THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Miriam Schulman:
Well, hey there. This is your host, artist Miriam Schulman, and you’re listening to episode number 90 of the Inspiration Place podcast. I am so thrilled that you’re here. Today, we’re talking all about creating meaningful connection every time you write an email. So in this episode, you’ll discover why your art collectors want to hear from you, and often, why you can still sell art even if you have a small email list, and how to color code your emails to reach all the personality types on your list.
But before we get there, I wanted to make sure you knew all about my quiz, because it’s perfect for today’s topic. Today, we’re talking all about connecting with your art collectors through email, and the quiz will help you identify your next best steps. It only takes a few minutes and the results are highly personalized. To take the quiz, head on over to schulmanart.com/quiz.
Today’s guest is a master of email marketing and former copywriter-for-hire who specializes in fun-to-read, more-addictive-than-Game-of-Thrones email copy. In a previous life, she was a music major and law school student. She found her way to the online space through blogging and social media. Please welcome to the Inspiration Place, Tarzan Kay. I never knew you were a music major.
Tarzan Kay:
Oh, yeah. I’ve been a piano player since I was three years old.
Miriam Schulman:
Get out.
Tarzan Kay:
Yeah. That’s when my parents put me in piano lessons. So that’s what I went to university for, jazz piano.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh my gosh. That’s serious.
Tarzan Kay:
Yeah, it was serious. I practiced. I hustled my ass off and I practiced a lot. I wasn’t the best, which was interesting because when I was in high school, I was like the best. I was like the best singer and I played piano and I thought I was actually the best because I was the best in my little small town. Oh my God, I have the biggest ego. Probably no one else thought I was the best but me.
Miriam Schulman:
No, your mom did.
Tarzan Kay:
My mom did, and she still does, bless her. So then I go to university and I’m like, oh my God, I’m not the best anymore. Not only am I not the best at all, I also don’t really have the level of commitment that it takes to be successful. I didn’t really have the drive. That’s actually the thing. I thought the answer was to go to law school, of course.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, what punishment.
Tarzan Kay:
No, it was such punishment. So then I went to law school for three years and I was like, well, this blows. Nobody here is like me. They do not care about the things that I care about. This is misery. And so after three years I was so close to graduating and I was like, “Nope, I’m done now.” And I left.
Miriam Schulman:
So I did get that right that you were a law student, but not …
Tarzan Kay:
Yes.
Miriam Schulman:
Right. Okay.
Tarzan Kay:
Three years. Yeah. And then I was like, “Okay, well, this isn’t for me either.” And then I got as far from law school as I could, I literally went to Australia and that’s when I started writing. I have known since I was born that I was going to be a writer. I have homework assignments from like grade two or one in my nostalgia pile that says like, when I grow up, I’m going to be a writer. And then I was introduced to this whole online world, like, oh, okay. I could freelance. I could have like flexible hours. And I could like maybe work from home. I was like, okay, I have a family now, I have to actually make money. And that’s when I formally started my business as a copywriter. And then I specialized in email and then I just made email my everything. I built my whole business on email.
Miriam Schulman:
People who take my quiz, who are into marketing their art, so far since I put that quiz up, it’s not as fun as your quiz. I’m going to have to redo my whole quiz. So I had over a thousand people take this quiz so far. And so most of the people, they’re not hobbyists who are taking the quiz. These are people who I’m targeting, who know it’s a boring quiz. Find out what your art marketing score is or whatever, whatever the heck it is. So people want to take it because it’s not a sexy find your ’80s personality. Almost 74%, when they asked about their email list, 74% answered with no, they do not have a list. What would I send them? 74%.
Tarzan Kay:
Yes.
Miriam Schulman:
And only 3% have a list of a thousand or more subscribers. So these are people who want to sell. And 74% says that they don’t have a list, that they don’t know what the point of it is. That’s why I had Laura Belgray on, I had Amy Porterfield on and now I have you on because I need more people telling my listeners why they need email, why it’s important. The thing I hear more than anything else, Tarzan, they don’t want to bother people.
Tarzan Kay:
Okay. So all of the email marketing that I do is permission-based, which means someone voluntarily agreed to join my list. So what we are not talking about is like buying a list of email addresses and spamming people. That doesn’t work. When people join your email list, they are actively saying, “Yes, I would like to hear from you.” So when you collect these email addresses and then they don’t hear from you, it sends the message that you are not consistent and you’re not a serious business person.
