We all get a lot of spam messages, but how many of us are sending cold emails that could be perceived as spam? This week, Anne & Erikka are here to help you clean the spam from your inbox. Using discernment is key, but checking for legitimate business websites, email domains, and avoiding sketchy links is a great start. As for sending spam, any #VOBOSS knows that their website, email signature, and patiently awaiting a response will help, but keep listening for the whole conversation!
Transcript
>> It's time to take your business to the next level, the BOSS level! These are the premiere Business Owner Strategies and Successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a BOSS, a VO BOSS! Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.
Anne: Hey everyone. Welcome to the VO BOSS podcast. I'm your host Anne Ganguzza, and today I am excited to bring back my very special favorite co-host Erikka J. Woohoo!
Erikka: I'm sure you say that to all the co-hosts, Anne.
Anne: Hey. Hey.
Erikka: Well, we are matching today with our headphones though.
Anne: So, oh my gosh. That's pretty awesome.
Erikka: Yes. Yeah.
Anne: Wow. Wow. We're doing a little experiment, BOSSes, that not only are we recording audio, but we are recording video this week, and that was quite an event because I had to put some lipstick on.
Erikka: Just gloss for me was the best I could do.
Anne: And try to look good for the camera, but you know, we'll give it a shot. So Erikka, it's been a crazy week. It's been, goodness, what's been going on with you?
Erikka: Man. Yesterday. Actually I posted that I got this really crazy spam email and um...
Anne: Uh-\oh.
Erikka: Well, well, okay. I'll take it back even further. It went -- on a good note --
Anne: Crazy spam.
Erikka: Oh goodness. All spam is crazy, right? But this one was, was probably the worst I've gotten. I had just gotten featured in this magazine called Voyage ATL and posted the article.
Anne: Oh yes.
Erikka: It's like really cool. And with that comes SEO juice, and there's good juice and bad juice. And it looks like this juice kind of fed some bad. I got a form submission actually from my, my site, which is based on Squarespace. And so I'm saying, okay, when, if somebody's wanna hire me, I click it. And it says it's from the Spit in Her Butt Show.
Anne: oh my gosh. The Spit in Your Butt. All right.
Erikka: Her. So particularly women.
Anne: Oh, Spit in Her Butt. Oh!
Erikka: The Spit in Her Butt Show. And they said that they found me on Voyage. Like they actually told me that that was how they found me.
Anne: Wow.
Erikka: And I was like, oh, ok.
Anne: So that was not a job proposal.
Erikka: I don't know, but I, I would decline whatever it is.
Anne: Yeah, I think I'd decline.
Erikka: And then they left a link, and it was like --
Anne: Oh my.
Erikka: -- it's a valid show though. That's what's nuts. I didn't click the link because you know.
Anne: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That looks suspicious.
Erikka: But Googled a little and apparently this guy does and I was like, ew, you know, but spam.
Yeah.
Anne: Spam is, spam is ugh. Spam is annoying. That is for sure. And I think, you know what? That kind of is a great segue into what I think would be a great topic to talk about. 'Cause I get questions all the time about emails and email marketing. So we should talk about email marketing today. And spam is a concern. I think, let me just open up by saying there's a lot of people which will go and kind of mine the internet for production companies and email addresses to where maybe they should send their demos to and try to get on their rosters. And while that's absolutely a method to do that, the risk that you take with that is that you are probably going to be cold emailing someone. And I think that there's some considerations that you need to think about before you do that.
Spam is most certainly one of them, and spam is in the broadest sense is receiving an email that you did not give permission or request. And so as business owners and trying to sell a service, we have to be very careful when we email people that we have their permission. I mean, that is the ultimate way that you need to be doing your marketing is to having permission to send to these people. But what do you do when you don't know these people? Right?
Erikka: Yeah, yeah.
Anne: How do you make an introduction? How do you do it without being considered spam? Because I know when I get spam, as you just mentioned, like the last thing I wanna do is contact these people ever again. 'Cause I'm annoyed, number one, how did you get my email address? How did you find me? At least the person told you how found you.
