Enthusiastically Self-Employed: business tips, marketing tips, and LinkedIn tips for coaches, consultants, speakers, authors, solopreneurs & small business owners

The New Yahoo & Google Email Deliverability Requirements w. Kendra Corman Ep 129

• Brenda Meller • Season 1 • Episode 129

Share episode

A live chat with Brenda Meller and Kendra Corman on Yahoo and Google Email Deliverability Requirements

Originally aired LIVE on Tuesday, April 9, 2024

Questions Kendra answers during the podcast:

  • What are the requirements for Yahoo and Google email deliverability? (3:44)
  • What is the difference between a DMARC and DKIM code? (4:52)
  • Does the one-click unsubscribe button at the top of the email unsubscribe from the entire list or mark it as spam? (6:58)
  • How often should small business owners and solopreneurs clean their email lists? (9:09)
  • What is the impact of inactive subscribers on email deliverability? (9:00)
  • What is a good open rate for emails? (12:55)
  • How can recipients mark emails as safe senders to avoid the junk folder? (14:54)
  • What is the best way to get people on an email list? (16:55)
  • What are the three most important things to consider when writing an email subject line? (19:58)
  • Are there any tools recommended for testing email subject lines? (20:58)

LinkedIn "Power Hours" (Single Session, x4, x12)
Each package includes: 

  • LinkedIn consulting / coaching, personalized to your needs and focusing on your questions.
  • Review of LinkedIn profile / company page to provide guidance / advice / recommendations

https://www.mellermarketing.com/powerhour 

**************************************
My name is Brenda Meller. I'm a LinkedIn coach, consultant, speaker, and author. My company is Meller Marketing and I help business professionals get a bigger slice of the LinkedIn pie.

Visit mellermarketing.com

Let's connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/brendameller
(click MORE to invite me to connect and mention you listened to my podcast)

Speaker 1:

My name is Brenda Meller and this is my show, which I call Enthusiastically Self-Employed, where I bring on amazing speakers to help those of you who are enthusiastic about your business and looking for some great tips. And today I have with me Kendra Korman. Hey, kendra, how are you doing today?

Speaker 2:

I'm good. Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1:

It's a delight to have you here today and, as we are getting our conversation started, I'm going to ask our audience to please jump into the comments and just say hello and let us know where in the world you're watching from, maybe tag in someone who might be interested in our topic? You can see it above here on screen. We're going to be talking today about Yahoo and Google email deliverability requirements, which we have the fortune of having an email strategy expert, Kendra, with us here today who can help us to understand what the rules are, and now that the dust settles, I think it's really going to be a great discussion. I know I have questions. I'm hoping our audience will have some questions for us later on as well, and we are live streaming right now on LinkedIn and on YouTube.

Speaker 1:

I'm trying to get a setup on Instagram live as well, and I was telling Kendra in the pre-show I had to do the clear my cookies and cash thing and those of you you know what I'm talking about I don't know if I'm mentally ready to clear out my cookies and cash Cause then you have to go back through and reset all of your passwords and links and stuff like that that you can't you know aren't remembered on your computer. So I'm going us on live on Instagram right now as well, but we will be live on LinkedIn and on YouTube. So if you are seeing this, let us know. It's like when I tap the mic, if we're in a live room and say, can you guys hear me in the back? And when you wave your hand, we know when you comment, we know that the live stream is picking up. So don't be shy, let us know that you're watching while we are waiting for those comments to start rolling in.

Speaker 1:

Kendra, why don't you tell us a little bit about you Now? I know you. I've been following you I don't like to say stuck, because I think that's a negative sounding word but I've been researching you and learning from you and absorbing all of my marketing goodness from you over the years. So I know about you. But why don't you tell our audience a little bit about you?

Speaker 2:

So my name is Kendra Korman and I've been running my own business for over 10 years now. So I left corporate over 10 years ago and that was after I got my MBA, because I finally had the confidence to go out on my own and realize the value that I had to add. I've been the Jeep advertising manager, the SRT marketing manager, so I really learned a lot of my fundamentals at a large automotive company managing one of the most iconic brands in the world.

