Rethinking Email Marketing and Leads with Real Marketing Real Fast's Doug Morneau

0:00
Welcome to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. I'm Josh Elledge, Founder and CEO of UpMyInfluence.com. We turn entrepreneurs into media celebrities, grow their authority, and help them build partnerships with top influencers. We believe that every person has a unique message that can positively impact the world. Stick around to the end of the show; we'll reveal how you can be our next guest on one of the fastest growing daily inspiration podcasts on the planet in 15 to 20 minutes. Let's go.

And with this, on the show right now is my good buddy, Doug Morneau. Doug, thank you so much for joining us. You are the CEO and founder of Real Marketing Real Fast, your website is DougMorneau.com. And, you know, one thing I'll say about your headshot, dude, you know how to rock the silver fox logo?

1:01
Well, you know, you got to work with what you've got, right? I tell people start with start with what you've got and go from there.

1:07
Yeah, yeah. So give us an overview of what you do.

1:11
I work with existing businesses that are up and running that are traditionally running some advertising, lots of times they're working with an agency, and they're just not happy at the results. So they're looking for leverage, they're looking to scale, and they're looking for maybe some new tactics or strategies to get there. So I spend a lot of my time talking to vendors, potential vendors, looking at technologies, just trying to stay ahead of kind of, you know, where the marketplace is going. And make sure I introduce those opportunities to my clients first.

1:40
Doug, what is working today in Legion,

1:44
there's still still lots of paid stuff working in terms of social media, Google AdWords, that sort of stuff. I'm still working is funny enough, I'm still working in the email space where I'm renting third party lists and doing sponsored email, mainly because it works, you know, and and my view on tactics is, you know, they stay in my toolbox as long as they produce some they don't produce their gun. And the reason I'm still not spaces because it's, you know, mostly unknown by most marketers. We don't suffer with the same competition issues in terms of, Hey, I, you know, your competition can see what you're doing. You don't have the same restrictions as the social space of, oh, you can't mention CBD. You can't mention this. You can't sell that you can't do supplements. The list owners and the vendors that are publishers are much more open. So and not to mention the big bonuses, the prices have come down. So you know the media is getting better open rates over the pandemic are higher than they've ever been. And now we've got technology on the back end for remarketing retargeting, that makes it more valuable than it was when I started this 15 years ago,

2:54
who would be a great candidate for renting email lists. And by the way, one of your books is called three big lies, the real truth about renting email lists to generate targeted leads and sales. So does this work for anybody? Are there certain industries that like, oh, Josh, let me tell you if you do X, Y or Z Yeah, you need to really consider what I'm what I'm what you're talking about in regards to email.

3:22
Venture Capital guys guys raising money public companies, it works extremely well for because there's a ton of data there. nutraceutical businesses that are selling vitamin supplements, especially CBD, because CBD and medical marijuana isn't is a no go on all the social channels. And I have access to millions of consumers who put up a hand and say, Hey, I'm interested in alternative health, or they subscribe to lists like Dr. Oz. And it's, it's a very simple process to get your message out and, you know, to be able to test that media.

3:51
All right, I'm writing down people I need to intro you to after this call. Um, so, you know, I might look at that and say, well, Doug, I'm so busy. Like, I don't know that I really pay much attention if I get an unsolicited email, like, how do you do that in a way that works?

4:13
Well, it's not unsolicited, you've subscribed to a list from a particular subscriber. So you're in the PR industry, right? So you might have subscribed to muck rack or one of those. So, you know, because you've subscribed, I just simply contract with them and they send you an ad. So it's not coming from me. It's coming from the publisher you subscribe to so if you've subscribed to Dr. Oz's newsletter, or you've subscribed to the wall street journal or the Washington Post, you're already familiar with them. You've given them permission, you're expecting to see them in the inbox if you open it up. And when you open it up, instead of being your regular news broadcast for the day, or whatever's happening politically. Instead, it's it's an advertising message from my client.

5:00
So, well, sounds like a great win win for the newsletter list owner.

