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Scott Cohen – How Email and SMS Can Help Win Back and Retain Customers

SEASON: 3 EPISODE: 33

Episode Overview:

There are five generations of buyers in today’s competitive marketplace and about 19 communication channels, so whether you’re looking to maximize revenue to grow your company, boost engagement and awareness, increase repeat customers, or encourage brand loyalty, my guest today can help. 

Standing out from the crowd and getting your message heard is always a challenge. Employing email and SMS marketing remain potent tools for engaging with customers. By implementing best practices such as personalization, mobile optimization, and clear CTAs, while avoiding overwhelming frequency and generic content, you can harness the power of these channels to drive meaningful results in your marketing efforts. To help us understand how to use these tools effectively is award winning marketing expert and CEO of Inbox Army, Scott Cohen.

Guest Bio: 

Having begun life as a copywriter, Scott Cohen has been a stalwart in the email marketing industry since his boss came to him and said, “Hey, you write the newsletters… why don’t you do them?” He has worked on both sides of the aisle, as a brand-side marketer running the email marketing programs at Purple, 1-800 Contacts, and Western Governors University as well as agency side working with clients ranging from small businesses to enterprise companies across multiple industries.

Scott won the 2021 Stefan Pollard Email Marketer of the Year Award from the ANA Email Experience Council for his work during his time at Purple. He’s a sought-after speaker, webinar and podcast guest, having spoken at events like the Email Insider Summit, Email Evolution Conference, Email Innovations Summit, eTail West, and more. (He also won a Bronze Telly Award for the very first TV ad he ever wrote, so “it’s been downhill ever since.”)

Given his unique experience, Scott knows enough “to be dangerous” about email marketing, SMS, and many things CRM and retention marketing. He’s built and managed larger CRM and retention teams, sent millions of emails (and a few million SMS, too), and written more than a few ads, blog posts, brochures, websites, and many other content pieces over the course of his 20-year marketing career. He’s pressed the “Send” button a few thousand too many times to be anything other than frank about what email marketers need to do!

Resource Links:

Insight Gold Timestamps:

03:41 My career started as a copywriter

05:42 You’re a songwriter, but you just do it in your emails

06:52 It put email back on the map, that’s really what COVID did

08:56 What are some of the common misconceptions about email and SMS marketing?  

10:27 Odds are you’re not sending enough emails

10:33 By the time you get sick of it as an ad professional, somebody’s finally seeing it

10:47 Being there in the inbox consistently with value drives branding

11:42 I believe in the concept of what we call being professionally persistent

13:31 The days of the once a month newsletter are dead

15:35 The ‘dreaded wall of text’ is something you want to avoid in email

17:20 If you want to have a PDF, post it on your site, and you can link to it in the email

17:43 Do not use a bitly (in email)

19:11 Deliverability is a whole different animal 

22:48 You can spend 10,000 tweets building a reputation, and one tweet destroying it (Scott Stratton)

23:20 Warm up the mailbox first

25:38 How do you demonstrate the essential role of email marketing in business growth?

27:18 I’m starting to read some things around a cookie-less world in marketing

29:22 What’s the role of AI?

32:39 You have to be able to speak the language of the people seeking out your solution 

35:31 We’re going to get beyond building emails top to bottom from scratch every time

36:53 The marketers that embrace AI as part of their job, will keep their jobs

39:25 You don’t necessarily need your email to match exactly what your website looks like

40:44 InboxArmy, we are a full service email marketing agency

Connect Socially:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottcohen13/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/InboxArmy

Email: hello@inboxarmy.com

Sponsors: 

Rainmaker Digital Solutions: https://www.rainmakerdigitalsolutions.com/

Resources: https://becomingpreferred-podcast.com/resources/

Next Episode: Making Manifestation Logical with Returning Guest, Dave Conway!

About the Host, Michael

Michael Vickers inspires enduring success, redefining the possible for today’s sales professionals, leaders, and managers. Whatever the sales or business opportunity, Michael will greatly enhance your odds of success. Every person who has an idea to promote, an employee to motivate, or a deal to negotiate, will attain a new level of success after an event with Michael.

Michael is also the best-selling author of Becoming Preferred: How to Outsell Your Competition, and Dance of the Rainmaker: Creating Authentic Differentiation in Today's Competitive Marketplace, where he shares his secrets to achieving the very highest level of sales mastery.

Whatever the result you’re striving for, if it involves influencing others or achieving success through others, Michael will build your confidence and accelerate your performance.

Michael is the Executive Director of Summit Learning Systems, a company that offers customized in-house training programs to many of today’s leading companies. He teaches thousands of business professionals throughout North America the skills required to achieve optimum performance.

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