Fab (00:01.149)
Hello Brenna and I have a question.

Brennan Dunn (00:03.374)
Go for it, FAP.

Fab (00:05.093)
Um, so we're both authors right now, which kind of feels good to say you were an author before, but now we're both published author from traditional publishers. Uh, and we also are a lot of other things, both of us. Um, I absolutely love just already for references that my dear listener is going to be like, Oh God, do I need to look at newsletters? Yes. I referenced one of your newsletters you talk about having three businesses in one. So I think today there's going to be a lot of conversation about different strands of what you do. Uh, but on top of that, obviously we're a lot of things. And so I was wondering.

Not now, but then, what did you want to do? And what do you want to be when you were a child? Did you have a dream job, a dream career or anything like that? That really stuck, stood out for you, not stuck. Um, that stood out for you.

Brennan Dunn (00:49.298)
Yeah, it has zero to do with what I'm doing today. I actually, I went to uni to study the classics. So I studied Greek and Roman stuff and read a lot about, you know, read Plato and Aristotle in the original and everything like that. And I thought I'd be an academic at a university like a place like Cambridge, which you're close to and thought I'd just be one of those Tweed wearing professors but life had other plans.

Fab (00:52.681)
Hehehehe

Fab (01:17.353)
Do you think you got anything out of the academic slash learning slash teaching again, I know there's different areas of background that you think still has translated in some of the stuff that you do today or nothing at all, looking at lateral things, you know?

Brennan Dunn (01:33.058)
I think I got a lot because the school I went to, it was called a great book school. So everything, there was no textbooks. It was all original sources and everything was discussion-based. So going to class was you sitting around a table with 12 other people and discussing a piece of literature. And I think the needing to be critically, needing to critically discuss a piece of text and having...

my entire university education based on that, I think actually helped a lot. I think it's, it helped me with kind of really understanding the why of most of the things I'm trying to do. Like, you know, why is this being done? What are we trying to achieve with this? And to be meta when it comes to marketing, I probably learn more from writers like Plato than I have with most like direct marketer type people. So

Fab (02:31.433)
I love that. And one of the reasons why I love that is because on a parallel level, because it's not exactly the same, but I studied more modern literature. I studied Russian and English literature at uni and language. And I found that there was so many interesting ways that you could look at some pieces of literature, go all the way from Shakespeare all the way to more thinking about the English one, but even the Russian one, which for me was very fascinating. And it's kind of interesting to see how actually, as you mentioned, that critical

Brennan Dunn (02:40.198)
OK, nice.

Fab (02:58.093)
reflection that we used to do. And if there's any other listener who is a language or a literature graduate, you know what I'm talking about. If you are in marketing or you are into a creative space, I find that sometimes I go back without realizing into the way that I was thinking. And as you say, the critical thinking, looking at research, like despite not being a data driven kind of a, not career I was going to say, but like a university career, neither of us, I found that I've

found myself into a data driven universe and I enjoy it. And I wasn't expecting it. And I know that you look a lot at data segmentation, obviously it's part of it. So it's kind of interesting how something that has nothing to do with data actually can bring some of that. And then I can see how what I know has helped me almost interpret it, if that makes sense.

Brennan Dunn (03:42.154)
It does. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense, actually. Yeah. And I think, you know, to go on with that, like a lot of the a lot of the great authors, I think that we all look up to. I mean, they were all trained in the art of rhetoric, which isn't really something a lot of people talk about. But that is persuasion, you know, the word sophisticated in English comes from the Greek word sophistry, which sophists were people who would go and kind of professionally

persuade people, they'd stand up in the public square and try to convince people, usually of like a philosophic truth, not of buying a product, but same rules apply. If you're like me and you don't think human psychology has really changed and since we kind of evolved, then it's amazing just how everything interconnects and how what's old is new.

Fab (04:34.025)
And I love that you mentioned that because I found eventually a shift within marketing to actually rekindle with the idea that psychology in a way that humans think is a driver for our decision, which when we say out loud, it's like derp. Of course, duh. Yeah. But I think that from an experience of somebody who's been in marketing for 15 years, myself, at least we didn't talk about it enough.

Brennan Dunn (04:49.025)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Fab (04:58.081)
And we kind of saw all the tactics and all the things and a lot of what you do, especially with, with your book and also with everything you do is there's the element of personalization and understanding your audience and behaviors as well, as well as what they tell you. And I think eventually we're getting back to having that conversation and people are listening, but it's been interesting as historically for my 15 years, it's something that

think we knew intuitively, but nobody talked about as a priority. Maybe it's just me. And I don't know if that was also your experience having actually been in this place for a long time, you know.

Brennan Dunn (05:25.975)
But enough.

No, you're exactly right. I mean, I think a lot of us, when we decided we were professional marketers, we looked at marketing frameworks and AIDA and ways to write headlines and this and that. But it's kind of unless you know, unless you really understand, I think, human psychology and what makes us tick, all the frameworks are great. But

You need both, I think is what I'm trying to get at. And I think you're right. I'm glad to see that it is becoming more of a, I think a lot of us are realizing that we could learn a lot from psychologists and people like that about how to better sell.

Fab (06:13.117)
There's something that actually I love that you mentioned. There's something that I heard in a podcast recently, there was a while I should be more mindful about the way that we consume the content that we consume. And to me, because I'm a lover of emails, just as much as yours, I've mentioned it a few times, creating sell just for in there. I did warn him that I was gonna be fangirling, so Brennan, I am. But anyway, your newsletter is like others. I really look at them and think, okay, why does this piece of content actually speak to me? Why did I stop to think about it? And it was called...

talked as mindful scrolling or mindful consumption. And I think that's another thing that we're relearning to do, especially as marketers. There's a bigger push on creating so many ways and iterating, which is, which I love, but I think it's just also going back and thinking about why am I connecting with this type of content and just kind of to tie in with our class in session. How much do you think that also can be helped with the element of getting personal?

see what I did there, and personalization.

