birth. What's your date of birth? We'd love to send you a birthday present.

Okay, so you've had a custom field, you're collecting a date of birth, you have an automation set up that says on their date, on this field date, you send them an email. And all of a sudden, for the sake of setting up something, you know, set up always takes time and can or Unless you're outsourcing it, of course, but after it's set up, then it should just be working hard for you.

That's the point of everything online. So having an automation that sends, you know, a happy birthday message with a 10 percent off offer or just even happy. Who, who doesn't like being wished a happy birthday? I mean, I do, um, you know, or any opportunity like that, but then ensuring that you've got that welcome sequence coming in as well.

So. You said funnel and absolutely funnel is okay. We sit more in the flywheel world of marketing, which is more about building fans of your brand, but then start to promote you, et cetera, et cetera. Um, but that doesn't mean you can't have an engagement sequence, you know, basically semantics class. It's all the same at the end of the day.

Um, you know, and that engagement sequence as you collect them on that form, which Emily said stage one and allowing them to go through that automation, um, And then getting to know you and your brand is so important. 

Let's talk about the technical setup. MailerLite is very straightforward. It integrates with a lot of platforms.

If I have my, let's say Shopify store, what do I need to do to get up and running? 

Well, Alan, that is definitely your zone of genius. 

Well, all, all integrations are an element of, I'll be honest off the top of my head. I do not know the exact steps, but pretty much it's connecting, you know, with WooCommerce, which I do know the exact steps for.

Um, you, you install the MailerLite plugin in the back end of WooCommerce, which is in, which is there, you go and search for it and then press activate. And then you get an API key off the back end of MailerLite in integrations. You copy and paste and it's done, right? That is, it is a matter of steps. It's a matter of moments.

Most things are relatively simple. You just don't know what you don't know. So, um, and MailerLite handholds you for all of this stuff. Their customer service is brilliant. Brilliant. Their tutorial, tutorial videos are brilliant. So, I mean, there's a few integrations we use a lot. We use our WooCommerce integration.

We use Stripe integration. We use Canva integration. Um, and I know Shopify is in the same vein. We just don't directly use the Shopify one. 

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com. And now back to the show. No, let's, let's talk about different integrations. And you mentioned Canva, which is a design tool. Now, obviously you want to make sure that whatever you use in your marketing tools, um, fits your brand, fits your corporate ID and all your colors, whatever. How does that work?

How can I make this as easy as possible? 

The, the kind of integration is the, is the sweet, again, Alan is our more technical genius when it comes to maybe like, I look at other things like SEO, but when it comes to the design function and we, we love a tech stack. Don't I think every good entrepreneur loves their tech stack, but obviously we talk, especially with our clients, we had a tuxedo about how to really kind of get that down to a bare minimum.

So you're not using 10, 000 tools all the time to kind of get to the same, um, End point there. So Canva is something that we have used from the start. We do pay for Canva Pro. So I think it was like 99 pounds. I don't want that's your, it's, it's, for me, it's the best money spent every, cause we use that every single day.

We do that to build out our, our Instagram stuff. We, cause all of our social media platforms, there's really good video editing stuff. Everything we can do, we can do on Canva. And we're very good at showing our clients how to do that too, because it's a really simple drag and drop type exercise. So when MailerLite then brought out their Canva integration, we were there in Canva, doing our design functions.

And literally from there, you can be pressing the button to bring those designs into your MailerLite. Platform as well. And for us, it's just that time saving of, it is just moments here, there, and everywhere, but in your busy day, when you are, especially if a solopreneur, you are accounts and sales and this and that we don't all have a thousand hours.

Isn't that the kind of hallmark of a great integration when you almost don't realize how complicated it is, what it's doing. That makes sense because it is because, you know, we've used. Other integrations in the past that you needed to fettle and adjust and wouldn't work. And, and you go, Oh, this must be so complicated.

You know, no, it's not complicated. It's just a bit rubbish, right? Whereas the great integrations, you don't even realize they're doing it. And, you know, I'm going, we use WooCommerce and I'd say we, in our weekly newsletter, we add our, some of our products into our newsletter via the WooCommerce MailerLite integration.

I never have to touch it. It is literally bomb proof. I set it up once it has never ever dropped out. I know I've done it now. And I'm like, and that's the same with the can for one, you know, you, you, you would have to export, find it, re import it. You might have to resize it. As you always had to resize it, um, but now it just, um, it just pushes straight through into MailerLite with one click of a button.

