Marketing Automation Secrets from the Experts with Colie James, Dama Jue, and Brianca Kirkman

Andréa Jones (00:00):
Oh, marketing automations. Sometimes we love them. Sometimes they leave us crying in the shower in the morning. Today we're talking about all of the things, marketing automations and how they actually can help us make our business better and smoother so that we're not pulling our hair out on doing the same repeated task over and over again. I'm excited for my guests for this round table episode. Let's get into it. You're listening to the Mindful Marketing Podcast. I'm Andréa Jones.

(00:37):
I've recorded over 300 podcast episodes. Yeah, it's a lot of podcast episodes and I've tried a lot of different virtual recording studios, but my favorite has been Riverside. Riverside makes their virtual recording studio look so profess. My guests love it. Plus I also low key love recording YouTube videos in here as well because it's so easy to use. My team also loves Riverside because it spits out separate audio video tracks making editing easy, breezy, lemon squeezy, and if you want a little magic, they've got this tool called Magic Clips, which uses AI to take your video and turn it into perfect social media sized videos. I'm talking vertical videos for TikTok and Instagram, Facebook reels, all the places you can post these videos with the captions included, and you don't have to hunt and search for that perfect clip. So if you want to try this out for yourself, click the link that goes with this video. Or if you're listening to the audio on the podcast, it's in the show notes. Okay, click that link. Use the 15% off coupon code. It's Drea, DREA and try Riverside for yourself. Thank you. Riverside.

(01:49):
Hi. Hello. Okay, we have three amazing guests today. I want everyone to introduce yourself. I'm going to start with Colie James, who is a repeat here on the podcast Colie. Introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about you.

Colie James (02:02):
Hi everyone. I'm Colie James. I am a client experience system strategist. I live right outside of Boulder, Colorado, and I'm simply obsessed with creating systems that stop you from doing the tedious admin work in the backend of your business and use a little automation to get some of that time back.

Andréa Jones (02:20):
Beautiful. Love it. Succinct. Can we match this energy? I love it, Colie. Thank you. Dama, over to you. Introduce yourself.

Dama Jue (02:29):
Hi, I'm Dama Jue. I'm from San Francisco, but I live in New York and I'm a funnel strategist. So I used to build funnels for people, but now I'm a little bit more hands-off. I'm also a Thrivecart expert, and I love to help people kind of wrap their mind around the tech, not just the tech, but also the options for the tech and the opportunities for marketing automation, all the automation you never knew you needed because you need it and you will love it once we get it set up in your business. So I'm all about high impact, low stress training, stuff you can implement in an afternoon. And of course, I also have thrivecart Template Shop, which has beautiful full funnel templates and also trainings and all that jazz. So two separate brands, Dama Jue, which is not thrivecart stuff, email marketing automation, marketing strategy, and then thrivecart template shop. But it's just me. It's just me, one girl, two brands.

Andréa Jones (03:19):
I love it. That's how I found you, by the way, was through thrivecart. I switched to thrivecart and I was like, oh, I don't like these. I need to find a, and then I found you and I was like, thank you. Thank you, Dama. Brie, over to you. Tell us a little bit about you and your business.

Brianca Kirkman (03:36):
Hey friends. I'm Brianca Kirkman. I'm the founder and CEO of Bianca Johnson and Company. I got married and that's why my name is different, but I'm a marketing and automation strategist. Basically what I like to do is help my clients implement their marketing strategy using simple marketing automation so that way they can incorporate an authentic brand personality, launch sustainable offers, and grow their business.

Andréa Jones (04:04):
Yes, beautiful. And I actually stalk you on social media. That's how I know you, because I feel like, and I've been on your email list for a while, so I feel like when I wanted to have this conversation, I was like, I know who to ask. Yeah. Okay, so I'm going to start at the beginning and I'd love to know what inspired you to start down the automation path, the marketing automation path. I know for me personally, there were a few moments where when I started my business doing what we all do, I had a Google sheet or a Google Doc as my everything, and then manually emailing out things to clients, and I was like, there's got to be a better way. So I wonder if there's an origin story. Colie, let's start with you.

Colie James (04:48):
I was trying to automate just about everything that I could in my business, and so I just landed on marketing seems to be the only thing that I'm still doing manually. What can I possibly put into my business to automate that part as well? Because the client experience part, I mean, even before I was setting systems up for other people, it was a big thing that I dedicated time to improving the backend of my own business. And so then when I started getting into email marketing and funnels and ads and all of this, I was like, okay, there's got to be a better way for me to automate this just as well as the client experience that I was giving my photography clients on the backend.

Andréa Jones (05:25):
Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I love that. Dama, what about you? What's your marketing origin story?

Dama Jue (05:31):
Mine actually goes back to before business. So before I started an online business, I was deep into Pinterest, but for baking and gardening and travel and stuff. And so my favorite scroll thing was to scroll Pinterest, and I saw this random blog post and it talked about if this, then that. I don't know if you've ever heard of it, but it's like an automation software for normies, not for business people, which I was interested in, but it didn't really go anywhere. And then I started my business and I still had this in the back of my head of how can I tell it? If I do this, then you do that. I just loved that concept and the name if this, then that sort of just stuck in my head. So as soon as I started my business, I became a immediately obsessed, you have this balance when you're brand new of doing everything as cheaply as possible, but then when you were like, what can I do with this a hundred free zaps?

(06:23):
What can I do with the free tier of mailer light? How can I get everything for free? But very quickly was like, okay, now you're getting clients and you're booked out. You better just automate some crap lady because you are dragging. You are. It's not a good look. So yeah, as soon as I kind of got going with my service provider business, I was like, oof, automate all the things. Let's go. Let's set up the teeny tiny little nerdy rules so that I can work less and if I'm working, let it be in revenue generating activity instead of me doing the tedious copy and paste yawn stuff.