Brennan Dunn (07:09.254)
I did. I think a lot. I think like, so let's talk really quickly about the word personalization, what we're getting at with that. So I think you look at a lot of marketing websites for email platforms, and they all say they have personalization as like a thing. But I think a lot of us make the mistake of thinking personalization is inserting variables in messaging rather than reshaping messaging.

So, you know, I don't look at personalization as being like, hi, first name, hi fab or something like that. I look at personalization as being, if I know this about the person on the receiving end, how can I reshape the entire discussion I have with them in a way that makes what I have to say really personally relevant to them? Because if I do that right, they're more likely to give me a chance and to read what I have to send them. And if they are more engaged, they're more likely to click the buy now button and.

You know, that's what we want to do. So I think like, yeah, I mean, with personalization, I think like, for me at least, the big eye opener, and we were kind of both geeking out on Kathy Sierra before the call, who is one of my favorite marketers. And I actually think that a lot of what I'm doing now with personalization came from her blog, which was called Head Rush, I think it was. I think it still exists.

But yeah, so this early blog post of hers where she talked about this project her consulting firm did for this car dealership where there would be a kiosk in the showroom and then the first thing it would do is it would ask you, what do you care most about in a car? Is it performance, is it safety, is it reliability, or is it?

One other thing too. And if you chose like safety, whenever it would like show you the different models that they had in the showroom, they'd have like pictures of like babies in car seats and stuff and things like that, right? Whereas if you chose performance, the focus would be on how fast their cars are and this and that and their engine specs. And like, you know, a dad who just wants to buy a thing to bring their family around doesn't care about, maybe something new, but like.

Brennan Dunn (09:27.646)
If you care about safety, you don't really care as much about like probably the engine specs as somebody who cares about performance. So to come full circle, what I'm getting at is if we can find ways of better understanding our audience individually, not just collectively, we can then send better information. And that's what I think you and I are getting at when we drop terms like personalization around, which

in a vacuum might not make a lot of sense as it means, what are we talking about, right? So.

Fab (10:05.349)
This is my little happy dance. Whenever somebody says something I like, I really do a happy dance. So the listener cannot see it unless you're watching on YouTube, but I'm doing my happy dance. It was really tight today as well. Sometimes it's a bit more flamboyant. Today's a tight little happy dance. Cause what I love about everything you said, but there's something that really spoke to me, which was the idea of understanding that personalization is not for the sake of personalization, which is what, when you are beginning to look at it as, um, as, as a

Brennan Dunn (10:12.722)
I can confirm there was a happy dance that just occurred. Ha ha ha.

Fab (10:34.725)
as I'm going to say is inclusion in your strategy, even more than a tactic or a technique, I'm going to literally say it would be good if it was part of the strategy instead of like an extra tick. We think, as you say, variables, we think about, you know, it's good to make sure that, you know, we address the person or that we do little things to make sure that they can feel like we're speaking to them. But as you say, that's not the bottom line of the reason why we should do it is then everything else around it, the little things. And I know that you mentioned in another podcast as well, things like.

Even if it's just changing a specific quote, like you mentioned for this example with Kathe's as well, it's changing a couple of pictures. It doesn't have to be huge, but it's the little things that make a difference. And I'm actually excited now to get personal again. Sorry. I'm not going to do it all the time. That's the name of your book. So I'm going to stop doing that, but I want to get into class in session. And I'm going to ask you the first question, because I think there will be something here that can start and kick off a bit more of a deeper dive into personalization.

which is our first question from class and session, which is, what is one thing that you can teach Brennan, our students and your listener, in one minute or less related to personalization?

Brennan Dunn (11:45.158)
One thing I'd recommend is, let's say you have an audience of any sort, say email list. Find out, if you don't know this yet, find out why they follow you, why they're listening to you. And this could be something as simple as sending an email to your list that says, hey, 2024 is around the corner. We're recording this in November, so 2024 is around the corner. We would love to know, or I'd love to know how I can best help you in the new year.

Would you mind replying to the email in a sentence or two about what it is you need for me? Like what, what do you need me if I could write the perfect newsletter for you? What would that need to be about? What do you want me to produce more content about next year? You do that. You're going to get a hopefully a good amount of responses. And that's the start of everything we're probably going to be talking about is if you can then take these raw responses, come up with a set of themes and then start to think.

How do I automatically say this person fits that profile, this person fits that profile, so that when I talk to them in the future at scale, I can say, hey, here's an interesting example that's going to resonate really strongly with you, but might not resonate at all with somebody else on my list.

Fab (12:57.529)
Well done for almost keeping it on time as well. You were really tight. I was saying, I was saying to you, like, usually we kind of see them people threading, and which is great into the excitement piece, but I like that you kept it tight. Um, and I want to actually double down on that because once again, the fun girl comes out, but there's a reason, uh, in our student community, we look at ideas and tactics and things and experiments. I like to call them as well. They're other creators and

Brennan Dunn (12:58.67)
Did I do it over, did I go over a minute? Okay.

Fab (13:23.985)
other founders and other marketers have tried. And there's a couple of years that came, came up and actually in the community. And one of the ones that I mentioned that I want to go back to, because I think it ties with this just to put it even more into practice is something that you were doing, maybe you are still doing, but I remember that you mentioned in one of the newsletters, which was again, that kind of sorting and like light segmenting from the beginning when it comes to the welcome sequence that then led into.

some sort of yes, still fresh emails, but also some sequences or some emails that were more automated based on people's interests or behaviors or kind of what they were looking for. And I think that's a really interesting breakdown. It might be a bit advanced for some of the listeners, but I think it's also an example of what can be done, especially if somebody's like, yes, guys, I know about personalization, I understand this, but I want to also remind people that there are ways that they can also make you work.

easier and is not just going to be an addition of time and resources because I'm not one my listeners thinking it's thinking oh god this seems like I have more to do right now you know and I love that I don't know if you're still doing that as well is something that you still have set up or you kind of shifted out hmm yeah

Brennan Dunn (14:25.858)
More homework. Yes, yeah, yeah.