It's those 

micro wins of just going, actually I'm saving myself so much time to do this, of something I'm already having to do. I'm already having to create those designs and play with those pictures. So why not just add one more simplified step in that to kind of make it as seamless as possible. 

And then you're not clogging up your downloads folder as well.

Yeah, I think there's, there's a ton of advantages. And as the first time that I hear that anyone has integrated convert directly into a email marketing system or email marketing automation system. And as I said, it saves time. Um, it makes things easier. And I think from their side, it was. Probably a scientist making complicated things simple.

I mean, that's, that's, that's really something that's not easy when we're talking about. And you mentioned that before, um, personalization is very important. Um, you're working out of databases back and forth. How can you make sure that your marketing automation, that your automated messages are personalized?

Well, the key way of making sure them personalize is capturing, um, the name in the beginning, you know, when Emily was talking about having a form at the kind of very beginning of it all and making sure you capture that capturing that name. We talked about date of birth, but also then there's an element of segmentation around their behavior.

How are they opening it? What are they clicking on? Because you can set up automations based on what they're clicking on. So if you find that the behavior is, uh, they're clicking on certain elements. Then you can have an automation based on those click throughs. Um, so there's many ways you can start to personalize your email campaigns and automations.

But capturing some data, analyzing data, and as always, MailerLite's very good at giving you that data that I 

think there. But, but also that if you are capturing that data, utilizing it, so I had a really Not, I would say it's a negative experience, but I received an email for a good six, seven months before I actually went unsubscribe.

Um, but they had got that set up and my name's Emily, you know, Emily Braithwaite, if you want to do the full name of me, but it was, hi, insert name here. And they hadn't changed that field. They put that field in and they hadn't taken that time. And so even if you do are capturing that data, because I know I've put it in the form, you have to still, To an extent, still check that that is working.

And let's face it, although a lot of these things are bond proof, as Anna says, there's still that element of error sometimes. So you do need to be, make sure that if you are setting up forms for those first time, you are adding those fields in so that they are being used. In 

MailerLite, and this may be other platforms, but I don't know this.

When you do insert name tag, right? So it captures it from the field. You can add a variable on the end that if it's. If no name is in the field, it will add friend. 

Oh, I like that. 

Yeah, so little things that can just make that difference. Yeah. 

No, but I think everyone is completely right. Um, it's, it's your responsibility as a solopreneur, as an entrepreneur, as a marketing guy to triple check that whatever goes out there is, is correct.

Because as I said, it's completely upsetting if you get something, the name is wrong, um, or you have a filler field in there. So you will never get a client out of that. 

If it hadn't been, if it had just been, And it hadn't been a personalized so far. I wouldn't have cared either way, but because it had been, and they had got it wrong, either with that, I went, it actually made me quite upset.

I don't know why I was so upset by it, but it was, yeah, 

no, I get why you're not upset. Upset's not the right word, but I know what you mean, especially 

when it's another marketer. 

Yeah, but you gave, you gave them a chance of six, seven months and they didn't fix it. So I think that was just fair from your side.

I mean, it depends how big your email list is, but the vast majority, it's not going to be too much effort to kind of export an Excel spreadsheet and have a look at your data and then re import it, you know, and if you are paying a marketing company to do all that for you, then add that in, but there's a regular check of the data, um, because it's just as important as actually pushing out, firing out a thousand emails.

Agreed. 

Absolutely. Talking about data, talk, let's talk about KPIs. How do you measure the results and the success of your marketing automation campaigns? 

For me, the ultimate KPI is, you know, is Revit, right? There's, there's client experience, customer engagement, and happy people when everything else, which is, will always be the ultimate one for me, people come first.

The second one is going to be absolute kind of revenue, you know, money you're making. But if you want to look at some stats underneath to kind of check how things are going, you've got your click through rate, you've got your open rate. If we're looking at emails in particular here, and they're relatively simple and you can, you can, um, you can tweak and adjust that to increase them.

You know, you can work on your subject line. Some more people want to open it. You can work on. on your deliverable time. You can resend an email that's not being opened already to people. You can AB 

test now as well, can't you? AB 

testing on subject lines, you know, there's so much you can do to increase those things.

But in principle, I mean, yeah, I'm looking at customer experience, revenue, then we're looking at particulars underneath that. One 

of the things that I've always said about In what we teach in terms of the ecosystem model, we have to, we have our little holy trinity with your email marketing, your social media, your macro content, and ultimately directing to your website.

