The Art of Intentional Email with Noah Vertefeuille

Andréa Jones [00:00:00]:
One of the things that I love about marketing, especially when you lean into your preferences, is that you don't have to be loud to be effective. You don't have to send a million emails a week to stay top of mind. And you definitely don't need those countdown timers to grow your business. There's another way. I'm excited to have today's guest on the show, Noah Vertefeuille, to talk all about his company, Timber Marketing, and how we can use email as a way to build those beautiful relationships with our favorite clients and customers. But first, a word from our sponsor. Riverside is the all in one podcast recording and editing tool that I use for this right here show. I use it to edit not only the audio in the video, it is like Chef's kiss, magical, making the entire process so, so easy.

Andréa Jones [00:00:45]:
Plus, I love their magic AI clips. Their little AI robot in the background pulls out the most impactful moments of the episodes without me having to comb through and do it myself. Resizes them for social media. So vertical videos you see on TikTok and Reels, those all come from Magic AI inside of Riverside. It's literally one click. It spits out 10 clips. I pick the best one and away I go. Saves me so much time.

Andréa Jones [00:01:12]:
If you want to get on the Riverside train, check it out today. The link's in the show notes and make sure to use my code DREA D R E A at checkout to get 15% off your membership. All right, now, welcome to the show.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:01:27]:
Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here.

Andréa Jones [00:01:30]:
I'm excited to just be nosy as I usually am, and pick your brain. All about email marketing. And one of the things that I liked about you, and from what I know about you, is that you think email marketing is something that you could do quietly. What does that mean, even to you?

Noah Vertefeuille [00:01:47]:
Yeah, no, I think that's a great question. I think what people tend to do when it comes to email marketing is they feel like they need to broadcast. Um, and I think that's a lot of times, even like some email marketing tools, the, the. The send button is called broadcast. And so with that, I think it's. It's more about being quiet and you don't want to be loud. You don't need to be loud to be effective. It's really more about having a conversation instead of it being kind of a broadcast.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:02:09]:
It's about how do you. You talk to people on an individual level, even though you are sending to multiple people at one time. So it doesn't not necessarily meant to be kind of a sales campaign. Conversation is not meant to be. Like campaign is meant to be a conversation. It's about kind of pulling up a chair at someone's kitchen table versus getting on a stage with a microphone.

Andréa Jones [00:02:26]:
Yeah, I love that. And I think this is what I love about just digital marketing in general. I consider myself pretty introverted and so to like go out in person, I like doing it. Don't, don't take me the wrong way. I like doing it, but as an introvert I need lots of downtime afterwards, like recharge. Whereas I feel like digital marketing, I don't have that like need for downtime as much. Where do you think that comes from for you? Like tell us about your history when it comes to building business and kind of establishing this framework for yourself.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:02:58]:
So I've always kind of seen the power of digital marketing. So my background has always been in digital marketing, kind of with a mix of small big businesses and things along those lines. But what I saw is that people a lot of times just overwhelmed. There's so many things happening in digital marketing and there almost is that kind of thought process that they need to broadcast. I need to be on social media, I need to send out a thousand emails, I needed to run ads everywhere. And what I saw is that it's a lot more again about how can you do things simply and effectively in order to, to make it a lot more intentional. And I think that intentionality is something that's really missing in the digital marketing space, especially when it comes to like content creators, small business owners, etc. There's again, there's kind of an overwhelming kind of aspect to it.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:03:41]:
And so really when I started the thought process was how can you make it so that it's as simple as possible? How do you really kind of focus in on having those intentional conversations versus just trying to blast out to everyone where you tend to end up watering your message down. You kind of lose everything along the way. Versus again, trying to talk to people on a one to one basis, even if you are talking to multiple people at the same time.

Andréa Jones [00:04:04]:
Yeah, I think that that's the beauty to me of the Internet. Right. It's like we can find our people instead of being limited to our local kind of community, we can find our community virt anywhere. Which I love, I love that about the Internet. But I also think it makes the kind of trust building process a little bit longer. So talk to me about how you help your business, your clients to build that trust through Email without feeling like we're screaming like buy this thing please. You know.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:04:33]:
No, definitely. I think, I think that's, that's exactly the thing with the buy now. I think when you think about going to like a car sales place or like mattress sales, which ironically is another one of those where like immediately you feel kind of put, put off a little bit in, at ease and you don't necessarily, you just feel kind of guarded when you first get there. And so part of that is because there is that like focus on hey, buy now, buy now, buy now. The thing is though is you're much more apt to buy from someone if some, you had a friend for example, that goes to the same car dealership and said hey I had a really great experience, I would, you should go there and you have kind of that personal relationship and that trust kind of built up because of that personal connection. It's much easier to sell something. And so with that I think it's how do businesses solve problems? How do you make that personal connection? How do you make kind of a one to one level pitch versus again sending out that general buy now message and make it a relationship instead. The whole idea is you want to solve people's problems.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:05:31]:
Obviously your product or service is what you think will do that. We kind of want to answer those problems with hey, here's just some solutions, here's some free solutions. At the end of the day I want to help you more than anything else and I also think that the end all be all product and service is what's going to help to do that. But here's some other things along the way that help to establish that trust and really kind of again show that you care more about them and that your service will help to kind of continue that trust versus just trying to pitch and something that's not necessarily going to have the same effect.