You got to reframe that. Like, rather than like, what’s going to happen if I email my list, like, oh my God, what’s going to happen if you don’t? That’s actually a lot worse. So they do want to hear from you. And there are plenty of studies to show that people do want to get emails from their favorite brands, at least once a week. There’s plenty of stats behind it. Let’s examine like your own feelings about email marketing.
Do you hate the emails in your inbox? Probably you don’t hate all of them. Some of them you probably don’t like, so take note of why you don’t like those and you’re not going to send emails with the big flashing button at the top that says 10% off. And the other ones that you really do like that you enjoy from week to week and get excited about when they land in your inbox, like what’s going on there? Maybe you could be that person. Maybe you could be that bright spot in someone else’s inbox that they’re like, “Oh, oh my gosh, a new email from Miriam. I wonder what this is.”
Miriam Schulman:
I do want to back up to something that you said earlier, because it’s definitely resonated with my audience. So you said you felt you were the best in music.
Tarzan Kay:
Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
Well, here’s the thing. If you ask my daughter, I don’t think she would say she was the best. It was like she wanted to do it and she didn’t care. Do you know what I mean?
Tarzan Kay:
Oh my gosh, good for her. She’ll do so much better.
Miriam Schulman:
And then as soon as she went to college, it’s like, she already knew she wasn’t the best and she didn’t care. She was just going to do it anyway. You maybe felt that way about music, you had to be the best. But with the writing, you stepped into that without having any kind of imposter syndrome at all. You weren’t like, well, I didn’t go to school for writing. I didn’t study that for three years. You were just going ahead, full on with that, right?
Tarzan Kay:
Well, I wouldn’t say that I didn’t struggle with that, and I didn’t think about that. I did training to make sure that I knew what I was doing, but I always knew that I could do it at least 100% better than the people that I was writing for, that’s for certain. Yeah. And the work that I do is very niched. It’s not email for anyone, it’s specifically for people who are selling services online or people who are selling courses and products. So I’m really niched, and I’m an expert in this really niched thing.
If I was trying to be an expert in all email for any type of business and all systems, that’s very broad. I would feel like an imposter. So the niching down helped a lot. And also, I just want to say one more thing about being the best, because I’m going through like a major personal transformation right now because I realized that I thought being the best meant something. I thought that I would feel something when I was the person number one and made the most money.
I realized that that is like an old patriarchal belief that I bought into and is completely untrue. It is an illusion of separateness to even think that someone is the best. What people really connect with in my emails is they are very human, including like I make mistakes. I sent an email out this week to the wrong segment. So there’s my greater email list and then there’s a very small segment of like 20 some people who are in my mastermind, and those emails are like extra private and have extra interesting behind the scenes details and stuff. I accidentally send that email out to my entire list and it had sensitive stuff in it.
Miriam Schulman:
Oops.
Tarzan Kay:
Yeah, I know.
Miriam Schulman:
But there’s a couple of things I want to interrupt so we can unpack why, because it’s really relevant for my audience. That a lot of times they feel that they have to get everything perfect before they do anything. And that’s what’s holding a lot of the people back. We have the people who are the 74% who don’t even have an email list. But then there’s the 25% who have it and what they said to me was like, they have a list, but it’s not much to talk about or they have it and they’re not really using it. They feel they have to be this, like they have to be the best and they have to send the best email and everything has to be perfect because their mother said so, or whatever their story is they’re telling themselves things have to be.
Tarzan Kay:
The response to that email when I messed up was like, I’ve never had so many email responses and people were so grateful to see my humanity and that I also make mistakes. It gave them permission to try things and make mistakes. You will not be successful in business if you’re walking around all day long trying to not make mistakes. You are going to make mistakes. You’re going to make so many embarrassing mistakes and fall on your face so many times like you just have to get up and keep going. That’s what makes a successful business owner.
Miriam Schulman:
100%. The message here is you got to send it out even when it’s not perfect. You can’t worry about that. You can’t worry about you being the best, whether that means being the best artist, being the best writer or I bet you’re a much better jazz musician then.
Tarzan Kay:
I was okay. I played with a lot of feeling, but I wasn’t technically very good.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. You have some really fun ideas about how to write the emails that really resonated with me. I think my audience who are artists are going to love it about using the four different color personalities. So can you give us a synopsis of that?