5:06
Yeah, absolutely. It's a way for them to monetize. I mean, you know, traditionally they're monetizing through banners and sponsored ads and native ads. And we still do all of those as well. But this is just a way to get a larger audience. So it works really well, if you're national, if you're looking to, to your point, target just a specific geographic area him working only in the Chicago area, it's going to be pretty tough to get any numbers that make sense. But if you're looking at America, America really is the last frontier where you can still leverage this, so many countries have have said, No, this isn't an option, or they just don't want to participate. So the opportunities for companies that are in the US that want to sell in the US or are globally and want to sell in the US is still still available.

5:52
So if I've got a list, and obviously I'm thinking you're talking about really big lists, but so I've got you know, with my other company savings Angel, I've got a list of like 15,000, moms in the suburbs, upper middle income, love money, saving opportunities, love stuff that typically appeals to mom. I mean, that's probably too small have a list too much attention, no,

6:14
no micro influencers? I mean, you've got people that are highly passionate moms, there's going to be there's going to be advertisers that would love to get in front of that audience, you know, and so, you know, to your point, is that too small, well, your list is 15,000, add another list, that's 20,000. And another list has 50,000, you know, another 10,000. So now you're getting close to 100,000 people. So you would just rent or buy ads in multiple lists. You just because a list is bigger doesn't mean that it's better yet, right? Right. The advantage of a bigger list is if the list is a million names, and you do a test where you run advertising to 100,000 people, if it works, guess what? You can do that? And you know, another nine times,

6:55
right? Would you be talking about this would be a dedicated email just ordered, it kind of varies based on both

7:02
dedic dedicated which you own 100% of the real estate, meaning everything in the email is all about you. Or sometimes they're just a sponsored ad. So there's right a banner ad or some text copy within an email. Sometimes we'll do that to test the the media before we buy a dedicated just just to see what the numbers look like. It's it's the list owners unsubscribe link, though that goes out with that. Right? Absolutely.

7:24
Wow. So I would imagine that they'd want to explain, I mean, at least I would I'd be really sensitive to like, here's why you're getting this.

7:35
Yeah. And they've been doing it for a while. So this isn't brand new to them. So you're not going to be the first person that's going to send an ad out to the list. Their subscribers will be used to seeing this. Yeah, sometimes I'll advise my clients to have their own unsubscribe list. So I didn't work for the Wall Street Journal, for example. So they sent me what's called a suppression list. So they track unsubscribes, where people don't want to see their ads anymore. Yeah, when they come to someone like me, and they rent a list. They don't want to pay to send advertising to someone who clearly is already in enterprise. I don't want to see your ads.

8:04
Yeah. So what is the potential?

8:11
Well, the potential is really Unlimited, depending on the industry that you're in. So you've got the ability to scale up quite quickly. So you know, I don't know what you're looking at, for potential wise, but I mean, in terms of traffic, your traffic's almost immediate. So if you compare it to other types of media, if you want to test and, and and run a new offer out, you're gonna see all your results within 24 hours. Hmm. So you know, instead of saying, hey, let's do a search campaign, or let's run some banners and see how many impressions we can get over the next 30 days, I get, you know, half a million a million impressions in an hour.

8:43
Now, is the investment, typically CPM?

8:48
Some of those some of its CPM, some of us now, cost per acquisition, depending on the depending on the industry. So I'm seeing more that open up where people are saying, hey, cost per acquisition, and they just get paid on a per lead basis. There's also opportunities now where you're, we're using that just on a, again, cost per sale. Amazing.

9:09
So if we were looking for guests for the thoughtful entrepreneur or something like that, I give just throwing something out. And that was valuable to us. Uh, you know, that that might be something where we could entertain that model.

9:22
Yeah, absolutely. Holy cow. Well, the other side of that is is leveraging your knowledge in the PR side. So you know, if you work with your clients, and you help them get a, you know, exposure in a major publication, let's say ink magazine, or fortune or Forbes, why wouldn't you rent their list and send out that are a link to that article that they did wrote about you to their list? They already get the email, they might have missed it. So there's ways to leverage that or send it out to now you're gonna might not be able to send it out to another publication Forbes might not lay send a link out to ink magazine, not sure. But you ask.

