I say it all the time…
Email service providers don’t really want entrepreneurs in the inbox.
Why?
Because many marketers abuse the privilege. They send spammy, irrelevant emails or fail to respect their subscribers’ preferences.
Many think they can use their email list to blast out sales pitches to make money whenever they want. And this is true—but only if you want to burn out your list, damage your reputation, and lose the trust of your audience.
But what we should be doing is building trust, delivering value, and fostering genuine connections.
And unfortunately, even well-meaning entrepreneurs make mistakes because they think they’re honoring the inbox—but actually aren’t. For example, some avoid emailing their list often enough, thinking they’re being considerate, but this actually causes their subscribers to forget about them and make them think they are being spammed. Others send overly generic content that doesn’t resonate with their audience, which lowers engagement and hurts their sender reputation. And let’s not forget the common mistake of not segmenting their list, which leads to irrelevant messages landing in the wrong inboxes.
Now, don’t let this discourage you, because my friend Scott Hartley is here to spill the secrets on getting your emails into the inbox, growing your reach, and building a profitable business—all while respecting your subscribers’ time and trust so get ready to take some notes.
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Get a Free Copy of the Open Rate Maximizer Checklist
- Become a Member of Hit The Inbox Facebook Community
Watch The Live Call
Full Transcript
Misty Kortes (00:02)
All right. Hello and welcome. Okay. I’m going to just go ahead and dive right in today. I say this all the time. I know Scott’s heard me say it. Email service providers don’t really want entrepreneurs, AKA marketers in the inbox. And you might be thinking, well, why is that? Well, the reason is, is because many entrepreneurs have abused that privilege over the years. And I know that you know this, right?
What they do is they set send spammy, irrelevant emails that fail to respect their subscribers inboxes in their preferences. Right. And so many of us think that we can use our email list to blast out sales pitches, to make money whenever we want. And that is actually true, but you don’t want to do it in a way that burns your list, damages your reputation and
at the expense of the trust that you’ve built with your audience. and here’s the thing, unfortunately, even well-meaning entrepreneurs make mistakes because they think that they’re honoring the inbox, but they’re actually not. And for example, some of us avoid sending emails because we think we’re being considerate, right? Because we’re not spamming them. We’re not emailing them all the time, but…
there’s actually a problem with that because it actually causes our subscribers to forget about us. And when we do finally show up, they think they’re being spammed because they don’t remember who we are. Now, the other thing that people do is they send overly generic content that doesn’t resonate with their audience. It lowers their engagement and it hurts their sender reputation. And then the last thing I want to mention is let’s not forget about the common mistake of not segmenting our lists.
Right? This leads to us sending irrelevant, generic messages that land in the inbox and our subscribers are wondering why we’re showing up. Now, here’s the thing. I don’t want any of this to discourage you because I have my friend joining me here today. His name is Scott Hartley and he is here to spill the secrets on getting your emails to land in the inbox, to help you grow your reach and actually help you build a profitable business the right way.
all while respecting your subscribers time and trust. So get ready to take some notes. Scott, I am so excited to have you here today.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (02:32)
Excited that you asked me to be here, Misty. And there’s a lot happening in the email marketing world, so this is very timely.
Misty Kortes (02:39)
Absolutely. So the first thing I wanna do is I wanna start off kinda setting the stone on why you’re the guy they need to turn to and listen to today in this space. So can give us a little bit of background about your journey.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (02:51)
Sure, yeah, so many years ago, back in 2004, I started my first company, which was an IT company, fixing broken computers, removing viruses and all that kind of stuff. And I kind of got burnt out on that. So I was like, I don’t really want to be doing this anymore. And of course, as I was growing that business, I really fell in love with all things marketing because I had to figure out how am I going to get customers? How am I going to keep them? And so in 2017, I really dove deep into the marketing automation.
and I started helping hundreds of entrepreneurs with marketing strategy and building automations. Well, of course, a big part of that was email. And even back in 2017, 2018, email was still a highly effective method of communication and a way to generate sales for your business. But I found that a lot of people were doing email marketing wrong. And so over the years, I really started honing in on
Misty Kortes (03:27)
Mm-hmm.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (03:49)
know, email marketing specifically, and of course the tech bug, you know, my IT background kind of, you know, bit again, and it’s like, okay, go into the email deliverability space. Now don’t like using that word deliverability because it’s like confusing to most people, but basically, you know, how do I help people get their emails delivered and consumed so that people then take the actions that we want them to take, and of course, you know, ultimately generate sales and build those relationships. And so,
You know, I went all in in the hit the inbox space back in 2022. So I published my book and started really focusing on helping a lot of clients leverage the power of email marketing in their business. And that’s where I’m at today. And that was great timing because now there’s lots of changes that have happened, you know, since I really focused on this area.
