- Duration: 34 min
- Platform: meet
- Source: Read.ai 01JJSMXEGD11RD0Z8TWCTYZCE4 (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JJSMXEGD11RD0Z8TWCTYZCE4)
Transcript
[Michael Bernzweig]: still still where you were enough. [Michael Houck]: Yeah I moved to a different. A different like Airbnb here but you know same. [Michael Bernzweig]: Same town yeah same idea I love it so yeah so not confusing so we have a whole range of you know like courses a whole range of Solutions and products and things like that that we put into our our different offers but- as I was telling you we’re really focusing on the newsletter because the newsletter has been by and far like the best onboarding tool for bringing aboard new clients, you know, for us. So, you know, I’ve just started with Matt’s whole world over there and just kind of taking it off a one by one and, and all of that. But, um, so really we already have all, you know, like a tripwire offer and a back-end offer and all the different offers and we’re actually setting up the funnel and everything correctly but I guess what I was asking is are there standard offers from like like sparkly like spark loop has their whole scenario set up you know they’re showing five different newsletters that pop up at the end you know and I know you know they’ve got their world together I’m sure there’s one or two others doing the same kind of thing. For the other steps of the funnel, is anybody else doing anything like that, where they’re A-B testing a bunch of different kinds of offers to figure out what’s converting the best and different people’s funnels? [Michael Houck]: I want to make sure I understand. Basically, you guys have all the different types of offers, and you want to measure which ones are converting the best from the newsletter. So what you’re thinking is, is there some software, platform, or tool that you can integrate with the newsletter? [Michael Bernzweig]: We already have testing and measurement and all that kind of stuff. So can we A-B test everything that we’re doing versus other networks of offers that already exist from others out there? You know, how we’re doing compared to what other offers are converting with our audience. Does that make sense? So like, so like, let’s say, let’s say we’re offering a course on AI, right? And, you know, we’re, we’re seeing whatever the conversion rate is, you know, and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, it’s our course, so it’s a hundred percent of the revenue comes to us. Might there be another platform like Spark loop that maybe you’ve used in the past or maybe this is an idea for somebody to start a company that serves up a whole range of offers that already exist for digital products that could be shown in the checkout that publishers could actually say, hey, this is what we’re doing, but what they’re doing is converting Maybe it just makes sense to leave their offers live versus ours. [Michael Houck]: So basically something that shows up in the newsletter or if someone clicks on some link in the newsletter or something like that. [Michael Bernzweig]: Not in the newsletter, but after somebody subscribes to the newsletter in that funnel after the subscription. Got it. [Michael Houck]: So instead of referring people to other newsletters, you’re talking about like a similar UX to Sparky. That shows up after somebody subscribes with different options. But basically, instead of you guys putting forward your own products, you’d put in products from other people who might be. [Michael Bernzweig]: Maybe they’ve already developed out some great products, and it just resonates better with our audience. [Michael Houck]: I don’t think there’s anything like that that exists, no. It’s a good idea. It could definitely be good to get more people’s products in front of other people. It’s a pretty cool idea. But no, nothing like that. [Michael Bernzweig]: I mean, the products that we put out take us weeks and months to develop. It’s not like it just happens like a snap of a finger. I’m sure it’s the same thing for everything you’re doing, right? [Michael Houck]: It doesn’t just happen. I like the idea, but no, I don’t think anything like that exists today. [Michael Bernzweig]: OK. I’m just kind of curious. Probably in the adult entertainment industry and gambling and all that kind of stuff would exist. So no, that’s fine. Um, and then we have three very distinct audiences reading the newsletter. So let’s say, you know, they say to you, yeah, you know, let’s bring in 5,000 people a month. You know, you, you start doing that. Can we test between the different audiences to see from your from what you’re bringing aboard, could we do 1,500 or 2,000 from each of the three audiences to see which ones are sticking around the most from what we’re bringing [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: aboard? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I think so. I think we could probably do that, as long as we get clear guidance from you about the different types. [Michael Bernzweig]: Yeah, for sure. Because I think if we can bring aboard more people like our ideal customers, you know, at scale, it’s like a no brainer. I mean, just why wouldn’t we? Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I mean, it literally, what we do is we’d send you a form, uh, once we move forward and then you just fill it out and you could let us know in there, like, Hey, we have these three different types of audiences. We speak to them all through the same newsletter. Uh, but we, we like to break it down more granularly. [Michael Bernzweig]: So, um, just give us that guidance and we’ll, we’ll run Okay and then as far as you know when you bring aboard you know the new subscribers like what you said you’re doing this for like three or four different newsletter publishers at this point or you’ve got a few. [Michael Houck]: Well since last time we talked we’ve doubled the amount of clients that we have so we’re up to ten now. [Michael Bernzweig]: Okay so and so you’re building experience what what are they seeing in terms of you know from from when they come aboard to when they get onto the list? What does that journey look like, And what are they seeing? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, so we are constantly sort of pen testing our database. So we’re sending cold emails related to the topics we think these people would be interested in to make sure they’re active in opening the emails and they’re engaging with subject lines that are related to the niche. Those are unrelated to your brand, and those would continue with anybody before we’d import them. Pick out people who have active inboxes and are in the niche and interested in the topics. At that point, we’d put them into the ConvertKit account, and we’d set up a custom welcome flow for these people where they’d receive the greatest hits from the newsletter. So they wouldn’t receive a normal welcome email right away. Rather, they’d receive the best performing issues of the past, unless they’re current events. Obviously, we’d steer away from that. And then if they engage with a certain amount of those in that initial campaign, then they’d sort of graduate to the main newsletter. And they’d get the welcome email at that point if you want. You don’t have to set it up that way. But they’d just graduate to the main newsletter at that point. [Michael Bernzweig]: Interesting. And what have you seen from the other clients that you’ve done this with in terms pros, cons, are they having issues with any parts of it? [Michael Houck]: We’re new to it, so there’s always potential issues that we haven’t seen yet, but every client has been smooth so far. We’ve delivered the leads, they’ve made it through the sequence, or they haven’t. The ones that haven’t are sort of turned out automatically. We just do weekly reporting about how many people are making through, how many we imported, sort of basic stuff like that. [Michael Bernzweig]: So if we wanted to get 5,000 new subscribers on the list, give me some of the numbers. How many are you, at the beginning of your funnel, starting to target versus once they get to the list and then the ones that actually make it onto the list? What are the numbers there? [Michael Houck]: What does it look like, [Michael Bernzweig]: It’s just an idea. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, graduation rate is a metric that we use. Like the amount of people who we add versus who make it through to the main list. It varies by client. We’re usually seeing like 90% graduation rate across the board right now, some a little bit lower, some a little bit higher, but 90% is about the middle. So, you know, that might change as things go forward, but in the early stages. [Michael Bernzweig]: Do you need to put, like in order to deliver a 5,000 to the list, do you need to put a little bit more than 5,000 into that loop? To be able to get to 5,000? [Michael Houck]: A good way to think about it is that we’ll probably add 1.2x of whatever you would sign up with. And then we’d adjust that also based on performance. So if we see a low graduation rate, we’d make it up the second month and add more folks. [Michael Bernzweig]: So at the end of the day, we’re paying for 5,000. We’re getting in and around 5,000. We’re paying $2,500. And then as we scale it up, we just you know, grow the number from there. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, exactly. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [Michael Bernzweig]: All right. It makes sense. Um, and so when they get added to the list, so they’re just getting imported. It’s not like they’re going through like the, the traditional signup process, obviously. Um, is, have you seen of the newsletters that you have up and running so far? Our audience is a hundred percent B2B. Have, have you seen, any, and this might be a good question to look into. Have you seen any differences between B2B and B2C or? [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Not notably yet. [Michael Houck]: We have clients both on both sides of the fence. [Michael Bernzweig]: Um, it’s been consistent across so far, but again, with only 10 clients and most of them new last two weeks, it’s, it’s hard to, and how long will it be like from when you start, you know, one, once I give you everything that we’re looking for and, Like, how long does it take from when you get started until you’re comfortable adding them to the list, and then once you’ve added them to the list until you know that they’re sticking around? [Michael Houck]: We’ll probably have a first batch ready for you in the second week after you sign up. So if you sign up today, we’d probably have someone to you by not next Monday’s import start, but the following Monday’s import. And then we would do sort of daily imports from there, and they’d be small batches. And, and then they go through the sequence and the sequence, you know, if we do four to six emails, probably one to 1.5 emails per week, they’re getting through that sequence figure, you know, roughly a month. And if they meet the engagement criteria that we set in the first week, then great, though, they’ll sort of push it through. If they don’t meet it till the end, then they’ll graduate later. Um, but yeah, that’s just what we look at. [Michael Bernzweig]: And are they, so are the emails coming from our, our traditional domain or where are they coming from at that point? Yeah. [Michael Houck]: So once they’re imported to the list, you know, they’re in your convert kit accounts, they’ll be coming from whatever email you’re normally sending from It just won’t be, they won’t get the sort of main newsletter issues. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Okay. [Michael Bernzweig]: And I have to assume we’re going to get a little bit more spam complaints than we are now with with this or not so much? [Michael Houck]: I mean, again, we’ve probably done a few clients so hard to extrapolate, right? But we haven’t seen anyone run into spam issues yet. And we do that. That’s the reason we do a lot of this sort of like cold email pen testing beforehand. We’re sort of filtering those, you know, high likelihood spammers out before they even get imported to the account. [Michael Bernzweig]: One thought, I wonder if this might be something you can add into your, into funnel. So, so maybe once you finish doing whatever you normally do, then using that same cold email domain, send out a few newsletters of the actual newsletter that they would be receiving. Yeah, we, we actually started doing it. Yeah, we, that was what we were originally doing in the beginning of the beta. [Michael Houck]: The issue is there’s a lot of setup work to like get the design of the emails to look like the one that come from the newsletter. And also some people have branding concerns, like they don’t want email sent out from their brand from a different domain. [Michael Bernzweig]: So we ran into more blockers than was worth the benefit there. Yeah. Because we actually have a couple of cold email domains that are very similar to our main domain. [Michael Houck]: Yeah. [Michael Bernzweig]: That we could probably easily set that up on. Would, uh, if we did all the setup to get that set up with an automated, the, uh, the newsletters like that, that best of, do you think that would be something that could work? Would it be worth testing out? [Michael Houck]: We’re honestly, we’re, we’re just trying to keep this process as simple as possible, because we know that a lot of people are going to want this. And we also know that there is a a lot of ops work behind the scenes. [Michael Bernzweig]: Yeah, you want to figure out how to scale it. I get it. I get it. That makes sense. Saying no is more important than saying yes. I’ll be honest with you. It’s funny, because we literally have just been, we’ve got a few things that we do for a handful of clients that just can’t scale. And it’s like, what do we do? If we can’t scale it, is it worth continuing to do it? We just, yeah. But you have to do everything when you’re starting, right? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, you got to do things that don’t scale early on. But you got to sort of know where and when to make the switch. [Michael Bernzweig]: Yeah, that’s interesting. OK, no, I think it sounds good. So we’re just finishing up with this funnel that we’re doing for the newsletter ourselves. And then I think this will be the next thing we do. So I think probably in about a week or two, to, we should be good to go. [Michael Houck]: Okay. No rush. We’re here. Um, just shoot me a note, uh, whenever happy to hop back on and, and confirm. Um, but yeah, we’re, we’re ready to roll. [Michael Bernzweig]: We talked about it. You said like initially we can start with like 5,050 cents a piece. And then as we scale up from there, same type of rate, you know, we’d be looking at it. And obviously if we get to a much bigger rate, we can obviously talk, but you know, Yeah. [Michael Houck]: If it’s, if it’s, you know, unless it’s like much, much bigger, 50 cents is floor. Um, but we’re, we’ve actually, we’re actually going to be raising prices for smaller amounts pretty soon, but, uh, we can, we’ll still do the 50 for you guys. [Michael Bernzweig]: Yeah. The only thing that’s kind of a bummer is, uh, and this is funny, like, so I think I shared with you, I sold my original company about two years ago, or maybe I didn’t get that with you. I sold that company and, um, you know, this has been my, my, my main focus, which is why I decided to dive into the newsletter, because it’s glaring. It’s like, all right, that’s where the time should be spent. And the thing about this that’s kind of a bummer, but if you could figure it out and automate it, it might be kind of cool. So Matt’s big thing is, and I think everybody, even you, if you’re doing paid acquisition for your newsletter, And trust me when I tell you, we’ve never paid for any, everything is a hundred percent organic since I’ve started this business. So this is super different. But what’s, what’s interesting is, you know, Matt’s big thing is like, Hey, you know, you need to, at the end of the day, whatever you’re paying out to get somebody to your list, you need to, you know, have your three or four offers break even at the point of subscription. And then move on from there. And I’m sure everybody’s paying 50 cents a buck, two bucks, whatever they’re paying to get people to their list. And if you can have a handful of offers, you have your SparkLoop. We’re using SparkLoop right now just to grow the number of subscribers, not to get paid. But at the end of the day, I’m sure a lot of people are using it to get paid. And obviously having all your different offers is key. But what’s a little bit of a bummer, and maybe if you can figure this out, it might be a big unlock for a lot of your clients. If you can figure out a way for your clients to break even on your costs of acquisition, then by being able to show some sort of office, and I don’t know, it may not be possible based on the way you’re getting people to the list, but if you can that, that might be a huge, uh, huge win. Cause I mean, Hey, you just spent me 10 grand with me, but you’re going to make it right back. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I think as we scale the business, we’ll, we’ll explore some, you know, some alternatives or solutions like that. But for now we’re just focused on let’s get the subscribers to the right people. Let’s do that for as many people as we can, as wide as we can. All right. [Michael Bernzweig]: Excited to give it a try. What the heck else are you doing that you think is, uh, is interesting? I saw your thing that you’re doing with the, what’s the other thing that you’re doing there? The bringing people into social, getting people to like each other’s social posts or whatever. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, we built a platform that helps creators engage with interesting content in their niche, and they make money from it. So that’s been interesting. But really, the big thing that’s growing super fast outside of the newsletter growth business is our ghostwriting business. We have at this point a team of like 10 writers and a lead editor, Blakey Maul, and myself sort of lead the team. And that’s been growing like crazy. People really, really want ghostwriting for newsletters right now and social media too, but newsletters where it’s at. Yeah. [Michael Bernzweig]: I mean, that’s kind of like our whole value ad because we’re doing a lot of the research that actually ends up going into the newsletter. So I don’t know, this is a way to really, outsource that, but, you know, on the flip side of it, I mean, it’s just, content is just, is king. I mean, it’s just, that’s huge. But the, I mean, it definitely like any time that something’s like gray in terms of the terms of service for a platform, that’s always concerning for me. So it’s kind of like, you know, definitely, you know, definitely challenging, but I think, I think, uh, the ghost writing end of it is, is interesting. It’s so needed. I mean, every, uh, every platform that’s out there needs, uh, you know, it’s the, all because you have so many people that have never been there and done that. Don’t have a clue about how to, how to launch or get the content up there. You know, they’re just focused on. They just heard this great idea, maybe from beehive. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I mean, knowing how to make good content is, is a full-time job. So, um, we’ve seen a lot of founders. Just come to us for that, which has been nice. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Oh. Michael, I think I lost you. [Michael Bernzweig]: Hey there, I think, I think that was on my end. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, you’re back. [Michael Bernzweig]: But I guess, you know, beehive has brought a lot of new people into the ecosystem. So, you know, I think you probably have a lot of people that are, you know, just trying to figure it out. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I mean, it’s, it’s definitely a good place to be right now. Um, we’re going to just basically grow the agency up over the next year or two and see where it’s at. And then, you know, probably be a nice, nice exit at that point. [Michael Bernzweig]: Yeah, that’s awesome. And I can totally, I mean, it’s value out that you’re adding there. I’m excited to try this with you. You’re taking me out of my shell trying something different. I appreciate the trust in us to do this. [Michael Houck]: We’ll make it worth your while. We’ll give you some good subs and hopefully they convert to the various offers you guys have. Just let me know when you’re ready to get started. Just shoot me an email and we’ll go from there. [Michael Bernzweig]: The only big concern that I have is the list is still small but it’s growing consistently. So it’s like, I’m just, you know, concerned about adding too many subscribers all at once that might dilute the overall. So we’re, we’re heading towards like the first thousand subscribers. It’s not huge. A lot of readers, because there’s a lot of people going to the site, but in terms of subscribers, it’s not huge. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: I mean, if we, if we’re just dripping people in small amounts daily, we’ll be able to track it pretty well. Pretty tightly and you’ll see. If you’re not seeing the performance that you want, then we’d bring it down to smaller scale. If we’re seeing really good performance that’s aligned to what you guys get from organic or close to it, then we’ll scale it up. So you’re in control of that for sure. [Michael Bernzweig]: Okay, so we can control how many people go in each day or each week? [Michael Houck]: I mean, you’re paying per month, right? So if you want to shift it for month two, just let us know. We’ll do that. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: OK. [Michael Bernzweig]: Maybe we ramp up a little bit slower over the first month or two just to see some of the metrics. I don’t know. Once they get onto the list, we’ll see what the metrics look like, I guess. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: There’s no way to know until we start getting them in there. And I assume that we’ll see how they do, and maybe one of the three performs really well, maybe two of them do, maybe all three do. But regardless, we’ll shift the focus of which audience we’re sending subscribers to based on based on performance. Okay. [Michael Bernzweig]: And I think in your last email you sent me whatever your onboarding form is, right? Is it still the same or do you want to send me something new? Nope, everything’s still in there. [Michael Houck]: So just let me know when you’re ready to get started and I’ll send over a striped link. We’ll go from there. [Michael Bernzweig]: Sounds good. Cool, man. See you. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Later.