Andréa Jones (06:55):
Yes, you unlocked a memory with if this and that. I forgot that that was a thing. It's like the precursor to Zapier. Zapier, however you say it, memory unlocked. I remember too, back in the day with Hootsuite, I had multiple Hootsuite accounts. You only could have, what was it, three brands attached or three accounts attached. So I was hustling freelance mode 2014. 10 years ago, Andrea and I had a free Hootsuite account for each client, so I was like logging out, logging back in again. I was like, there's got to be a better way. Oh, I can pay for the automation. There you

Dama Jue (07:30):
Go. Oh, open my wallet. LL,

Andréa Jones (07:33):
Yeah. Oh times. That's funny. Thank you, Dama. That's great. Bree, how about you? What's your marketing automation origin story?

Brianca Kirkman (07:41):
So yeah, so I actually started my business while I was working in corporate as a digital director. And so when I worked in that role, I worked crazy hours, almost a hundred hours a week, but I still had this business, and so I was like, I have to figure out how to operationalize this business so that it runs while I still am present in my corporate job and that they're not over interfering with one another. And so that's what I did. I just started thinking about if this is what the strategy is for me, how much of this can I automate and what does it take for me to do that? And then I would start implementing those strategies and I would talk about it and I would share behind the scenes. And even in my membership, when I talk to my students, I'm always telling them, you didn't start this business so you could work a hundred hours a week. And I know that from experience. So automation allows you to create more flexibility in your schedule. And so I really have been focused, especially once I had a kid on how can I use automation so that way I can work 20 hours a week or less, but still be able to serve my clients, still feel like I have an omnipresence online, still not feel disconnected, but also not feel like I have to be everywhere all the time, communicating all the time. And so automation has kind of saved my business and my mental health.

Andréa Jones (09:05):
I mean, after a hundred hour weeks, I don't even know if you have any time energy capacity for anything.

Brianca Kirkman (09:11):
No.

Andréa Jones (09:12):
Wow. Props to you built out of necessity. So I want to talk a little bit about automations, and you all touched on this a little bit, but automations save us in so many different ways, so many different ways. Even thinking back to me building my first email list on MailChimp, the idea that I could email a list of people consistently, they all received the same message at the same time, was mind blowing to me when I started my business. I didn't know that's how they did it. I thought it was a B, C, C on everything. So marketing automations save us so much time and they streamline things. They make us look professional. I'd love to hear a story about a time where marketing automation saved your bacon. It saved the day. Colie, let's start with you.

Colie James (10:05):
It's not really a marketing automation, it's more a client experience. But since I was in the process of selling, we'll just call it marketing, I have it set up to where when someone is booking a consultation call, I get a text message like Zapier is taking that information and sending me a text message. And I guess I had accidentally forgot to mark my vacation on my calendar as busy, and it was marked as free. And I was at Disneyland and got a little text message that someone had booked a call for the next day, and I was like, no, wait, my calendar is blocked off. What are you talking about? So I mean, if I didn't have that automation and I was totally in vacay mode, I would've completely ghosted that person because I would not have looked at my calendar on vacation to see that someone had snuck in because it was on my calendar for four full days, but somehow I forgot to click the busy button. So I mean, it didn't make me look, I mean, I set up automations and systems. My systems have to work, so that was good. I let them know I was at Disneyland, and of course everybody knows that I go to Disneyland constantly. So they were like, oh, don't worry about it. We'll just chat next week. I was like, thank you, I appreciate that.

Andréa Jones (11:14):
I think that's the most unique way I've heard of music. Zapier, I love it because now you can't miss it. You can't miss when those meetings come in. I have so many times where I had one yesterday where I got the reminder of a meeting that wasn't on my calendar, and I was like, whoa, wait a second. This isn't on my calendar. So I was grateful for the reminder of it. But yeah, it's like those automations help save us because if we didn't have them, we would be out here just floating in space like blah, blah, blah. Everything's great. I love that. Thank you. Colie. Dama, over to you. What's a time that a marketing automation saved your bacon?

Dama Jue (11:55):
I'm going to answer that, but I have a bonus thing on what Colie said. Sometimes when I go out of town, airlines let you have free wifi now. So sometimes I like to book launches for while I'm out of town, so I can be on vacation and just have the notifications rolling through, but you don't always get them. So I like to set up a zap where it goes from Thrive Cart to WhatsApp and I'm just getting little messages while I'm chilling on the plane, watching a movie and eating my snacks. It's just another fun way to, yes, remind me of things, but also can I just take a moment to celebrate the joy of getting a sale while I'm at 37,000 feet anyway,

Andréa Jones (12:33):
Okay. Also, I have to say Dama launching while on vacation is wild to me. I need a whole, I'm not that brave. My anxiety I do all the

Dama Jue (12:44):
Time.

Andréa Jones (12:46):
Congrats to you. I need to take that course.

Dama Jue (12:49):
I do it often and it's different from I'm creating a thing and there's a live element. But if I'm doing a sale, I just had my fifth anniversary in my business, so over Memorial Day weekend, I slapped together, not slapped together, but I planned an executed a sale and the emails were ready. I was feeling good about that, and then I saw a deal to go to the Dominican Republic. So I was like, it looks like I'm going to the DR for the weekend. And we're at the pool and there's Stripe notifications coming through, and we came home and the sale ended. So I like to be home for when the sale ends, but I don't like to be in my business, working in my business during mid cart. If the cart opens on Wednesday and closes on the following Tuesday, that weekend needs to have distraction because there's that mid cartt lull and I need to not be thinking about it. So vacation or I'll plan a hike or something, just random little for me, it's actually good for my anxiety to not be there during mid car or to be very engaged in something else during mid car. But

Andréa Jones (13:53):
Anyway, okay, just continue.

