Cody Cook-Parrott says “marketing is a creative practice”

Hey everybody, I'm here with Cody Cook-Parrott and we're talking about the funnest thing ever, email marketing. Cody, I found you years ago, mostly probably from one of your posts about leaving Instagram, which I'm a big fan of, of both the post and leaving Instagram. And one of the things that struck me,
like it was an old interview and it was like you had 80,000 followers and 300 people liked your stuff. And it was like, yes, that's what I see. Cause I, I work in the music world and it's like all these big music outlets or bands and they have a gajillion followers and like 500 likes.
And I always did the math. I pulled out the calculator. I'm like, wow, 0.48% of your audience liked your thing. We should do.
Yeah. Yeah. You know, I am using Instagram right now and I, I, I posted the other day and 27 people liked my post, which, you know, what, what, you know, and I like to say, what a gift, you know, those 27 people found it, but it's, it's often like, especially on Instagram, it's like, they're my peers.
A lot of the times it's like, out of those 27, half of those are like my friends just being nice and liking my post. I'm like, this is embarrassing at this point. It feels embarrassing to use it. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, also that you just give Meta money to boost your post and get it out there. Supposedly it goes to your followers, but probably not. It probably goes to a bunch of strangers then when you boost it. So that then, and even before that, though, you've been doing newsletters, right?
I have had a newsletter since March. December 12th, 2012.
2012.
No, no, no.
December 22nd. That was the day.
12, 22, 12.
I looked recently because I was like, when did I send my first newsletter? And yes, it was December 22nd, 2012 to announce a holiday market I was doing in the shop that I created in a vintage camper.
That's so great. That's so great. Can I ask about how many people that went out to?
It went out to 70. Okay. And I think 42 opened it. Or maybe it went out to, yeah, great open rate. And as far as I remember, the holiday market was a smash success.
Yeah. That's great. That's so cool. And so you started using MailChimp with that, right? Okay.
And I used MailChimp until 2021. Okay. Okay.
Did you, and the crux of our conversation- Oh, you know what, Seth?
What? The dog is going to bark, I think. Okay. Oh, maybe not.
Maybe not. She's like, maybe not.
It sounded like a delivery person.
Okay. Okay. Oh, I saw that. I heard that.
I'm sorry.
Anyways, carry on. It's wonderful. Um, did you do any, cause we're talking about segments for this segment video. Um, did you do segmenting with MailChimp back then?
hold on hold on oh i see if we also have to start you know what maybe i'm gonna i can edit it out okay okay can you okay i didn't know how much editing you do um hold on let me just see that's fine bro there's no there's nobody there i know oh i
know she's so sweet she's she protects us you know very yeah okay okay ask go ahead ask again okay
So you started out with MailChimp. Did you ever do segmenting with MailChimp back in the day?
Nope. I used no... Sorry, June's really distracting me. Can you lay down? I know. Mommy's on a professional call. I know.
You can keep going.
Okay. I never used a single feature of MailChimp in the eight years that I used it yeah I just I oh you know what actually that's not entirely true I did have a virtual assistant who we did we used the function where
you could send and I wish you could do this on flow desk I don't think you can but correct me if I'm wrong it's like With MailChimp, you could send an email to the people who had clicked a link.
So like, let's say I was promoting a class and then a bunch of people clicked the link for that class. I could then send an email really easily to just those people who had clicked the link.
Yeah.
And that was a feature I enjoyed using, but I didn't, we didn't. really use the segmenting feature.
Yeah. Yeah. No, that, that, yeah, that's an amazing thing. Yeah. I do. I think I remember that and like how obviously useful that would be to find people and build a segment around that or whatever, or just send directly or resend directly to them.
Yeah.
So that goes into the whole segmenting thing, right? I mean, like people that click on the thing that you're talking about, they're at, they're obviously interested in it. Maybe they've bought from you in the past. Like, so that's, What's been, how's your journey been of discovering of like, maybe I should do segments.
Yeah, I, I will just say for anyone who has a business, I, or as an artist and makes money, whatever, however you identify, I love the segments and flow desk. And the way, the way I started using them was, um, in my business, I use Zapier or I actually don't exactly know how to say it.
I don't think anyone does.
OK, great. And the the way we use we have it set up, I say we my amazing virtual assistant, Hannah, who makes digital things make a lot more sense is when someone signs up for my class through Thrivecart, it automatically makes a new class. adds them to a segment that we've made in Flowdesk for that class.
