I got over my slump, here's S7 🤩

Season 7, Issue 1 is HERE

Jan 25, 2024

Hello Mehketeers!!

Blasting out my insecurities over having a motivational slump last week actually worked and I started writing this season literally the same day.

That’s my real life hack, I post very publicly about things I’m not doing and it shames me into action. If you follow me on Instagram you’ll know I (more regularly than I’d like to) post my desk whenever I need to clean it literally so that my friends can be like “oh come on Kayla that’s really too much, just clean it.”

Also last week I asked what people wanted as the season opener and “lighter warm up” won by a mile, so here’s bunch of micro topics I’ve been saving in my notes app that never really added up to enough to be their own issues.

On the agenda today:

How often should you email your customers?
My favourite linguistics trick for sales/marketing
How I explain the difference between unique selling propositions (USPs), value propositions, and features… using a $5 note
Struggling to say “no” to requests? A few phrases I like for just that!

(psst, I’ll be adding the agenda to the top of issues going forward as it was requested in the Season 6 Reader Survey! I actually am taking notes from it, if you’d like to say something anonymously I’ll keep the survey open another week or so!)

To email or not to email?

I’ve been thinking about email cadences for a while - what’s the right amount? Weekly? Biweekly? Monthly? It depends on what type of email it is, but either way I do think your email list should be getting something regularly enough for them not to think “huh? I’m subscribed to them?” every time they receive one of your emails.

I had exactly that experience when I received an email from Airtasker, and then a few months later had a sense of de ja vu when I had the same reaction again and my marketing brain kicked in to say “they should email way more than what they are.”

Airtasker, that advice will cost you $15.

Fave sales language trick

For those of you that don’t know, I have not one but TWO degrees in linguistics (it’s my party trick at this point) so I love when a little language change has a psychological effect.

This one’s really simple: replace “but” with “and”

If you’ve got a free afternoon and some automated sales emails to revise, this is a great little way to rethink how you phrase things.

Here’s some copy from the Jira product home page:

No single vendor can deliver everything your team needs to do DevOps. But using multiple tools can be messy.

If we take out the “but”, it compounds the problem into something bigger and slightly more convincing:

No single vendor can delivery everything your team nees to do DevOps, and using multiple tools can be messy.

Explaining value vs features with a $5 note

Feature: security features ensure the note is legit, legal tender and brail, size, and shape make it accessible for visually impaired users
USP: it’s pink! Unique colour way, this combo of colours is only available in Australia
Value: you and I both agree that this little slip of plastic is equal to $5

See how the features actually have very little influence on the value of it? That’s why you need to focus on value and not features in your marketing!

Passive aggressive but professional ways to say no

Let’s role play, I ask you to do something (let’s say it’s a piece of work that won’t actually lead to any results). How do you reply?

Just so I’m understanding the request correctly, what's the value/outcome you’re expecting?
Where is this on an important/urgent axis?
Given the time/resource restraints, we should focus on high impact work
How would you like me to prioritise this in comparison to (real work you need to do)?
If you’d like me to do that then I’ll need to deprioritise (work you’re happy to swap this out for)

Link me up, Scotty

Not a link but a podcast recommendation. I got super hooked on Normal Gossip over the past few weeks, it’s a host telling a guest some listener-submitted gossip from their real life. It’s low stakes, light hearted, and some episodes are truly scandalous.

LinkedIn rolled out a new ad format. Bit of a side note, but you know what would really convince me to try this new format? If one of the dot points was “we’re prioritising it in the algorithm.”

Still up for reading 2024 predictions? Digital Native did a part 1 and part 2 that’s worth reading, and then while I was going through their archive I really liked this issue on how appealing to the seven sins makes for easy marketing messages.

That’s all for the season opener!

See you next week,

Kayla