Andréa Jones [00:06:00]:
Yeah, so, so give us the nitty gritty of like those first couple of emails. Like someone finds us, they sign up for something, what are we saying to build the trust with that person?

Noah Vertefeuille [00:06:11]:
I think it's adding personality. So no matter if you're a solo preneur or if you're running a business, I think it's, it's why, why you should care about who I am, who the business is and a welcome to them. So I think it's again creating that, that one to one relationship and saying hey, thanks for joining, this is who I am, this is why, why I want to work with you. And then from there it's how do you Create quick wins. So how do you have a download or a PDF or something that you can send, Hey, I think this would be really helpful for you. Or hey, here's someone else who we worked with in the past that, and this is the kind of the challenges that they went through and this is how we've helped them. And again, kind of making it personal, making it so you're not just a faceless entity. You're kind of a person who has a personality and kind of a thought behind it.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:06:57]:
But then also how do you give them kind of free pieces of advice and value so that they feel like they've gotten something at the end of the day? So when you actually do make that pitch for, hey, here's the actual service or product, they already feel like they've gotten some stuff out of it. So it's much, much easier and much of a lower threshold for them to actually go forward and actually push forward and kind of continue that relationship that way.

Andréa Jones [00:07:18]:
Yeah, I think something that I hear a lot from business owners, especially when they're not the face of their business, is like, what do I even say to like build that trust? So do you have an example of a business or maybe even your own business where you put something in an email and it really like clicks with people and they feel that trust just something like tangible that we could see as an example?

Noah Vertefeuille [00:07:39]:
Well, I think from the, like the business owner's perspective as an example, even if you don't want to be the face of the business, even like things like the history of the business or even kind of some how tos, like this is the behind the scenes. So say like I've, I've done this before with some, some E commerce businesses where we've said this is the background, this is how the products made, hey, meet this, this maker, this person who actually creates some of the products and kind of bring them into the, the whole process with you so that they feel like they actually know the business a lot more. You don't even need to kind of show your own face if you're the business owner. But again, it's coming up with the history, coming up with what are the different pieces behind the business and why it's important and why again, it is not just another business. It's not just the, the same old, same old. There's, there's actually more story and history and personality behind it that helps make it kind of again, easier to trust because you have that connection with the business.

Andréa Jones [00:08:28]:
Yeah, I really like that. Let's say Someone hasn't been sending their emails to their list in a while. So they've got the welcome sequence. People come in, they filled up trust and then crickets. What's the kind of email we can send after we've been maybe not paying as much attention to our email list as we wanted to.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:08:49]:
I, I've been there myself. I think that's one of the things that it's. It's funny too when it comes to marketing. I feel like it's the whole saying the cobbler's shoes are the, the worst one or however you say it where sometimes you don't focus it on as much as you should because you're focusing on others. But so I've definitely been through this myself. I think the biggest thing is, is being honest with people. So like, hey, like have you haven't seen heard from us from a while kind of establishing that first and foremost so you're not kind of like completely crickets and then all, all of a sudden kind of going right back out to it. Then also you don't really need to kind of go to a deep explanation, kind of acknowledge it first and foremost.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:09:22]:
But then how can you then reestablish that trust in that relationship? So how do you have value? So like hey, it's been a while but actually we just found something that's really cool on Google Ads or we've just found something or that's really cool with this product or whatever else. Trying to again reestablish that trust, reestablish that relationship and again kind of creating that value that you're able to see, say hey, here's stuff that we wanted to show you and maybe even kind of tying that back into the story. So if there has been a little while, maybe we've been kind of hard at work working on these types of products and again showing kind of some of the more of the background that's going into the actual business itself so that it again can help tie people closer and closer into the business, feel like they're connecting with a more of a personality versus just the business, but also again, kind of establish that, reestablish that value really early on without them having to make much of a commitment.

