How To Write Caffeine Emails With Geoff Stephen

Igor Kheifets: I’m Igor Kheifets and this is the List Building Lifestyle, a podcast
for those who want to build a large profitable email list and make six figures from
anywhere in the world. If you would like to get rich by building a large email list
while helping people, this podcast is for you. I also invite you to attend a free web
class I’m conducting this week to find out how I built a list of four-million-three-
hundred-thirty-one thousand-six-hundred-and-fifty-six email subscribers at a profit.
Secure your free seat at Igor.cx. Attend this free workshop to discover an easy
way to get 50 to 500 new email leads per day on complete autopilot without losing
tons of money. Just go to Igor.cx to attend this free web class. And now, once again
it’s time to claim your list building lifestyle.

Welcome back to another episode of The List Building Lifestyle with your host
Igor Kheifets. Do you feel bad when you email your list? Are you afraid of
unsubscribes and spam complaints? Are you getting angry responses from your
subscribers calling you a spammer? Is your list inundated with offers? Are they
sick of the claims? Are you trying to build an email list in the high [inaudible
00:01:16] niche like internet marketing, dating, real estate, or MLM? Well, then
you’re going to love this episode, I’m hosting the godfather of caffeine emails.

My guest figured out a way to make more sales with their emails while
generating tons of goodwill with their email list, and even getting their
subscribers addicted to their emails like I’m addicted to espresso. He emails
every day. He sells in every email. He’s breaking all the rules and getting away
with it. He’s the chief editor of Email Reboot. He is Geoff Stephen. Geoff,
welcome to The List Building Lifestyle.

Geoff Stephen: Hey, Igor. Thanks for having me. It’s good to be here.

Igor Kheifets: Well, it’s great having you, let me tell you. Because few people
understand email the way you understand it, and the way I understand it, the way
people who actually make money with email understand it. One of the biggest
missions for this podcast is to raise awareness to the fact that email ain’t dead.
Email is actually the best media you can be using in your online business, and
probably in your offline business, as well. The idea behind what we do here is to
help people see and understand exactly how they can use email in their business to
make more money. I think there’s few people who are better than you at writing
daily emails, and that’s exactly why I wanted to host you on the show.

Geoff Stephen: Great. Sounds good. I mean, yeah, email is where it’s at, man.
If people tell you that email’s dead, they’re either lying to you, or they’re
trying to sell you something else. I don’t know. It’s kind of irresponsible, to
me, for people to say that email is dead, but it’s there. I’m walking, talking
proof that it’s still making money, and it’s still the highest return on
investment that I’ve seen in any type of marketing channel. Igor Kheifets: Yeah.
And you’ve been around for a while, right? Geoff Stephen: Yeah. I’ve been in
internet marketing for probably close to 20 years now. So I’ve been through …
I’ve seen it all. I’ve pretty much done it all, but email’s pretty much what I’ve
been focusing on for that entire time, so kind of my main skill.

Igor Kheifets: That’s interesting. How come email stuck for you?

Geoff Stephen: It just seemed like … To me, and the way it explain it to
other people is it’s the easiest. It’s the fastest. It’s what the internet is
built on top of is email communication. Like the entire internet was built on top
of email, so everyone can email. It’s not like a technically difficult skill to
learn. Everyone knows how to email, and it’s just … If you know how to do it
well, if you get good at it, the doors just are wide open for how much money you
can make and how much business you can generate through email.

Igor Kheifets: Yeah. I agree with that completely. I guess what I’m wondering
is, and this probably something that a lot of people would wonder, is how come …
Over the last 20 years, you’ve seen the development of social media sites, you’ve
seen the development of text message marketing. How come email specifically is the
one that’s continuously out-performing every other media when it comes to dollars
and cents and sales?

Geoff Stephen: I think it’s the fact that … I mean, you’ve got social media.
You’ve got blogging. You’ve got articles, and all that stuff going on. But I think
email is like the connector that brings everything all together. I think that,
because of that, everyone knows about email, everyone knows how to do it. So I
think it’s just kind of that … What do you call it? That constant that’s always
been there in marketing. It’s a way to make money.

Igor Kheifets: Yeah. It seems like everything dances around email, because you
need an email address to register a Facebook account. You need an email address to
get your receipts when you buy stuff, right?

Geoff Stephen: Yeah.

Igor Kheifets: Pretty much everything revolves around email. While at the same
time, the trendsetters or the wannabe trendsetters, they want to grab our
attention and take it away from email. A lot of times, the feeling it creates or
the perception it creates is that email is now gone. But when you get back to the
real world, when you start buying stuff, when you transact with businesses, when
you do things that are personal, such as getting your visa renewed or something,
or setting an appointment at an embassy, or signing your real estate contract for
the new house you’re buying or leasing, typically, email is involved. Nobody’s
asking you for your Instagram account to send your receipts or documents to sign.