Dama Jue (13:56):
Yeah. Okay. So you asked me when marketing saved my bacon. This has happened a lot of times basically all the time, but one that immediately stood out to me is I have this system where every single sale I make gets pulled into Airtable and it categorizes them. I can see my quarterly sales, my monthly sales, my all time sales. I can see it by type by offer. And what I love about that is that when I don't have to do anything about it, two, I use webhooks, so it does not even cost me a zap. So there's joy there, but it lets me see a bird's eye view of how are my offers doing? How has this offer done lifetime? How has it done just in this quarter? And I can see even by category like, oh, okay, Q1, people were buying this and then in Q2 they're buying templates and now I can actually see that.

(14:46):
So it's really helped me to see the bird's eye view sometimes kind of hard to see all the stats and then see them in a way that is easy for your brain to interpret a pie chart in an Airtable, not base but interface. Thank you, but like a pie chart or a bar chart or something like that. So it's helped me make decisions when it's time to pull an offer, when it's time to adjust the price of things, when it's time to, I'm about to pull this offer shut up. No, I'm not. It's still making sales calm, slow down. So it's let me see the data at a bird's eye view and make the data has made the decision and it not me and my tender emotions. I just have the emotions, just need to get on board with what the data is. So that has saved me from pulling offers or from doing things like maybe an emotional reaction, like no one's buying it then or whatever. It just helped me make that system in general takes the emotion out of the sales, and I also don't have to do anything to create it. I created the interface and the base and then it just populates these cutie pi little charts for me, which are a joy to look at. So that helps a lot.

Andréa Jones (15:56):
I love that. And I love that you said too, the emotions aren't running the show. The data is the data, so I love that too. Thank you, dma. I love it. Dama. Sorry. Love that. Bree, over to you. What is a time, tell us a moment when marketing automation saved your bacon?

Brianca Kirkman (16:11):
Yeah, so this is kind of a glimpse scenario, but a real life one. Recently I had to take an unexpected bereavement leave. And because all of my automations were set up, I was able to onboard clients into my membership. They were able to come seamlessly into the membership, complete their onboarding forms, schedule their first call. So I was out, completely checked out from my phone and from my computer, but people are still going through my funnels, they're still onboarding into products, into programs and things like that. And I bled for bereavement on the first day of my launch. And so it was, nice is not the right word, but it was nice to know that even though I was out, that my business did not stop because of something that happened in my personal life.

Andréa Jones (17:02):
I feel like this is one of those moments where we can stop and be grateful for the business because in a traditional job setting, it can be hard to take the time you need. I think depending on your job, there's a certain number of bereavement days you get, and it's like this is the only time you get to take the time you need. What if you need more? Sometimes you literally can't get it, but because we get the freedom that comes with building our own business, we get to decide those things and then you get to take the time you need while still having the marketing automations in the background. So I love that.

(17:38):
Next question, I want to talk about tools in tech. I know tools in tech sometimes can be the end of the puzzle, but sometimes as well, it's really, really helpful to hear the tools that other people are using. I'm an Airtable girly through and through, give me the bases, the interfaces, the forms, even now have conditional formatting, which I love. However, I have dipped my toe into notion and I'm like, oh, okay, I can see how this could work as well. So I'm loving all of the marketing automation tools and I'd love to know what tools you cannot live without and why Colie? Let's start with you.

Colie James (18:20):
I mean, I'm going to say Airtable, I could pick another one, but literally I just wrote a blog post and I was basically identifying and giving bullet points for each hub that I have in my business and what I can do inside of each one of the hubs. And I was like, wow, that's amazing. I mean, I wake up every day and I'm like, what can Airtable do for me today? As Dama said, I zap everything in the Airtable. I use it to manage my podcast. I'm now using it to manage all of the rest of my marketing content, like the Evergreen emails and those kinds of things. So I love Airtable. If I have to pick another one that's maybe more focused on actual marketing, I would say that I really dig Metricool, and I know that you do too, as a scheduling planner piece of software.

(19:06):
I love that it not only lets me or my team members schedule out content for weeks at a time, but also all that data that it gives you when you log in. So I no longer have my team members write down what our starting Instagram follower account was at the beginning and the end of the month, or YouTube subscribers, none of that because when you log into Metricool, it gives you all of that data for all of the marketing channels that you have connected. And so it's kind of like a two for one. You automate the posting of your content, but also you no longer have to manually write down all of your data related to the marketing so that you can make those kinds of decisions of, should I continue to do this or what should I do next?

Andréa Jones (19:49):
Yes, I love Metricool. I've been using them for a little less than a year now, and their analytics hub, it's like Chef's Kiss, this is what I was looking for. I tried them all. I tried them all, and they're not great, and I love them for the analytics too. Okay, cool. Two for one. Love it. Dama, over to you. What is the marketing automation tool you cannot live without and why?

Dama Jue (20:14):
This is tough because I truly, two for one, I cannot live without thrivecart or Airtable, but push comes to shove a rock solid checkout and core system, like a full funnel system built in. thrivecart is an absolute non-negotiable for me. I just have to have it because I need to be able to be binging grays and eating popcorn and something like that. And then someone lands on my Thrive On Sales page, built in Thrive Cart, grabs the main offer, grabs the bump, thrive Cart, sends them to a success page and rolls them, sends them their login link. They get an automated email because Drip and Thrivecart are connected, and it's like a cozy little welcome and an invite to join my affiliate program. They can join my affiliate program, grab a link, promote, earn, and even get paid without me getting off of the couch or being awake or being hands-on, or literally doing nothing for it. Just chilling and getting the text messages like this is amazing. So I love Airtable and I use it every single day in my business. But yeah, the one that I couldn't possibly live without is just a rock solid, my rock solid system inside Thrivecart. And so I love that. Yeah, I mean, if that's not the online Biz Dream, then I don't know what is. But yes, Airtable is a very close second because honey, I love my web hooks. I love my little bases, my little automations, my little systems. I love it.