Andréa Jones [00:10:10]:
Yeah, yeah. What about. So personally, what are your favorite kinds of emails to write?

Noah Vertefeuille [00:10:16]:
That's a great question. I think mine are definitely they'd be story driven. So story driven emails I think are some of my favorite ones. So like one business I'll kind of bring into like a personal level. Like I, I have like A small farm on the side. So that's something that I, I, we have like a small farm stand and all that stuff. So I, that's kind of my, the way to unwind from marketing is doing marketing for my own like little side projects. And so with that it's again tying the story into like the, the story of the farm and how it got started or hey, we just got brought these new animals onto the farm, that thing and tying a story into it and really again building the history and the, the personality behind the brand itself.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:10:53]:
I think too also just kind of like reflecting or getting like quick bite sized wins or snippets that people can, can digest. I think with even those story emails people tend to be long winded and I think email is one of those where you can have a little bit more of a conversation because it is a lot more long form. But that said, how can you again give, give little pieces of information along the way so people, no matter if they read the whole email, the first part of it, the first half, whatever, they're able to kind of get pieces throughout and get some, some quick, quick wins throughout as well. But no, I think there's a lot of different emails and it's more about like writing a letter to someone. I think the best emails that perform the best is like hey, you're writing like a love letter for back lack of credit way of putting it where you're kind of again talking to the people individually in more of a long form way. In kind of a more personalized way too than you would on social media as an example.

Andréa Jones [00:11:41]:
Yeah, I mean honestly the emails for me that get the most responses are the ones where I share the personal like background, the personal experiences. People feel like when they respond they're talking to me and they're not talking to like some random entity that's just floating out here on this Internet, you know. And so I see that for myself all the time. And I think it's even more important now in this AI world. Right. It's like AI is everywhere. There's like a lot of AI gobbledygook everywhere. And so how can we stand out from that? It's like being even more human.

Andréa Jones [00:12:16]:
So I'm wondering from your perspective, what are some of the ways that you've seen work really well to like show that we're human. And if you can give a specific example too, I love the farm, a farm stand example. How you, yeah, how you show that you're human. And like I promise you know, this isn't like a fake person back here. You know what I mean?

Noah Vertefeuille [00:12:36]:
No, that's a great question. And that. And I think what's. I'll do the opposite. First, I'll. I'll kind of. I'll talk about, like, what I've seen as the, like the. You can tell that it's not.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:12:44]:
Not human is like when you see like the word uncover or like a lot of these unwords. Like, there's certain words that you'll see, like unlock. On. Yeah, unlock, uncover, launch, growth. Like, there's a lot of those words where, like, it's funny that I feel like AI gravitates towards those. And so like, when you read those, obviously you're like, okay, this is like people have started to kind of. Kind of tie that to being. Yeah, I don't just like, very, very like fake, I guess, in the.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:13:10]:
In the sense of the emails. But I think when it comes to like being more and more human, I think it's being more simple. Like, I think that's the thing too, is that a lot of times people will utilize AI as sample to make them seem smarter than they actually are or more articulate or whatever else. But I think having conversation be like talking as you. If you were, how you would really talk. Like, again, if you're doing that story, it's not about some big. And again, I'll go back to the farm example. It's not about like, hey, this is like going deep into the story of this type of pig or whatever, because that's one of the things that we raised on the farm.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:13:45]:
But it's more so like, hey, this is Dorothy. Like this. She's an awesome pig and sweet mama that we just got and we're really excited to have her on the farm. Like, having a conversation like that versus it. Like, she is actually a Berkshire S. Who that blah, blah, blah. And like, you can go on and on and on about like the. The nitty gritty.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:14:00]:
And I feel like AI Sometimes goes a lot more factual, but it's more about, again, how do you talk to your best friend who's sitting across the table from you versus trying to, again, sound smarter than you actually are and build up this Persona that is nothing like you or the brand should actually be.

Andréa Jones [00:14:15]:
Yes, I. Okay, first of all, I have this unreasonable urge to ask you more questions about the farm, even though that's not what this podcast episode is about. Sorry, listeners, Is there like a social page we can shout out or something?

Noah Vertefeuille [00:14:28]:
Yeah. Fidelis Tara Farm.

Andréa Jones [00:14:31]:
Say it again.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:14:32]:
Fidelis Terra farm F I D E L A S and then Tara is T E R R A and farm.