Speaker 2:

I used to say the United States and my husband goes cheap is a lot of the stuff I took for granted, other people didn't know, and so sharing that information, sharing that knowledge, has been really important to me, making sure that marketing strategy and tactics are affordable to everyone.

Speaker 1:

Awesome, all right, great. So it sounds like you've got a really great, amazing corporate background that you're now bringing into your business. So the great thing about people like Kendra who are enthusiastically self-employed is you bring all this corporate knowledge and then, when you're self-employed, you can go a lot deeper into areas of specialization for you and I've known you for years as this marketing expert and for a while I knew you as the email marketing person and I know you're getting into other areas podcasting and AI and communications and other things as well but today we're here talking about Yahoo and Google email deliverability requirements. So, kendra, for those people who maybe heard about some things but really aren't familiar with what those requirements are, maybe let's start out there. Does that sound fair with?

Speaker 2:

what those requirements are. Maybe let's start out there. Does that sound fair? Yeah, so, basically, I don't know about you guys, but my Gmail account, so my personal email account, has gotten more spam, more phishing, more everything right and people pretend, trying to pretend to be missing my delivery package, things like that. This was all in response to that, okay, and it was. It's a way for Google and Yahoo to ideally get rid of the phishers and scammers out of your inbox so that it very rarely makes it there.

Speaker 2:

However, if you're not following certain practices, those of us like you and me, brenda, who do send emails that are value added to our audience, that our audience wants, our subscribers want to get, could negatively be affected if we don't have everything set up correctly. Yeah, so, basically, just so you know they are doing, I'm going to throw out some acronyms that mean nothing to most people. I'm not going to explain it because you don't really need to know what they are. I just it's magic in the background, but it comes down to DKIM and DMARC policies. I know, brenda, you send out of Kajabi. I send out a lot out of Constant Contact and ConvertKit.

Speaker 2:

Those systems are spoofing our email address, right? So exactly what spammers do, right? So what we're able to do is add DMARC and DKIM codes into our DNS, which is where our URLs are managed, and when we add this code there and say I get it in my email account at KendraCormancom, it'll say, okay, this doesn't really look like it's coming from Brenda. It pings the DNS and it says, oh yeah, no, it is because it's got all the right information and everything matches between the header code and the information inside her DNS. So it's all good, it's all from Brenda and we're good to go. Spammers won't have that, and so that's really what's important to note when it comes to the changes that they made and what it's in regards to question Is your car a V6 or a V8?

Speaker 1:

And I'm like I feel like I should know what that means and what my car is, but I don't. And, by the way, I have a Jeep. When you said Jeep, I'm like, oh, my Jeep girl in the house here. I love how you broke it down and explained it, and it's really. It sounds like the rule is meant to protect us, not to add in additional hurdles for the good email marketers to jump through. Is that fair to say?

Speaker 2:

Yes, 100%, and it actually it's a really good thing. All of these policies, all of these laws that came out that have strengthened permission-based email marketing is good for you and me and all of us that are sending emails that are value-added, because it makes it harder for the bad people to get into the inbox, which I love.

Speaker 1:

Now I have another question too for you, as it relates to this. I've noticed that with these new rules now, there's now a one-click unsubscribe at the top of the email, which looks a little different. If I hover over, I can see the link and it looks a little different from what's at the bottom of the email. Is it unsubscribing from the list, or is it marketing a spam, or what can you tell us about that?

