Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
Graham and Ashkahn consistently emphasize the importance of mailing lists, but today they dive in deep to talk about how to build a mailing list, giving their best tips and tricks to collecting emails and how to make sure you’re getting the right people signed up.
Show Resources
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: All right.
Ashkahn: Hey.
Graham: Hello everyone.
Ashkahn: Welcome. Welcome to the podcast.
Graham: This is Graham.
Ashkahn: This is Ashkahn.
Graham: Today’s question is “you talk a lot about collecting emails, but what are some of the places I should collect them? I grab it from customers when they make an appointment, and I have a form on my website.”
So.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: Collecting emails. We do talk a lot about collecting emails because you have to. It’s very important. I’d say that having a big email list is actually probably your number one arsenal in marketing, to be honest. Way more than having a big Facebook page or a lot of Twitter followers or something like that, you know?
Ashkahn: In fact, part of the answers of this question is we in some ways view our Facebook page and Twitter following and things as good means of filling our mailing list.
Graham: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Ashkahn: We view those as part of the end point ideally would be for those people to be on our mailing list, rather than-
Graham: Every one of them.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: Ideally we would just take them off of Facebook and put all of them onto our mailing list where we control how we reach them and who sees what.
Ashkahn: Yeah. Right? That’s one of the big differences is Facebook can just stop us from reaching people, and they have. We used to reach a bunch of people, and then they started making all these algorithms and stuff.
Graham: Now, not so much, unless you pay them, yeah, money.
Ashkahn: But that doesn’t happen with email.
Graham: Yeah. There’s the promotions tab in Gmail, I guess, has been the closest development to-
Ashkahn: Right, and-
Graham: Pushing some things a little bit to the side.
Ashkahn: Better spam filters, or …
Graham: Yeah, but even with that, you’re still at least kind of guaranteed to show up in a section of someone’s inbox as opposed to, yeah, needing to pay the gods of the internet in order to deliver it or something like that.
So, email is important. Yes. Ways to collect them, first of all, you’re totally right. When someone makes an appointment, when someone comes in physically to float at your spot, that’s of course a great time to grab someone’s email. The Helm, for example, just uses someone’s email as their kind of account name, which a lot of softwares do.
So, the email is very built in to just interacting with a lot of booking softwares. Within that, there’s also this kind of differentiation between someone giving you their email address to make an account and make an appointment and also them giving you their email address and saying, “I want to hear from you. Please send me marketing emails.” Stuff like that, right?
So, even when you’re collecting emails or when someone comes in in person, like if they booked online, they didn’t opt in to your mailing list, often at checkout there’s kind of an option to opt in to receive marketing emails from people or not. When they come in in person, train your staff to ask for or ask them if they want to sign up to actually be on the mailing list when they’re at their appointment, right?
Even though you have their email address and it’s in the system, still confirming verbally that you’re allowed to use that to actually send them emails and to let them know about sales you’re having and upcoming events and things like that, I think, is a great way to actually get that activated kind of double opt in list built.
Ashkahn: Yeah. It really is, at least in our opinions, I would consider a float center, if we were to be sending just a ton of emails to people without asking them, to be kind of spam. I would think it appropriate that some email client would filter that stuff out.
So, that’s what I want. I want confirmation from someone that they do want to hear from us and that we’re not just kind of getting them because they had to give us their email in order to book an appointment with us.
Graham: Yeah.
Ashkahn: You have a stronger email list at that point. You know those people are interested. It’s a much more real representation of how many people are gonna want to read what you’re saying and actually be interested in sales you’re doing and various things like that.
Graham: Yeah. I guess just to kind of delve a little further even into the things you already said, so collecting someone’s email when they are making an appointment again. Use another opportunity when they’re coming in to confirm they want to get those emails, and similarly, when they’re making the account. Making sure to tweak and play around with the wording that you have on your website to actually check that box to subscribe to your mailing list.
Often something like “join our mailing list” is not the strongest pitch to actually give you their email addresses, right? Letting them know that they’ll get special deals that are only sent to people on the mailing list, they’ll get important news or invited to events, things like that. Show some benefit in your pitch to actually get them to sign up, I think, is an important one.
Ashkahn: There’s a lot of different ways on your website to optimize what you have going on, too, from just where it’s placed on your homepage, making sure it’s actually on your homepage somewhere, not buried somewhere on your site, and there’s various, there’s all sorts of smart pop ups now that you can customize in terms of how many seconds after someone gets to your page does it show up, and it can only show up to someone once and then it won’t bother them again every time they come to your site, or it can detect when someone’s finished reading and about to leave a page and try to pop up right at that point, and welcome gates and all sorts of different kind of fancy ways of trying to up your amount of people who are subscribing.