Misty Kortes (04:40)
Absolutely. And you know, you and I’ve been in this space for a long time. And I know, I remember like in the early days, it was like really difficult to get people, they were all caught up in their heads about what should they put in the email? How should it be written? It was all like all about copywriting. It was just like, it was hard just to get them to write the email, right? And then we had to convince them, listen, you really need to send the email. You know, that was like the next battle. And now here we are fast forward a decade later.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (04:43)
Yeah.
Right.
Yeah. Yup.
Misty Kortes (05:07)
And people are like, okay, I get it. want to email because, because they started writing the emails, they started sending it. And now they’re like, I want to send those emails and that, and now we have all this regulation and compliance. Right? So that’s really what I want to get into today, obviously. But what do you think is the biggest mistake that entrepreneurs are still making today that sabotage their email deliverability? I know there’s a lot I’m sure you could talk about, but like what’s the biggest one?
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (05:35)
Yeah.
Misty Kortes (05:37)
or two.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (05:39)
I think it really goes back to just something I alluded to while ago, is we are missing the relationship building peace. We’re missing the authenticity. Like you mentioned earlier, you didn’t directly say this, but marketers screw up everything. Marketers screw up everything because they’re like, great, we got this new way that we can reach people. Let’s just blast.
Misty Kortes (06:00)
Yes. Bro.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (06:08)
it as bad as we can. And that’s what happened with email. So now we have more regulations. We had that just recently happen within the past couple of years with text messaging. Now it’s impossible to be able to send text messages to people without jumping through a million hoops and having to try it 15 times. So marketers screw up so much because so many marketers just look at it as an ATM, as a cash machine, as opposed to
How can I build relationships and provide value to my audience? When you approach email marketing from that perspective, everything else becomes a whole lot easier. The segmenting that you talked about, the list hygiene, the authentication, writing the content for your emails, all of that type of stuff becomes so much easier when you change the mindset of like, these are real people on the other side of my computer keyboard.
Misty Kortes (07:06)
So what would you, like what’s one tip that you can give someone so that they step into that space of being real authentic with their subscribers? Like what’s one thing that they could do?
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (07:18)
Yeah, I mean, when you’re writing your emails, when you’re thinking about your emails, envision that you are having a conversation with a friend or a family member. How would they want you to approach them? What would you say to them? Would you be all stiff and corporatey? Would you have it conversational style? Would you share a joke? Would you share a story? What’s going to draw them in so that they’re not
cringing, it’s like, my gosh, Scott’s calling me again, or Scott’s sending me a text message. How can you break through those barriers so that you’re showing up like, cool, Scott sent me an email, what’s he got to say today? That’s really what you wanna be thinking about every time that you’re crafting a message to anybody that’s on your list.
Misty Kortes (07:50)
you
love that you’re saying this because recently I’ve even as a marketer, like I know all the rules. I know what we should and shouldn’t do. I, know, I get it, but I, it’s easy to get inside your head and then become like, I don’t know, more rigid with your communication. I’ll just use that as a word. And so recently I started communicating with my list, like as if it literally, as if they’re friends of mine. And it’s kind of like a day in the life of Misty.
Which is like I get up every day and I’m like, what do I want to talk about today? Like what do I want to share? like in the last couple of weeks I shared my husband, we had this conversation. We have a tree. I think you, made a mention of this on my social post about it. Like the leaves were dropping and he’s trying to clean them up and literally as he’s cleaning them up, there’s more dropping and he’s like, I hate this tree. And I’m like, why don’t you get it? You know, why don’t we just cut the tree down and plant something that doesn’t drop? Cause I live in Arizona. We have the luxury of
trees that actually don’t shed crazy enough. And, and he’s like, I’m not going to cut down a perfectly good tree. And I was like, that is like a huge lesson for entrepreneurs. So I tied my personal life to a business philosophy. And I think if more of us did this, people would be more interested. And I have found that by sharing my personal day-to-day life of Misty, people are really resonating with that. So you’re, you’re spot on. Like that’s what we should be doing a hundred percent.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (09:07)
Yeah, right.
Absolutely, because
so many of us in social media is horrendous about this, but everybody’s got the picture perfect life. Right? And a lot of times we translate that into our emails. We try to communicate, we’ve got it all together. We figured it all out. Buy my stuff. But whenever we’re real and we’re raw and we’re honest and we’re like, hey, I struggle with this too. I just happen to find a solution that’s working for me.
Misty Kortes (09:43)
Yep, absolutely.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (10:01)
Now people are more endeared to that because it’s like, okay, I’m really not the only one that’s facing that challenge. Like you’ve got it too. you’ve got, figured out something that might work. Okay, let me, let me inquire more about that. And it draws people in. And again, it goes back to that authenticity that we’re missing in so much of our marketing communication, no matter what platform that we’re using.