Erikka: True. True.
Anne: But a lot of times, yeah, a lot of times I'll just get an email in my inbox and it'll be like, hey, I can help your SEO or I can do your website or whatever that might be. And the interesting thing is that they never seem to be from a valid company. It's just like kind of an indescript email address and no signature file. And I don't know, what are some things that you look out for when you're getting emails to see if they're spam or not?
Erikka: Oh man. It's the common stuff.
Anne: Warning signs.
Erikka: Yeah. The misspellings. Honestly, sometimes the all caps.
Anne: Yeah.
Erikka: Because humans just don't really write that way. Particularly like if it's coming to me in another language that I only speak English, I only have English everywhere on any presence on the web, maybe a little Spanish every once in a while, but yeah, nothing --
Anne: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Erikka: Yeah, definitely stuff like that. I don't know. Just the context. I'll I'll look at it. I definitely don't click any links, but I'll read it. But yeah, the misspellings and all that kind of stuff, usually it's in the text, you can tell.
Anne: I think for me, the first thing I see is, is there a signature file, and is it coming from a proper domain?
Erikka: Yeah. Yeah.
Anne: Right?
Erikka: There you go.
Anne: If it comes from like a Yahoo address or a, even a Gmail address these days, and I know there have been talks with people about, well, it's okay to just have a Gmail address for your business. And I'm like, I, I kind of have a disagreement with that because I feel like if you want to exude professionalism that at least have a domain name that is your business. And that domain name can be your name. But I feel like if it comes from Gmail, you didn't take the time to like really set up your business in a professional way. That's me.
But I've had so many people say otherwise that, oh no, it's perfectly fine now to get an email address from Gmail or Yahoo. But if you're gonna do that, and then have a signature file that links back to a webpage maybe of yours, of your own domain. Right? I still feel like, again, if you wanna be, show professionalism, you should have a domain name. AnneGanguzza.com. That's me. Erikka J, right? Or even Anne Ganguzza Voice or whatever that is, it goes back to a domain that hosts a website that tells people about you.
Erikka: Yeah. You've gotta establish that trust. Right? And I mean, it's so inexpensive. Like I said, I personally use Google domains. It's $12 a year, a dollar a month. I mean, why wouldn't you, you know, just to have that domain? And then setting up an email, I think it's like an additional six or something. Yeah. The Gmail or the Yahoo is definitely one. Another one to look for, particularly with spam is that they'll try to use like a known brand name, but it'll have like an extra dot or something in there. And you have to watch that 'cause you might see like Bank of America, but it's got like Bank of - America. And like that's not Bank of America, like watch that type of spam too.
Anne: Right?
Erikka: Yeah. Get your own domain name. It's, it's so easy.
Anne: Yeah. And I think that will really do a lot. It'll do wonders for having people respond to that email, which is what we want. We don't want people to take a look at our email and get angry at us and then say, oh my gosh, I'm so annoyed that they just emailed me that and trying to sell me something that I don't ever wanna contact them again. Because that's what I do silently. I'll be like, oh I'm so. And if, especially if they send it more than once, right? If it comes like a day or two or again and again, and I can tell in Gmail 'cause it threads.
Erikka: Yep.
Anne: And I'll be like, all right, that's it. That's like the fifth time you sent me email and I, then I might write back. But as a business, if we're sending out emails to people who have not given us permission and guys, I say it over and over again, when you are mining the internet or you are finding production houses, and you are sending emails to the contact there, they have not typically said it's okay to send them emails. So you have to be very, very careful about what you say in that email that you're not gonna get them upset or annoyed that you are just reaching out to contact them because 200 other voice talent have found their name as well. And all they do is field off these, "hey, I'm a voice talent. Here's my demo." So I think it's important.
Erikka: Yeah. The trick that I hate that people will do, and I see this probably more with like spam, legit, spam and bots. But like they try the re and the subject line to make it look like they were replying when you know, you never sent anything to them. It's like, stop trying to trick me. I know I didn't email you .
