- Duration: 36 min
- Platform: zoom
- Source: Read.ai 01JNS4E1C5DQCW8XDC19KNEY18 (https://app.read.ai/analytics/meetings/01JNS4E1C5DQCW8XDC19KNEY18)
Transcript
[UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Hey. Warren, what’s up, man? [Michael Houck]: Good to talk to you guys. Yeah, good to see you, brother. Ben, Warren, you guys should meet quickly. [Warren Lentz]: Nice to meet you, Ben. Yeah, nice to meet you. Yeah, I’m excited for this. [Michael Houck]: So Warren, for context, Ben is sort of my chief of staff slash ops, does everything around the business ops wise. So you’ll get to know him, but he’ll be around pretty consistently. And so I wanted to include him on this call as we sort of go through the launch checklist and get everything knocked out. As a reminder, the goal for this call is for us to basically just clear any roadblocks to getting things started so that we can have all the settings in Beehive set up and be sort of in progress with anything else so that we’re able to time the launch with the content rather than being an ops block. Walker. Nice. Love that. [Warren Lentz]: Thank you. Yeah. I can do stuff now. Let’s just keep Kayla, my wife separate. Cause she needs to do whatever she needs to do in the, uh, MailChimp thing. Um, yeah. [Michael Houck]: There’s some uncertainty there for me about what the right move is. I need to dig into that more this afternoon, but, um, since she has the SMS side of things, I don’t know whether we’re going to want to break them up or whether we you just bite the bullet and use MailChimp. It’s just, you know, MailChimp is kind of a legacy platform relative to Beehive. But I gotta look into SMS options and it doesn’t help that I can’t see anything in the MailChimp account yet, but hopefully that’s resolved. Okay, so on the longevity code, so let’s just knock these out. I’m gonna start from the bottom, actually. So we set up three automations when we launch a new client. One of them is a welcome sequence, and that’s usually a two email welcome sequence. The second email is dependent a little bit on you, which is what do we want to say in that email? The first one’s just like, hey, here’s the newsletter. Here’s why you should trust me. Here’s what you’re gonna get. The second one is more like, you know, some people use it for like a discount code or an offer. Some people use it to tell the story, right? Go in a couple different directions. So any thoughts there? [Warren Lentz]: Yeah. So for the newsletter, are you talking about when people subscribe or on the first email we send them to the first 8,000, like the first publication, or are you just talking about the welcome flow? [Michael Houck]: No, this is the welcome flow. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Warren Lentz]: Got it. Okay. So the first one would be the standard. So you’re asking about the second one, second email? Correct. Got it. Okay. The second one would probably be, so what’s worked well historically. So for other ones, the first one is like generic. Here’s why, you know, like welcome. Here’s what we do. Here’s what we’re about, but they already know that because they’re, they signed, they opted in or whatever. But then, so what, what is the second one usually again? [Michael Houck]: The second one is either to sort of build trust or to have them perform an action. So if you want them to, Um, you know, I don’t know where you guys are at with the, with the launch. Uh, but if you want to direct them to somewhere in the meantime, or if you want to give them some discount, or if you just want to tell the story, um, and sort of have them be more excited to [Warren Lentz]: open your emails in the future, uh, up to you. Um, I probably need to see the first email first for like how we’re talking about it because one option could be, um, uh, So there wouldn’t really be a discount cause this isn’t really connected to the store. It’s more so like a standalone longevity newsletter. Um, and then we’ll, we’ll funnel the top, you know, 10 or 20% most engaged people every three months into the Klaviyo one. That’s more like heavenlyheatsanos.com. This main one, I think it’s a second one in order to build, to build more trust. It would, I think it’s good if it talks about like the biggest people in this space a little bit. And, um, but it, it has to be evergreen. Because it has to just be throughout the year as people join. So I don’t have a good, like, I don’t think it’s my face talking. I think it’s faceless, although I might make some appearances if it makes sense. But I probably have to see a mock-up of the first email. [Michael Houck]: Okay, that’s fine. I can send over just like a kind of Mad Libs style one, if you will, this weekend. We’ll want your input. On some parts and also Andrew is going to get in there and do his work too. But I can give you the kind of outline of what we think for this newsletter would make sense. [Warren Lentz]: Got it. Okay. Yeah. No, that makes sense. Okay. [Michael Houck]: The other two automations that we do, we don’t necessarily need too much input from you. There’s a re-engagement slash auto churn one. If people are unengaged, we just want them off the list for deliverability purposes. And then there’s the third one is when someone rates an issue in