Misty Kortes (10:25)
I totally agree. Okay. So we’re going to switch gears just a little bit and talk about deliverability. So now we know we need to be authentic. We need to be real. Maybe you can take that tip and become, you know, share a day in the life of your life and tie that into your business somehow. But you talk about silent killers when it comes to deliverability, right? So explain what those are.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (10:49)
So there’s a lot of silent killers that are out there that most people don’t really realize that are basically sabotaging their success with their emails. But it’s not rocket science. What are those silent killers? Like you mentioned earlier, it’s not segmenting your list. It’s, I’m blasting the same message to everybody. It’s also not looking at engagement. So who’s opening and who’s clicking on my emails versus who’s not?
Am I just sending you, it’s like, I’ve got my to-do list on it, write and send email. Okay. I’ve got to get that thing out today. And so we just write and send that email and click send. And we blast it to everybody on our list, irregardless of how they’ve been engaging. Right. That is a, that’s a big killer because you know, that’s the biggest thing right now that the mailbox providers are looking for is they are looking for engagement.
Misty Kortes (11:19)
Mm.
Yes, I did that for years.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (11:49)
As a matter of fact, let me kind of take that a step further, engagement now is not an open. Google just recently updated their best practices, their sender guidelines, and they specifically spell out, Google does not track opens. Short sentence. So what do they want? Well, they want people to click and they want people to reply. So that means that we have to change the way that we’re doing our email marketing.
Misty Kortes (11:55)
Mmm, yes.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (12:18)
Again, being more authentic and being relational. we’re basically compelling our readers like, I’ve got to find out more about that. So I’m going to go click or I’m going to reply to that email, say, hey, tell me more. So that’s the engagement piece. And because we haven’t built those habits, because email marketing has changed throughout the years, we’ve got some bad habits now that if we don’t shift them, they are going to be a killer of our email marketing.
And what happens is, is that if we don’t evolve, if we don’t make these shifts sooner rather than later, your emails simply won’t get delivered.
Misty Kortes (12:47)
Yes.
Yeah. So you actually need people not only, mean, obviously we want as marketers, as entrepreneurs, as business owners, we want people to open our emails. That’s obviously a given. Open rates are important to us, but the email service providers aren’t tracking that as a metric, whether or not someone is actually engaged with you. Is that what I’m hearing?
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (13:15)
Yeah, yeah, because, right
now, I mean, there’s a lot of spam filters that they’re opening emails to check them for, you know, malicious content and viruses and things like that. You know, they’re, you know, they’re privacy protections in place. So, you know, emails don’t get opened or don’t get recorded as open. Others, they do get recorded as open, but it’s not a real human that’s actually open it. It’s the software. There’s all this type of stuff. So the opens are not a great metric. We still need to look at it. It’s a, you know,
something that we should be monitoring, but it’s not the metric that the mailbox providers are looking for. Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Yahoo, they wanna be like, you’re interested in this? I know you’re interested in it because you’re clicking, you’re replying.
Misty Kortes (13:59)
Yes. And so we have to be intentional when we share our messages to get our audience to do those things. So yeah, that’s awesome. That’s a really good tip. So today go back and look at some of the emails you’ve sent recently and look and see, are you asking people to actually engage with you? To click, to respond back to your emails? Because I know in working with over 5,000 entrepreneurs over the last decade, many of them,
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (14:06)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Misty Kortes (14:29)
will want to, they want to use email as a tool to blast and send out their stuff, but they actually don’t want their list to communicate with them, which I find absolutely insane. And a lot of times they justify, well, I’m too busy. I can’t, I can’t take all these messages and respond to every person individually, but that’s, that’s a huge shift that they need to make in their mindset. So if you’ve ever thought like that,
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (14:35)
Mm-hmm.
Misty Kortes (14:54)
Like I just want to send out messages and I don’t want people to actually respond back to me. You got to change that thinking.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (15:00)
And it’s not just the fact that they’re responding back to you, but you need to reply back to them because they’ve taken their time to respond to an email that you said, hey, let me know. And then if you just like ghost them, like, are they going to continue responding? No, they’re not. like overnight. So I just released a new lead magnet called the open rate maximizer checklist, an email that I send out one hour after somebody ops in and I deliver it to them. I have a one hour email.
Misty Kortes (15:06)
Yeah!
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (15:28)
that’s basically putting into practice what I’m teaching is like, hey, respond back to this email and let me know that you got it. All you gotta do is say, got it. I had five emails that got sent to me after I left the office at an overnight. Five people replied back, got it. I responded to every single one of those and said, hey, thanks for letting me know that you got the email. I’m looking forward to hearing from you what results that you get after you start applying the 15 strategies that are in that guide.
Misty Kortes (15:45)
Yep.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (15:58)
was like, took me 10 seconds to respond to each one of those emails. But now I’m showing like, hey, I wanna have a conversation with you. I’m not just like getting you to jump through some hoops. I really wanna have, you know, an authentic conversation and I wanna be helpful to you. And if we take that approach, you would be surprised at how that will change the relationship with your list and the results that you get from that.