I think a lot of the time, especially as we work in silos, as Alan said earlier, we work in silos and actually all those things are working together. So as long as the overarching. And the result is you're getting more clients through the door, or you're having more conversations, depending if you're service based or you're getting form fills in or whatever your, your KPI is that you're trying to track there.

It shouldn't matter so much that that one granular thing hasn't hit the spot. And we find this with social media as well. That social media post that you spent about 10 hours. Curating never sort of really kind of hit, hit, hit the way it needed to be. It doesn't matter that in the, in the grand scheme of things, and the same thing happens with your email marketing.

Now, to an extent, absolutely. You do need to be looking on a regular basis at your click through rates and your open rates and deliverability and all of those kinds of things that are super important, but. But not on such a granular level to the point where you feel like you failed because that one email didn't hit because there are too many, sorry, there are too many other things at play sometimes that you have to factor in the political landscape, the seasonality of when you're sending it out, you know, at the moment we're in the UK, it's the summer holidays.

So we will always find a kind of little dip because there are people going on on their UK breaks and stuff. So we find that even if they are, it's our best work, it may not be our. Best hitting email because of the seasonality of it. So you have to look at it on a, on a broader scale. So looking at your last six months, is it, is that deliverability the same?

It's your click through the same. What did you change? What did you change? I don't think it's the A B split testing with your, um, with your, your titles for your, for your emails, they're the things that we can start to tweak and adjust, but when you're looking at that pattern rather than on a, on a singular email, 

but then you see, um, There is that long term nurture about email.

You know, we, you, you got in a dispute with someone recently. Emily is our kind of social media disputer. No, you are wrong. Here is why type person. And, um, they'd said like clearing your non openers in what was, it was quite short. Someone 

said on LinkedIn, and I, I have, I struggle with LinkedIn at the best of times because I, I just think.

Everyone's far too corporate, but anyhow, the, the, the, if, if someone has been on your email list for six months and they haven't become a customer in six months, and then you should remove them from your email list. And I disagree so strongly on that because they are still a, it could be that your biggest advocates, your fans, they could be the ones telling you, referring you to other people.

All they're taking their time to make that decision, depending on the price point of your product. So ultimately we are slightly higher, higher, um, scale in our product price, but we're not a 10 product, you know, so some people have to take that time to invest in what they need to do. We've had people on our email list, one of our most recent ones.

She was on for two years before she made any purchasing decision. She was in the background. She was one of our lurkers. Yeah. She wasn't really getting very much involved. And then at that point, she's like, here. Have my money. We're like, Oh, 

well, we got, um, someone asked us to come and present a conference they were putting on.

And she'd known, we had no idea who she was. We'd never heard of her business. And she's like, well, I've known you both for about nine years. I followed you in your old business. Then I followed you in this business. I joined your email list. And we're like, we had no idea. And we just got this email going, would you come and speak at my conference?

And we'll, of course the answer is yes, but we didn't know who they were. So. And, and this is something we're big on. Like a lot of marketing is very black and white. We don't actually call ourselves marketers on the technicality. We call ourselves online visibility specialists, but a lot of marketing is very black and white about ROI, et cetera, et cetera.

But the reality is when you start to embrace the gray, rather than the black and white, That's when great things start to happen and opportunities start to happen and on a technicality we would have cleared her off of our email list if we seen she hadn't clicked through or hadn't done anything else for after six months, 12 months, whatever you choose.

Now I'm not saying you don't clean your email list. I think you should clean your email list. But you may want to double the amount of time before you clean it to give opportunity and also depends what industry you're in as well. 

Exactly. I agree. I agree. 100 percent agree. It really depends on what your business is, how long the decision making cycle is.

I mean, if you mentioned if you're selling something for 10, probably if people haven't bought after 30 days, they will not buy from you. But if you have something. Building a conference, complete different story. And then obviously you need to check what works best for you. Now, on that note, you're working with a lot of brands and companies out there.

Do you have any kind of success stories that you want to share? Um, of people who have started using email automation, what kind of results did they see? 

I'm thinking about Laurie. 

You go on then, you tell that story. So 

we have, so again, so the type of businesses that we work with, we've worked with some larger brands as well, but we actually love working in the small business kind of, under a hundred K kind of, um, small business owners and they are, they come to us with a complete overwhelm.