Andréa Jones (21:37):
Yay. I love that. I need to dive deeper into Thrivecart. I've been using it for maybe two years now, and I have it set up, but the only thing I don't have set up is the one click upsell. That's the next thing on my list where I'm like, I've got, there's a Dama course on this. I need to dive into this module.

Dama Jue (21:57):
That particular course is my absolute highest ROI course, because when people implement it, they're like, oh. And they finally get how upsells work in Thrive, like, oh, oh, it all clicks. And right now upsells and bumps are like an extra 20% on every single launch of 20% of every single launch revenue is upsells and bumps. So let's talk.

Andréa Jones (22:24):
Yeah,

Colie James (22:25):
I have fell victim to a few of her upsells and downsells. I'm just saying, I go to my one thing

Dama Jue (22:30):
I like to make irresistible. I don't play around. I came to get it done. Yes.

Andréa Jones (22:38):
I love that. Thank you, Dama. Okay, Brie, over to you. What's the number one marketing automation tool you cannot live without and why?

Brianca Kirkman (22:46):
Definitely Airtable. I use it for everything, especially my onboarding experience because I can send emails and I can follow up, even discovery calls. You book a discovery call with me, you're getting those follow up emails. You're getting emails if you book a discovery call, but you don't enroll into a service immediately, those follow up. That entire system that I've built in Airtable pretty much runs my business 24 7. I feel like once you know how to do it, it's like you could do anything in Airtable. So I really love it.

Andréa Jones (23:23):
So are you sending emails from, is it SendOwl that's in Airtable, or is it just the

Brianca Kirkman (23:28):
No, I just send them straight from Gmail in Airtable.

Andréa Jones (23:32):
Wait, how did I not know about this? Are

Colie James (23:34):
You not doing this?

Brianca Kirkman (23:35):
Really?

Dama Jue (23:36):
Oh my God, you're about to. We're going

Colie James (23:38):
To all chat when this is done.

Dama Jue (23:40):
Yeah, we're about to blow your mind.

Brianca Kirkman (23:43):
It's the most phenomenal thing ever. I love it.

Andréa Jones (23:47):
Wait, is this the confirmation email if, sorry, y'all on the podcast, you're

Brianca Kirkman (23:52):
Seeing

Andréa Jones (23:52):
The reveal?

Brianca Kirkman (23:54):
Yeah, you can send any kind of email. So let's say someone booked a discovery call and you wanted to, they booked a discovery call, you had the call, but they didn't enroll in a service. And so two days later, you want to send an email that's like, Hey, Andrea, I was so excited to chat with you during our discovery call on X, Y, Z date, and you can insert the date because you have that information in the table because Airtable and Calendly are connected and can, and it feels so custom because all of the information is plugged in from connections that you have with other tools and software that you have. So you could send upsell emails like using Dama's system that's like, Hey, I know that you purchased X, Y, Z product and you can pull in the product because it's in your Airtable base. And you could say this would be an excellent compliment to that, and you could set it up so it runs automatically and it's wonderful. And I think because obviously you can do segmentation and things like that in ConvertKit or Klaviyo, et cetera, obviously you could do that, but to me there's something about it coming from a Gmail in a very hands-off, low touch, organic, we're friends kind of way. That just works perfectly and I love it.

Andréa Jones (25:14):
So I have, my whole week is going to be completely redirected to this project now because I am like, where have I been? So we have a question here from one of our members of the Savvy Social School. Allen's asking, are you basically using Airtable as a CRM? So when someone books a call with you, it goes, okay,

Brianca Kirkman (25:33):
Yeah, I don't really consider it as that because I do have ddo and I send contracts and things like that through Dubsado. So I don't consider Airtable to be my CRM. I consider it to be more of a data manager, just where all of the data from all of the multiple places are in this one place where I can see it at a glance. And then from there, I think about what I want that customer journey to be, and I'm able to direct my customers on that journey using the automations and Airtable, and it's just much simpler. So I don't really consider it to be a CRM, I'm not looking at it in that way, but it does help me to nurture them along whatever path they're on based on a decision or an action that they've taken in a way that I wouldn't if I was marketing to someone who I hadn't had a previous engagement with, if that makes sense.

Andréa Jones (26:25):
Yeah, yeah, it makes total sense. You've had a conversation with them so you can personalize experience after that. And even

Dama Jue (26:32):
If they're not on your email list, they'll get that email. So even if they were previously on your list and they unsubscribe, they'll get that email. You can automate Slack things with Airtable. You can automate a Google Calendar, invite you around the ACT forms.

Colie James (26:49):
Yeah,

Dama Jue (26:50):
You got to poke around the actions.

Colie James (26:53):
And I will just say, because the person specifically asked about the CRM as someone who sets up things like Dubsado and HoneyBook, I am recommending to more and more people now that you use your actual CRM to book someone, which is to nurture them into signing the proposal, signing the contract, and then paying the invoice. And then so many people are now moving over the rest of their client experience into Airtable because of the way that you can look at everyone at once, and you can set up these kind of if then conditional automations on the backend that none of the CRMs allow us to do at this point.