like an interactive poll at the bottom, if they rate it as like a really good issue, that’s an opportunity for us to capitalize on that like customer love and do something with them. So again, maybe that means they jump into Klaviyo sooner, or maybe it means something else. So any thoughts on what you’d want to have happen if they rate an issue really highly? [Warren Lentz]: Oh, so are you talking about a thing at the bottom that’s like, you know, click here if you love this email or like, there’s just a poll on the bottom. So you’re saying if they engage with it and they liked it, then, yeah, I mean, I think we put them in the Klaviyo bucket sooner. I think, I mean, each issue is gonna have a different topic relative, so it might be issue dependent, but I guess if that’s not ideal for it to be issue dependent, Yeah, it’d be tough to change that for each. [Michael Houck]: I mean, it wouldn’t be impossible, but it’d be ops overhead for sure. [Warren Lentz]: Yeah, I mean, what’s like a normal thing people would do? Like send them, yeah, I think we just add them to Klaviyo sooner than, I just don’t know what the levers are because if we’re just a longevity newsletter with like weekly issues and then the likes issues, then I think that’s just a positive, just a positive signal to us where we add them. I mean, we could give them like, you know, lead magnets or, but that’s like a case by case. [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I would argue that unless we want to send them somewhere from the lead magnet, we’re almost putting lead magnet at the wrong slot in the funnel. I put the lead magnet on top of the funnel to get them into the newsletter in the first place. Yeah. What most people do here is they offer some sort of like preview of something, like if they’re in beta, for example, or they offer a discount code, which again might not be applicable here, so. Is there a way to filter out male and females, or no? No, we’re not, well, if Matt has that data, he could import it alongside the new subs as a, like a custom field, so in theory, but it depends on him. [Warren Lentz]: Got it, got it, OK. Yeah, because I was thinking one thing we could do is Kayla has a longevity community for like 20 bucks a month. It’s female longevity community, so we could do like if someone likes an issue, just like basically send them like, you know, three months for free to either them or close friend or family member if they’re a dude or whatever. Um, but yeah, I, I don’t know what we would do with, with that right now. Okay. [Michael Houck]: Well, we don’t necessarily need to say anything up here. We’ll have the list of people who have rated an issue, you know, well, indefinitely. Um, so when it gets to a point where we would want to take more action from them, we can do that in the meantime. We can potentially send, if we can get that data from Matt, we can split them and send the females to Kayla’s community with some sort of offer, and we can just put everyone into. Into Clayview as soon as well, if you want. [Warren Lentz]: Yeah, I mean, do you think that’s the best thing to do? Because because the Longevity newsletter isn’t it’s not branded the heavenly heat saunas or heavenly health. It’s like a different name and people don’t yet know it’s the same thing. [Michael Houck]: So, yeah, I was going to I think just with the with the stage that things are at, I would say personally, I don’t think there’s a huge downside to throwing them into Klaviyo. Um, but at the same, especially because they are branded differently. It’s not like people are going to feel like, you know, the longevity code is selling my stuff. They don’t know necessarily how, um, yeah, it’s got their email. Right. So I don’t think there’s a huge downside. Um, but over time we can think about if there’s like a, a stronger funnel to set up there too. [Warren Lentz]: Got it. Okay. Okay. That, that makes sense. Um, do you, um, so I’m trying to get the domain name cause I think we, we like need that. Right. So the one I liked the most was, uh, decoding longevity, but it’s grand, grand, which I think is a one-time thing. Um, do you guys or anyone on the team have strong POV or like creative juices about this decision, because it’s kind of a big decision, but maybe it’s not really. Yeah. I mean, I don’t feel super strong. [Michael Houck]: I’ve never felt super strongly about domains. And this is coming from someone who at one point spent 250K on a domain. So I don’t feel like it matters too much at this stage, because down the road, we can always just auto redirect or something like that. For example, one of the really big AI newsletters that has like, you know, 600,000, 500,000 subscribers. They just recently took to the total rebrand new domain. Um, and you know, it went fine by all accounts. I know the founder. So, um, I don’t think it’s a huge thing. I also don’t think we need to be married to a.com this early either. So if you get the, the, the phrasing you want, but it’s like, you know, with some other, um, um, what’s it called? Um, the TLD, then I think that’s fine. Got it. [Warren Lentz]: So what next step do I need to do before we send out the first one? Yeah, I mean, the big thing here is like, let’s just put a stake in the ground. [Michael Houck]: Let’s pick one. I would optimize for cheaper just because it’s so early and we can redirect later if we need to. But we want it to align with the name of the newsletter. So if we want to go with the longevity code, then it should probably be something related to that in the domain. If we say, hey, we don’t actually care that much about the name and we’re gonna change it up and the domain is more important, then we can adjust the name and the branding as a result. [Warren Lentz]: Okay, okay. Well, we liked decoding longevity the most. So if I wanted to do decoding dash longevity, because it’s cheaper, then would I need to go purchase that right now? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, I would say so. Yeah, that’d be good. Then we can get the DNS work started. [Warren Lentz]: Okay, so is that just as simple as me going on GoDaddy and buying that domain and then telling you that it’s bought? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, and then once you tell me that, I’ll be able to go in and add it to Beehive, and I will need to send back some screenshots of DNS records that need to be added. Since you own it, you’ll have to do that, or someone on your team will. But that’ll be a one-time thing. [Warren Lentz]: Got it, okay. Okay. Nice. Okay. I think I already did that one. So you asked this today. This was Emily’s on a news Gmail. Can you add this as an admin? So I need to add this as an admin, right? [Michael Houck]: That was an ask for Matt. So I think, yeah, probably. I wasn’t on that email. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Got it. Okay. [Warren Lentz]: Okay. Nice. Yeah, so I just need to know what I need to do. Okay, so by domain. I’ve already written all this stuff out. [Michael Houck]: Let me share my screen. So I think I sent this over. If I didn’t, then I will right afterwards. This is our launch checklist. So basically, we have the automations down here that we were just going over. Next thing I wanna go over is polls. So there’s two polls. The issue satisfaction survey, which we were just talking about. And then the second one is in the welcome email, the first welcome email, we, excuse me, we have a, the option to include a poll to get, you know, either some demographic information, although since we’re working with Matt, we probably don’t need that. The number one question I like to ask here is like getting context on what type of content these people want from us. So the ask for, you would be, you know, if we’re going to ask that question, what are the options that, um, that you think would be most interesting, uh, to help you, um, work with Andrew and deciding, uh, content [Warren Lentz]: direction. Got it. Uh, yeah, I think it would be, it could be, um, like I think like heat therapy, cold therapy, red light therapy, nutrition, or optimizing sleep, mitochondrial health, toxic burden, or like, you know, toxic environment, so like that as a topic. Yeah, I mean other health like modalities. There’s eboo, that’s not right. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Waste, density, telomeres. [Warren Lentz]: I’m just trying to think of all the different topics. So this would just be in one of the first couple emails or the welcome email. And then it’s like, what do you want to hear more about? Yeah. [Michael Houck]: If we give them like four or five options and then have sort of a catch all like other, like reply to us, that that’s usually the best, the best support. [Warren Lentz]: Got it. Okay. Yeah, that sounds good. Okay. I’ll make, make a note here. [Michael Houck]: Um, okay. So we’ll get on that. Um, one thing that we’ll include in all of these, uh, like trigger based and pull based, um, and welcome sequence emails and also on each issue is, uh, an emoji. So I think that this is pretty powerful cause it in the subject line, we’ll show the emoji. People can always recognize your emails, uh, just an easy way to stand out in the end. And boost open rates. So any particular emoji that you have in mind that you think would fit the brand, let me know what that would be. Okay. Doesn’t need to be on the spot right now, just. [Warren Lentz]: And this is the emoji that would go in the subject line of each letter? [Michael Houck]: Yeah, so emoji and then the subject line. [Warren Lentz]: Okay. So I need, I need an action list of items on my list, so I’m just gonna write myself an email right now. [Michael Houck]: Or I just go here and look at the thing here. The ones that are color-coded yellow are ones that we require action from you. [Warren Lentz]: The ones that are blue are ones we might loop you in on for collaboration. Got it, okay. So I need emoji and domain. I’m just gonna do high-level emoji and domain, okay. Nice. [Michael Houck]: The design assets are already in progress. We’ll send that to you for review. Might get that today, otherwise it will be Monday or Tuesday, but hoping to get that to you today. Now, the other stuff is just like the settings. So since we’re getting the decoding longevity domain, do we want to change the newsletter name to be decoding longevity? [Warren Lentz]: Isn’t that what it already is, or what was it right now? Yeah, right now it’s the longevity code. Oh. Let’s see. Longevity code. Oh, and then that wasn’t