Misty Kortes (16:15)
Absolutely.
Absolutely, 100%.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (16:25)
Now, one other thing that I want to mention
too, because you kind of mentioned this as well, but another silent killer, and I’ve noticed this here really within the past three to four months, we have to be consistent and regular with our communication. We have to email at least weekly and we have to show up every single week. So when we tell people, hey, I’m going to send you a weekly email or I’m going to email you three times a week, you’ve got to be consistent.
Misty Kortes (16:41)
Yes. Preach.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (16:54)
So it needs to be that you’re doing that week in, week out, that you’re showing up basically the same time, same day, every time that you’re sending those. That way there’s that subtle consistency that gets communicated to your list. But that also shows the mailbox providers that you’re a legit sender. Because the spammers and the hackers, they’re just haphazardly blasting stuff out at all kinds of randomness. But when you’re consistent and regular,
You know, you’re saying, hey, I’m not a spammer. Like you can see by my actions, but it also goes back to, hey, I’m building a relationship with my audience. And when I’m talking about consistency as well, this is a big silent killer that a lot of people don’t think about, but it gets you in really hot water really quickly. Because I’ve seen this with several people that their domain reputation has tanked. So some people they’re like, okay, I’ve got a list of 5,000 people.
Misty Kortes (17:47)
Mm-hmm.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (17:52)
So they do a good job, they clean it, they whittle it down, they prune that list. They’re like, okay, I can really only email about 1,500. All right? So they email, they start emailing 1,500 contacts and they’re building up their reputation, they’re getting good engagement, all of that type of stuff. And then all of a sudden they get this wild hair of like, oh, well I’ve been emailing these 1,500 people, but I still got 2,500 people on my list here. Like, oh, I need to add them in and boom, the next.
broadcast that they send out is back to the 5,000. That type of spike, any type of major changes like that is not consistent and that draws the attention of Google, Apple, Microsoft and Yahoo and it gets you in trouble. You cannot have wild spikes in the numbers of emails that you send, the frequency of emails that you send, the number of people that you send to. You have to make small incremental shifts over a period of time
Misty Kortes (18:27)
Yes.
Mmm.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (18:49)
so that you don’t get in trouble. And that is a huge silent killer because I’ve seen people, I actually had one client, they were emailing I think about 80 some odd people regularly and in the last 30 days they bumped it up to 500. Their domain reputation took a hit because of that.
Misty Kortes (19:07)
Yeah, so it’s not even like thousands and thousands. I mean, it’s marginal compared to what your list size is, right?
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (19:10)
Right?
what you’re normally
communicating, what you’re normally sending, yeah.
Misty Kortes (19:19)
Yeah,
absolutely. No, that’s really good tip. And I think what they’re looking for is, you know, the people out there that are scraping because there’s lots of tools. There’s I don’t even it’s more than blackhead. I just think it’s wrong. But they’re scraping people’s information on social media profiles. There’s tons of tools that will do that. And then they’re dumping them into their CRMs. And then they’re thinking that they have a right to email people and they don’t. So, yeah.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (19:28)
yeah.
Yeah, right. Yeah.
Misty Kortes (19:48)
They’re looking for that stuff. So what do you, what’s one of the most common myths? Because I know we could probably go on for a while on this, that, know, when it comes to email marketing that you wish would like go away, that people have learned and they’re kind of like, they, they still think it applies to today.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (20:05)
Yeah.
Probably the most common myth that I hear is that I can’t communicate with my list frequently. Even when I tell people like, you need to be emailing them at least once a week, I still get this pushback. It’s like, oh, but I’m going to upset my clients. I’m going to upset my prospects. They don’t want to hear from me more than once a month.
Misty Kortes (20:19)
Mm-hmm.
What?
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (20:39)
That’s a lot of head trash that we have. But it goes back to what we talked about at the beginning. If we don’t have a relationship, if we’re not providing value, then of course people don’t want to hear from us. If we’re just saying, hey, I got this new thing, why don’t you go check it out? Like they don’t want to be bombarded with that. know, take for example, you know, if you go to a big city, you know, and I love to go to Chicago.
Misty Kortes (21:08)
Mm-hmm.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (21:09)
and you’re walking down the sidewalk there in downtown Chicago or downtown LA, wherever it’s at, do you like to be just randomly accosted by somebody that, like, hey, fill out this survey. Hey, I’ve got this. Hey, you know? Or even when you’re going to a carnival or a fair, you’ve got all of those carnival barkers that are hollering out, hey, come over here and play this game, play that game. For me, I hate that. That’s so annoying.