Andréa Jones (27:31):
Wild, completely derailed, but also delightfully. So because I am going to dive both feet in to sending emails through Airtable, which for some reason I didn't know was a thing before. Now, I thought you had to have a tool to do this, and maybe this is a newer thing. So

Colie James (27:52):
There's two things, Andrea. There's one that says send email, and then there's one that says send Gmail. You just need to activate the send Gmail. You log in one time and then for it's done. Yeah,

Andréa Jones (28:04):
See, there you go. And here I was saying, so we used Airtable for influencer management for one of our clients probably three years ago now. And so we purchased a separate tool, send Fox, that's what it was. I said, send out, but send Fox so we could email our influencers based on certain parameters. Did they participate in this last campaign or have they not participated yet? All of those things, which I knew I could do, but now you're telling me I can connect it to Gmail. My world has opened up, and I appreciate all of you for this conversation. Okay, we're going to take a quick break when we come back, I have more specific questions for each of you when we get back, but first a word from our sponsors.

(28:55):
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(29:38):
Alright, and we're back. So I have for each of you specifically, and I want to start with Dama, how do you balance the world of automations while also maintaining a personal touch with all of the things that you do?

Dama Jue (29:54):
Okay, so this might be controversial, but everything written in my business, pretty much every email is written by me. I think AI can do a lot of things, but what she can't do is right for me, she cannot do that. I need my email, everything. My emails sound like the way that I talk because I literally am just opening up drip and spit balling, so all emails sound like me. So I think that adds this personal touch because I really just talk to people. My tone is very casual, informal, friendly, and AI just can't do that, I feel like. So anyway, I write it all. I don't use AI for any of that stuff, and I am always looking for different ways to bring in personalization to things. So things like obviously their merge merge fields for their name or this and that, but I do a really careful tracking with my email list of source, what brought them into my world.

(30:54):
So it was that collab that I did with Megan, or was it that summit that I spoke in? So every single new lead gets tracked with a source, and so I can remind them like, Hey, we first met via blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like Andrea Jones podcast. And so I can add that information there. And so I like to pull those things in. I usually, yeah, I'm always looking for ways to pull in personalization. I'm a natural question asker, so I like to ask a lot of questions so people can reply. And I may not reply straight away, but I always prioritize if somebody replied to one of my marketing emails that I automated, especially my forever funnel or my nurture sequence, I prioritize making sure I get back to them. And so that is a detached sort of automation world, but I'm still the beating heart behind it. And so just trying to bring in my voice, my sound and making sure that if they are engaging, then I'm engaging right back with them.

Andréa Jones (31:54):
Yeah, I love that you add that human touch. I think there's going to be a premium on the human side of things because AI can technically do these things. We don't really want it because they can't come up with the stories that we have, our personal experiences. And even as much as I love AI and the tools copywriting, ain't it, I got so frustrated yesterday with some copy that it was just coming across so stale. I was like, ai, just write this. RuPaul would say it, and she went too far. I was like, no, no. Okay, nevermind. I don't want any of this and it's all terrible. I'll just write it myself. So yeah, I agree with you. As amazing as the robots are not quite for the copywriting, not for me. Okay, great. I love that. Thank you. Dama. Next question goes to Colie. What's the most innovative automation campaign you've run and give us some of the results.

Colie James (32:52):
Okay, I want to make sure that I mention this one because it had an incredibly small number of people, but I feel like the return people are going to be like, wow, you made $7,000 off of that. We haven't talked yet about ManyChat. So ManyChat is an AI bot, which you can attach to your Instagram, and they bought it now. So there's no, should you use it, shouldn't you use it? They're penalizing you if you do. I mean, it is an Instagram product now, so when you attach it, there's no fear of them penalizing you. But I was planning on offering HoneyBook services. I had been strictly a ddo girl. I said some really mean ugly things about HoneyBook for years. I take them all back now, well, I take most of them back, but I was introducing HoneyBook into my business and I was like, I should do a wait list for HoneyBook.

(33:41):
I had planned on doing a course, I was doing VIP days, so I just put it out on Instagram and I only did it twice. I just said, Hey guys, I mean, you've heard me talk about HoneyBook, but I am going to be doing beta offers for HoneyBook soon. If you would like that information, please DM me the word HoneyBook or reply to this particular post, and I will add you to the wait list. Now, I only had 12 people click the link or do the HoneyBook. Right. Out of those 12 people, 10 people finished the automation, which in this case was, give me your name, give me your email. So off of 10 people, I made seven grand. I think seven of the 10 ended up being purchasers of beta. And I mean, you don't want hundreds of people to get your beta. You just want some people to do it so that you can run it through, you can make the improvements, and then you can sell it at full price or whatever it is that you want to do for the next step. So I loved the fact that all I did was two posts, 12 people started, 10 people finished, seven people ended up buying. And I will say that one of those two people who didn't finish the automation, she was actually the first person to hire me to do HoneyBook full price. She didn't finish the automation, but yet still she was still following me. She was still paying attention. And so when I announced it, she paid the full price. So $7,000 off of two posts. I think that's a really good return on investment.

Andréa Jones (35:07):
Yeah, I agree. And I love Manychat, but it's a little bit controversial. Have you heard any of the controversy around it where people, the

Colie James (35:15):
Current new one where they're telling you not to do the DM words? I mean, yes, but also it's still working. So I mean, because I got such a large return on investment on such a small number of people. I mean, HoneyBook is penalizing me anyways. I don't know about you guys, but less than I swear, half a percent of the people who follow me are actually seeing my stuff.

Andréa Jones (35:38):
Oh, you mean Instagram?