Tarzan Kay:
I like to think about these four different people when I’m writing emails, and how this can help you is just like to give you an idea of how to vary, how to mix up your content and write different types of emails, because there are different types of people on your email list. And what we often think is like, oh, everyone’s like me. If you don’t like long emails or if you don’t like gifs, or if you don’t like certain things, like you just write that kind of email every time. But there are all different types of people on your email list. I like the DiSC system. You can use any personality based system, but I like DiSC.
Miriam Schulman:
I don’t know what that is. What is DiSC?
Tarzan Kay:
It’s spelled D-I-S-C, it’s like the four styles, and we’ll talk about this. We’ll talk about Harry Potter. The four styles are dominant, influencer, steadiness and conscientious. This is like a nice framework for writing emails, so we can go through them. So the dominant style, we’re going to think about these like houses in Harry Potter. Okay.
Miriam Schulman:
So by the way, I’m rereading the entire Harry Potter series as my quarantine project and I’m almost done with four.
Tarzan Kay:
Oh my gosh. That’s beautiful. Oh, that’s so good. If you want to take a break and listen to the audiobooks-
Miriam Schulman:
I have done that already, because I have-
Tarzan Kay:
Oh, you’ve already done that.
Miriam Schulman:
My kids are now in their 20s, but we used to listen every year. So now I decided that I would go back and revisit as a reader.
Tarzan Kay:
Oh my gosh. I love that.
Miriam Schulman:
I’m loving it. Like such an escape from everything.
Tarzan Kay:
Oh, that’s so good.
Miriam Schulman:
Just watching the federal government deal with COVID, it’s kind of like watching the Minister of Magic deal with the return of Voldemort, almost like the same sort of thing.
Tarzan Kay:
It’s very similar. Yes, totally.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, color types. Go ahead, red.
Tarzan Kay:
Okay. So, color types. The red is a dominant style. Dominant likes to be number one. They like to be in charge. They’re often guarded, very focused on the task at hand, and really likes to achieve things. I think Slytherin matches this persona the most. Also, a lot of entrepreneurs have this like dominant leadership style. You only see the worst of the reds in Slytherin, they’re like we’ll win at any cost and can be snarky because they’re like often sharp-tongued. I’m very red myself. My style is I like things done fast. I want everything done yesterday. I move really fast. I can sometimes overwhelm people. And when it comes to email, I will give an email four seconds and I want to know exactly what it’s about. And then I’ve already decided whether I want the thing or not.
Miriam Schulman:
You don’t attend webinars, right? Because I don’t either.
Tarzan Kay:
I never attend webinars.
Miriam Schulman:
Never. Decide ahead of time either I’m going to buy it or I’m not going to buy it, and just show me the checkout.
Tarzan Kay:
Yeah. I already know whether I’m buying it like way before the cart opened. I know the date that it’s opening, I’m getting it. I’ve probably already assigned the task to someone else to buy the thing. So like very decisive too, that’s how I think about the D, which is the red. Bringing it back to email, when you’re emailing and you want to appeal to the reds, you want to be like very succinct. You want very clear link text. Not all of your emails have to appeal to all of these personality types. Just side note. Okay. But occasionally when you write something that’s like really punchy, that’s short and gets directly to the point, your reds, those Slytherins are going to love you so much.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. And so for artists, if you are selling art, these are I’m assuming the type of people who just want to know how big it is.
Tarzan Kay:
Yes.
Miriam Schulman:
Is it framed or not? And how much does it cost? And show me the picture. They don’t need necessarily the flowery journey of like how you got inspired and where you painted it.
Tarzan Kay:
Yeah. In fact, the reds, they might not even care as much as you think about the details. They’re just like, I like that painting. I want it. Ship it to me now, I’ll pay you. They’re sort of the easiest sell and the hardest sell because if they want it, they’ll just buy it. And if they don’t want it, they’re like pass.
Miriam Schulman:
Pass.
Tarzan Kay:
Yeah. But I’m going to skip ahead to the C, which is the blues. We can think of these as Ravenclaws. They’re conscientious. They value logic, knowledge and facts. So those blues, they do want to know what type of canvas is it on? What type of paint did you use? What is the size? What are the exact colors? Because I want to match it to like this other painting. I want to make sure it looks right in my living room. How long is it going to take before you ship it to me? Like all of the details.