Speaker 2:

Yes, google and Yahoo have required that they be able to unsubscribe and don't have to scroll all the way to the bottom anymore, and it's unsubscribing entirely from your email notification. So they're unsubscribing from Brenda's emails. So I know that you will sometimes send out emails and people can manage their preferences and things like that. So if you still want to get certain emails, you can stay on those lists and not get other ones. Right, that unsubscribe button doesn't manage any of those preferences, it just unsubscribes them overall to everything. Okay, it does not market as spam.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's good to know. And I feel, and I've even reached out to Kajabi and I said, hey, why can't I get a one-click unsubscribe at the top of my email? And Kajabi is saying it's there, it's just at the bottom of the email. So is this more for private senders than it is ESP email service providers, or what can you tell us?

Speaker 2:

about that. No, it's, it's. It's more on all those ESP managed senders and things like that. It's helping them eat more easily, unsubscribe from the newsletters and they're automatically pulling that in and up into the header information. So that's what it's doing automatically without you needing to do anything.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that's good to know, and you, I know I at least look at you as an email marketing expert. I think you are. You've had so much great knowledge over the years about email marketing, and when this came up, I reached out to you and I said hey, do you want to come on my show and talk about this? And now that we've been living with it for a few months, the dust has settled a bit. I think things are moving forward. We're going here. Is there anything that small business owners and solopreneurs should know as it relates to the new requirements? Anything that they should be doing that can help them with deliverability or open rates? Any tips for us there?

Speaker 2:

help them with deliverability or open rates. Any tips for us there? Definitely. So a couple of things. One if you did nothing you might be okay, but odds are you're not, because you had to do something additional, right? So odds are that you need to take that other action.

Speaker 2:

I get emails from a local membership organization here in Metro Detroit and theirs are going to my junk folder now because they lost their authentication because they didn't add the additional DMARC policy, even though they had the DKIM before, which whatever, but they didn't take that extra step and make sure that they're conforming with both. And so now it's no longer coming from them, it's coming from at ccsendcom, which is fine because that one's authenticated and we'll make it through. But they lost a lot of their I would say deliverability to the inbox because they're not updating their DNS the way that they need to. And just so you know if you're using an email service provider yes, I'm talking in code and I apologize, but you don't really need to know anything. They literally have how-tos. They are flagging it inside there saying, hey, you might find some deliverability issues. You need to do this extra thing. Constant Contact Embedding MailChimp has it Pretty much everybody that's allowing you to authenticate your own domain for sending your emails is doing this, so don't worry about it.

Speaker 2:

They are letting you know. So if you see that alert, don't ignore it. Make sure that you're taking action on it. So that's first. Second is you got to do some list hygiene? That's one of the things that a lot of us avoid, because it's I have 4,000 subscribers. 200 of them read my emails, but I have 4,000 subscribers. That's hurting you, that's hurting your deliverability, that's hurting everything overall. So get rid of the 3,800 that no longer really want to be on your list.

Speaker 1:

Ask them, should we be?

Speaker 2:

doing that.

Speaker 1:

Is that like a once a year thing? Is that like after 90 days of unopens? Do you have any thoughts on that?

Speaker 2:

So I recommend okay, so most of us are solopreneurs, right, we're entrepreneurs. We are chief cook and bottle washer and bookkeeper, cfo, cmo and everything else in between, right? So I encourage you to do it once every six months, because I think any more often than that we just we're never going to get to it. We're going to push it off and then We'll never get around to it.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that makes me feel good because I feel like with the new rules, should I be doing it more often. Should I be doing it every month or every 90 days? I like the six months. That feels manageable, it's not that often.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and the first time you clean your list again, it might hurt a little bit because your numbers are going to go down, but again it's all for good. Okay, Because you want people that are interacting with your emails. That's going to tell Yahoo and Google and Outlook and everybody else hey, the people that I send to on a regular basis, move it to a folder to save for later or save for inspiration, right, You're never going to find that out. Outlook knows I did it. So that is a sign, even if I'm taking actions with it, that I am interacting with your email. And so those email service providers want people that are taking action with emails because then they know that it's wanted and needed.

Speaker 1:

Good, and I would think, at the same time, if you are doing what Kendra says practicing good list hygiene, removing inactive emails every six months I think your open rate would also go up.