And it's a, what do I do now? What, what should be my priority? Cause like I said earlier, we, we have many hats that we're wearing and we have to prioritize what's going to have the best ROI for our business at the time. And we can't all spend all day, every day on our marketing. So we look at it and strip it back.

And one of the biggest things we had with this one client who Also now has a podcast. It's great medium. Do you know what podcast? I think I love it. I love it. I love it. Anyhow, she has a podcast. She, she's a mindful eating coach. Um, she, uh, was working on her visibility. She was working on kind of really stripping back what she was putting out there.

Social media is actually one of the smallest parts of what she now does. In fact, she hasn't been, she used to be very big on Instagram. She doesn't touch it now. She now has. Mike made this come success where she has a podcast as her macro content. She's really building a strong email list there and really kind of getting good conversation.

And one of the nice thing as well, because email is two way conversation and we've always put the campaigns out there, but we forget people can reply to us. So when you do get replies, it makes it even more special. She's getting that kind of relationship building out there. And now she has a mindful eating coach in the UK.

She's building that out and she's getting clients in Brazil, In Australia, in New Zealand, she had one in Hungary and she's now a worldwide brand. And this is one of the biggest things that we advocate is the fact that Mrs. McGinnis cake shop on the corner, you know, the minute you are online, the minute you are utilizing the tools like Maylight and all these other incredible things out there, you are a global brand.

You are global out there. You have that ability to scale, to change direction, to talk to people that you never would have, we never, you're not in the UK right now. And we're having some amazing conversation right now. The tools at our fingertips are so special. And someone like Laurie, who we worked with for a good couple of years now is really seeing the success of it.

Not only that, the fact that she's building a global brand, but currently I know for a fact she's on holiday right now. She's canoeing with her friend out there in the wilderness and she's having the best and people are still interacting with her. And that's the great thing is that you can take your foot off the gas.

We all deserve to have that break, that holiday. And I think when you are focusing so much on social media and, and there's a lot of noise around social media, what we should be doing, and we should all be doing TikTok and Reels and everything around that. It's, it's really time intensive. It really. Draws all your energy and you're spending so much time doing that.

And actually there are other ways in which you can engage. As Alan said earlier, in terms of that engagement funnel, the minute someone puts on, um, in that email address, you can start to put that automation in place where they're starting that nurture process. So we start with a video, you know, we have a welcome video.

Thanks for joining us. So nice to see you. Thank you very much for being part of our family. And then it goes on. So they're still getting that relationship build without having such a, you know, There in the moment as a social media, real TikTok going out there as well, so I love that about email because you're still building relationships without necessarily being present all day every day on that as an automation.

Yeah, email probably the oldest marketing tool on the interwebs, and I think it's still one of the best. Now you mentioned you're working with. Under a hundred thousand K. I think a lot of our listeners are in that range. Tell me a little bit more what you guys do. 

Well, Alan, should I do it? So I realized I was taught.

No, you do it. We do this class. We do this. We're two of us and we love coming on screen together, but we realized that we're husband and wife and I can't wait to take over. Um, so 

one 

of the biggest thing was cause. Previous to working at Yellow Tuxedo, we had an events business and uh, we were working on a lot of the stuff that we're doing successfully out with our events business is what we teach now.

Um, mainly because there's so much that you could be doing for your business. And we recognize that small business owners aren't marketeers all the time. So we don't all have the budget to engage with a marketing agency. We may want to take it in house. We want to have that control. So we really kind of, We, I love using the phrase, we bridge the gap between marketeers and muggles.

And we kind of help people to understand what it is. I love it. Well, we're all bit muggles, but we, we're not, it's not our zone of genius, but I do feel that a lot of the skills that we can learn are achievable. They don't have to be scary. It's not black magic. You know, it's just about having a consistent process where we understand if I press this button and I'm doing this, what am I, why am I doing it?

So we kind of bridge that gap. We give people the technical expertise and knowledge to know what they can do. And also that kind of freedom to go, okay, that's not too scary. I understand why and how I can do this. What's my creative flow over here now. So can either go, I think again, as small business owners, we feel very constrained to do that kind of in this kind of side of this is how we do social media.

This is what they tell me to do. I just do this on a Monday. I do this on a Tuesday. I'll do this. And actually. The whole reason a lot of us are solopreneurs or doing our own businesses is to have that freedom to be what we want to be. So we kind of empower a little bit at the same time as giving some technical expertise and know how.

Come and have a chat actually if you want to. 

In a non jargony way. 