If we’ve gotten into the habit of emailing people of like, hey, I’ve got this new thing, go check it out, go buy it, know, check out this course. Like people get tired of that. They don’t want to hear that. But
Misty Kortes (21:48)
I personally love sending the emails where I kind of give a surprise gift, where I’m like, hey, I created this really cool resource, but I’m giving it to you because you’re part of my community. You know what I mean? Like, I like showing up like that.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (21:53)
Yeah!
Yeah, yeah, that’s different
because, you know, because now if you’re approaching it as, I’ve got a relationship and, you know, I want to provide something of value to you. I want to share, hey, did you know what happened to me the other day? You know, like people are going to be interested in that. so Misty, if you just randomly called me up, you know, and it could be in the middle of a day, you know, I’m working and everything and I see, you know, your name and phone number pop up on my phone.
Misty Kortes (22:13)
Mm-hmm.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (22:25)
But I know that you’ve got something that you want to share with me. Maybe it’s a story, maybe it’s, you know, whatever that’s going on. Like I’m going to be, I’m like, Hey Misty, what’s going on? I’m going to take that call. I’m going to be interested in that. And so if we start to approach where we’re authentic and we’re providing value, your list isn’t going to mind if you show up two, three, four, five times a week, because they’re like, Misty’s got something really cool that she’s going to share with me today. Now we’re going to always hit the mark with it.
Misty Kortes (22:53)
Yep.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (22:55)
No, I mean, we’re human, right? There’s stuff that I write that my list isn’t interested in this particular week. But the next week, like, man, it may be spot on, that it’s going to hit somebody. It’s like, that was really, really insightful. And so we have to, again, shift our thinking. And I think it comes from a place that so many entrepreneurs, like life is hard as an entrepreneur.
Misty Kortes (22:57)
Right.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (23:23)
And we just want to get the result that we want. We want those sales. We want that revenue. And if we’re constantly in this rat race and we’re approaching all of our marketing and especially our email marketing, it’s like, man, I got to get that result. I got to get that result. I got to get that result. Then we miss the opportunity that we have to actually provide value and draw people into our world. And we’ll be attracting the right people that then want to do business with us.
Misty Kortes (23:53)
Absolutely.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (23:53)
and building
that relationship. So I think it comes from that place is like, we’re just all stressed out. And it’s like, man, I got to this email out. I got to make this sale. This has got to be a successful launch or whatever that it is. We’ve got to break out of that mindset, that mold, and really, again, go back to being authentic and building relationships. And then people will want to hear from us.
Misty Kortes (24:15)
Absolutely. And along the same lines is I think a lot of entrepreneurs think that they’re honoring the inbox when they don’t send emails, but you’re not. These people came to you, they signed up maybe for a free resource, they asked you to communicate with them when they signed up. And so we need to look at it from that viewpoint is
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (24:24)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Misty Kortes (24:39)
I’m not honoring, it’s like meeting a friend one time or a person one time and saying we should hang out and then never speaking to them again. I actually have a gal, we were vacationing last year in July and we were in the pool and we met a gal. We talked for like five hours straight in the pool with her and we, now I have her email and her phone number and we text message each other and we’re supporting each other. Like.
That’s what we should be doing with our subscribers. Like not just the one time we met them and then we never talked to them until we need something from them, right?
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (25:13)
Yeah. I, and I’ve been
listening to Les Brown again, you know, I mean, he is a great motivational speaker. And so I’ve been listening to some of his older stuff. And one of the, the YouTube videos that I listened to the other night was, you know, we are doing people a major disservice. If we’re not sharing our knowledge and our expertise with them. When we know that that’s what they want, that that’s what they need. That again, like it goes back, they opted into our list. And if we’re not sharing.
Misty Kortes (25:17)
I love them. Yeah.
Mm.
Yes.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (25:41)
what we know, what can change their lives, we’re holding back and we’re doing them a major disservice.
Misty Kortes (25:49)
Absolutely. I literally just sent an email yesterday about that exact topic. So, okay. Where are we at in time? All right. just, in your book, you talk about the email, E-M-A-I-L. I know everybody knows how to spell that, but it’s an acronym framework. Just touch on what that is. It’s in your book and I want to bring it up because I want them to know they need to get your book, they need to read it, and they need to put these things in practice.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (25:53)
Yup.
Misty Kortes (26:19)
But give us a highlight of it.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (26:19)
Yeah.
So, so real quickly, excuse me, the email framework is, is really simple. So number one is you have to establish authentication, right? That’s the technical stuff of email marketing. You’ve got to have certain things in order in order to be able to drive on the email marketing highway. You have to have the authentication. Secondly, the in email framework is monitoring your metrics. So just like in everything else in your business, you’re looking at your bank account.
You’re looking at your Stripe account. You’re looking at all those sales numbers and things like that. You need to be monitoring certain metrics when it comes to your email marketing. So yes, open rate’s one of those. Not a great metric, but you do need to look at it. But you need to be looking at your click rate. You need to look at your replies. You need to look at your domain reputation. You need to be looking at your demark reports. There’s a lot of metrics that we need to be monitoring when it comes to email marketing.