Speaker 2:

Right, it does. It definitely goes up. They're saying over 20 to 30, somewhere between 20 and 30% seems to be where the average open rates are. A couple years ago now it feels like just yesterday, but a couple years ago iOS 14 and 15 updates started for anybody that's using Apple Mail. That's using Apple Mail. So again, even if you're using a Gmail or Mellor Marketing, if you have it loaded on your phone or iPad and you're using that Apple Mail app, it's already pre-opening. So you saw a spike a while ago in your open rates. It might have been a small one, but again, Apple was pre-opening, again to protect people from privacy so that you didn't know what device they were opening on when they opened things like that. And just so you know, an open is just downloading the pixel that's embedded somewhere in an image. So when they open up the images, that tells you that they opened the email per se.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that's good to know. And I did hear something about the Apple and in the back of my mind I'm like I should probably be aware of what this means. But I also, honestly, I'm like I can reach out and ask Kendra sometime. And Kendra and I are both part of a networking group in forum and we meet once a month in the Troy group. We're meeting this Thursday and then we've got another event we're doing on Saturday.

Speaker 1:

I was also and I put this up on screen because I have noticed even for myself when you said check your junk email, I'm noticing more senders are starting to slide in. There's more safe senders, more people that I've subscribed to their list and I'm not getting any. And I'm gonna give a shout out right now to my friend Mark Stucheski His handle is Mr Productivity and he messaged me. He said are you getting my emails? Because I'm friends with him. He's like can you double check your spam folder? And I went into the spam folder and, lo behold, a bunch of emails from Mark Strushevsky were sitting inside there. Is there any? I would say for our audience check your junk spam folder, look inside there at least once a month, I think, to see if things are in there. And then is there an easy way to mark people as safe senders so that they're not going into the junk, or should we be doing anything different as recipients?

Speaker 2:

Yes. So as recipients couple things. One, you want to make sure that if you're an Outlook, you're right-clicking and you're marking it as not junk. When you get that first one, take that action. Make sure that you mark it as not junk. It'll add it to the safe senders list and make sure that it doesn't get in there. I would look at marks from email because it might have changed. He might be authenticating and sending from at cc sendcom, whatever his email service provider is using as their blanket authenticated email and it, so it looks like extra spoofing, but he might have been sending from his email before. You won't know that on a reply. It'll be buried a little bit in the header, so you'll want to take a look to see where it's coming from, because now you're authenticating or you're adding to your safe senders list a different email address because it's coming from a different email address that's been authenticated with these new requirements.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that's good to know.

Speaker 1:

So I will mention that and I think he actually, now that you say it, I'm remembering he said he just changed domain, so it was on markstrucheskicom and now it's on Mr Productivity.

Speaker 1:

So I think my email incorrectly marked it as a spam and I had to go in there and say no, this is safe, don't ever put him in the spam folder again. And a side note I had a woman reach out to me. I'm trying to think of how this works. She called me and I don't know who she is and she said hey, I don't know about you, kendra, but when I get phone calls, I let them roll the voicemail. So I listened to the voicemail later and she said hey, this is so and I'm not you about this new corporate technology solution and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like spam did what it was supposed to do and I think, like some people are trying to break through the spam wall of trying to flood people with unsolicited emails and trying to get at them. You, as an email marketing strategist, what's your advice for people as it relates to getting people on the list and as opposed to just spamming them with messages?