Andréa Jones [00:14:40]:
I love it. We're gonna put that link in the show notes just because I want it too and I want to go look, I'm like, all about, like the slow life right now, like the farm living. And with the way the world is going, I would not be surprised if we had an apocalypse. I need to know where all my farming friends are so we can go camp out and surprise. Anyways, back to marketing. One of the things that I like that you said is using more stories in your email marketing and not going for the facts all the time. And listen, y'. All listening.

Andréa Jones [00:15:12]:
You know, I love AI. I love my chatty chatgpt bestie. However, when I'm putting stuff in chatgpt, usually I have to be very, very guided in how I sound and have an entire, like, brand guide essentially for my voice. Because whatever chatty wants to do, like, its instinct is so wrong. Like, it so doesn't sound like me that it takes a lot of editing. And so I. Not saying you can't use AI, not knocking AI personally, however, don't just put in write a story about my pig. It's going to be so generic.

Andréa Jones [00:15:47]:
You have to give it more context if you do want to use AI. But even if you don't, like, lean into the stories over the facts. I mean, as humans, that's just what we crave. And so I really, really like that. Okay, kind of switching gears a little bit. Talking more about email complexity. This is something that I always want to get nosy about because in my email marketing world, so for contacts, I have about 20,000 people on my email list. I do not do, like, all these segmentations.

Andréa Jones [00:16:18]:
Usually I'm like, if you're here, you're here for marketing, and I'm probably going to send you almost everything. I have a few things that you can unsubscribe from, but you're. You're probably going to get everything. And if you don't want any of this, then you really have to unsubscribe. Okay. But I know there's probably a better way to do this. What are your thoughts on this?

Noah Vertefeuille [00:16:38]:
No, I think. I think when people hear segmentation, I feel like there can be like a paralysis analysis or paralysis with analysis, because I think that you could go so, so granular with that segmentation. But I think you can also, like, scale up to, like, very, very simple. Like, like one of the first things I like to recommend to people Are maybe there's people who only want to hear from you once a month. And so like maybe there's a time based segmentation where you say these people are once a month, these are whenever these other people are whenever I get anything new in. But then also the, maybe there's different things that people like more or less. So maybe they like a specific kind of marketing and kind of breaking it down to email versus ads versus whatever else. And I think too like you don't even necessarily need to not send every email to all those people.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:17:22]:
It might just change how you get the flow to work. So like HubSpot as an example has smart content and that's just one example. But there's a lot of other email tools that have something similar. We could actually almost reorganize the same email depending on what segment someone has kind of associated their profile. And so I think the more information you know on someone, the more you can have that conversation with them. So you can know again, like, do they, do they like this? Can you actually speak to that A little bit more around that? But also like then you know, when you have like let's say you had a segmentation around people who are in email marketing, like obviously you're going to have a different conversation with them versus someone who's just marketing in general. And so I think you can, you can really get overwhelmed with all the different examples. But I think it's, let's go back to like the highest common denominator.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:18:04]:
Let's break it into some very simple ways to start and then from there can you get a little bit more granular? And I think too like again you can go as, as deep or as shallow as you really need to. But I think I would always recommend very, at least basic segmentation because again it's, it goes back to the whole idea of having a personalized conversation versus speaking. Like in a megaphone you can speak to the whole audience who knows marketing or you can talk to people and be a lot more direct by, by kind of segmenting and knowing, okay, they definitely like this. So I know they're going to love this email.

Andréa Jones [00:18:34]:
Hmm. Okay, so where do I start with segmentation then? How do I know? How do I know? Yeah, I have too many people.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:18:42]:
No, I think that's a great question. I think so my thing is again it's funny because I think everything in marketing like people over complicate it and it goes back to the whole AI where people tend to make it. It's a lot more like technical And a lot more kind of, I guess, clinical than it really needs to be. But I think one of the things I do, especially when I first come into managing a new email account, is send out a simple survey. Like, even if it's a one to two question survey, hey, how often do you want to hear from us? What, what kind of content do you like hearing the most about? Like, what is what? What really interests you? Or what do you want to see more of? And starting kind of at that very simple level of like the timing that they want to hear from you. Because again, some people might want to hear less and some people want to hear more. Again, the highest level of content, like if you have four to five different buckets that you can kind of break your audience out into asking, which one do you like the most? And again, make it multiple choice. You can put them in each if they want to be.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:19:33]:
But then also if there's anything that they want to learn more about that's not necessarily in one of those five buckets, that helps. Again, even if it's like, hey, I want to learn about like new innovations, like, okay, that's even another bucket. Or you can almost use that as like kind of mini user base from within your brand where you're able to go back to them directly and again, have even more personalized conversations. Hey, what do you want to learn about? Because I think the rest of the audience actually might want to learn more about that as well. So I think again, it's keeping it simple and thinking about, like, if you have a new friend, what are some of the questions you'd ask them? Kind of like, first and foremost, just get them to know them on a basic level and then from there you can have a deeper conversation.