And then the I part of the, or I’m sorry, the A part of the email framework is that we need to adopt consistent practices. We talked about that just a few minutes ago. You we want to have that consistency, that regularity, right? And the I part of the email framework is that we need to improve our list hygiene. And this is becoming really, really,
Misty Kortes (27:34)
Yep.
Yes.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (27:45)
critical right now because the hackers and spammers, again, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Yahoo, they’re making life difficult for everybody when it comes to email marketing. So if it’s hard for us, it’s also becoming more difficult for the hackers and spammers. So now they’re ramping up the things that they’re doing. And so they are now really infecting other people’s lists just for no other reason than to cause problems. So
Misty Kortes (27:54)
Yep.
Yes.
Yes.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (28:15)
They’re attacking all kinds of web forms. And it used to be that it was junk email addresses, ones that weren’t even valid. And those emails would bounce and they would cause problems and things like that. Now what they’re doing is that they’re basically scraping the internet for legit email addresses. They’re filling out web forms with those legit email addresses. And so misty at gmail.com, but misty, you didn’t come to my website and fill out that web form. Some bot did that, some hacker.
Misty Kortes (28:40)
Yep.
Yup.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (28:45)
And so now Misty, you get an email from me and you’re like, who in the heck is Scott Hartley? Why is he sending me this thing? And you’re like, I don’t want it. And so they market a spam. Well, now you get a bunch of spam complaints. Guess what? You’ve got a lot of issues. So list hygiene, improving your list hygiene is really, really important. Also touches upon, you know,
Misty Kortes (28:52)
Yes.
Yep.
Yes.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (29:08)
you know, making sure that you’re weeding out bounced emails, making sure that you’re looking at engagement, making sure that you’re segmenting your list, all of those types of things.
Misty Kortes (29:17)
We’ve got to do a little plug here before we get to the L part of the framework because so many clients, like they, we spend time, we spend money, we spend energy trying to grow our email list. And then we get so attached to having that person on that list. We don’t want to let it go. And it’s hurting us. Like hear this message loud and clear. It’s okay to delete people who you spent time, money, and energy to get on your list who are not engaging with you. Like,
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (29:20)
Okay.
Yeah.
Misty Kortes (29:46)
because I just know the tendency is Misty, spent good money to build this list. I get it. But if they’re not opening your emails, if they’re not engaging with you, you’re not going to get anywhere with them anyways. And there are tactics and strategies, which we don’t have time to go into today, that you can re you can get them back on your list without emailing them. Right. So
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (30:03)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Misty Kortes (30:06)
Yeah, I just want to say that because I know that’s the tendency. Like when I say, when I do a list scrub for a client and maybe they have 5,000 people on their list and we have to delete 1200 of them, they both freak out.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (30:17)
Yeah. Yeah. But the thing
is, that, know, and that’s a shift that we have to make. It’s no longer, can you just email them until they buy, dire and subscribe? Like that, that methodology does not work anymore in the eyes of the mailbox providers. Google Microsoft app on Yahoo will not allow that.
Misty Kortes (30:28)
Yep.
I do this.
I totally agree. And I do mine every quarter and I just deleted almost, I was just shy of 900 emails off my own email list just recently, like last week. So like it has to be done. But like I said, there’s other ways that you can try to get them to reengage, but all right, I’ll let you continue with your framework, with the last letter.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (30:44)
Nah. Yeah.
And
the last one is the L and it’s something we’ve already talked about, leverage value-driven content. Like we’ve got to show up in a place of service to our audience. Now that doesn’t mean that we can’t sell. Okay. You know, there’s a way that you can make your emails very value-driven, very engaging, but still also call people to action. And if you, yeah.
Misty Kortes (31:21)
Yes, Tim Kennedy teaches
that. Like he taught that for years and years and years. He’s like, you don’t send an email just to send an email. There’s always a soft call to action. There’s always something that says, hey, this is what you should do with this information now.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (31:34)
Yeah, because if we don’t tell people what to do, they’ll say, that was a great story. But then they won’t connect the dots. How do I apply that to my life or my business? So we have to let them know, here’s what I want you to do. You know, maybe you’ve taught a lesson. Take 10 minutes and brainstorm on a sheet of paper, whatever it is that you talked about, or reply to this email, or go download this resource that I’ve got for you, whatever that it is. But we have to give people the next step.
Misty Kortes (31:39)
Yeah.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (32:03)
Here’s what you need to do with what you just read.
Misty Kortes (32:06)
Yeah. Cause I think sometimes when people hear valuable information, I say that in air quotes for those who are listening in, but can’t see is they think that’s just me giving away my knowledge, experience and expertise. And yes, that’s a component of it, but getting people to actually take action on what you’ve just shared with them is the real value. What is the same knowledge is power, but I don’t know. know, know, yeah.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (32:32)
Well, here’s the thing.