So then that way I can really easily message everyone in the class through that, as well as if I'm promoting a new class, they are in like that segment anyways. And then the other way I use segments is for lead magnets, which I only started using only started making last year.
And I've always been sort of anti lead magnets. Like I've been sort of like, people will just sign up for your newsletter alone. And, um, I have found them to be like a great creative practice for me and really fun to make. And so a lot of times I'll work backwards. Like if I'm teaching a class,
I'll think like, what's a free resource I can make that goes, that would lead people to this class. And so then when they download the lead magnet, it adds them to a segment. So like in my podcast, people listen and download the creative ideation portal. It adds them to that segment in the flow desk list.
And then yeah, I can just, if I have something that I'm like, I don't need to email this to everybody on my sub stack list or even everybody on my flow desk list, I just want to email it to the people who've downloaded this lead magnet.
It's a really nice way to just send to a smaller group of people.
Yeah.
And send less emails. And send less emails.
We know we all get enough emails, so.
Yeah.
Can I just, because I can imagine a lot of people I was on your email marketing course a while back and a lot of the stuff that you were saying this, that, yeah. And like, but I couldn't help but think of people that don't do any of this ever are just like, Whoa, wait a second,
this and that. What do you think is the best way for someone to like just dip their toe into any of this? Cause it's hard to just be like, Oh, sign up for flow desk. And like, what do you think is like a first or second step that someone could take?
Yeah, I love that question. And when I'm working with one-on-one with people, this is the most common question. And so one that I'm really asking myself a lot because people are usually, I mean, the big question is like, do I have a newsletter and host it on Substack or one of the 800 other things?
And so I'm always trying to help people pick the right one. What's amazing about Substack is that it's free. So if you wanted to send a newsletter, just a free newsletter to 100,000 people, it doesn't cost you anything. They're only making money if you're charging money. So sometimes that, and it's tricky because MailChimp is the same,
that it's free, I believe for the up to 2000 subscribers. And so there's a lot of options that are free, but if someone's like, if someone doesn't want to make money from their newsletter, I usually tell them to, to just buy flow desk and, um, find somebody who has the, there's so many referral.
I mean, I have a referral code. Maybe you have a referral code. Like there's so many ways to not pay full price for flow desk. I also want to say that. Um, but I think, um, it's just so intuitive. It's so easy to make nice looking emails. Um, it's worth the cost to me.
So, well, my first step is to start collecting emails. So I don't care where you do that really. Like if you do, and cause that's the thing is, is like you own your email list. So you can move it at any time and i also try to remind people that like you know when
i've looked at the stats i think 97 of the people who read my emails read it in their inbox still oh yeah so they don't even know they might not even know what sub stack is they're like why are you even telling me about that like we just read your newsletter just like we did you know,
there's a handful of readers who got that first email in 2012, you know, who are still reading today, 12 years later, and they don't know the difference if it came from Mailchimp, Flowdesk, or Substack. So I try to also remind people of that is like, just pick whatever is feeling most intuitive and good to you.
And, and I should pause to say, like, I, as much as I'm like, if you don't want to make money off your newsletter, don't do Substack, but plenty of people love Substack and don't have paid subscriptions turned on and just love the community and the, you know, it, the reality is it is a platform.
And you can find other people. on a platform. Um, which is like, I mean, this is a great example of like, you took my class and we're one of my students, but I really found your work because notes was showing it to me, um, on Substack and was like, Oh, Seth,
he took my class and is writing really cool stuff. So, you know, it's like, um, that is an example of how Substack, especially if you're not using social media, can bring you to other writers, thinkers, and newsletter creators.
I mean, back when Substack rolled out recommendations, I was like, oh, okay, whatever. And then like a friend of mine that runs a pretty big newsletter started recommending me. And then my like subscriber, like it was like, what the heck?
And to this day, I mean, that was like two years ago and I still get stuff from that. And like recommendations on there is, yeah. Substack as a platform can really, and all the point too of like, of, oh, it's a platform. It can get weird. It can do that. Well, yeah.
Then you export your email list and go somewhere else. Sure. Yeah. There's a lot of that talk of like, oh, Substack's social media now, blah, blah, blah. But it's like, yeah, but I'm building an email list. And if it burns down tomorrow, I have an email list that can last me however many years in the future. Yep.
Yep.
I'm with you.