Graham: Yeah, and we use some of those, too, for our various websites just to, again, kind of optimize that amount of people who actually trust us enough or even know that the mailing list exists to give you their email address.
Ashkahn: Yeah, it’s funny because the question involves the biggest ways to get emails. So, outside of that, I don’t know. There’s a lot of stuff you see people do all the time when you go to events or something like that where you enter your email to be in some sort of raffle-
Graham: Trade shows in general, right? If you are doing any events or giving presentations out in the public, don’t think of it just in terms of passive education of the people out there, right? Actually getting incoming emails from the people in the audience I think is, yeah, is really worthwhile.
Ashkahn: It’s pretty much nice to keep in your mind as just a go to call to action. At any point, if selling a float on the spot seems a little unlikely or a little too much friction, even if you are doing that, it’s nice to just always be aiming for people to sign up for your mailing list. It’s a lot less of a commitment for people, but now you have a way of contacting them and reminding them that floating exists and sparking their interest in the future.
Graham: Yeah, we have another good episode on A/B testing. But you might want to check that out because one of the best ways to actually get people to sign up for the email list is not anything tricky or something it sounds like that you haven’t thought of, like Ashkahn was saying. It’s more just doing the basic things and doing them really well. So, actually testing your calls to action and the area of your website that you’re trying to get people to sign up for the email list, using a tool like Optimizely, something like that, could really help you actually get more people on board.
Yeah, similarly, I guess you just did an episode with Derek where you talked a little bit more about concise strategies for big giveaways where people are doing their email addresses, is what they’re giving-
Ashkahn: Yeah, we talked specifically about the ones that we did, like a kind of monthly float giveaway on social media specifically, and they win a year of floats sort of giveaway. Both of those were methods of trying to get people on our mailing list at the end of the day, and to provide some activity on our social media and stuff like that.
But really, that was part of the process for those, and we’ve even, when we were first starting out, just had slips of paper-
Graham: I was just gonna mention that.
Ashkahn: -outside of our door and a sign that said, “Give us your email and we’ll keep you updated.”
Graham: Or else.
Ashkahn: Literally it was people, we just hung a pen there and people would write their email on a piece of paper and slip it in our mail slot while we were in construction. So, and it worked. We got emails based off of that.
Graham: Yeah, which is, it’s kind of amazing that things like that work. But they totally do. You’re a weird business. We put up little descriptions of kind of what we were and our name up on the wall there, little early beginners’ guides that we had on a brochure holder, and yeah. Just loose pieces of paper and a pen up, and I guess just that external was interesting enough and they’re like, wait. What is this floating thing?
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: That it just enticed them to actually leave it, which is cool.
I guess a little more about converting, we started with converting people over from Facebook and Twitter, and then I just made some joke about getting all them, but it’s actually a really good place to grab people for your email list as well.
So, for things like that, linking over to posts that you’re putting on your site, it’s really, you can look at the Float On Facebook page and we do have a little widget that’s a “join the mailing list” kind of widget on there, but not, to be honest, not many people end up using that or just clicking and joining our mailing list straight from Facebook.
Ashkahn: Yeah.
Graham: So, it’s more like posting up content that you’re putting on your site. Interesting blog spots, or video interviews with clients, or something that you can then link to from Facebook and encourage people to come over, and from that page then you can try and collect email addresses is sort of a good way to go about it.
I guess just know that you’ll have to pay for that, right? As far as, it’s kind of like occasionally we decide to dump some money into trying to convert Facebook audience members into actual mailing list members because when you’re linking off your site, and especially when you’re linking to different content, videos that aren’t on Facebook, they kind of penalize you in the sense of not showing that content to anyone unless you pay for it. So, there’s sort of this transactional cost almost in converting Facebook fans or Twitter fans over into email list joiners.
Ashkahn: Yeah, at the end of the day, really doubling down on the things you’re already talking, you know about. Your website-
Graham: Yeah, you got this.
Ashkahn: And people coming in-
Graham: You’re doing good.
