How email has changed for the better... + something in the pipeline - Kit Approved Expert | Email Marketing Strategist John Bellingham

11th Apr, 2025
A NEWSLETTER FOR SOLOS
Read time: approx. 4-5 mins

Email marketing has changed for the better

Email Marketing

Where it started for me… and what I wish I knew back then!

I remember when I first started using email marketing – it was a long time ago, and I was dabbling with two platforms, Aweber and OfficeAutoPilot (which no longer exists!).

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I had no idea what I was doing (literally!), other than trying to emulate what I saw a few people doing in other industries.

I was a big advocate of self-improvement, and along the way, I came across a ton of new ideas and examples of how others were making them work in their businesses.

Back then, the marketing names being flaunted as ‘the go-to guys’ (at least in my circles) included Dan Kennedy, Joe Polish, Dean Jackson, Gary Halbert, Dan Sullivan, Chris Cardell, Jay Abraham... the list goes on, mostly all USA-based.

In those days, “squeeze pages” were all the rage (now referred to as ‘landing pages’) – the ‘best-practice’ tactic was to create them and drive traffic using paid ads (content marketing wasn’t even a ‘thing’ back then).

I remember being taught that on a squeeze page, you must NOT give visitors a chance to do anything other than subscribe to your list – no links to a privacy policy, no menu options, no links to T&Cs, don’t even let them navigate away – and once on your list, “sell until they buy or die“!! 😳

Fast forward to today and thankfully the approach to email marketing has completely changed – which is a good thing as it’s now a much richer digital channel, one that’s nuanced and more powerful than ever before.

Today, to be effective, you need to acknowledge;

Email marketing is just one component of a client attraction system
People demand privacy and control of their data
Subscribers don’t allow you into their inboxes as easily as before
Your email marketing system is an ever-evolving layer of your biz
You need to add value or your subscribers will reach for the unsubscribe link

The one thing that hasn’t changed over the years is the effectiveness and high ROI email marketing brings – quoted at 42:1 way back when (in other words, for every $1 you invest, you can expect $42 in return), and today being widely accepted as at least 36:1 (data source: Statista).

Something in the pipeline…

The Hub – a community to accelerate the success of solo biz owners

Have self-paced digital ‘courses’ had their day?

I don’t believe they have, but I’d say it’s becoming more difficult to sustain them as an income stream in isolation – people want and expect more these days.

I think expectations and demands have ramped up significantly – to the point where a standalone self-paced digital course is becoming just one part of a trifecta of what will become the baseline standard over the next few years.

I believe the online education space is morphing into a place that must accommodate three elements, at a minimum;

Education (courses, webinars, ‘live’ streams)
Mentorship (guiding, sharing experiences)
Discussion Groups (sharing and accountability).

And that’s what I’m currently working on – designing and building a community that will deliver transformation and help accelerate the success of solo biz owners.

It’s called ‘The Hub‘ and it’s becoming an obsession of mine (I think my wife is reaching her limit for Hub-related chats… 😳)

It’s launching next month, and I can’t wait to share my long-term plans with you and show you how you can benefit from being part of it.

The objective is not simply to ‘teach‘ stuff – but instead, to guarantee a true biz-changing transformation that will impact your biz’s bottom line.

I’m going to be starting slowly, with a very small group of solo biz owners who want to transform their biz (and income!) over the coming months.

If you’re interested in becoming a ‘founder member‘ of the ‘The Hub‘ community, hit the button below and you’ll be first on the list to find out what’s on offer!

Yes, I’m interested in being a founder member of The Hub

Kit Feature

Using a little bit of ‘Liquid’ gold…

Did you know that Kit supports Shopify’s Liquid Template Language?

Probably not, unless you’ve dabbled with some advanced features of the platform.

Below, is a simple example of what ‘Liquid‘ is and how you can use it – but don’t get confused or overwhelmed by it – it’s just fancy text that anyone can learn to use!

Example

Let’s imagine you’re composing an email to your list and you want to make it as personal and relevant as you can for each subscriber.

At one point in your email, you want to display conditional content, depending on whether the subscriber has purchased your course or not.

If they’ve already purchased it, you want them to leave you a review.

If they haven’t purchased it, you want to give them a link to buy it.

You would use ‘Liquid’ to do this, something like this;

The red text in the image above is the ‘Liquid’ code. This is what it’s doing;

It checks to see if the subscriber has the ‘tag‘ entitled “Purchased course“.

If they do, they are shown the sentence “What did you think of the course?” and shown a button to leave a review.

However, if they don’t have the ‘tag’, they are shown a different sentence (“Buy the course now and get started with your email marketing“), and then shown a ‘Buy the course – $97‘ button.

I appreciate this is a simple example, however, it’s merely to show you what’s possible and to get your brain ticking over so you’ll come up with ideas of how you can use it in your emails.