I was just looking at this. So I released the new lead magnet over the weekend, that open rate maximizer checklist. And I was just being curious, you know, and I’ve got a trigger link set up. So whenever somebody clicks on the link in the delivery email, like it records, like they clicked on that link. I was surprised at the number of people who opted in for the checklist. They opened the email that delivered the checklist.
Misty Kortes (32:39)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (33:01)
but they didn’t click the link to actually open the checklist. And I’m like, you feel like you’ve taken the action because you’ve opted in. Like I get that. But until you actually open the checklist and start reading it and start applying it, it’s not going to do you one bit of good. And so that’s why it’s important. This is important. That’s why that follow-up email that goes out one hour later,
Misty Kortes (33:07)
I have a theory on that.
Yeah.
EXO
Yes.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (33:31)
It’s like, hey, did you
get it? It’s a reminder. So that if they reply back, yeah, I got it. So if they haven’t done anything with it, but then you need to have follow-ups in the days after, they again remind them, hey, have you been applying this, you know, and sharing stories and all that type of stuff. You can’t just have a one and done and think that people, they opted in for the checklist. They got it. They’re to be good. It’s human nature. They don’t.
Misty Kortes (33:41)
Yes.
Well,
here’s what happens. I don’t know. Maybe I’m the only one that does this. Basically the only time I’ll opt into things, you know, I opted into your list the other day. And I, so what happened is I was scrolling through Facebook. It was probably nine, 10 o’clock at night as you know, my downtime, I opted into it. I got the email. I went over to my inbox to make sure I got the email and I didn’t download it because I was on my phone. I don’t like downloading resources on my phone.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (34:11)
Hmm?
Misty Kortes (34:23)
Right. And so I think to myself, I’m going to come back to that later. And then I don’t because I forget about it because it gets buried. So that’s what people are doing. So what Scott’s saying is send that one hour email, but also I would send another, like the next day, another email if he, because you in our email service providers and our CRMs, we have the ability to track who downloads what now, right? If you’re not doing that, on, get up to speed, but you know,
they downloaded or not. And if they didn’t download it, send another email the next day and say, Hey, I noticed you still haven’t downloaded that. Like it’s not going to help you if you don’t actually, you know, take advantage of what I’ve given you. Like be forward with that, nudge them forward. It’s kind of like being, you know, a trainer at the gym. Like the point of having a coach, the point of having a trainer is to get them to do, help you do the things you wouldn’t otherwise do by yourself. Right.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (35:11)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yup.
Misty Kortes (35:20)
So
don’t be afraid to do those kinds of things. yeah, I’m 100 % with you.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (35:25)
Yeah, so that’s the L, so that’s the email framework and it’s not laid out as email framework in the book, but all of that content is there that touches on every single piece of that framework.
Misty Kortes (35:36)
Yeah, I love that. So that’s why I wanted to bring that up because it’s just so, it’s so concise on exactly what we need to do. And if you’re, if you’re listening in going, what, what is this DMARC thing? What is this like compliance? Like how do I track these kinds of things? That’s, would, I would strongly urge you to reach out to Scott and have him help you with the technical aspects of setting up your email deliverability. So let’s wrap up with.
One more thing, one more tip. Okay. So for someone just starting out with email marketing, cause there are new businesses starting every day, new entrepreneurs joining our force every day. What’s one thing that, that we can do today to improve deliverability that they can do themselves. Like that’s super easy that, can help. I mean, obviously all the tips we gave today is helpful, but
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (36:31)
Yeah,
I think, you know, probably the biggest tip is, you know, if you’re getting started out, take the time to map out a strategy for your email marketing. You know, create a plan. You know, it’s almost like a business plan, but what role is email marketing going to play in your business? And what’s the outcomes that you want from that? And then reverse engineer that. How are you going to get to those outcomes? And again, making that authentic.
Misty Kortes (36:43)
Yes, that’s good.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (36:59)
You need to think through, like, how often am I gonna communicate with my list? What am I going to share with them? Create a content calendar, just like you would with social media, and start planning out two to three months in advance. Here’s the topics that I’m going to touch upon. Be thinking through, like, what are some of the common questions that you get or the problems that you solve? Simple things that you can share in your emails, but create a plan.
Misty Kortes (36:59)
Yes.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (37:26)
Just like everything else in your business, if you don’t have a plan for it, it’s not gonna get you the results that you want. And it’s not gonna, it’s just not gonna work well at all. But when you take it seriously and you’re like, okay, this is a serious part of my business and I’m gonna plan it out. I’m gonna come up with a strategy. You would be surprised at what you can achieve with that. And email marketing, despite all the shiny bells and whistles of social media and everything else, email marketing is still
Misty Kortes (37:26)
.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (37:56)
the number one revenue generator for businesses. It still is. Yeah. Even Gary Vaynerchuk. Somebody just mentioned the other day, they spoke with Gary Vaynerchuk as much as he’s on social media, right? I mean, he’s all over, especially Instagram, but they had a conversation with him and he said, still the number one way is email. And that’s coming from a guy who’s heavy on social media.