Colie James (35:39):
Yes. I mean Instagram. So I mean, whether I'm using ManyChat or not, it's bad. At least it's bad for me. So I'm working on moving towards not really focusing. I mean, I'm working on more emails and blogging and the podcast, but I mean, I just feel like I'm already getting penalized on Instagram. And so using ManyChat, if it's saving me the automations, I don't care that I'm possibly getting penalized for it. It's all good.

Andréa Jones (36:03):
Yeah, I'm team ManyChat as well. I think that there are some people who don't like that they have to put the keyword personally, and so it feels like they're on some sort of mission to say Mancha, nobody likes it. And I'm like the data showing on my edge that people actually take way more action with this comment, the keyword situation versus click on the profile, then click on the link in the bio, then look through all my links that I have here, then click on that link, then go to the page and enter your email. It's already too many steps. And so I like that I can say, DM me this keyword, and then in the DM I can say, what's your email address? And then let me get you this thing right now. And it connects to my convert kit. And I love it

Colie James (36:47):
Because most people don't want to leave. I mean, I treasure my morning scroll. There is almost nothing that you are going to get for me to stop watching reels with my first cup of coffee in bed in the morning. And if you have sparked my interest, I don't want to click on five different links like you said, and then go to your website and type in my stuff on your thing, and then I wait for an email. No, I would rather just do it all on the DMs and then there's a record. If I wanted to know, oh, Andrea had that thing, but I can't remember what her name was or what the thing was, I could just scroll through my messages and see what it was that I sent. The worst thing is seeing something on Instagram and it refreshes and it's gone or whatever it is before you take action. And then you're like, oh my God, it's gone. And then you can't remember anything about it. That is just the most frustrating thing for me. So if people make it easy for me to opt in and say yes while I'm on my scroll, not having to really leave Instagram and then come back, I mean that's bonus points for you. It's more likely that I am going to buy whatever it is that you are trying to sell me.

Andréa Jones (37:53):
Yeah, make it easy for me. I love it. I love it. Okay, Brie, over to you. I'm curious about what trends you're seeing emerging, specifically with marketing automations. What should we prepare for as business owners?

Brianca Kirkman (38:07):
So I think that a lot of people are really, I feel like for a long time it was so focused, internet was so focused on build it big and hire the big team and make it super complicated. They weren't telling you to make it super complicated, but it was becoming these very elaborate, complicated businesses. And I think now what we're seeing is this desire for things to be simpler for us to go back to the basics for us to think about how we were doing business before we were kind of bamboozled into this idea of having big teams and scaling and things like that. And so I think with that is you see a lot of people really tuning their, or pruning their tools. They're getting rid of all these tools that they're paying for, and they're trying to think about how do I run this business on the least amount of tech with the simplest automations and save myself the cost of three or two team members.

(39:09):
And I honestly really like this trend because I think that a lot of times what we saw when people were trying to automate their entire business or trying to hire people to run their entire business for them was that they had these long elaborate kind of ridiculous automations, and they had no idea where anything, if something broke down. So if a client came through and they didn't get the right email or they didn't get the right link, you had no idea where to go to find it to fix it or update the automation, et cetera, because you had 15 tools connected to one automation or you had seven hands touching the same process or things like that. And so I think with us going back to a more simpler process for these things, I just think it's going to be overall more efficient, and I think it will take away some of the time that we've spent on the back end of our business and allow us to think more innovatively about how we show up and how we connect with our clients and our students and focus more on building community versus building this elaborate spider web mess, chaotic mess of automations and team members and things like that.

Andréa Jones (40:21):
Yeah. Yeah, I agree. If someone else had set up my Zapier for me, I wouldn't know. I wouldn't even know what I was looking at. I feel like I'm the only one on my team who truly knows how everything's connected. And you're right, we don't need sometimes all of the team and all of the multiple steps. Let's make it easy. So yeah, I love this trend for us collectively, and I hope we continue doing it. Okay. Next question I have is for Dama. How do you manage your time and energy to avoid becoming overly reliant on automation?

Dama Jue (41:01):
That's a really interesting question. I am not sure I could become overly reliant on automation, but because I have so many automated systems set up for sales, for customer service, for nurture, for that, for all kinds of different things that I can easily, it's gotten to the point that I can easily check out or submarine for periods, which is great. You should submarine on the weekend and enjoy your time with your family or whatever. It's good for balance, but it's not great when I submarine too long, and then I sort of feel kind of disconnected from my audience or from my students. So I sell templates and all self-study stuff. I do a group program twice a year, and I'm very intentional about enrollment and when it opens and closes because I like to disconnect when I usually have a trip planned for when the cohort ends because I'm kind of ready for it, but I start to feel a little too distant or disconnected from my audience.

(42:01):
So when I feel that way, because the automations are doing their magic and I just want to interact with people, I go hang out on threads, which is where I see most of y'all. I'm going to need to connect with Brie on threads, but I'll go hang out on threads. I'll peek at the support tickets that my assistant has already answered for me just because kind of curious what's on people's minds. And then I like to do kind of random pop-up events. I'll host a random live q and a as a bonus for something, or if like, oh, I'm deciding to add a new thing to this offer, and I'll do a little discount for it. And for that week only I'll do a bonus q and a or a bonus, like a coaching call or something like that. So I like to experiment with this, keeping my self-study boundaries, which is kind of good for my mental health, but then adding in little spurts of heavy interaction heavy people because I don't want to feel disconnected, but I can't mentally emotionally sustain it all the time.