Andréa Jones [00:20:06]:
Yeah, I feel like maybe that's my problem because like when I meet people, I'm always like, so what's your opinion on like some really deep topic? And I never go surface level. So yes, you're right. I should do the surveys. I love surveys. I used to do these all the time and I don't know what, like over the years I just stopped. So I should start doing it again. That's a really good place to start. Okay, so what's the one question that you wish people would ask you when it comes to email marketing?

Noah Vertefeuille [00:20:31]:
That is a fantastic question. And I think there's a lot of different questions. I think one question that people don't ask enough is like, why or why email marketing should kind of be a part of their strategy. So I think a Lot of times people think email has been around for such a long time, people kind of discount it as kind of a thing that they do. Like they do digital marketing and email. Like it's part something that gets looped in. And so one thing I wish people would ask more is like, why you should have email. And then also what is.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:21:03]:
What is the purpose of email marketing in general? I think again, it is that communication and that. That conversation. So a lot of the other channels on digital marketing are more so about influence, location, so ads about getting people who have either just barely heard of you with retargeting or have never heard of you, and you want to get them to know about more about you. Social media, same thing. You're having some conversations on social media, but again, it's more of that broadcasting. Whereas email marketing is such an important part of the overarching digital marketing strategy. And again, people don't ask about that enough or why they should have that in their strategy. But I think again, it's a core piece where all the other pieces of digital marketing kind of really come to email.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:21:42]:
Like, email is like the. The point where they all come to because even it's their website, it goes into email marketing, whether even, like I said, video or other content goes like email marketing. And that's again, where you can have that. That conversation and you can. You can kind of retain current customers, you can get new customers and really educate them on who the brand is. There's so many things that you can do. It's really a really versatile tool and it's continually evolving. And so it's not something that it was created 20, 30 years ago and now we're just done with email marketing.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:22:09]:
It's an. It's an obsolete tool. It's something that actually really is something that's important and should be continually used and kind of built into this overarching strategy.

Andréa Jones [00:22:17]:
Yeah. Okay. I love that. Thank you. Okay, so I know you've got a free resource. And y', all, if you're listening and you're like, yes, I'm going all in on email, but I don't have enough people on your. My email list. Tell us about your free resource.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:22:32]:
Definitely. So the free resources from Overwhelm to Optimize, Practical guide for running ads that drive real business growth. And I think again, the idea with this resource and the reason I wanted to offer it up to y' all is that again, email, I think is. Is the core. You can't like people oftentimes too think about email as like I can do cold email and get a bunch of new people. It really isn't what email should be used for. Email, again, should be for nurturing and building relationships with people you already have contact with. And so the first step is that you need to get people to get in contact with you.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:23:02]:
And I think advertising is one of those ways, digital advertising in particular, because it has a lot more trackability. Again, there's a lot of problems with whether it's Google Ads, Facebook ads, et cetera. No one really knows where to start. And that's kind of my MO from the very beginning is how do you make this as simple as humanly possible, where you can start something really easily, and then as you learn, you scale it up. And so I think the starting point there is on the advertising, and then that then folds into the through the greater email and the greater digital marketing strategy. But this guide is something that I created at Timberbrook in order to make it a lot simpler to start that ad journey so that you are able to have conversations with people. But it's getting people the first step in the funnel so you can walk them down the funnel and kind of hold their hands to be a customer, and then hopefully a longtime customer after that.

Andréa Jones [00:23:46]:
Yay. Awesome. I'll put that link in the show notes, y'all. Onlinedrea.com slash 379. Noah, thank you so much for being on the show today.

Noah Vertefeuille [00:23:54]:
Thank you so much for having me.

Andréa Jones [00:23:55]:
And thank you, dear listener, for tuning into another episode of the Mindful Marketing podcast. Guess what? We are in the middle of the Instagram Bootcamp right now. If you want to learn all about Instagram, go to onlinedre.com Bootcamp Sign up for free. We're going all week long for this challenge, and you gotta be there live in order to get the challenge bonuses. So I will see you there, and I'll see you on social media next week. I'm talking all about social media manager versus social media strategist versus content creator. What even is the difference? You'll have to tune in next week to find out. That's all for today.

Andréa Jones [00:24:28]:
Bye for now.