Geoff Stephen: Right. Right. True. No, you’re right. It’s your unique identity
on the internet. Everyone’s got one, so it’s everywhere. And there’s no reason why
it shouldn’t be capitalized on as a marketing channel. I think email is like … I
talk a lot of marketers who are maybe newer, who are just kind of getting in the
game, and I find that the biggest bottleneck that people face in their entire
process, or their funnel, or whatever you want to call it, is writing emails for
some reason. It’s like they, “Well, I can make a funnel. I can drag and drop my
way into a pretty looking squeeze page and a sales page, and whatnot. I can do
this. I can put this together. I can create opt-in forms.”

But then they get to the point where they’re like, “Well, how do I communicate
with these people?” And they’re like, “Oh, email. I don’t know what to send. I
don’t know what to tell them. I don’t know to communicate that way.” So it’s this
huge bottleneck for people, which kind of surprises me, because email’s so
familiar [inaudible 00:06:44] everybody. But it’s like once they get to that
point, they’re like, “I don’t know what to write,” or, “I’m just going to copy
someone else’s stuff and hope that works.” It’s almost like they get to that point
and they choose to ignore it, even though there’s so much money there.

I always tell them, “There’s so much money almost hiding behind email that once
you understand how it works, understand how to write the correct type of emails
and how to get your list engaged, and all that stuff, it’s … Like I said before,
the doors are open once you know how to do that.” For some reason, people just
kind of let it bottleneck up their funnel, and they don’t witness the potential
that their sales process actually has without doing email.

Igor Kheifets: Yeah. I see two big problems with that. I see the first problem,
which is most common, is people not writing emails at all. Typically, that fear, I
guess, or whatever that is, prevents them from making a lot of money. The second
problem is even if they overcome the fear of writing the emails, they tend to just
write, maybe, a seven-day or maybe like a seven-email sequence that spreads out
over 30 days. But they don’t necessarily continue writing them every day, and they
sure as hell won’t email their list every day, which is something that I think is
a huge mistake.

For example, recently I came back from the T and C, Traffic and Conversion,
Summit. While I was away, I made sure my list is getting at least one email a day,
and on some day, we mailed out more than once. I couldn’t have been happier with
the results. I came back. I checked my stats, and we’ve been averaging about
$11,000 per day in revenues, not profit, but revenue, from the sales that came
directly from those emails. Anyone who is build a list and is not mailing their
list, why the hell are you building one, then?

Geoff Stephen: Exactly. Yeah. I mean, if someone asks me … I don’t know if
you’re going to ask me this later … but if someone asks me, “What’s the kind of
defining element of email marketing, the defining thing that will either be
successful or not?” The defining thing, for me, is consistency like you’re talking
about. If you’re not consistent with your list, if you’re not what I call
relentlessly consistent, which is like email, like you said, every day, at least
once a day, including weekends, including holidays, if you’re not doing that,
you’re missing out.

I calculated if you miss a day of sending an email, you’re basically put
yourself three days behind in engagement with that subscriber. So every day you
miss, kind of puts you three days behind, because of short attention spans and
people doing other things. They kind of lose interest really quickly, so you have
to keep up with it. You have to keep emailing every single day. Absolutely.
Consistency is like the … Well, just like with all marketing, right? It’s like
you have to be in front of their eyeballs as much as possible, so nothing’s
different there with email.

Igor Kheifets: Yeah, absolutely. You have to be … The new term for that is
omnipresent, right?

Geoff Stephen: Right. Yeah.

Igor Kheifets: Wherever they look, you want to be there. That’s why targeting
is becoming more and more important these days, because they visit your website,
they get on your list. All of the sudden, you appear on their sports live score
website, or whatever. I actually got a text message from one of my clients about a
month ago. He’s a big hockey fan. He’s sending me a screenshot with our banner ad.
He’s like, “You’re everywhere. You’re in my hockey website.” But, yeah. As far as
email, the consistency with mailing every day is critical.

I’ll even go ahead and suggest this, taking it a little bit further. What I try
to do, I try to email on the exact same hour every day. So not only is the
consistency of daily emails, but it’s also consistency of daily emails at a
specific time. So eventually, the people who read your emails all the time, and
even the ones who don’t read them but see them, they kind of get used to expecting
for you to appear in their inbox.