(43:00):
So I've experimented with some interactive things that accompany that are short term, that accompanies self-study things like I recently did an asynchronous ask me anything. I used video, ask for that video, ask, connected to an Airtable base connected to softer nerd alert. So all the nerdy things. But yeah, I did this asynchronous ask me anything. I've done Voxer office hours. I really want to experiment with a telegram channel, like a broadcast channel next. Or I just kind of ran, do a random zoom q and a call where I'm just like, let's just vibe. Let's vibe a little bit. What are you guys working on? Where are you getting stuck? Because that also helps me have content ideas. And sometimes you just don't know what they don't know until you're interacting with your people. And one other last little thing where I like to take the automation out of my business and just be live and very, when you're live, you really can't hide behind.

(43:57):
You can't put on polish. It's just like, I'm real. I messed up this. So this slide has a typo or whatever. So I like to do, every six weeks or so, I'll do a live training where I'll prepare all the tutorials and templates in advance. But the strategy portion of it, I love to do that live because it puts me in connection with people. And it would be fine if it were prerecorded, but I like seeing the light bulb moments popping off on their faces or on the chat. I actually encourage people to be camera on or let them know your face is not going to be in the, so feel free to be camera on if you want. I like to see the light bulb moments. I like to see the follow-up questions. I just like to see that engagement happening in the chat that I'm not like drop a one if you're whatever, trying to force the engagement.

(44:43):
They're just like, they're feeling it. They're having a light bulb moment. Or I'll say a thing and they'll be like, oh my God, yes. I've always wondered about that. So I like seeing that strategy come to life. And so seeing them kind up get lit to implement it is just fun. So I'll incorporate periodic live things, and then I'm like, okay, I'm going to separate again with my people Nest. That was a lot of people. And then I'll kind of go back to my little self-study corner, but every so often I feel the yen to be like, oh, I want to extrovert out and connect with my people. And then I do little submarines.

Andréa Jones (45:16):
Yeah, there should be a study somewhere about extrovert, introvert, do you work in an office? Do you own a business? I am very much introverted, by the way, submarine. I had never heard of this until now. And as soon as you said it, I was like, I know exactly what you mean. I don't need a definition because that's me. That's what I do. Just give me my books. Leave me alone. That's me. I'm

Dama Jue (45:40):
So far underwater. Please do not disturb.

Andréa Jones (45:43):
Yes, exactly. Do not disturb signs on. Yeah, and I think that automations help us be able to do that, right? We can customize our business experience, but I also love that you acknowledge that you do need to connect with your community members because that allows you to get the feedback loop. It allows you to customize things even more. It allows you to stay in touch with what they're thinking and feeling. So I love all that too.

Dama Jue (46:11):
Thank you for sharing. It's a random thing though. They might not share like, oh, I wish it, they might not fill out my feedback form and say, this would be great, except it needs this. But somehow on a live call, they'd be like, oh, can we have that? Or could it gives you, there's almost a little bit less of a filter, not in a nasty way, but in a helpful way. So I will often take feedback from like, oh yeah, that would be really cool, or Could we have that? Or, oh, is it possible to, and I don't usually get that in forms. I'm just like, now as I'm talking about it with you right now, they kind of share a little bit more, a little bit more open and almost like a family vibe when you're on live on a thing.

Andréa Jones (46:49):
Yeah, yeah. No, it's less stuffy, right? It just feels like you're just chatting with a friend. Yeah, I like that. Okay, over to you. How do you make sure that your automations kind of all align with your values, your company's values, and you're not doing anything that gives you the ick?

Colie James (47:07):
I mean, I think the biggest thing that I try to do is practice what you preach. I mean, for those that don't know me, I homeschooled my kid for a year. The two years before that she was virtual, but she was home with me. I mean, I really try to tell people that you build a business so that your life can come first and not the opposite. And so when it comes to my automations, I'm always very clear to tell people what automation it is, why I created it, and basically how much time it saves me or what I'm able to do that is outside of my business because that is what I personally value. I mean, I talk about being at Disney all the time. I don't just do it so that I can sell products. Really, if you're not into Disney, it's okay.

(47:50):
What would you rather be doing than answering 20 emails over and over again saying the same thing when you could write an email template that would do it for you, and then you could move on about your business. So I think the biggest thing that I try to do is tell people, automations help you build the business that you actually want and not the business that you feel forced into after you have chosen this as your path. No one should be working 24 7 inside their business when most of those tasks we can take care of with some admin. And a lot of people are like, why can't hire anybody? But yeah, I'm talking about starting with automations. And once you start with the automations, if you hit the max of what an automation can do for you, then I highly encourage you to go seek out some actual human to human help.

(48:36):
But automations can just do so much for us. And if we can get over the stigma that they turn you into a robot or they take out your personality or that your clients are going to be offended that it's not you personally answering them. If you can get over that mindset, there is a beautiful business for you on the other side where you are not stuck to your phone or your computer, and when your kids talk to you, you don't have time to respond to them because you're too busy responding to your clients on your phone. So practice what I preach is what I try to do.

Andréa Jones (49:08):
Yes, I love that. And I think part of it is you are so clear about what is important to you as a business owner and those values and that everything you do kind of feeds into that. I think that's such a good baseline for everybody to consider. All right. Last question goes to Bree. How do you use automations in your business to make sure there's a sense of community with the people in your audience?

Brianca Kirkman (49:36):
Of course. So I mean, naturally I use chat, but I use it in ways that are not just selling. I like to ask questions and then based on their answers, send follow up. So I might say, which of these is of interest to you? Are you trying to, I don't know. Do you like apples or oranges? And if they reply, I like oranges. I might say, oh, I love oranges too. This is where I get my oranges from as a very strange random off the top example. So I really like to use ManyChat to segment out where my audience members are and what their interests are, so that way I know how to follow up with them later on and to even follow up. So let's say I said, DM me a keyword because you wanted to download my lead magnet. I will add another part to the automation that's two or three days later that's like, Hey, Andrea, I just wanted to check in.