Brennan Dunn (14:32.306)
I am. Yeah. Do you want me to quickly explain how, how that all works? Yeah. Okay. Cool. So when, when you go to my, one of my websites is creating cell.co. It's a, it's a twice weekly newsletter. Um, and when you join the email list, instead of the thank you page saying, go check your email, instead, I show a very quick survey that is all multiple choice, so it's not fill out a form. It's just click the buttons. Like, why did you join? Like, what is the number one thing you want me to help you with?

what email platform you use and so on. It's very simple survey. I get about 84, 85% of all new people who joined completing that. And I make it very clear in the texts surrounding the survey that first, it's gonna take them maybe 15 seconds to complete so it's not a lot of time. And second, if they can share this with me, I can send them better information that's more relevant to them. So I think by doing that, it makes people more willing to do the thing. So I get almost everyone.

or the overwhelming majority of people complete that. And then what I do is I have a very short welcome sequence. That's a series of emails that just kind of like introduces them to the email list, introduce them to me and so on. But what I do is I pivot around three things. So in the survey, I find out what is it you need my help with right now? Is it, do you want help with building your audience? So growing your email list. Do you want help with automating how you do your email marketing?

or do you want help with turning more subscribers into customers? So those are the three kind of groups I put people in. So if you choose like say automation, what I do is in the welcome emails, my focus on those emails, and you're right, it's not that I have like a ton of emails that I've written, I just change things like the list of bullet points about what they're gonna learn from me. So if they chose automation, they're gonna get a few bullet points of like,

Here's how I plan on helping you better automate your email marketing. And then I'll mention like, there will be a paragraph at the top that is specific to my experience and my expertise as somebody who's pretty decent now with email automation. So that's what I've done is I've made it so the welcome sequence itself changes slightly depending on what you're focused on or is. But the big thing that is what you are getting at is I've been writing for three and a half years for that newsletter.

Brennan Dunn (16:52.702)
So I have a lot of, and that's been weekly. So I have like 150 pieces of content that if you joined today, that I've already sent out that you probably would never see. So what I've done is I've, I've gone through and I've got a big Google doc and listed every piece of content that I've sent, and then I just started grouping it into which one makes sense for automation, like which one's about automation, which one's about audience growth, which one's about sales. So there's the three kinds of groupings that I did.

And then I org or prioritize them in a way that my best stuff ever about audience, like if you're on the audience section or the audience group, um, I would sort it so that the best audience stuff I've ever sent is at the top. Likewise for sales, the best emails I've ever said about sales or at the top and so on. So what happens is, is if you join my list today and your focus is on audience growth, you get the welcome sequence. That's very focused on audience growth and how I plan on helping you.

And then for the next four or five months, every Tuesday, you're going to get an email for me about audience growth on Thursdays, you're going to get another email from me, but that's my live email. So you get two emails from me a week. The Tuesday one is evergreen, but it's specific to what you shared with me. And then the Thursday email is whatever happened to be setting that week. And then what I happened to be setting that week, it's added to one of those three different tracks. Um, so that's basically what I've done is I've made it so I can.

You know, if I have pushed him to shove, I wouldn't need a right, uh, an email in a given week and most people would then get that Tuesday email. But I try to make it so every Thursday rain or shine, I do send an email. Um, so yeah, it just allows me to have a twice weekly newsletter, but really with the effort of only sending emails out once a week and people love it because they're getting, again, if their focus is on audience growth, it's like, Hey, they're getting an email every single week for me about audience growth. Um,

And yeah, it ended up being pretty straightforward to architect and set it all up and convert kit, but I think it, I've heard from people that it's, they appreciate the fact that I individually profiled, what are they struggling with? And then I'm sending them relevant content about that.

Fab (19:08.989)
So much goodness. I'm gonna highlight a few things and then I'm gonna get back to a couple of points. I wanna highlight a couple of things that you mentioned because there was a lot and I think at different levels. One of the things that I really love was the idea of the nurturing piece because obviously really strictly speaking, I mean, you could potentially read the amount of emails that you have, but you know, we probably wouldn't be able to architect six years worth of these Tuesday emails, but even just the fact that for the first four or five months people have on top of that.

fresh email, they have an extra email that is very much tailored to them. I think really helps with the nurturing stage because once again, I find that there's a bit of time dysmorphia sometimes we forget that just because people get one weekly email from us, it doesn't mean that we might build the trust for the specific problem they have, that pain point. So you actually have been just an email for the pain point every single week for 12, 16 weeks. I think it's so powerful. So just wanted to highlight that. And then again, dear loyal listener, you're going to laugh. Systems.

Yay. So any students from our email marketing lab, or whether they're our community, all access pass or just students will know that within the system that we help you set up, there is a backlog of your emails. And I really encourage, and I know it sounds like double in the work, but it's similar to what you do, especially if you put a lot of time and effort and there are very conversational emails. We encourage a notion in this case, but you can use Google as well to just put that copy there because you don't know when you're going to need it. And if you categorize it like.

Brennan does, whether you do it because we want our students and you use, you know, our lab and what we built for you, or you just do it on your own. I think it's actually a very undertapped backlog of content that people don't think about enough. We talk about blog post alarm, maybe social content, but we don't think about our emails and it's great that they live in places like ConvertKit. And I love ConvertKit like you do, but God damn it, the archive is a mess. So if I have to look out to find out a little shout out, but also a little no.