Geoff Stephen: Yeah, for sure. People are creatures of habit, so once they get
into a routine, and once they see that you have a routine, and they get used to
reading your emails, absolutely. I test this all the time. Same time every day, or
I stagger them, or I send them in the evening kind of thing. It doesn’t seem to
matter what time they go out, as long as they consistently go out at that same
time.

Igor Kheifets: Yeah. Yeah. There’s definitely … One of the most common
questions, I think, we get is, “Igor, what’s the perfect time to send out an
email?” Right?

Geoff Stephen: Yeah.

Igor Kheifets: Over the years, I never found a perfect time. I’ve had periods
in my life when I was emailing at 7:00 AM EST, other periods when I was mailing at
9:00 PM EST. Eventually, I just said, “You know what? Let me just email twice a
day, once in the morning, once in the evening, sent to Unopeneds,” and just try to
cover as many time zones as I could. But as far as there not being the perfect
time unless that is the exact same time every day, that is so true.

Now you mentioned email identity, which is something I had never heard anyone
else talk about, and I study email every day. Do you mind expanding on that a
little bit?

Geoff Stephen: Email identity?

Igor Kheifets: Yeah. Or you said email is everyone’s unique identity on the
internet.

Geoff Stephen: Oh, no. I just mean that everyone has an email address. It’s
your unique identity across the internet. There’s only one of email that you have,
so I’m just saying that that’s why email is so foundationally important to
internet marketing. That’s the foundation or the root of who you are on the
internet is your email address. That’s kind of what I was going for there.

Igor Kheifets: Yeah, got it. Got it. Okay, cool. I agree completely. Not only
that, I think it’s also about being very personal. When you’re in their inbox,
it’s a more personal relationship than being on their Facebook feed.

Geoff Stephen: Yes. Yes. It can and it would be. I will say that email is not
tactical. Email is conversational. So when someone asks me, “What time should I
email every day?” Or someone asks me, “How many [inaudible 00:13:10] 500 words?
1,000 words? How long should my email be? How long should my subject line be?”
because Gmail has so many characters, and all this sort of stuff. What you’ll find
is once you start emailing every day, and sort of building a relationship with
your list, and being conversational with your emails, all that tactical stuff
starts to matter less, and less, and less. Because all people need to see is that
this email is from Igor, or this email is from Geoff, and they’ll open. And
they’ll read it based on just the relationship that you have with your list.

Email, as I said, it’s conversational. It’s non-tactical. Tactics are really
easy to teach people, so there’s a lot of information out there that’s tactical.
You might think that, “Oh, I need this email course, because it teaches me a good
email … No more than 500 words. You have to have the PS. You have to have your
picture. You have to have a subject line this long,” and all these tactical
things, which are totally easy to teach. But they don’t matter nearly as much as
the relationship you have with your list and the type of emails that you actually
send.

Yo, it’s Igor. If you’re loving the content hop on over to
listbuildinglifestyleshow.com for more free training and a free transcript of this
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show. It really helps. Thanks.

Yeah, absolutely. Most of my emails these days are very friendly, so there’s
not much hype going on. It’s just mostly, “Hey, I just put together a new video
about my latest trip to San Diego. In this video I talk about how I generate
subscribers while being away from my computer, so go check it out.” That’s pretty
much the whole email.

Geoff Stephen: Yeah, that’s it.

Igor Kheifets: It’s not really … Yeah.

Geoff Stephen: People ask me what type of emails you should be sending. “Should
my grammar be perfect?” All this other stuff. I’m like, “Imagine this. You’re
sitting across the table from someone in a coffee shop, or in a pub, or across the
dinner table, or whatever, and you’re talking about your day. Like, “You wouldn’t
believe what happened to me yesterday on the way to the coffee shop. This guy cut
me off,” and whatever. You have a story to tell, right? If you can read your email
back to yourself and it sounds like a conversation, then you’re on to something.
But if you read your email back and it sounds like you’re a marketer, or it sounds
like you’re reading the first page of a novel or something, then you’re on the
wrong track. You always have to imagine yourself in that conversational space
between you and another person.

Igor Kheifets: Yeah, which is where it really helps to at least have some sort
of an image or an idea of who you’re writing to. Because then you can imagine that
person potentially … For me, as far as writing the emails, I always try to
imagine my ideal customer literally sitting across the table, will you said, maybe
in a coffee shop. And what would I say or how would I say it if they were
literally right there? It really helps with not trying to get caught up in big
words and swipe files, and stuff like that.