So in your email to appeal to these blues or your Ravenclaws, you want to have like nice meaty FAQ. Let’s say, you’re trying to sell your thing and you’ve sent a bunch of different emails and different reasons that they might want it. But now you just want to really dig into all the questions. Answer them all, all the basics, the questions people ask you all over again. The blues, they want all of that information. If you forgot something, like they’ll ask you more questions. And also, if you said that the painting was 22 by 22 and it’s actually 22 by 24, the blues are probably going to notice and they’re probably going to call you on it. So we do need to pay attention to the detail. They’re very detail oriented.
Miriam Schulman:
I had to redo a painting once because something like that happened. It was more than two inches I was off. But it’s actually quite embarrassing. It was supposed to be six feet wide, and I ordered a canvas that was 60 inches, which is not six feet. It’s five feet. I painted the whole thing. This is a very, several thousand dollars, delivered it to New York City. And then I get a call, “You know, Miriam, this is not six feet. This is only five feet.” So I had to paint it again.
Tarzan Kay:
Oh my God.
Miriam Schulman:
That peacock painting is hanging in my living room, the five foot one, because it’s really hard to sell a painting like that.
Tarzan Kay:
Oh my gosh. Whoa. Which actually establishes this theory that often, you’re probably like very red. Would you identify with the red?
Miriam Schulman:
I think so. But now I’m like confused because I’m a Ravenclaw according to the Potter.
Tarzan Kay:
I am also Ravenclaw. So I actually feel like Pottermore is like sorting people based on different criteria. So, this is like a different way of looking at it.
Miriam Schulman:
I think it’s because I value intelligence is how I got sorted into Ravenclaw.
Tarzan Kay:
Yes. Yes. That could very well be it.
Miriam Schulman:
I don’t think the Sorting Hat would agree. I think the Sorting Hat would have put me in Slytherin and the rest of my family thinks that’s where I belong.
Tarzan Kay:
I know, I think the Sorting Hat is probably like conscientious about putting people in Slytherin because it’s a little bit of a negative connotation, but I’ll be in Slytherin with you.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Tarzan Kay:
We’ll be okay. We’ll be there together and we’ll do some good.
Miriam Schulman:
The green eyes will match like, that color is good for us.
Tarzan Kay:
Okay. So we got the red, we got the blue, let’s go to the yellow. So let’s say the yellow is Gryffindor, influencers, very people oriented, very fast paced, motivated by the reputation, how they appear to others. The yellows are like they’re often the people that take the most convincing, like if you ever … I send so many emails. When I’m in a promotion, just like dozens of emails and the yellows are the ones that buy at the last possible minute. It takes them forever. They’re like not looking at stuff. They usually come in at the last minute.
If you have a friend who is like a fun person, who’s always late to the party, that’s the yellows. They’re very fun-loving. So in emails, I try and tell stories that will make them laugh, use funny gifs. Make it entertaining for the yellows and they will love you forever. If you want to get them to buy earlier, like I recently had a promotion where if you bought like on the first two days, you got to like go on this really fun trip with me to Puerto Rico.
Miriam Schulman:
Wait, I would have liked to do that. Go ahead.
Tarzan Kay:
So, one of my students who like she’s bought lots of stuff from me before, and I know she’s like super high yellow and always like sliding into home base at the last possible second. She was like up at 7:00 AM buying the thing the minute it opened, because she was like Puerto Rico, we’re going to have so much fun.
Miriam Schulman:
I don’t even know what you’re selling and I’m like …
Tarzan Kay:
Yes. Puerto Rico, who doesn’t want to party in Puerto Rico?
Miriam Schulman:
I’ve been home for so long, I’m like …
Tarzan Kay:
Yes. Almost anywhere sounds great.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. Exactly.
Tarzan Kay:
Yeah. So the yellows, make it fun, have a good time, make it silly. The yellows are people person. So start conversations with them. Make them your friend, because they’re nice people to be friends with.
Miriam Schulman:
I think you mean this, but I’m going to ask it anyway. So not every email has to appeal to all four.
Tarzan Kay:
No.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, okay. All right.
Tarzan Kay:
No. You will never get an email finished if you’re trying to make it appeal to all four. Yeah. This is like a way to mix up your emails and think about different types of ways you could email your list. So the last one is the greens, we’ll call them Hufflepuff, hardworking, humble, slower pace also, but very people oriented. My experience of the greens are like, they’re very deeply, very feeling, emotional people. They love like my deepest stories. When I get really into my truth teller persona, and I’m being so brave and we’re crying together, that’s when they really connect.
Miriam Schulman:
I’m guessing the greens were the most responsive to your mistake email that you mentioned earlier. Is that right or no?