I like your point too of like that no one knows, no one knows they're reading a Substack newsletter probably in their inbox. This is MailChimp. Like I've seen so many people that were like, oh, I had 250 people on my MailChimp email list, but I'm starting over here on Substack from zero. I don't want to,
I'm like, no, just. Yeah, no, move the list. Well, I want people to start. It's like, no one knows. Yeah, no one knows. No one knows. And so to your point though, too, because we're talking now about, okay, I have this sub stack email list that I send to people.
Now I'm also, some of these emails are now in the segmenting in Flowdesk. And I've heard some people say like, oh, well, no one signed up for Flowdesk. But it's like, no, people gave you permission to email them. You're just continuing to email them, right? Like, have you ever heard feedback or the negative part of like, oh,
you're adding someone like against their will or something like that?
No, and I have a, well, I do... have it written almost everywhere. When you sign up for a class, you will be added to an email list. And then it says, when people download the, and I just added this recently, but let me try to think of the order of events.
So when someone downloads a lead magnet, when they get the email, it will, with the link to the lead magnet, it will say at the bottom, like, there's a class coming up. You will get a few more emails this week. If you do not want them, click unsubscribe.
This does not unsubscribe you from Monday, Monday, my main newsletter. So I do have that on there because I do think some people are tapped in enough to be like, I don't want any, I like respect if they're like, I just wanted the free guide to the tool, the tools you're using to take notes.
I'm like, go for it. Um, you know, I don't want anybody to get emails they don't want. So I try to have a lot of like clear language about. If you unsubscribe from this, you will not, um, unsubscribe from Monday, Monday, my newsletter. So, yeah, I try to try to keep that clear.
But no, I've never had someone be like, I mean, I get people who email me. I had someone email me recently. I think they were talking about Substack, but they were just like, dear Cody, you send way too many emails and I can't figure out how to unsubscribe. I'm just like, oh my God.
So, you know, people can't figure out how to click settings, I guess sometimes, but.
Right.
Only God can help them.
Or filter an email in Gmail. Gmail makes it so easy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you recently wrote in the email that you sent out a few days ago, you decided to use Flowdesk email list made up of people who have downloaded one of my free guides or taken my classes. And that's-
Because I think you've written before that when you post, when you announce something to your main list, it's not like, wow, all these people. But when you send to the smaller list, the segmented list, when you announce something, there could be more that happens there.
Which I'm always trying to stress that if you have a thing that's coming out, you or anyone else, if you just announce it in your newsletter once, you have to keep announcing it just like on some second notes you have to keep announcing it like you have to yes like three times in a newsletter like because
someone's not going to open that one two weeks ago because they had to get their oil changed or whatever like and everyone's so afraid of repeating themselves because they don't want to be like looked at as as too salesy but but it's almost
too like if you if you don't talk about your work no one's going to know about it
Yeah, it's really, I mean, I think it was last year, I wrote a newsletter that was just called I am annoying. And it was sort of about this of like, I was talking to like a business mentor. And I was like, I'm so scared that I'm so annoying. And she was like, you are kind of annoying.
And I was like, what? And she was just kind of like, maybe just embrace that, like, It's going to annoy some people that you send X amount of emails or do X amount of things or whatever. And those it's OK. Those people will delete the email or not open the email.
I like to think of like there's a few like marketing girly podcasts that I subscribe to or listen to that are like really into like email marketing and they'll send emails. they'll send five emails a day sometimes. I mean, they're, you know, it's like, they're in that sort of like funnel business world. Automations. Exactly.
And I'm not like pissed at them when they send that many emails. I'm just like, girlies are doing their jobs, I guess today. And, and I just don't open them if I don't want them. So I try to remember that my readers are able to do the same.
They can decide what they want to open and what they don't want to open. And yeah, so I try like the last time I taught shapes of our offerings, I just to the flow desk list, anyone who had downloaded the lead magnet for that class.
I mean, I think I sent an email every single day leading up to class. So I sent like five emails that week and it worked every time. you know, and people said they were like, and I try to put a lot, this is something I learned from Michelle Pelzon Lipsitz from holisticism was like,
I try to put a lot of value in every one of those emails. And that's the sort of like generosity that I try to think about in running my business is like, okay, this is, Yes, this is a marketing email and I'm trying to get you to take my class.
And I hope that if you don't sign up for class, this is still a really helpful email and it inspires you and your business in some way. So I try to not just send stuff that's like sign up for my class. But that offers a little bit of.
knowledge or inspiration absolutely yeah that's coming from the music world uh music world loves to just post like this is what our vinyl looks like and here's a buy now button
Yes, I've seen you write about this before that it's like you can't just say like, listen to my new song. You have to tell a story. Yeah. And that's what people are scared about because it's vulnerable, especially when we're used to Instagram.