Geoff Stephen: Yeah, yeah. I always tell people to stay away from those swipe
files. There’s so many … “Well, I’ll just copy and paste these templates, and
put in my name, and send those out.” I’m like, “Really? Why would you do that? Why
would you take someone else’s email that maybe worked for their list? What makes
you think that that email will work for your list knowing how you built your list
and hopefully knowing who your customer is and who is actually on your list?”
Those templates aren’t going to work. All they’re going to do is … They’ll
probably, actually, do the opposite of what you want. They’ll probably push people
away, because you’re going to sound like you’re pretending to be someone else. It
just doesn’t work.

Igor Kheifets: Yep. Yep. From experience, I can tell you stealing other
people’s emails word for word simply … That does not work. I used to do a lot
that, and I would be so angry. It was like, “Oh, Frank Kern sent out that email,
and it obviously worked for Frank Kern. Why is it not working for me?”

Geoff Stephen: Yeah, right. Yeah.

Igor Kheifets: Earlier on the call I mentioned caffeine emails. I’m sure a lot
of people are wondering right now, “What the hell are those?” Can you give us the
Caffeine Emails 101?

Geoff Stephen: Caffeine emails are just … It’s basically the process that I
use to come up with my emails. I use caffeine, because caffeine is … For one
thing, I drink a lot of coffee. My routine is I get up in the morning. I send my
kids off to school, do all that. Then once I get started, I get my coffee, and my
first thing in the morning task is writing my emails for the day. I’ve got it down
to my entire process, probably 20 to 30 minutes to get my emails written and send
them out.

I use caffeine, because caffeine is just one of those things that triggers your
mind. It wakes you up. It keeps you engaged, and it sort of … The way caffeine
works in your brain is it blocks the mechanism in your brain that makes you tired,
so it pushes all the tiredness away, and keeps you alert, and keeps you
stimulated, I guess. That’s why I call them caffeine emails, because you have to
sort of weave that logic into your emails as far as stimulating people’s brains,
and getting them into your story, and giving them visuals so they can relate to
your emails and put themselves in your story. Yeah, that’s the gist of why I call
them caffeine emails.

Igor Kheifets: All right. What do you write about?

Geoff Stephen: Whatever. I mean, typically, we go with storytelling emails. A
quick story. A quick snippet of my life, something that happened. Something that
might have happened, but I might just be making up at the time. Doesn’t matter.
Something that you can transition from your story into your sales pitch, so it’s
not … I’ll say it’s simple, but it’s not easy. It’s simple to do, because we’re
just writing emails. But it’s not something that’s easy to be really good at it,
so you have to have people critique, and review your stuff, and teach you how to
do it right.

The emails that I write can be about almost anything, as long as they don’t
sound like marketing emails. As long as they sound real, as long as they’re
conversational. It’s like me picking up the phone and giving you a call and say,
“Hey, what’s up? How’s it going?” Then you start talking, and you get into
conversations and, “This and this happened.” It’s a very non-specific thing.
There’s no perfect formula, but it all comes out in how you develop your style,
how you develop your own lingo, how you develop your own pattern, I guess, when
you write. I think that when you start writing every day, and you start being
consistent, all that comes out. All your personality comes out in your email, and
how you write, and how you use different words, and how you spell things, maybe,
differently just to be different, or whatever. It’s kind of an ongoing process.

Igor Kheifets: Yeah, absolutely. Are there any go-to topics or principles you
tend to go to when you’re struggling to come up with things to talk about in your
emails?

Geoff Stephen: Not really any go-tos. What I use frequently can be … Like if
my product is teaching people how to write emails, I will set examples using other
people’s experience, like other people’s examples, and showing people what not to
do, kind of thing. It’s one of the things I use. Just going like, “Long story
short, but this guy did this. It was wrong, because he should have done this, and
this, and this. And here’s how to do it right.” That kind of thing, right? That’s
kind of a go-to sort of template, I guess.

Igor Kheifets: All right. Talk about what not to do.

Geoff Stephen: No, no. I don’t … Yeah. I don’t really have a template. I have
a … I don’t know if it’s a talent or just a practiced skill to just start
writing and just coming up with stories that work pretty good in transitioning
into the sales pitch.

Igor Kheifets: Okay. When you sit down to write a story, then, is there a
template to the story you tend to follow? Are there, maybe, a couple of templates,
like the way they’re structured in terms of like building blocks? Because,
typically … And I’m talking about my own experience and experience connecting
with other writers … you can typically spot the formulas that those writers are
using.

Geoff Stephen: Right. Sometimes, but honestly, I try to mix things up a bit,
because if you get into too much of a habit of writing a certain length of an
email, people get used to it, and they start getting blind to it, and they start
ignoring it. Frequently, what I’ll do is maybe I’ll have a longer email, or
whatever. And then next day, I’ll write like a one-liner or a two-liner out to my
list. What happens, typically, is it kind of catches them off guard, and it gets
more engagement that way.