Misty Kortes (38:00)
Yes. And you own and control it. Like it’s an asset. Yes.
Absolutely. Because the goal of social media is to hook the attention, capture their interests, and then get them into your own private community, if you will, which is your email list. Right? So absolutely. Gosh, there Scott, there is so much good stuff in here. So it has been honestly so incredible and so many takeaways. I hope you guys are taking notes on this. If not, listen to it again and go back and take some notes.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (38:35)
Yup. Yup.
There is, mean, like we could rip all day on this.
Misty Kortes (38:55)
So, you know, thank you so much for breaking down all of this for us and really helping, you know, entrepreneurs understand the importance of email, the importance of email, number one. Number two, getting actually into the inbox and that there are things that we need to do that we are responsible for. Because I think a lot of times we have a tendency to want to blame our CRM or our email provider, right?
So like the male chimps of the world, the keeps of the world, the hub spot, we want to blame them for the reason why our emails are not getting in the inbox. And that’s not true. There are things that we as marketers, as business owners, we need to do to set us up for success. So thank you for introducing those to us today, if nothing else. And so what’s, what’s a place where, where anyone who’s listening in who wants to know more, where can they connect with you? First of all,
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (39:52)
So the best place that I really encourage everybody to join is hittheinboxcommunity.com. So that is a brand new Facebook group that I just created a couple of weeks ago. You’re welcome to come in there. You can ask any questions that you want to about your specific email marketing challenges. I’m going to be sharing regular updates on things that are happening in the email world, any new resources that come out. They’re going to be shared there, but it’s a great place.
You know, connect with other email marketers, see what’s working, and then also, you know, be able to ask your specific questions. So hit the inbox community.com. It’s a great way. I’m in there every day answering questions and interact.
Misty Kortes (40:33)
And he is, I’m part of the group. I see it all the time. So good stuff. All right. So that’s number one. Number two, I know you have a special gift. So where can they get that? And what is it?
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (40:44)
You need to remind me what I sent over to you.
Misty Kortes (40:47)
You’re 15 tips. Hold on. Yes. Yes. Yes, yes, yes.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (40:49)
the, is that the open rate maximizer checklist? Yes, okay.
Okay, I couldn’t remember if I had sent that one over to you yet. Okay, so that one there is the open rate maximizer checklist. I tell you what, this is a brand new resource that I just created. This one is like so timely with all of the recent algorithm changes that just happened with Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Yahoo. I tell you what, if you apply these things, like it’s going to,
change the results you’re seeing from your email marketing. So the URL for that is www.go.hittheinbox.email/open-rate-checklist. And so the easiest way is if you join the Hit the Inbox community, there is a post in the community that has a direct link to that landing page where you can get that checklist.
That is definitely a resource that you want to grab and start applying immediately.
Misty Kortes (41:51)
and
I’ll make sure I link to it in the show notes. You gotta shorten that URL, it’s way too long. I’ve done that.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (41:53)
Yeah, I haven’t had a chance
to go get one, know, like openratechecklist.com or something,
Misty Kortes (42:01)
I know,
right? Absolutely. no, Scott, again, thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing all your incredible knowledge with us today. I appreciate you. So yeah, any last final words?
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (42:15)
just really, you know, take the heart that email marketing is hard. I will just tell you right now with all the changes, it’s getting harder. But those businesses who embrace that and say, I’m going to take the challenge and I’m going to really get serious about email marketing. I’m going to build relationships. I’m going to provide value. And then you follow the best practices that we now all have to abide by. You’re going to be one of the few.
Misty Kortes (42:16)
Thank
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (42:45)
that actually do that, and you’re gonna be able to see those results in massive form that so many other entrepreneurs that, I’m too busy. I don’t wanna mess with that. they’re making life difficult. They’re complaining rather than looking for the opportunity. But if you take the opportunity, sky’s the limit.
Misty Kortes (43:05)
Absolutely. Because I think they’re either complaining or ignoring. And they’re going to get caught because the compliance is only going to get harder, then the restrictions harder and harder. But hard doesn’t mean impossible. Right? So we just need to be accountable. We can’t just use it as a free for all tool that we can do whatever we want, whenever we want and how we want. There are some rules to this game now, and we need to make sure that we abide by it. And we will get in the inbox, especially with the help of Scott.
Scott Hartley | Hit The Inbox (43:19)
Right.
Misty Kortes (43:34)
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for tuning in. I appreciate each and every one of you and I will see you again next week.