Speaker 2:

So you want to do permission-based email only. There was a time, a long time ago okay, think fairy tales, think Star Wars Long, long time ago, in a galaxy far away, that buying emails was productive and you got business from it. We haven't been there in probably, I'm going to say 20 plus years. Okay, yeah, it's been a long time. Some people still saw it as effective, depending on who their target audience was and things like that. It is not effective, it damages. You Do not do that. You want people to opt in, either verbally or implied, so mostly verbally. You want, if you're going to a networking meeting, like we're going to on Thursday, and you get business cards, you do not just take people and add them to your email list. You say, oh, would you like my weekly LinkedIn tips? I can go ahead and sign you up for those. Again, you're not signing up for email. You're signing up for weekly LinkedIn tips and if LinkedIn is important to them, they're going to say, yes, I want those tips. And so, again, you're never asking anybody to sign up for email. You're getting them to sign up for whatever it is that you're sending them on a regular basis, whatever that value is that you're providing them and if they don't want it, you don't want them on your email list. Okay, because it's going to hurt you overall. Your sender reputation is huge, okay, and you don't want to miss out on the people that want to hear from you, hearing from you just so you can add someone to your email list.

Speaker 2:

So, again, getting people to opt in is really important for service providers like Brenda and I. That's a checklist, that's a white paper, that's an ebook, that's a download of some sort that you want to make available to people, and when you do that, then they're opting in for that and then they're going to start getting your other emails. If they unsubscribe, fine, not a big deal, that I gave them the value that I promised and we can move on. But you really want to make sure that you're only taking people who really want your content. That's going to be number one. Number two from name and email address Okay, you're from I know you as Brenda Meller. Yes, I know you're also Meller Marketing. But when I get emails, I'm looking for Brenda and I'm going to be like oh okay, brenda sent me something, just like you. It's going to be oh okay, this is from Kendra, not her full service business, which is a full service agency H2H Consulting. Yeah, I know that's delete.

Speaker 2:

So again think about is your company more well known or is your name more well known? That's where the from name should be coming from. So think about that. And then the subject line is the next most important piece. You want to lure people in. You want to think about what's going to move the needle, and some of that's testing. Most of the systems have A-B testing so you can do some A-B testing. Since I send weekly, I don't really do A-B testing that much. I send it and then I realize if it worked or not. But it's very interesting to see how drastic things change on the open rates and on even the click rates based on my subject line. So you really want people are deciding whether to delete or unsubscribe from your emails by looking at the from name, the from email address and the subject line. That's it they're giving you. I think it's a fraction of a second before they're making that decision.

Speaker 1:

That's a really good point, and I use a tool. I don't know if you've heard of it or if you've used it as well, but CoSchedule has a tool. It used to be for free and it was the CoSchedule Headline Analyzer. They did recently start charging for it. It's a nominal fee and I'm like, honestly, I feel like they should have been charging for it all along because it's such a great service. But now I get, I think, 20 credits a month and I pay a few bucks for it. But I can plug in an email subject line and they tell me are these spam trigger words like using free or things like that in a subject line? Do you use any tools like that? I know you're an expert in email marketing, so I feel like maybe you don't need these tools, but do you recommend any tools like CoSchedule Headline Analyzer for email subject line testing?

Speaker 2:

So tools like that are good. It'll give you insights into how powerful it is and things like that. I don't use that. So you used to get flagged if you put free in your subject line or if you put free in the body of your email. Senders and receivers have gotten a lot more sophisticated free in the body of your email. Senders and receivers have gotten a lot more sophisticated so it doesn't actually flag it as spam as much anymore. When you say, hey, download this free guide or something along those lines, it's not assuming it's spam because it's already verified your sender reputation and who you are and what you send, knowing that people want to receive your content, and so you've got a lot more, I think, wiggle room than you used to Like.

Speaker 2:

Even Constant Contact used to have a button that would say analyze for spam and it would be like it would take a look at the email for spam and it's. You use the word free and you did this and when, it's okay. But even they don't really use that anymore. Actually, I don't even think it's in there anymore because it's not as not quite as important anymore as your sender reputation.

Speaker 2:

But if you need ideas, get ideas and then you want to see what's working and what's not working. So the best resource is going to be your own data, because your audience isn't a general audience, right? It's people that want to hear from you and they might like longer subject lines. They might like subject lines that have all the different things in it. They may like the emails that say upcoming events, because they know that you've got great speakers and great events and things like that. So those are going to be more updated, right or more opened, and so, again, look at the behaviors of the people on your list and what they're reacting to. That's going to give you more insights than anything else.