But as far as templates … I mean, simple story writing is subject line,
introduction, narrative, transition, call to action, and then something that I
call a return, which is kind of like a PS, but it’s not a PS. It’s just,
basically, a reminder for the subscriber or the reader to check out what I’m
offering again. It’s just sort of they read to the bottom, they get to this, they
go back up, so it kind of keeps them inside the bubble. But, I mean, that’s kind
of the format, right?

Your subject line, which leads them into the introduction
of the email, the introduction draws them into the narrative, which is another
word for just the story, or whatever it is that you’re talking about. The
narrative will transition. You have to have a transition, which transitions to the
call to action, which is what you want your subscriber to do, whatever that is.
Whether it’s buy a product, or like a page, or reply to your email, or whatever
that is. Then I have the return, which reminds them of what this whole thing is
all about. That’s kind of a template, but more of a format, or a process, or
something like that.

Igor Kheifets: Yeah. It’s like an outline more so than it is a template.

Geoff Stephen: Yeah.

Igor Kheifets: Yeah, that makes sense. If we’re just getting started with
email, where would you recommend getting started? Like what would be the best way
to approach email?

Geoff Stephen: Honestly, it’s just start writing and just keep writing. Again,
it’s a thing that’s not templated. It’s a thing that’s not really a formula. It’s
just practice. It’s practice. If you have someone to follow, like myself or
yourself, where we lead by example. We can say, “Well, this is a really good email
that I wrote that got really good results. Look at what I wrote and make it your
own. Tell your own story. Follow the same format and practice doing that.” Sort of
what I would direct people to do.

Igor Kheifets: Okay, got it. Obviously, you publish an email marketing
newsletter. It’s a physical newsletter. It’s called Email Reboot. In your
newsletter, what sort of advice, or guidance, or coaching do you tend to share
with your subscribers?

Geoff Stephen: Typically, it is two or three subjects. It’s not just all one
topic or two or three topics, I guess, that I would cover. Honestly, it can be
anything from, “Here’s my latest split test results, and why they worked, and why
they didn’t work,” to more psychological copywriting. Each email issue has a
topic. Obviously, it has a title, but then I go a little bit deeper into each
separate topic within the issue. It’s different every month, obviously. Different
topics. But everything is designed to help you write better emails, help you make
more money with your email.

Igor Kheifets: All right. Sounds good. Obviously, to join your newsletter, we
need to go to EmailReboot.com, right?

Geoff Stephen: Yes. EmailReboot.com is the opt-in page.

Igor Kheifets: Right. Opt in, get on your list just for the sake of getting
your list, I guess. Obviously, the newsletter is $77 a month, right?

Geoff Stephen: Correct. Yes.

Igor Kheifets: Cool. Do we have to pay shipping, handling, as well, on top of
that?

Geoff Stephen: No, no. It’s $77 a month. That’s it. That’s all you pay. It’s a
combination of … I mean, you say it’s a physical newsletter, which it is. It’s
not digital, it’s physical. It gets delivered right to your door. But it’s a
combination of the newsletter, plus like a back office full of email training,
plus a Facebook group, plus direct access to me as an email coach, which is
something a lot of people don’t offer, because of time or whatever. But you’ll
have direct access to me to critique, and review, and just give you ongoing advice
on your email marketing, and just your copywriting in general. So it’s sort of an
all in one solution for anyone who wants to make more money with their email
marketing.

Igor Kheifets: All right. Got it. That’s EmailReboot.com if you want to get on
Geoff’s list, as well as sign up for the Email Reboot newsletter. It’s a physical
newsletter, plus coaching, plus guidance, plus access directly to Geoff, who will
review and critique your emails, which nobody does for $77 a month. It just
doesn’t happen. All right, cool. Before we part, maybe any last few words of
wisdom for beginner email marketers?

Geoff Stephen: If you’re just getting into email, I would recommend jumping in,
keep writing every single day, focus on the fact that you have to be relentlessly
consistent with your emails to be successful. And just practice, practice,
practice.

Igor Kheifets: How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice.

Geoff Stephen: That’s are.

Igor Kheifets: All right. Cool. Thank you very much for tuning in to another
episode of The List Building Lifestyle. This is Igor Kheifets and Geoff Stephen.
Thank you so much. Until next time we chat, have a good one.

Thank you for tuning in to the the List Building Lifestyle. Get access to previous
episodes, the transcript of today’s show, and exclusive content at our website at
listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. Also, don’t forget to claim your free seat at the
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to 500 new leads per day on their list at a profit without any list-building
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