Brennan Dunn (21:03.938)
Yeah.

Fab (21:05.625)
It's going to be a nightmare. We've used that as well for years and we send lots of emails. I'll be like, why are you not going to find that specific email on that topic? So just wanted to know these two things that first of all, I love the nurturing piece and the backlog, like again, there was a happy dance internally this time for the systems. Um, and then I have a question slash note. I could go down so many, so many places. Like we could chat for six hours. At some point, somebody will be bored, but I will keep talking about these things. Emails and personalization. I I'm here. I'm here forever. Anyway.

We talked about that welcome email, sorry, the post welcome section and page, which I imagine you still do with Right Message, which is one of your own companies, so maybe you can talk us a bit about that form as well, because if people don't know you that well, I think it's good to mention that as one of the things that you do. But I was wondering, would you say that actually, you said it's 85% to 84% a likelihood they're going to answer that form?

And then you give us another tactic a bit earlier or tip about doing this with your existing audience as well. Let's say one of our dear listeners is like, this is a great idea to actually segment my people better, but I'm afraid that if I wanna segment the people already I have in my list, if I'm gonna send them this form or this survey, it's just not gonna happen. They're not gonna do it because I'm asking them to do something or to do too much.

So if somebody was like, is it actually worth the while for me to do something like this with my current audience? Or should I just worry about the new subscribers? What would you say to them? I hope it makes sense as that question. I was trying to put myself, you know, into that.

Brennan Dunn (22:35.43)
It does, yeah. I mean, so, no, it makes perfect sense. So ultimately you're gonna have, you have two, unless you're starting out from scratch, you've got your existing list and then you have your new people joining every day. So if today you set up your thank you page to segment people, excellent. You're gonna start getting a good chunk of people to segment them. But you're right, what about the people already there? So this is a very common thing that we've, we've hit.

We most recently helped Justin Welsh do this. He's got a list of about 180,000 people. He started using us to do the post-option serving, but he had like a lot of people who were already on his list that he wanted to get segmented. So he sent a very simple email that said, hey, I'd love to basically serve you better. And the big things are, I think two things, like I mentioned before, need to be in this email, just like they need to be on the thank you page messaging, which is...

I want to give you better stuff. I want to increase the ratio of signal relative to noise. So if I can give you like more specific stuff, more specific, whatever that's a win for you. Second thing is you want to convey that this is not going to take a ton of time. So I make it very clear, like a good, when I do the kind of serving I recommend, which is the structural segmentation surveys, you're not getting people to fill in giant text areas. Cause I think when people see a

giant form of like filling the blank with lots and lots of like text fields. That's overwhelming. Um, and, and yeah, so I think a simple email like that, where you say, look, I want to help you legitimately just create better content for you. If I could learn a bit about why you're here and what you need for me, that'll let me do that. Click here. Done. Ideally, what you want to be doing too, is you want to make it so there's very little friction. So one thing you mentioned, right? Message. That's my tool. One thing that we've built into the product.

itself is I hate it when I click from an email to a survey and I need to type in my email address again. I know it's stupid, but I just don't like, I'm like, you know, my email, you just email me. Right. So, um, one thing that we always do and we recommend people do is find a way to pass along that email address to the, uh, to the survey page. And then you can then attach what they share with you to, you know, to their contact record. Um, so that's.

Brennan Dunn (25:00.01)
That's kind of the, the thing you can do where it's just a simple broadcast email, you can send a few, you can send one and then like a week or two later, send it again, um, you're the, the problem is always going to be the response rates are always going to be so much lower than you would on post-opton. Usually it's like 20, 30%, um, if you're lucky. So it is a bit of an uphill battle, but you can also like include in your new usual newsletters, like have a conditional like

thing included that says, if they're, if they haven't done the survey yet, have a, Hey, I'd love to find out more about you. Click here and just keep doing that in every newsletter until they do it. And then that goes away. Um, but yeah, I mean, there's a lot of things you can do. Obviously nothing is like when they just said, you may email me. Here's my email address. Click submit. Then they're a lot more willing at that point to do something like great. I can email you. I want to send you a better email. What should I send you?

They're a lot more likely to do that than they would if you're just randomly sending them an email, um, you know, months down the road or something like that. So I think that's, that's what most people are doing is they're doing some combination of you get the new subscriber survey up, but then you re you probably use the same survey, but you just phrase it differently, uh, for an existing subscriber, and then you just send a few broadcasts, uh, to your email list, trying to get them to do it. And then you.

you do soft mentions in your in your newsletters until they actually complete the survey.

Fab (26:30.085)
By the way, I am obsessed with the conditional element of just kind of adding it in. Uh, you can do that with conditional tags on different places. Again, we are, uh, ConverKit buddies. So I guess that's kind of where also my head went, but other, a lot of other great email platforms allow you to do that. And I think it's, if you are a bit more advanced and you feel a bit more confident about what we're talking about, that's definitely something worth exploring. And we do that just to give, uh,

Brennan Dunn (26:46.219)
Yes.

Fab (26:53.913)
I will list an example as well. We do it with our certification. When it's up, we like to have a bit of a more of a bigger banner, uh, within our normal newsletter, but I'm most like, I mean, our current graduates will not mind that, but I'm like, if they don't see it, it's not the end of the world. It's probably better. It's nicer. It's neater. So having a conditional block in this case, that is this, let's say banner that is not there if they have a specific tag, that's how it works, at least on an easier level in ConvertKit. That's the easiest way to do it in ConvertKit.

Brennan Dunn (27:23.188)
It does.