taken. The domain was not taken. It’ll be one of those two. Let me just log by the domain and then figure out which one. Will be one of those too. [Michael Houck]: Okay. Just let us know. Um, we are going to use a custom domain purchases in progress, and then the DNS, uh, we’ll collaborate on that, um, uh, company address. So we need this for the footer in case it’s like an unsubscribed rule that we need to include a mailing address. So, um, we’ll need the, wherever the company’s based from you. [Warren Lentz]: Well, well, the company is Virginia. But I want to give him the LA address. So I just put it in the chat here. [Michael Houck]: Okay, cool. Let me, let me grab it. [Warren Lentz]: Where’s my, oh, I can’t see it until, Ben, can you grab it? Cause. Oh, I just wanted to read. That’s weird. It auto didn’t meeting group chat. Okay. [Michael Houck]: There we go. I’ll DM it too. Okay. Thanks. Okay. I think you and Andrew have already talked about a one-liner. If not, he’ll follow up about that. That’s just to go along with whatever the name is. We’ll want to just have a little one-liner as well. Next thing that we need to talk about is sender name. So Warren, is this gonna come from you? And if so, is it first name, last name? Or do you want like Warren from the longevity code? Or I think with what you said earlier, maybe you just want it to be the longevity coder or decoding longevity. [Warren Lentz]: Yeah, when I talked with Matt, we like the idea of it being like, no, no face or name or keeping it separate for now. So I think it would just be from the longevity code. Have you found that like a person is usually better or what are your thoughts? [Michael Houck]: Yeah. I mean, people follow people, people trust people. They don’t trust me then. Um, when we, when we first chatted, you also mentioned that, you know, you’ve probably get your hands in some other things and there’s maybe more things that we would potentially do down the line too. So if you’re like, I don’t wanna just be the longevity guy or I don’t wanna be this newsletter guy, there’s an argument to be made to not do it too. [Warren Lentz]: So it’s more of a strategic decision for you than anything else. [Michael Houck]: Okay, let’s not do it now then. Okay, sounds good. Okay, and the reply to email address. I’d recommend this not being an email address at the new domain unless you’re gonna have somebody manage that inbox. Otherwise it can just be, you know, your email or somebody on your team’s email. They just would get the replies and therefore be able to surface, hey, here’s what people are saying or taking action if people like have questions or something. [Warren Lentz]: Well, a lot of my team is having health email addresses. So this would be an email that they would see. So if they reply to the newsletter, it would be sent to a different email than the newsletter came from Yes. [Michael Houck]: But we don’t really see that being like a, like an issue for most clients or really for any clients. Um, even if it’s a different, different email, I I’ve done that myself in the past with, uh, with one of our newsletters and it’s, it’s fine. Don’t feel weird about it. [Warren Lentz]: Okay, I just do support at heavenly health.com. Yeah, nice. And then you already set up the straight verification, which is great. [Michael Houck]: I think Matt is he’s like under the weather right now. But he said he’s going to do the initial subscriber import soon. Do you guys email list that we’re using? Or is it just the the folks that he’s bringing in? [Warren Lentz]: Well, I think he has everything, but it’s the current Klaviyo list from Heavenly Heat Saunas, which is 8,000 or seven point something. And then I wanted to do all my LinkedIn, which is like five or 7,000, but I haven’t got that email. Matt was trying to help me and it didn’t come. And then I wanted to do all my Gmail from the last 20 years, but Mail Media didn’t also ever send it to me. So, and then I also want to do some of Kayla’s engaged audience from MailChimp, but I don’t have that list yet. So Matt, I was hoping would help that all come together, but for now it’s just the 8,000, which I think we can just get started with. So it started, but yeah, that’s where we’re at now. Yeah. [Michael Houck]: He’s been, he’s been like deathly ill all week. I’ve barely even heard from him myself, so we should be good there. I think he’s, He’s starting to be on the mend. I was just texting with him this morning. Um, so cool. Okay. I will leave that to him. Uh, with the initial eight K we can, we can get started. Um, and then last thing is, um, when we’re sending. So, um, we might’ve talked about this a little bit on the kickoff, but just want to nail it down, uh, day and time of the time of the day that we, um, we want to send the email any So [Warren Lentz]: these are US-based people that are really interested in health. They’re on some kind of a schedule. I want them to read it. Saturday morning, maybe they just delete it. So e-commerce is good Tuesday, Thursday. I mean, I’m definitely open to industry best practices for these types of people, but like Brian Johnson, one of these, or like people with a little more money, like if it’s an email, that they want to ideally be excited to read for two or five