(50:36):
Were you able to access X, Y, Z lead magnet? And if so, what were your thoughts? Were you able to get to it, et cetera? One thing that I've learned about myself is that I am not necessarily the best at remembering to go back and pick up a conversation where it left off. And so I like to use automation and things like that to remember things that I know I'm going to fall short on. So I might fall short to remember, oh, it's my student's birthday. Let me send her a message. So I have automation set up to do that for me. I might forget to check in on a client who I know is having a launch or having an upcoming event. So when it's on my brain, I will go ahead and schedule the post or schedule the reminder, schedule the follow up to go ahead and check out or to send them a gift for their launch or things like that.

(51:27):
So I think that basically my overall approach to it is that I really want to feel omnipresent. I want it to feel like I'm always there. I'm always remembering things. I'm always on top of it. And so when I write it down like, Hey, this client's birthday is coming up, or this client is launching, or whatever, I want that journey to be, I will set up the automation for that in real time. What it's evolved into is this kind of web of follow-ups or re-engagement or circling back, things like that. Even down to when clients book discovery calls or when they complete programs, we follow up after that. So you might complete a program and then 90 days later we circle back to see how's it going or do you have any questions? And when I ask my students, do you have any questions? I'm willing to answer whatever those questions are, not necessarily for an additional fee or anything like that, but because I want to make sure that they have the support that they need. And so I feel like it's more of a prompting, if that makes sense.

Andréa Jones (52:34):
And I love that you're using these tools for follow-up. I'm the worst at remembering birthdays like the absolute worst. So I useable and I put all my clients in there and they send handwritten birthday cards. Now I still customize them and actually GMI on my team helps me with this. But if I didn't have that tool saying, Hey, this person's birthday's coming up, you should send them a card. I would never do it. I wouldn't do it. No,

Brianca Kirkman (53:01):
No. I would totally forget. And I think that's the point of automation is that we are not going to remember everything. And we don't have to kind of like, if you think about, I even use automations or things like that in my day-to-Day life. I schedule all doctor's appointments around my birthday or around my kids' birthday because your birthday's going to happen every year on the same day no matter what. So now we can get this annual checkup on that same day every year. And so I think about automations in that same way. The purpose of an automation is to help me pick up where I may leave off or to remember something for me that I may forget.

Andréa Jones (53:39):
Yeah, I love that. Thank you. And the running thread, I noticed in a lot of our conversations today was about using automations to personalize experiences. So as all of you listening, watching to this, a big takeaway from this episode, not to use automations to turn into a robot, but to use automations to have personalized interactions at mass with people where you physically could not do this all at the same time. And so that you can really personalize experiences through these automation tools. And I love that for us. I love that. Okay, so as we close out our episode, I would love to know from each of you what's coming up next in your business and how we can connect with you. Let's start with you, Colie.

Colie James (54:24):
I'm trying to remember when this is going live. So in my business, I am planning on doing a birthday sale, which this episode is actually going to come out the week of my birthday. It is July 28th. So if you would like to know what I am doing inside of my birthday, please go to Colie james.com and sign up for my newsletter and you will get all the goodies delivered directly to your inbox by my automation assistant. And her name is Ashley.

Andréa Jones (54:50):
I love that behavior name too. I love that. Okay, Colie, thank you. So Dama over to you. What's going on next in your business and how can we connect with you?

Dama Jue (55:00):
You and I are doing a fun collaboration, so right around the time this podcast drops, so you'll have an opportunity. You might've heard me mention earlier in this call my, or did I mention it? I had another call with Colie today, so I'm like, I'm a little bit losing my marbles, but I have this product called on-brand fillable workbooks. It has just under 5,000 students. This thing has jet fuel strapped to its back. So many people have taken this training implemented that same afternoon, which is like my secret sauce. Here's the thing, here's how to do it. Here's the no fluff. And then they go and implement, and it has really changed their freebie workflow, their course bonuses. It's all about using a Google Doc for a fillable interactive workbook. And it's a super short training, but Andrea is going to have a really juicy discount for you. So make sure you hang out with the two of us. But if you heard me earlier talking about how I can be on the couch binging grs and eating kettle corn, don't miss my free mini training. It's like a behind the scenes thing on how I do all of that. How did I actually set all those things up to bring that income while I'm chilling completely inside Thrivecart? No apps, no third party platforms necessary. And you can find it on Thrivecart template shop thrivecart template, shop.com/mini-training.

Andréa Jones (56:19):
Yay. Awesome. Thank you Dama. Brie, over to you to what is next in your business and how can we connect with you?

Brianca Kirkman (56:26):
Of course. So you could follow me on all social media at the Brianca Johnson. I actually just released a five day email challenge called Make Them or Remember You, and it's all about developing a memorable brand personality. And so definitely get that. That's on my website, bianca johnson.com and consider enrolling into the Clarity to Coins membership where we help our students package their expertise into a profitable offer and build a sustainable business.

Andréa Jones (56:55):
Yay. I love that. And I'll put all of these links y'all in the show notes onlinedrea.com/ 3 1 5. Thanks again to my amazing guest on this episode. It was juicy. Y'all saw aha moments for me in real time, which I always love. We have more amazing episodes coming right up. But first, before you go, make sure you give us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It helps keep us in the top 100 marketing podcast. We were number 46 last week. So that's all. Thanks to your listenership, which I so appreciate and love. Keep up the good work there. Next week I have Nikki McKnight. We're going to wrap up our conversation all about automations with her and really some foundational things that you should consider in your business. So I'll see you then. That's all for today. Bye.