Fab (27:23.321)
if they have a tag or if they don't. Um, so I love that. I have one follow-up question and then I promise I'll get to the second question for everybody. Um, I know, right. Um, but I just know that we didn't talk about personalization enough and having you here. It's a great opportunity. And the other question is, uh, pre-amble by just me explaining how we do segmenting just to give, um, especially the listeners that have been listening for a while, an idea of the behind the scenes on our side.

Brennan Dunn (27:29.346)
Hahaha

Fab (27:49.373)
There's different things that we do, different tags and segments we create. My favorite, for example, to be very honest, is based on the fact that we're a school and we don't, and we welcome all different types of marketers. It can be a positive and an injury in a way that is very specific on the values, the vibe, the energy and the goal of our marketers. They're very specific people in that respect, but they end up being different type of marketers. We just can't fight it. So that's how we niche down.

And so my favorite way to segment, which we are, can be better at, but we are better than what we used to be is basically who they are, because based on who they are, their goals and their needs are going to be different and the products that we serve are different. So again, any listener that is part of our crew might have seen things like, are you a freelancer? Are you an agency owner? Are you a creator or new marketers as well? Came up. And I think it goes back to my question now is something that we learned by giving an option for.

Brennan Dunn (28:36.534)
in house.

Fab (28:44.141)
Other and that's what came up. So we're like, oh, we are missing this one. Let's add it. So that's how we segment as the main kind of type behavioral segmentation that there are many others, but I think there's a very foundational one for us. If we get to know that at the beginning, it really helps us making things more personalized. What would be maybe one or two more examples just for people that are starting out and they're like, why should I segment? Should I do demographics? Should I do location? I think there's so many more powerful ways that we can do that based on our needs.

So if you have any one or two ideas, I think that will be great just to add more to that.

Brennan Dunn (29:18.45)
Yeah. So you have like the traditional demographics slash firmographic, uh, segmentation stuff that I think a lot of people, like I would, I would, I would look at it as like the boardroom segmentation. So you're going to, you're going to show your investors a little chart that says 32% of people are in the UK, 18% are in the U S you know, that kind of thing. Right. Um, and that would be like stuff like age range. Um,

You know, gender identity, that kind of stuff, right? Like that's, that's stuff that usually doesn't actually probably affect anything we're doing. Like, would you actually send. Uh, people who are 20 different content about marketing than people who are 40. Like probably not. Um, so I don't actually, I'm not a huge fan of that kind of segmentation. The thing that I really like to focus on is two things. So why are you here? And who are you?

And the who is going to change. So, and like a B2B sense, it would be industry or what's your job role or, you know, how, at what stage is your company at in your case? It's like, are you a freelance marketer? Are you in house? Are you working with an agency? Um, you know, that that's kind of the who thing, right? And then you can drill deeper into that too. Like let's say you find out that they are in house, like, well,

Are they looking to go out on their own? Are they looking to maybe switch to a different company? Are they looking, let's say they're, um, uh, solo, like they're, they're marketing their own business. I don't know. I assume you capture that somehow too. Then you could trap probably drill further and find out like, well, is the issue that like they have a bit of a leaky bucket that they have, like people coming to their website, but no one's buying or joining their email list or whatever else, like try to capture information about.

Okay. So know a bit about like your, your situation, but okay. You're a freelance marketer. So what's the issue? Like, why are you checking out all marketing school? Right. Like, and dig deeper into that. And then you could also capture, I love capturing data about what have they tried so far, so in your case, it would be like, you know, so how are, how are you currently learning how to like do marketing better, like what are, what have you done and, and try to capture as succinctly as possible.

Brennan Dunn (31:43.946)
Like what is it they've tried and are we done and so on. And then. Yeah. I mean, ultimately like my end goal is I just want to get data that I can actually use to make their experience better. So it's not about the boardroom charts. It's about what can I learn about somebody that will make. Make it so I can send them better examples. So for example, I want to give two quick examples real quick, cause these are kind of top of mind. So two people we've been working with.

Uh, one is Justin Welsh. He re he helps people who want to be solopreneurs. And then there's another called Dan Goh who helps people with fitness. So with Dan, uh, you know how I mentioned the whole like gender thing, not usually be mattering. He, it matters for him because why it matters for him is that if I, if you say you're, you know, a woman, you're probably not going to want to see a bunch of like fitness case studies about a bunch of dudes, right? Like you want to see people.

who are like you, who, you know, this course has been able to help. Likewise, if you're older, if you see everyone, if all the example case studies are all people in their twenties, you might be thinking, oh, maybe this doesn't help me. So for something like that, like, you know, he's capturing gender, age, range, like goal, lose weight, gain muscle, do you travel a lot for work?

You know, that kind of information he's able to then give them very specific onboarding. So when you join his list, if you travel a lot for work, you're a, um, you've got a family, you're, you're a woman and, um, you want to build muscle and you're, he finds out why, like, and you want to do it for body confidence reasons. What happens is you're welcome. Sequence is very styled into that, where it's about like, Hey, I can help you. I know you're on the road a lot.

So even if you don't have access to the best gyms, like what I'm gonna be sharing with you can still really help you. Whereas if you didn't ever travel, you wouldn't see that messaging. And that's worked really, really well for him. And it's worked so well that not only is his engagement rates significantly higher, but in his newsletter, he's linking to the product or the course in every newsletter. And the description, the call to action description,

Brennan Dunn (34:08.534)
changes, depending on what those different data points. So I just mentioned that we're collecting and there's actually 3,385 ways of describing his course, which it seems crazy, but when you think of like, we're just changing, like the first few words to be based on this and the next few words to be based on that. And it all makes a nice few like paragraph description that's led to a 26% increase in overall engagement and sales, which is a big deal for him.