Tarzan Kay:
Yeah, for sure.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Tarzan Kay:
The greens would be so appreciative of that. Definitely, they’d be the most. Also, greens in the S the DiSC framework S stands for steadiness. So even in that scenario, like doesn’t feel very steady when you get an email that was meant for someone else revealing sensitive information. On the other hand, I can appeal to them by saying like, I really care about this. I made a mistake. I’m sorry. And please don’t stop loving me.
That’s like go straight to the heart and I’m always trying to speak from the heart specifically for the greens because they’re going to really respond to that. So in terms of connecting with them, like share your stories, share your origin story. When something really deep happens, share that. When something happens it’s really meaningful. When you want to take a stance on something, share that because those greens are going to be 100% behind you.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. This has been really helpful, Tarzan. So basically what you, my listeners, need to know is you can write talking about whether it’s your painting or an art class. You can talk about your painting or art class in four different ways, so four chances to connect with everybody on your list. Did I get that right?
Tarzan Kay:
Totally. We’ll just review them. So the red, or D for dominant is like, just give me the information. I already know that I want it. Okay. The I for influencer, they’re like very fun-loving. These are the yellows. Very fun-loving. You need to ask them five times before they actually will respond to you. They might show a lot of excitement and then suddenly disappear, but don’t let them ghost you because they probably do want your thing. Just like keep them entertained, make it fun.
The greens S for steadiness, the greens, they are like those people oriented, like they want to hear your deep stories. They want to have deep connection, go deep with them. They’re going to love you for that. And then the blues, C for conscientious, they want the logic, the facts. They want the knowledge. They want the measurements. They want to know the delivery time. They want to know all those details. So make sure you give that to them. That’s the blues.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. Perfect. So two things that you should know, Tarzan does have a blog post about this that goes into detail. You can find that at tarzankay.com/blog. I know it’s on the menu. It says blog posts, and that’s how I know it’s there. But you should also make sure you grab her freebie tarzankay.com/email. Tarzan, can you tell us what they get if they sign up for that freebie?
Tarzan Kay:
Oh yeah. If you go to tarzankay.com/email, you will get a beautiful swipe file of 10 promo emails that you can make them your own. You can use them for yourself. I would also just recommend hanging out on my email list for a bit. There’s lots of interesting freebies. You can get the freebie, but really like there’s some really good stuff there. And the people on my email list really love my emails. They will change the way that you think about email. So if you feel like you need a shift around this, come and hang out and do email with Tarzan because I promise it’s really fun in my world and exciting and going to inspire you to do it yourself.
Miriam Schulman:
And she likes fantasy fiction, not just Harry Potter, Game of Thrones.
Tarzan Kay:
Oh my gosh, I love, yeah. Aragorn. I’m reading the Mists of Avalon right now.
Miriam Schulman:
Not familiar, but that’s part of that series?
Tarzan Kay:
It’s like about Camelot, Avalon, King Arthur. Yeah.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s good. I’m very happy with Harry Potter because it calms me down because I know how it ends. I don’t know what’s happening right now in the world, but I know what’s happened in Harry Potter. I don’t have to worry about the character. Like don’t worry, he’ll figure out Mad-Eye Moody’s the bad guy. It’s like, that’s where I am right now. By the way, you will find links to all of these places in the show notes, which is schulmanart.com/90. Okay. Tarzan, do you have any last words for my listeners before we call this podcast complete?
Tarzan Kay:
I just want to invite you to be courageous, because there’s probably a lot of stories that you’re telling yourself about why you can’t send email and you don’t even quite know what they are yet. People are going to unsubscribe. They won’t like it. They’ll get mad at me. There’s a lot of emotional chow-chow going on there. And I’m just going to ask you to be brave and to share what you have to share and trust that the people who like it are going to stick around, they’re going to love you for it. And the people who don’t like it, they can peace out. They were never going to buy it from you anyway.
Miriam Schulman:
So true. I love that. All right, thank you so much for spending this time with me here today. We will see you the same time, same place next week. Don’t forget, you can also get some insight into your unique artists marketing personality using the quiz I developed schulmanart.com/quiz. It’s based on my experience with working with artists at all levels. When you’re done, you’ll even get some inspired action steps you need to take to move your art career forward. Okay. That’s it for now. Thanks again.
Thank you for listening to the Inspiration Place podcast. Connect with us on Facebook at facebook.com/schulmanart, on Instagram @schulmanart, and of course on schulmanart.com.
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