No, I love this approach and there should be more people like you out there because normally it's either this, you mentioned LinkedIn, very corporate, everyone knows everything and is an expert. And then you have to solopreneur who's standing there is completely overwhelmed.

I have no fucking idea what I'm doing here. Um, I want to, I want to touch and I want to touch on one thing and it's pretty technical, but I'm sure you both have a take on it. What do you think about AI and what kind of influence it will have on the future of marketing automation? 

Well, we're, we're fans. I wouldn't say we are knees deep in it.

I would say we are ticklers of it. Um, we use AI for brainstorming for ideas. I'll tell you what I use it a lot for. I'll write a newsletter. I'll drop my newsletter into AI and go, give me some cool subject lines, please, to choose from. So I use it to help me with subject lines almost weekly. Oh, yes. Maybe like have their own AI, uh, uh, subject line integration.

Um, 

yeah, 

go 

on. But how we're moving on to a different platform. So we were, cause we record our podcast on Riverside and they have the new AI voice feature and Alan went, what do you think of this Emily? And he pressed the button. I went, Oh, you sound great. He was like, it's 

not me. It's not me. I mean, it's.

We are big on, the reason our business exists is because we had another business where we try to simplify as much as possible. And then someone said, you know, no one knows how, no one else knows how to do what you're doing. So we're fine, we'll start showing people. AI for us is the next step, right? It's not about taking over.

It's about working together. It's about understanding how it can simplify processes. And if you're stuck on a subject line, for example, it can help you with a subject line. If you're stuck on a social media post or what to write in your email or what are the, how many stages should I put in my email automation?

You know, if we're keeping it on there. Then AI will give you some ideas to get going. Um, some people are great with ideas. Other people aren't. We're all different. We all need help in different places in different ways. AI is there to help us all for the moment until it takes over the world. And then this will be a different conversation.

You know, we all know we're all, we've all seen Terminator. We're all a little bit worried on the road over here, but it is. Um, yeah, so I don't know. That's where do you sit with it? 

Um, I'm on your page. So I'm using it strongly every day. Um, basically same tools like you as a copywriter, um, giving me ideas.

Um, as a solopreneur, I think AI is a good tool to bounce off ideas because as a solopreneur, it can be very, very lonely. And you don't have anyone to ask and whatsoever. So AI is a great assistant in helping that. And sometimes it just comes up with ideas that you didn't have. Um, so there is no writer's block and everything that comes in, you still can decide what you want to take from it.

So it's, AI is not taking over. It's your decision. Um, but it gives you just so many examples of where you can get better. And I think that's the strongest part of AI right now. 

You just need to go in and take away all the rocket emojis when you're in chat 

GPT. 

That's, that's, that's true. Cool. Before we come to the end of our coffee break today, is there anything that you want to share with our listeners that we haven't covered yet?

There is one thing we have to share that by the time this goes out, which I believe is autumn 2024, MailerLite is having a fantastic, we look, we're MailerLite fan boys, and girls, and girls, sorry, fan people, people, and things are even MailerLite t shirts. We own the only two yellow MailerLite t shirts in the world, right?

We won a competition. It's a really long story. We'll tell everyone another day why. But we do know they're doing 30 percent off your first three months, uh, this autumn, 2024, which is fantastic. If you're, if you're still just kind of getting going, you're still under that a hundred K and you want to get going.

It's a great opportunity. 

Especially if you haven't started with, uh, with email and marketing as part of your marketing mix, it, you should, and it should be more higher, higher up your priority list than it probably is right now. I think email, it's been around for donkey's years. It's here to stay. It's only getting stronger.

And if. Things like integrations and these automations are coming more and more into play and that with the arrival of AI it's making your life so much simpler and I just think we need to be all be a bit smarter with how we're working not harder and yeah. 

So do we want to say anything about us before we finish?

Oh we're 

amazing, follow us. Yeah, 

absolutely, go ahead. Get involved in the conversation always, come and be social. 

Okay, cool. I will pull the links from MailerLite and your links in the show notes, so you will be just one click away. I hope a lot of people will reach out to you. I'm sure that people have understood now that you're a fun team, great to work with, with a lot of experience.

I'm fun. 

I had to pay his mum. 

Yeah, so yeah, let people reach out to you and then take it from there. Thanks so much for your time today. 

Thanks for having us. 

Hey Claus here. Thank you for joining me on another episode of the e commerce coffee break podcast. Before you go, I'd like to ask two things from you.

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