Um, so that's one example with Justin. Um, what's been cool about that is that he's capturing things like, because he helps people on both LinkedIn and Twitter. Um, and he also helps people who are coaches, course, graders, service providers. Um, what else? People who make money with like partnerships and ads on their newsletter. And they don't want to hear different things. Right. So when people join his list, he's asking them like.

You know, how do you make money? Are you more focused on audience growth or monetization? Um, what have you tried before? And he's getting some great data that he's then using to personalize the way that he presents what he has to offer. Um, and yeah, it's just, it's one of these things. Like, I think when it comes to the questions you want to ask, everything I just mentioned is there's no one right set of questions to ask, but ultimately like my rule of thumb is you need to be simple questions.

You can't have like, what would you do to solve world peace or, you know, to, or, or whatever, and then you have like 30 options that are each like each answers like three sentences long, that's just, that's overwhelming and no one's going to answer that, but if you can have short and punchy things like you might even want to experiment, uh, experiment with all marketing school to have, like you mentioned freelancer in-house, uh, agency, all that kind of stuff, like the more you can have like.

Do you work for yourself or do you work for somebody else? Myself. Do I work for somebody else? Cool. You work for somebody else. Are you at an agency? Are you at an in-house product team? You know, whatever, where it's very, almost like conversational rather than it being, um, you know, like a proper structured thing where it's just more of a, think of it like a chat bot, but it's more of a survey type thing. Um, those tend to have really good engagement rates because again, those are, I, I like surveys that I could.

Brennan Dunn (36:35.302)
I could complete after night at the pub. Like I w if I were to come home after night of drinking, I should still be able to understand and, and complete the survey. So if it's too loaded, if it's too wordy, if it's too mentally overwhelming, that's what leads to people saying, you know, forget this, I'm closing the tab and not doing this. So yeah, we've seen this time and time again, across our entire customer base.

At right message, we're sitting on 13 million survey responses that we've analyzed heavily and the common thing is short punchy questions with very easy to answer answers. And questions that are not probing, like, you know, how much money do you make or something like that, but are instead focused on, um, them and, and how you're then able to help.

Fab (37:26.585)
It's kind of a thread that I see within the conversation all about how can I better serve you? And that's kind of what really speaks to me. And I think when you think about questions that way, first of all, is also gold mine when it comes to any type of market research survey that people do. Because whenever we talk to our students, especially in our certification, we talk about audience personas and within that market research is a big part of it. And I can see that there's a bit of skeptic, like the bit skeptical or end.

they feel like service can feel very overwhelming for them even just to create. And as a result of that, as you say, all the things that work, I see that they struggle to do that, like keeping it simple, keeping it concise, but I love the idea as well of making it a flow, which if anybody has a superior experience or seen right message, that's how you do it. You know, one then will lead conditioning to the others. And I think even if you do that with a more

a static survey or like just like a normal survey instead of having just random questions all plunked into one place. If they follow a flow, as you say, it feels more like naturally we'll go into the next step. And I don't know, I think we're not prodded to think about it unless we have a tool like Right Message that would, you know, allow us to create that conditional journey, which I love. Now I'm going to get into the second question, by the way, just about. After we extracted all of this amazing knowledge from you.

Brennan Dunn (38:39.883)
Ha!

Fab (38:44.741)
And by the way, thank you for a couple of tips that I'm gonna also take on for the school. Appreciate that. About a framework or a tactic or something that you have learned from somebody else that really stood out for you. What would that be?

Brennan Dunn (39:00.074)
Yeah. So we, we already talked about Kathy Sarah, which is like a Mark. She's a marketing hero of mine. She's incredible. And I, without getting too deep into her stuff, like it's horrible. What happened to her with like online trolls and stuff like that. And I miss seeing her as a voice on the internet, but anyway, one of the, um, one of the things from her that's stuck out with me from, I mean, she, she probably wrote this 15 years ago on her blog.

She was blogging way back before. I think a lot of us were, uh, even reading blogs or anything like that. Um, the thing she, she wrote, it was, I forgot the article, but it was, um, a comparison of like old marketing with new marketing and the old marketing was, uh, if we outspend we win. Whereas the new marketing is if we out teach, we win. And I know that stuff. Like if you, if you follow like Seth Godin or whatever, we all know this, like we've all heard a lot of this. Uh, but.

That was so like, because I always think like, am I, even with my own newsletter, I'm like, is what I'm sending too dense to, to teachy to, should I be doing more like, sizzly salesy stuff that like is like a really compelling story. And if you actually want to learn something, you got to buy my thing. But I've seen time and time again, both for myself and with a lot of my friends who do this kind of thing that...

The more I give away, the better it is for everyone involved, including myself. And so I don't know if that's a framework per se, but I think when you really think about the old model of just dazzle and like, oh, you can have the Lamborghini and the giant mansion, but buy my thing. I'm very against that. I'm very against kind of the.

internet marketing way of doing things. And I think one, one concern I had when I started doing like selling my own courses and products online was, am I, am I an internet marketer? Am I doing all of that stuff? I hate. And, um, I think having followed people like Kathy and others who, who had that, like, when we out teach, we win mentality. That, that, that led me to realize that if I can just help people out legitimately and then.

Brennan Dunn (41:28.162)
provide ways that they can pay me to get more help, better help, more specific help, maybe even me or my team doing everything that I'm talking about for them. We all win because again, you can pay me nothing, but still got a lot for me, or you can pay me a lot and get a lot more for me. And if, if I can build an entire business around that, I'm happy. So I think like, I, I credit Cathy to planting that seed originally, and then others like Seth for.

helping water that. But yeah, that would be it, I think.