Ashkahn: Little, the thing is, you can run all these weird specials and crazy promotions and stuff like that as ways of getting people’s emails. It’s nice to do those too, but small tweaks to the main kind of fire hose of emails you have coming in to you to increase that size are in the long run gonna stack up month after month after month, if you can get 5% more people to sign up for your mailing list, those numbers kind of keep adding up. So, don’t forget about the basics, too.
Graham: Yeah. All right. If you have questions of your own, cruise on down to floattanksolutions.com/podcast.
Ashkahn: That’s right. That’s our website.
Graham: The little sub page of the website, too.
Ashkahn: Yeah, and there’s a thing on there to join our mailing list.
Graham: There’s a nice drawing of both of us.
Ashkahn: All sorts of stuff.
Graham: Yeah. Check it out.
Ashkahn: Check it out. Bye.
Graham: Bye.
Recent Podcast Episodes
What is Float On’s North Star Metric? – DSP 294
Graham and Ashkahn talk about the guiding principles and metrics that dictate how they run Float On and what they measure for success. While they don’t have any float center secrets, they do provide some useful advice in how to look at numbers, when to pay attention to them, and perhaps more importantly, when to ignore them.
What Can you Say About Float Centers Closing? – DSP 293
It happens every once in a while that a center you knew closes down and it can seem like a dark omen for the rest of the industry. The reality is that these are individual circumstances that are brought about not because of a major trend as much as just life events coming up.
Graham and Ashkahn share their take on other float centers closing and what they know about it and how frequently they think it’s occurring.
How to Build a Green Float Center – DSP 292
Graham and Ashkahn talk about the options available for sustainable options when building a float center, or more accurately, the lack thereof. Unfortunately, the materials necessary to make a float room saltproof and waterproof tend to be very unfriendly for the environment.
The guys break down the specific options available and what to consider when adding green technology to your own center.
How We Financed Float On – DSP 291
Graham and Ashkahn are asked about how they financed Float On.
As the guys explain how they started, they go along slight detours to talk about all the mistakes they made along the way and how they’re unsure that Float On could even start today like it did back in 2010. They then go on to explain the pros and cons of the extreme bootstrapping they did to make Float On happen.
What’s Floating Like Around the World? – DSP 290
Ashkahn and Graham break down the wild world of floating, well… worldwide. They share what they know about the industry in different countries, continent by continent, and gauging which ones are the most float centric vs. those that are the least (hint, it’s definitely Antarctica).
Latest Blog Posts
The Heart of Floating – Guest Post by Kevin McCulloch
“When we commit to The Heart of Floating, we form relationships and communities. We share experiences, we connect, we learn, we teach. We care.”
In this guest post, Kevin McCulloch, owner of Float St. Louis and organizer of the Rise: Float Community Gathering, explores the heart of floating and it’s power and potential to connect, heal, and grow individuals, relationships, and communities.
The Most Ambitious Float On Project Yet
We have a new endeavor that we’ve been working on in private for awhile now, and we think that it’s going to make a big splash in our salty little industry. After many years of testing behind closed doors, we’re finally ready to take the plunge and release our secret project to you, the floatation community.
You might want to sit down for this one….
The Start-a-Center Giveaway Returns!
Everyone knows that, when it comes to gifts, it’s much more fun to give than to receive. With this year’s Start-a-Center Giveaway, however, I’m not so sure anymore. With over $13,000 in Float Tank Solutions products going to one lucky duck (plus $4,000 worth of goodies from other float industry homies), we humbly suggest that we may have finally tipped the scales in favor of the recipient.
If you’re Charlie, this Giveaway is the Golden Ticket, which I guess makes the Construction Package a Wonka bar and the Ninja Fans are the Fizzy Lifting Drink. So, what do you have to do for a chance at all the Everlasting Gobstoppers?
It’s been three years since our last Giveaway, and we thought that it was long overdue for another one. So, what’s the dealio? The Giveaway is a chance to give a big ol’ boost to a deserving Float-Center-To-Be. This time around, we’re taking things to a whole new level, with over three times the value of products and services being given away. To you. For free.
Dear Everyone: Please reconsider building your own tanks
Look, we get it. Really. Float tanks are expensive – especially for what can seem, from the outside, like a glorified bathtub with spa parts attached. It doesn’t take long to go from, “Why is this so expensive?” to “I’ll bet I could save money by making my own tank!” After you start mulling it over, you get excited. You could be offering something no one else does right now… because it’d be your own creation! How hard can it possibly be?
As experts in only thinking about half of the consequences of our actions (at best), we’d like to say, “Incredibly hard, actually!”