It's like we tell a story and then five people see it and we're like, all right, well.
Yeah, it's like we never had problems writing a 300 word caption. But now when we have to write an email, it's like, no, this is just business.
Just business. Yeah. That's really fascinating.
It's a bummer. Because I've seen some bands that write, like, I forget the name of the band, which doesn't do them credit right now, but this is a Zoom call. I can't remember all that. But they were... They wrote it like, hey, we're on tour. I'm sitting on the floor right now of the venue writing this email.
And blah, blah, blah. That was the whole, like, that was the text at the top. There was no, like, tour poster or anything like that. It was just a solid paragraph of, like, this happened, that happened. And I always think, too, of, like, as a musician, as artists...
we have the coolest stories to tell we have nothing but stories and like we should just keep telling them and then yes there's a there's a thing for sale at the bottom fine whatever yeah they're trying to sell tickets to their upcoming shows of course but like totally when you are a human you
And like, it's not just written by chat GPT or something someone else could write. Like, cause I see that a lot too. Like a lot of artists, a lot of bands will be like, Hey, we're really excited to be out on tour. Can't wait to see you. Like, yeah.
The person putting together that, that email campaign wrote that and just got approval from management. It's so safe and plain. So yeah. Yeah. Putting, putting, adding the value before you always just add like, it makes it so less sales sales-like. So.
Yeah, I think that is. And that's why I often, I say marketing is a creative practice because I really feel like you can be creative in the way that you sell, but, um, Yeah, we do have to sell. That is part of how it works.
Yeah. It's amazing how little... The amount of work that goes into the creativity and then it's so easy to just stop it once we have to talk about it.
Yeah.
Because we don't want to bother anyone. But if we bother just a little bit and we bother creatively... It can help pay our rent or our phone bill or groceries or something.
Yes, yes, yes. Creative bothering. Creative bothering. There it is. There it is. We got there.
Awesome. Well, do you have any closing thoughts for anyone that might be on the tipping point of maybe doing an email list or creativity?
I mean, I think... I mean, you know, something I really try to stress is like the only reason my business has lasted or done as well as it has is because of an email list. Because Instagram changed so intensely how it worked. I mean, when in 2014, when I maybe had 20,000 followers or something.
it, you know, 600 people saw every single grid post. It was like, that was just the norm. And I could sell out a class in two seconds, you know, use it with one grid post, you know, that's just how it worked. And it does not work that way anymore for me, at least.
And yeah, so I definitely think having an email list is just a smart business plan. So.
And to, to your point, you mentioned it earlier, just start collecting emails.
Yeah. I mean, my first thing was at have company, my shop, I had a clipboard with a piece of paper that sat on the, on the front counter and people would write hand, write it on there. And so, yeah, I mean, that's a big one for musicians. Like if you have a merch table, have a clipboard
with a piece of paper out, like, of course, or like a QR code or whatever, but like get people on, collect those email addresses, like anywhere you can. So don't, even though things are automated now, like don't forget, I'm packing up orders of my new books right now.
And I made these little inserts that say like, I wrote this in landscapes and here's my next class. And yeah. here's my website, you know? So I'm, I'm always thinking about like marketing, like every, every, not to be like every, every opportunity is an opportunity to market, but it's like, I, as I'm shipping out all these books,
I'm like, I have an opportunity to remind people to subscribe to my newsletter or take my writing class or sign up for my writing group. So yeah, I feel like, um, Don't be afraid to get creative with your marketing and start an email list and the end. And subscribe to Seth's newsletter and to mine.
And the final thing on that too, like you write books, you have a huge email list, all that you do these courses and there's, and you're putting together that thing that goes in a book because there's still people that bought your book that have probably never taken a course.
Totally. Yes. Or who, or who, who didn't, who saw the post about the book, but didn't see the post about my writing group. Right. And then they're going to get the book and get the piece of paper and be like, oh, Cody has a writing group. Like, yeah, exactly.
No one can know it all.
No one can know it all.
Cool. Cody, thank you so much. It's been a blast. It was great catching up with you and talking for real.
Thanks for doing it. It's so nice to talk for real. Okay. I'm going to get back to messaging ShipStation.
Do it. Take care of that.
Okay. Thank you so much.