9:58
Yeah. So Doug, how did you get into this? How'd you get into marketing?

10:04
Just always wanted to do it. And you know, so I worked for a number of companies, various companies in the public company side private companies, venture capital guys. And I just kind of learned as I went, and I thought it was pretty logical. But apparently, somebody said to me, Tom Schwab said to me, what's what's, you know, logical to you is special to other people. So, you know, I've just grown as someone who's who's read, you know, 100 books on the topic traveled the world to meet all the smartest people interviewed some of the brightest people, including yourself on my podcast. And I'm just willing to try so I pull up my credit card first. I try it, I buy it. If it works, I recommend it to my clients.

10:43
Yeah. Yeah. You recently looked on your Instagram? Yeah. Seven days ago. You have been married for 32 years.

10:55
33. I made a mistake. 33 Oh, no. Congratulations.

10:59
I like my my typo.

11:02
Yeah. So So what, you know, if someone says, you know, what makes a great marriage or you know, what, what do you and your wife have, that have led to that longevity, I should point out, we're dealing with a couple of guys. So let's see my 1990 days of when we're recording this. My wife and I 25 years. So but i'm, i'm curious, you know what, what you would say has led to your longevity, just great communications.

11:30
You know, we've we've just treasured each other. And we've always been open and had great lines of communication. We don't always agree on everything.

11:40
And yeah, I mean, that's it.

11:45
Yeah. And now you've got kids as well. We got kids,

11:48
and we got grandkids. I guess the other thing I'd say is, it is our faith. I mean, my wife and I are, are both, you know, Christians. So we've figured you know, the, we have so many things that we do in common. So the more things you can do with your spouse workout or the gym together, we traveled together. So I very rarely go on any business trips where I don't take my wife, or take somebody with me. So that's been good. But yeah, so I've got kids, I've got three grown kids, one my son's Mary's given us three grandkids, we got a six month old, two year old and a four year old. Yeah. My other daughters out of the house with a boyfriend and I've got one daughter still at home. Very, very smart, very attractive, single not to kill me if she sees this interview.

12:35
Alright, good. So, um, who is your who's kind of your ideal client? And and how do they typically find you?

12:44
In the venture capitalist, space is very word of mouth. So it's very hard to find these people, they're typically private guys that are investing seven, eight figures into companies. And they're looking for an ROI when they when they take them public. So most of them would know me or know who I am, or know what I've done in the past. In the rest of the world is really just, you know, like every other business, getting the name your name out there, getting your brand new out there having conversations, and just positioning yourself as a, you know, as a leader in your industry.

13:13
Right, right. Do you, you know, obviously, in 2020 I know speaking is something that you've done. What have you done to fill the gap that you may have been on the speaking circuit? years past?

13:24
zoom? Yeah.

13:26
Let's move from a podium to a camera.

13:30
Yeah. So when when folks are like, okay, I like what this guy's talking about. It can go to your website as well. Doug Maher, no, and Doug more, no more. No is MORNE A you? And when they go there? Where would you recommend they look?

13:50
Well, I'd suggest that they add a forward slash email and sign up for my email list. If you want to see what I'm doing, where I'm spending my time, my money, my focus, and working with my clients. That's where to go, you'll get a feel for the style, how I work. If you don't like the information, just unsubscribe, what you'll notice very quickly is you're not going to get an offer. Every week, when I sent you an email, what you're going to get is kind of the direction we're going what I'm seeing in the marketplace to feedback, the opportunities, what's shifting what's happening, what's not happening, where I'm not spending budget where I'm spending budget, so that's probably the best place to see what's current. So if you wanted to come sit beside me and see what I'm working on, that's the best place to go.

14:31
Yeah, you know, Doug, you're also an amazing connector. And I just say, you know, personally, thank you so much for the connections that you've helped make. But many of them and, and likewise, I hope that, you know, through through the process of this, this conversation, I can lead many people your way as well. So, Doug, you're a good guy. Thank you so much for joining us again, your website, DougMorneau.com. Thank you. I appreciate it. Doug.

14:57
Thanks so much. Josh. always loved hanging out with you.

15:01
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