Fab (42:05.001)
I love that. And I love that actually ties back with something I was thinking about for our third question of class and session, which is all about unlearning. And one of the reasons why I'm thinking about this is because actually being true to what you said and this kind of mindset almost, even more than a framework that Cathy kind of like imparted to you in one way. Then you also wrote a book, a book that is very much about the power of personalization. So it's one of the core things that you do and you wanna be known for and you are known for.

So thinking about this is personal as well. And this, the answer to this question right now might not be related to the book, um, but I wanted to ask about unlearning and as a fellow author, myself, we're talking about it from self-published to publish myself with my second book. Um, I learned so much from that experience, but I also unlearned a lot of things because it is, it can be counted as a product for me, I wanted to be a writer since I was 10.

Stephen King was my hero. That's how awkward I am. And so I was like, yes, I got that. I mean, nonfiction, but I'll take it. And so I learned a lot of things about expectations and also about sometimes just getting the things done. And then you talked about your book being like five years in the making, mine was similar experience and just serendipitously happened. And so, and I think a book is also a great way to out teach people, is a great way to actually share so much for.

Brennan Dunn (43:03.159)
I love Stephen King.

Fab (43:27.929)
a more nominal price and just share your experience, your learning and your lessons and then be like, and if you want me to do this for you or with you, that's a different side of the journey. So this is a bit of a round, like round up way to ask the question. And maybe again, the answer is not about the book, but I'm just going to pop it in there. I want to see if there's any lessons also from this is personal as well. But the traditional question is, what is something that you haven't learned recently? And is this maybe related to this stage of your journey as an author as well?

Brennan Dunn (43:59.659)
So.

Does it need to be recently? Because I have something that was a big.

Fab (44:05.689)
Yeah, no, go on, go on, we can go back. We can go into memory lane.

Brennan Dunn (44:07.126)
Okay. I think, okay. So let me, I didn't really talk about this yet, but my, my background, uh, in between thinking I'd become a classics professor to selling online courses and stuff, um, I was, I was a software engineer. So after uni, I got into programming. I was very big that I wanted to now be a proper software developer, engineer type and

The thing I had to unlearn, I think, was when I had built my first... I started up an agency, it did well. This was about 11, 12 years ago, it did well. I got kind of bored with client work, so I started my first software business called PlanScope. I run WriteMessage now, but before that I had another software business that I've since sold called PlanScope. In building that up, I realized that a lot of the people who were following

They didn't just want project management software because that's what it was. They wanted help on like pricing and how do I get clients and proposal writing and things like that, that I thought were way out of scope. I'm like, I sell project management software. I'm a developer. I'm not gonna write like an ebook for you on pricing. But I was so fixated on the medium or the method that it really, I really internally struggled against.

You know, going out of what I consider to be out of scope, like I'm a software company, I don't do this. I'm a software company. I don't do that. And, um, so I think the thing that I've gotten, I've had to unlearn is that. I don't, I no longer primarily identify with the medium that I like the medium of what I sell. Right. So with, with the right message, even this is a recent thing with the right message or a software business. We always had so many people who would do a demo.

And they'd see the product and they'd be like, this is really cool. I could see us using it, but we don't have the time or we'll come back to it. Or we've got a few other things we need to work on before we're ready for it. And I would close that conversation by saying, cool, we'll be here when you need us, right? And then I started to think a few months back, like, what if we just said, like, what if we do it all for you? What if I just provide an agency behind the product? Um, because some people

Brennan Dunn (46:29.354)
They want the outcome, but they don't want to learn software. They don't want to figure out how it works and try it and all that kind of stuff. But I was so again, once again, I was so convinced that I am a software company. Like software companies don't do that. Or at least I thought, um, and I think like the big thing that I try to convey to others is if you're a course creator, let's say, don't just focus about just a don't get, don't get so obsessed about your course or your courses.

Some people want the outcome and they might want to throw money at you to get that outcome. Some people, you know, when it, when a different met, maybe a different like done with you method, like a group workshop type thing or something where it's like a, and we've seen that with the cohort courses that have been coming up, especially since COVID, but I think like the more, the sooner most of us can detach ourselves from thinking, I sell courses, I sell software, I sell books, I sell freelancing, you know, services or whatever.

And the more we can think kind of full spectrum about some people want to do it yourself, some people want done for you. Some people want done with you. The better, because you're able to then cater to a lot of different types of people who might for whatever reason be more of a, I want to try it on my own versus I just want to throw money at the problem and have a go away. Um, so yeah, that's something I've had to unlearn kind of recently. That's something I unlearned a decade ago for another in another context.

And that's something I still constantly struggle with, which is the, the framing of what it is I'm selling and getting too focused on the product itself. If that makes sense.

Fab (48:08.505)
I think it's really interesting. And I like that you share that because it speaks to how we have evolved as well in the way that we realized that we could have gone two different ways. We could have been obviously just the school or we can understand who do we want to be known for as myself and as the school. And we had a similar experience to yours very recently in this year where a lot of people came to me and were like, listen, I love the idea of

type of marketing you're teaching, but I ain't got time to learn it. I ain't got time to even thinking about it. Can you do it for me? And once again, similar to you, the resistance came up because consulting work, it's something that I can do. I've been doing that's one of my past lives, but obviously I wanted to focus more on the school and I was like, yeah, but if I get the right people in from more discerning with the clients that I bring in and I really zero in into what can we offer that is unique to us, that is in line with how do we want to be known, then.

What's the harm in that? So it was similar in that respect where, especially when it comes to some of these decisions, I appreciate that if it's just an idea of launching something new or going another direction that doesn't have any market research, because that's what some of our clients I have to talk out of, just launching something with no data, that's the other problem. But when literally people are asking for something, and or especially in this case, they were like, I literally just want to give you this to do.