Speaker 1:

That's brilliant and, by the way, if you want to learn email marketing from an expert, get on Kendra's email list. We'll talk about that in a minute and like how you can do. But she does a weekly email and I have to say, if they're always a value and I always feel like she's talking to me, like talking to me just as one person, not to the general audience, and a lot of times I'll reply back to her and I'll say, hey, I found this helpful, or, and we'll sometimes share information back and forth with each other, but you do a really great job with that. What I'd like to do is change gears, kendra, and I'm going to open up the discussion now, so I pulled a ticker up on screen that lets the audience know if you'd like to join the conversation. You can comment below and ask Kendra a question.

Speaker 1:

And I am noticing lately it seems the LinkedIn live streams aren't a fun new ride at the amusement park anymore, like they used to be. And I use this Cedar Point analogy. Because we're here in Metro Detroit, we're familiar with Cedar Point, so every year Cedar Point has. Because we're here in Metro Detroit, we're familiar with Cedar Point, so every year Cedar Point has a new rider attraction or something like that, and they put all of their marketing effort into the new rider attraction and once upon a time, the big ride was Demon Drop. I don't know if you remember. It was like years ago, like Demon Drop was the big thing and that's all you heard about and all their ads was the Demon Drop. It's like when LinkedIn Live came on the scene, like LinkedIn Live, they made you apply for it and they gave a lot of love in the algorithm to LinkedIn.

Speaker 1:

Live Live streams were going out to a lot of people and now it seems to be LinkedIn is shifting into different paths and they're pulling back. I think like they're throttling back a bit on LinkedIn Live stream coverage, so I'm not seeing as many live viewers anymore. I'm still seeing a lot of people watching in the playback and I still convert my shows to podcasts. It was always of great value, but I did see the comment from Megan coming in. So, megan, thank you so much for watching. I think, Megan, if I'm not mistaken, Cleveland was in the 100% view of the eclipse. I think they had total darkness, if I'm not mistaken. Do you remember hearing about that, Kendra?

Speaker 2:

I saw the path and I knew we weren't on it. We were, we were on the edge, but I was actually. The eclipse day was, which was yesterday, was my podcast recording day. So I was recording a podcast with someone in California and we were near the path.

Speaker 1:

When you're podcast recording, are you in like a closed soundproof room with no windows, or what's your setting for that?

Speaker 2:

no, I'm right here at my desk. My room is closed with no windows, so yeah, interior interior office, it's cheaper oh good, okay very cool megan yeah.

Speaker 1:

so she says absolutely it was magnificent. So it did get dark. And here I'm in frazier, michigan metro territory and we were in like the 99 zone. So she says absolutely it was magnificent. So it did get dark. And here I'm in Fraser Michigan, Metro Detroit, and we were in like the 99% zone and it got dark. It was like twilight, but it was still bright outside and it was eerie and the temperature dropped for a little bit and then it got bright again as well. At any rate, it was a fun experience. I say the next one will be 20 years from now. We'll look forward to that. All right. Now I see some folks that are starting to come in.

Speaker 1:

We got Jack jumping in as well, and Megan is starting to tag in. Thank you so much, megan. She's a great supporter. She's tagging in together digital to definitely listen into this recording. So we're going to start to wrap up our conversation here today, and we were here today talking about email deliverability requirements for Yahoo and for Google, and as we start to wrap up our conversation, the first thing I want to do is I'm going to share your LinkedIn profile up on screen, kendra, and as I'm pulling that up, can you remind people? Is there any specific instructions that you have if they want to increase the likelihood that you're going to accept their invitation?

Speaker 2:

So odds are, if you're watching this, you're probably connected to Brenda. So I do actually look, because now that LinkedIn limits, I used to decline anybody that didn't send a note. But since I learned from Brenda that you're not limited on the number of notes, that's totally fine. So as long as your headline isn't some big salesy thing, I'm pretty much going to accept at this point, especially if you're connected to Brenda. X percent YouTube views or whatever increase and.