Anne: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, it's interesting. What made me think you were talking about using a known brand or trying to kind of spin off of a brand -- I actually got like an invoice in PayPal, which was an invoice that I certainly did not -- I didn't buy anything from this person, but it came so legit with the PayPal logo 'cause it came through PayPal, but it was spam coming through PayPal in the form of an invoice where once they had the invoice, if you open the invoice, right, then they had links to probably, I don't even know 'cause I didn't click them. So people try anything to to, to contact or maybe it was phishing. Whatever it is, I think that again, as voice talent, we have to be very, very careful.
There are laws. There's the Spam Can Act of 2013. There is the GDPR. There is the California Privacy Act. There are so many laws and, and regulations set in place that theoretically, if you do not put your address on the bottom of your email, and you do not offer an unsubscribe, that is considered spam. So even if you're sending an individual email out through Gmail, if it's unsolicited, if you don't have your address or a way to unsubscribe, that is considered spam and somebody could potentially legally take that up with you.
Erikka: Yeah. Yeah. Things to watch out for.
Anne: So, then what do we do? Right? What do we do? How do we market with email? That's the question of the day. VO BOSS has a direct marketing program. And the one thing that makes it different is that we have a list, but it was not a list that was something that we mined off of the internet. This is a list that was purchased. And with lists that you purchase, of course you have to be careful with that too, because you don't know how many times that list has been sold. Let's say, oh, it's a list of e-learning companies. And we sold it to 2000 voice talent already. And so you don't wanna have a list that you don't know how many times it's been used.
You don't know how old it is. We don't know if there's current addresses on it.
The list that I have purchased is a large list that has been in business for many, many years. They continually update addresses, and it's 90,000 plus creatives and companies that have in-house media production divisions, copywriters, creative directors, owners of companies. So this list that we have purchased, they have agreed to allow VO BOSS to market to them. And that is, I think, the number one advantage, if you want to do a direct marketing this way. You can also buy a list that has permissions built into it. This list costs a few thousand dollars, but it's one of the reasons why I started the VO BOSS blast because I was like, wow, I'm gonna buy this list. It's pretty expensive. So I can offer, uh, this 90,000 people, I can offer marketing to this list, and it's already what I call vetted. It's a vetted list. And so these people are okay with anybody from VO BOSS, sending them a marketing email.
So essentially the product basically gives you a VO BOSS address. So Erikka, you would be like ErikkaJ@VOBOSS.com. So therefore it gets sent out to these companies who have already given permission. They're already expecting to hear from us, but the reply to is set to your individual email business address. So therefore when somebody wants to hire you or ask you for an audition, they basically will just reply or send an email to you. And it also has links in the email that go to your website, that go to your demos. We usually feature a project or something new that you've done. And that's essentially the concept around a direct marketing method that uses a list where people have already given permission. And that's like half the battle. Really.
Erikka: Yeah. For sure. And I mean, if you're not gonna spend, you know, the thousands of dollars, obviously there's the grassroots, the organic route, right, is where you are talking to people or you have it on your website where they can actually subscribe. So they're making the choice to subscribe to your list and giving permission that way. And if you have those sort of tools built in, they obviously would have an unsubscribe option. So yeah, permission is, is the key for sure.
Anne: I'm so glad that you brought that up 'cause people will say, how do I get permission? And that is, I think one of the leading ways to get permission is to have one of those pop-up windows. I have 'em on every one of my websites. And any platform has a way to do that. If you have a WordPress website, there are plugins. I used to use the plugin called Bloom. And that was the one that allowed a popup to appear once somebody was on your website and says, "hey, subscribe to my email list to get special offers or whatnot. If you wanna keep up with what's going on, sign up here." And I wanna say that that is a very valid way to get a permission based list of people that you can market to. And it's very valid. I mean, I've been doing it for years on all of my domains, on Anne Ganguzza, on VO Peeps, on VO BOSS. So anytime you see that pop-up and you say, yeah, let me sign up and keep up with what's happening with your business, that person has given you permission to email them.