minutes each week, what’s the highest likelihood of them not deleting it? Would it be Friday at 4 p.m. For them to go into the weekend knowing they’re going to skim it? Do you think morning is better than afternoon? What are your thoughts? [Michael Houck]: General best practice is morning is better than afternoon, but it’s also more competitive. If we were doing deep dive essays than I would say, you know, maybe the weekend, like a Sunday morning read or something like that, or, or maybe a Friday afternoon, um, if they want to bookmark it for the weekend. But, um, I think with the format that by my understanding, we’ve talked about so far, um, I think you’re probably better off on a weekday morning. I would recommend, uh, between Tuesday and Thursday, it could just be a little like come up for them. Like, Hey, you know, I’m, I know I’m back at my, at my job or whatever I’m working but here’s something that I can, some little things that I can be doing better this week that are aligned with my goals. [Warren Lentz]: Yeah, let’s do Thursday at like, like 1130 AM Pacific. So it’d be 2.30 Eastern. Cool. [Michael Houck]: Like a before lunch email. Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to get like Friday lunch. Yeah. Sweet. Okay. I think that we have, what we need then, so let me know about the domain. I’ll resend this link to you too, so you have access to this doc, but emoji, domain, and if you have any other thoughts about what we might wanna do with the second welcome email, let me know. If not, we can just do this, the plan that we have. But yeah, everything else should be in progress, so just domain and emoji. [Warren Lentz]: Okay, domain, emoji. I’m on GoDaddy right now trying to figure that out. But I’m just gonna buy it and then in terms of the DNS things, do I just send you a screenshot of what that is? [Michael Houck]: No, you don’t need to send me any screenshots. So you send me that the domain is purchased and exactly what the domain is. I will add it to Beehive and then I will send you screenshots of what records need to be added in the DNS. [Warren Lentz]: Got it. Got it. Okay. Okay. Nice, that’s great. Okay. Cool. All right, man. [Michael Houck]: Well, look, if anything else comes up, let me know. But I think we’re in the clear here, ops-wise, and we should be ready to roll things out along with the content. So I’ll let Andrew take the lead from here on our side. And then Matt, obviously, as he’s feeling better, we’ll get the growth stuff set up. But yeah, I’m pumped. I think we’re basically ready to roll once we get the design finished up. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Awesome. Yeah. [Warren Lentz]: Thank you for your help. I’m excited about this. There’s just so much going on and like, this is like perfect. So I appreciate you starting this company to like, you know, help people like me. Cause I have a vision for it. I just have no time. [Michael Houck]: So this is like perfect. No, all good, man. When we talked to Kayla on Monday or Tuesday, she was saying how you guys just landed back from Austin, like 30 minutes before we hopped on a call. [Warren Lentz]: Yeah. And I’m putting, offers on places right now and our Facebook ads are starting to take off in a small way. And like, there’s so many good things. I just am being torn in so many direct, we had a shoot, a big shoot here at our house on Wednesday, but it was raining all day. So I had to cancel it. But now it’s like, obviously really pretty, but we might be moving to Austin in like a month or two. I just got to figure out which, where we’re going to live. So there’s a, the market already popped up, you know, obviously a few years ago, it’s a little soft right now, but, It’s also complicated because I’m not just getting the house that I want. Now I’m married and like, okay, well, she has a different opinion of what I want. So I’m like, oh, so there’s a whole other thing, which is fun. [Michael Houck]: You got to balance the getting what you want in the house and making sure that she’s also happy and everything like that makes total sense. [Warren Lentz]: Yeah. Yeah. Because we both work from home a lot. So it’s like we both want to, you know, have a good place. But yeah. Yeah. No, this is great. So this weekend I’ll buy domain today or this weekend. And then the emoji thing, I go back and forth on what it could be. There’s a lot of options, but I’ll get you that hopefully Monday. Cool. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Yeah. [Michael Houck]: The emoji is not like a huge blocker. So the sooner, I mean, we need it out before the first issue, but the domain is the real number one thing. So just send me that when you can. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Got it. [Warren Lentz]: And if it’s like longevity decoded, it’s not a big deal if it’s longevity dash decoded as the domain and as the email, because the name and the design and the email will all be the same. Right. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Then I’m not going to spend two or three grand on a domain then. [Michael Houck]: I would not recommend it. No. Thank you. All right, man. [UNKNOWN_SPEAKER]: Cool. [Michael Houck]: We’ll talk more soon. Have a good weekend. [Warren Lentz]: All right. Sounds good.