Speaker 2:

I was like okay, they're connected to a few people I know. Let me take a look. And the first thing I get from them is a DM that says hey, I'd like I can help you with your YouTube channel. Here's my information. And I'm like no Unsubscribe, unfriend, like disconnect. You don't go right into sales like that. If you're interested in building relationships and connecting, I'd love to connect Again. I know that not everybody with premium can just automatically send notes, so don't worry about that. You're probably connected to Brenda. I will acknowledge that and consider that a good one.

Speaker 1:

And then, as long as your headline isn't something crazy, yeah, I have to tell a quick sidebar story about the YouTube. Youtube marketers are trying to help us out and I'm starting to get these more often lately. I don't know if you've seen these yet, kendra, but an email where they say hey, I'm watching your YouTube channel, you've got great video content on here. And then they grab a screen capture and they circle like everything on my YouTube page in red and with arrows pointing to it and it's. It reminds me of when we were back in grade school and you got your paper back from the teacher and you thought it was a really good paper and they marked like everything's crossed off and circled and arrows, and I'm like, is this a sales technique? This does not make me feel good. You're telling me everything I've done wrong and I'm tempted but I haven't done it yet. I'm tempted to go on their LinkedIn profile and do the same thing.

Speaker 2:

Oh, my gosh, you totally need to do that and it needs to be a LinkedIn live.

Speaker 1:

Right, but I always think about energy moves in one direction, and I want to focus on things that are forward reaching for myself and for my business, and not necessarily something that just makes me feel good about the situation. But, at any rate, I also want to pull up your LinkedIn URL up, or your website here up on screen. Kendracormancom, and I know you're working on a couple of things right now, including, I'm seeing this podcast bootcamp that's coming up right now, so do you want to tell us a little bit about that? And then also, if we're interested in working with you, what are the other services that you offer?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so the number one issue that all solopreneurs, entrepreneurs almost everybody will acknowledge in the world of marketing is the fact that they don't have enough time to do consistent marketing Right. That's what you hear. Before we jumped on, brenda and I were talking about Neil Patel and he came out with some research on how often you have to post on different platforms to grow, benchmarking other brands that are growing, and it was like at Instagram. You don't even want to know the numbers right now and it's a lot right. And then I'm telling you you have to do emails right, and then you can't keep up with all the things. You just can't right.

Speaker 2:

We're chief cook and bottle washer, cfo and CMO and everything else in between, and podcasting is one of those amazing tools that gives you unique content with your voice. It creates a no-trust factor and again feeds you content for all those social media posts, for all those email newsletters, and it differentiates you. Podcasting is not an overcrowded space as of this, as of yet, and there are a ton of people that love to binge watch content. I am a huge fan of email marketing, podcasting and being productive those are my three main pillars of my brand. So that's where AI comes into play.

Speaker 2:

But if you're interested in starting a podcast and are a little bit concerned about it, that's what the podcast bootcamp is for. I got to turn my head and look at my calendar here. The first training is live on April 11th, and then I have live trainings on the 15th, 16th and 17th of April, since we're in April 2024. And then the bootcamp closes on the 23rd. So if you can't make them all, you'll have access to all of the recordings. You'll have access to everything until the 23rd of April, so that you've got the confidence that you need to move forward and get that podcast started to be more effective and efficient with your marketing.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome and if people happen to be listening to this on the podcast and I'll say the podcast will probably go live maybe a month or two after we're talking here today so will that bootcamp be available in the future or are there other services that you'll look?

Speaker 2:

at. There is a waitlist for the bootcamp that will be up there, because my next one is actually not going to be until January of 2025, if you can believe that. But you can join the waitlist for that, and joining the waitlist will allow you to get my emails, so that'll automatically sign you up for my email newsletter too. You can go to KendraCormancom forward slash bootcamp and you'll get all of that information. But if you want the deep dive course, I actually do have a course that is available for podcasting. I also have some other courses.