Erikka: Yeah, absolutely.
Anne: And so there are ways to create your list. It takes a long time, I'm gonna say because not everybody that comes to your website's gonna really wanna keep up with you. I mean, a lot of us have email. I have, we've discussed my email before.
Erikka: Yeah. You beat me, but mine's pretty bad too.
Anne: Uh, yeah. I got a lot of unread messages and a lot of, yeah, I get a lot of email, so. But it's one of the ways, interestingly enough, Erikka people may laugh at how much email I get. But a lot of the ways that I learned how to market through email was by signing up for companies' lists.
Erikka: Yes. Copy. Steal like an artist.
Anne: Exactly. It's like my secret weapon. People are like, well, how'd you get so good at marketing? Oh my gosh, I sign up for company email lists. And then I, I observe and I say, okay, what kind of information are they sending out? Not only do I observe how to market myself, but I observe how I might be able to help that company 'cause I can see how they're marketing to their clients. And therefore it's like a double cool thing because, number one, I'm learning how to market, number two, I'm learning about this company and what their needs are. So then how can I serve those needs?
So I can just bring it back to them and just say, hey, I really love what you're doing with this product, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever it might be. Just wanted to reach out and say, hey. And even if you don't even say like I do voiceovers, it could just be like, hey, I signed up your mailing list. I love your product. I think it's super interesting. Just wanted to say thanks for the inspiration. And boom, you're done. Don't even mention that you're a voice artist, but in your signature file, guess what?
Erikka: There you go, there you go.
Anne: You're a voice artist. So you start to develop that relationship first. Erikka, like how do you find new leads and contacts?
Erikka: You know, I am not one to do much of the email or direct marketing. It's just, this is not my jam at least not at the moment. It's sort of on my long range roadmap to probably outsource that moreso, the lead generation part. But I will say that when I was moreso doing music and I'm probably gonna date myself here, but I was using MailChimp So they still run, but I did it the grassroots way. So it was like people that I knew were already engaged with my brand, people that I knew were already buying from me, I started with that. And then I would just say, "hey, you know, I've got this thing, I have this newsletter that I'm starting. Do you wanna stay up to date?" And most of them said, yeah, sure.
And then I just had them click, and it automated, and I built this database of about 500 people. So when I had a new release or I had a new piece of merch coming out, you know, I sent the one, and it went out to everybody, so I kind of did that. But yeah, as far as lead generation, now I'm more so -- I like the passive stuff. So I love the SEO. I use P-to-P's. I have my agents and my managers, but I really, really kind of leverage the SEO so that I have more walking into my website passively because I don't really love to email market. I do have a couple where it's like brands that I'm super engaged with. Just like you said, I'm like, I love this product. I love what you guys are doing. If I can ever help in any way, please let me know, and I just send it, and I have all my information in my signature. So I'm not really selling. It's just there for them. If they wanna see it.
Anne: Well, exactly.
Erikka: Yeah.
Anne: Exactly. You're expressing an interest in them, and you're not trying to take anything back.
Erikka: Yep. Yep.
Anne: You're not trying to push yourself on them. And I think that that's really wonderful, and I do believe that email marketing, it is just one way. Obviously we always wanna know how to get work. And we have a whole episode that we did on SEO, which I love because that is also one of my favorite methods of getting work is just having people find me and then listening to the demos. And if they're strategic, target marketed demos, which is what I'm all about, they listen to it, they love what they hear. They then contact you and say, "hey, how much would it cost to do this?" So I love that.
But I also think a combination of that along with your talent agents, along with maybe pay to plays, along with direct marketing through a list, can really provide you with the opportunities to really get out there and get work so that you can make it a successful endeavor, this career, as voiceover, because that's gotta be the number one question, right? How do I get work? How do I get work? And how do I email mark? it's something that people are, they're kind of terrified if they've never done it before.