And if it feels right, as you say, it's going against the ego of being like, is it worth the while exploring? So it kind of speaks to me very personally because we're the same experience this year and it has been proven to be a good decision because it kind of follows the different ways that you can help people with the same thing, but in different capacities as well, which I absolutely love. And now, now we come to our this or that our quick fire, uh, before we close up our chat.

Brennan Dunn (49:42.19)
A different format. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Fab (49:54.577)
Brandon, I'm going to give you some options and I would like you to choose one or the other. Are we ready?

Brennan Dunn (50:02.998)
Are you segmenting me?

Fab (50:04.713)
Yeah, I'm saying, lol, that is the best. I didn't realize that. I didn't realize that I do it for everybody, but this is so up for you. I'm feeling really chuffed about it. I'm going to say, okay, very, very important segmenting. You will see it's very top level. Um, Spotify playlist or podcast.

Brennan Dunn (50:13.947)
Go ahead, segment me. Run me through.

Brennan Dunn (50:23.396)
Spotify.

Fab (50:25.701)
Voice notes or text?

Fab (50:30.961)
Now this one might be, I don't know if it's relevant, but we'll see. We're gonna go on an Instagram journey. Carousels or reels, but you can also look at it as carousels or videos if Instagram is not your thing.

Brennan Dunn (50:44.85)
use Instagram at all. I guess videos, cause I like YouTube. Maybe that. Yeah.

Fab (50:47.593)
So.

Perfection that works as well that works. You can always do caros a little on LinkedIn, but I'm not really into those So am I not the answer for the next one tick tock or YouTube?

Brennan Dunn (51:00.994)
YouTube never used TikTok. I don't even know what that is. I know kids use it, but yeah.

Fab (51:08.081)
And then this one, I might learn the answer anyway, as soon as what we've been talking about for the past hour, newsletter or X.

Brennan Dunn (51:16.654)
how you meet Twitter. Newsletter. I'm going to go ahead and close this one.

Fab (51:21.009)
Of course. And then the final one, which if I were segmenting, this will be the one, this will be the two options most important for me. Memes or GIFs. That's the one, that's the golden one.

Brennan Dunn (51:32.976)
Let's see memes.

Fab (51:37.053)
It's okay. I'll accept that. That's why that's really off as well. Um, I'm a big, um, gift or gifts fan. So, but again, a gift can be turned into a meme. So I'll take that. You know, they can work together. So I'll take that. So well done. Well done. I put you on the spot, but you did really well. Um, I have one final question for you.

Brennan Dunn (51:38.64)
I'll also forgive that you said GIF instead of GIF.

Brennan Dunn (51:45.451)
Yeah, yeah.

Brennan Dunn (51:51.142)
You can have a meme that's yeah, you can have an animated meme. So there we go. Yeah.

Fab (52:01.877)
Kind of like a closing question before we say bid our goodbyes and tell people to find out more which is Based on what we talked about today and anything else in between Brandon if you could Broadcast one message onto everyone's phone because we are giving you that power to do that one message What would that say? What would be the right message?

Brennan Dunn (52:23.09)
Everyone everyone are just listeners of everyone who listens podcast or eight billion people of the planet

Fab (52:30.477)
8 billion people in the planet, give them the right message. See what I did there? Anyway, what would it be?

Brennan Dunn (52:37.819)
See, if it was just the audience, it'd be easy. Everyone.

Brennan Dunn (52:46.09)
Be kind. I don't know. I mean, that sounds trite. I don't know. I have no idea what I'd say to everyone on the planet. I'm not that convicted about anything that I say like, you know, come to Jesus or something.

Fab (52:58.55)
That's not a bad one.

Fab (53:07.145)
Everybody could do with a bit more kindness. So I'll take that. I'll take that. So what would you say to the listeners then? By the way, I'm curious now because I think you kind of had something for the listeners. What would you say to the listeners instead?

Brennan Dunn (53:09.662)
Yeah, yeah, that's a good, good safe catch.

Brennan Dunn (53:19.402)
I'd say if you're a marketer and you're like me and you've sold things in person to people, but you're also like me and you've done online marketing where you've got like broadcast style things, try to find the middle ground. Whereas I don't know what it would be in, I know in Latin it would be the media vita, or via, I don't know what that is in modern Italian, but like the middle ground between low touch sales like online.

broadcast marketing and high touch individual one-on-one sales. If you can find that middle ground, you'll connect better with people and you'll get a lot of that same benefits you would get from a one-on-one discussion, but at scale.

Fab (54:03.525)
Love it. That's what we say, by the way, all the time, whenever I do an email marketing workshop or even in our email marketing lab, I always say, emails have the capacity of touching people individually at scale, such a powerful thing. And there are so many different ways.

Brennan Dunn (54:15.134)
Exactly. She can't do with social. I can't, I can't tweet or X or whatever they call it. Uh, in a way that says only show, only show this to people who are self-identified marketers can do that with email.

Fab (54:28.841)
trip. Very, very true. So Brennan, thank you so much again. I feel like I literally growled you. So thank you so, so much for being here with us today. It was a pleasure to have you. If people want to find out more about you and they don't know what will be the next steps, what will be a couple of next steps you would direct them to?

Brennan Dunn (54:36.47)
Of course, thanks for having me, Fab. Yeah.

Brennan Dunn (54:47.494)
Start with create and sell, which is my newsletter. That's create and sell.co. If you want to check out the book, I'd love for you to check out the book. That's at thisispersonalbook.com, which then just links to like Amazon and all the places you can buy it. And where you can find me probably on Twitter or X, just Brennan Dunn, B-R-E-N-N-A-N-D-U-N-N.

Fab (55:11.441)
Thank you so, so much again. Thank you so much to the listener as always. Brennan mentioned that too, but be kind to yourself and others. And remember true marketing speaks to hearts, not just minds. And until next time, class dismissed.