Speaker 2:

My email marketing course is going to be launching this fall and it's being fully redone with a ton of AI and ways to be more effective and efficient and productive there, because, again, we just don't have enough time to be consistent, and so I'm creating all of the ways that you can be more consistent and with your unique voice. And then, if you're interested in individual coaching or consulting sessions, then I'm also available there. Again, you can just reach out to me through LinkedIn or you can go ahead and email me at support at kendracormancom.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome and I have to do a little shout out because I read Kendra's book Mastering AI in Communications here and I have to say AI is still feels like it's like the Wild West. It's a new field. I think it's growing in popularity and people are realizing we've been using tools like AI all along for grammarly, even voice to text and stuff like that. We've been using that, so now it's just like getting comfortable with it and I have to say this is a is it Shook? Am I remembering it correctly?

Speaker 2:

Yes, it's a short, helpful book.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. So it's a Shook and literally it's not. I read this in two nights and I probably could have read it in one night, but I was reading it towards the end of the night. But it's really interesting and I love your framework that you put together in here. And I just want to give a shout out. I know we're talking about email deliverability requirements, but there's some things in here that can be utilized as you're thinking about what to put inside your email. So I think there's a tie in there. I'm going to bridge those two together.

Speaker 2:

Everything links together right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, there you go, Kendra. This has been such a delight chatting with you here today. Any final comments for us on Yahoo and Google email deliverability requirements as we wrap up.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So I would say. One other thing that I would like to point out is that if you are a spammer or you just go adding people to your email lists and things like that, the damage that you're doing is severe to your sender reputation of your entire URL. Your entire domain is going to suffer, even when you're sending one-to-one emails. So be very careful, because if 1% of your email list unsubscribe or, I'm sorry, doesn't unsubscribe marks your email as spam, okay, in Google, in Gmail, that means people that have Gmail accounts and people that use Google Workspace Google is going to turn off all the emails from your domain You're getting. These changes are severe, these changes carry major ramifications, but they are fantastic for people that are doing the right things, that are managing their email list correctly. There are some companies that are no longer emailing to Gmail accounts.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker 2:

Because they don't feel they're sending enough value, or their list doesn't feel like they're sending enough value, and because of that and because they get so many spam notifications, they've actually had to turn that off. That's not a good thing. Yeah, you don't want to do that and you don't want to have to do that. Google has email tools and things like that that you can utilize to check your performance and a lot of other things available to help you do better with your email deliverability. But overall, just, I think the biggest thing that you want to do is make sure you're doing the right things, make sure that you're sending email to people that want to get your emails and make sure that you're sending them value.

Speaker 1:

Okay, good point, and I would be remiss if I didn't invite our audience to come and join us on Saturday. We're doing this event it's called the Shift Live-a-thon event and since I have Kendra on here, I want to ask her. I know you're doing a session on Saturday that's going to be talking about. Let me just pull up.

Speaker 2:

I was like I think it's podcasting, I didn't want to say this yeah, I'm going to be talking about podcasting because, again, we're limited on time, right, and if you make the shift, the first thing you're limited on is time Before you make the shift. What you're limited on is time and audience, right, so you want to build an audience. Creating a podcast is something that you can easily do a lot easier than whatever you're imagining this is and you can do that to grow an audience even before you make the shift. If you're looking to shift from corporate to solopreneur, that's awesome, and join us.

Speaker 1:

We're going to be live on Saturday. If you can't make it live, you're welcome to register and get the playback. You have to go to mellormarketingcom slash shift and you can hear more from Kendra that day. So, kendra, this has been such a delight. I look forward to seeing you again on Thursday and then again on Saturday. But I just want to say thank you so much too for coming on the

People on this episode

Head Shot

Brenda Meller

Host