And the first thing you have to be aware of is when you go and mine the internet for those addresses is that you've gotta be careful of talking to people when they haven't given you permission. It's also like when somebody calls you up, how many -- like I actually have a phone at my home that is not my cell phone. And we get spam calls every single day. And so you don't wanna be like that. when you're sending out email, but if you can send out email marketing, the cool thing is, is to send it out to people who've already given you their permission to do that.
And the other cool thing is if you do hire or outsource, let's say, do a BOSS Blast, what happens is we kind of represent you without being an agent. So we're like on behalf of VO BOSS, check out millennial voiceover talent, or check out Erikka J. She's got the smooth promo sounds of whatever it is that you, whatever genre that you want to talk about in your promo or in your email marketing, we can focus on that. And it's on behalf of another brand that is trusted, that has already been given permission. And so that's even cooler because it's not like I, I, I, I, I, here's what I've done. It's about VO BOSS presenting you as the talent that is established, that is credible.
And that's the other thing too, is that VO BOSS doesn't do this marketing for everybody. I mean, we vet the people that we market for. And we have to make sure that you have a well-established brand, that you've got good demos that we can market and things that we can do. Because if I get labeled as a spammer, VO BOSS gets labeled as a spammer, guess what? My entire BOSS Blast business is out of business. So I have to be hyper aware of what's being sent out and coming back and make sure that it's not going to be considered spam. So you better believe that we've got many eyes looking at that email going out, making sure that it's good and that it's not spam. I'm gonna say, think about your own email and the emails that you get on a day to day basis. What do you consider spam? And then think about how you are marketing email wise to people.
Erikka: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's what it's all about, talking about our balance theme is having a balanced approach to lead generation, whether that's P2Ps, agents, managers, email marketing, social media marketing, because that works too, using hashtags, or like you said, not, I, I, I; you know, talking about a recent job that you did, how you were happy to help this brand or this company, or promote this new product. All those sorts of things help you with lead generations. So having a balanced approach to that is super important.
Anne: Yeah. Wow.
Erikka: Wow. Yeah.
Anne: Good discussion.
Erikka: One more thing about email marketing I kind of wanted to touch on real quick. We, we kind of started to was the signature. I think it's important that you make sure that you have a good signature. You know, there are tons of tools out there for you to go build it. It doesn't necessarily have to be super fancy, but if you can get it branded, that's great. And there are tools that can help you do that, but you know, make it easy for them to find you and to find your work, to know what you do. If you choose to put a picture, but at minimum, at least like your website and some way to contact you maybe outside of that email. But yeah, I think that's important because if you are sending an email to market, that might be your only shot to make an impression.
Anne: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And actually I think that, remember, it was the first thing that I look at when somebody sends me an email, do they have a signature file? Is it coming from a valid domain, a valid company? Does it look legit? And so I think your signature is super important. And by the way, I use Wise Signature. I think I spend $39 a year. And it allows you to put all sorts of really cool, like your social media icons, you can put links to your demos, and it makes it look really nice too. I love a nice, a nice signature.
Erikka: Yeah. I've used them. I use Signature IO, same type deal where I can put graphics and colors and all that stuff so that it's branded. So yeah, like you said, it does establish trust, but I kind of wanted to touch on like the aesthetics of it alone, just being eye-catching and being like, oh, makes me wanna go click and look at it.
Anne: Absolutely, absolutely, great suggestion. All right. Well, hey, I know we can talk about email all day long but I think this was a great start. I'd like to give a great big shout-out to our sponsor, 100 Voices Who Care. You guys can have an opportunity to have your voice make a difference. You can find out more at 100voiceswhocare.org. And of course, to our sponsor, ipDTL. You too can connect and network like a BOSS and find out more at ipdtl.com. You guys, have an amazing week. Thanks so much for joining us this week, and we'll see you next week.
Erikka: Bye!
Anne: Bye!
>> Join us next week for another edition of VO BOSS with your host Anne Ganguzza. And take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at voBOSS.com and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies, and new ways to rock your business like a BOSS. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via ipDTL.