Episode 61 Secrets of Email Marketing Pt 1
Welcome to the Vermilion podcast, a free audio library of business strategies,
creative inspiration and industry knowledge for actors, filmmakers, writers and anyone
looking to activate their creative potential. I'm Misha Calvert, a writer -director who
helps artists build the careers that they dream of. I really hope that this podcast
inspires you in some way. Thanks for tuning in.
Secrets of cold emails. This is a very requested topic.
And rightly so. I'm a huge fan of email communication and email marketing.
I am consistently amazed at how many problems in life are solved by a cold email
campaign. We're talking money, housing, creative jobs,
or even just telling your friends that you're on the market. There are so many
things that are taken care of by just letting large amounts of people know that you
exist and that you're getting out into the world, letting people know you exist.
It's as simple as that. I'm going to talk you through how to create a very
successful cold email campaign that also used this as a warm email campaign.
The difference between cold and warm is just that cold is people that haven't heard
from you before. Warm is people that you have an existing relationship with. So I'm
gonna give you all the steps that I use when I'm emailing people on mass and set
you up to do your own email campaign. Let's dive in. I love emails and my business
this year has doubled since I've really started to embrace email marketing. But I
can't say enough good things about email marketing. One of the best reasons to
integrate email into your business, and if you are an artist who wants to make
money from your work, you are running a business. One of the best reasons is that
email is an owned platform. Once you have their email, you have it. This is in
contrast to social media.
You may have half a million followers, but if you lose access to your account, you
can't reach them anymore. And in today's sociopolitical climate, being kicked off of
social media is increasingly a risk. Point being, somebody's email doesn't usually
change. So once you've got it, you've got it. Try to build an email marketing list
based on the people that are already in your network. You already have a list. You
just might not have organized it. So we're going to talk about how to organize that
list and how to reach them successfully. Step number one is you're going to want to
identify a goal with this. It can feel very overwhelming and very big,
like, "Oh, email marketing is so huge. What does that even mean?" Well, it means
whatever you want it to mean. You just need a goal. Why are you contacting these
people? Be bold and be specific. I do email marketing a lot pretty much weekly and
I do it for a number of reasons. The last one was to try and sell out a class
that I was teaching and I wanted to let people know about my for a million weekly
coaching sessions, which is, by the way, an incredible value at $150 a month.
You get four sessions a month with me in basically four classes. So I wanted to
put all that in an email and let people know about my CD classes and that was the
goal. Sell out and raise awareness. So your goals could be different.
I'll give you three examples of goals that you might have with an email campaign
based on what actors and artists tell me they're trying to do. Number one,
I want to book one indie film in the next six months. Number two example, I want
to sell out my class next month, which was my example. And number three, I want to
find a new job that makes me, for instance, $80 ,000 a year or more. Write down
what your goal is. Be specific and be bold.
The second step is that you're going to want to identify your target market. What
does that mean? Well, if your goal is to book one indie film in the next six
months, your target market is going to be directors and casting directors in your
area who are casting and filming indie films. That's your market for this email
blast that you're going to do. So the target market is just who are you emailing
and make sure that it's the correct group of people. For the second example, I want
to sell out my class next month, my target market is going to be actors who like
to sign up for classes and not actors who don't like to sign up for classes, but
actors who are at a level that can sign up for casting director classes who are
actively signing up for those classes. So that's my target market.
If your example is you want to find a new job at 80k a year or more,
your target market might be recruiters or company owners. So take a moment and write
down what is your target market? Who are the people that are going to be able to
potentially get you to your goal? Step number three, you're going to create a master
spreadsheet of these people. This is a really critical step and the steps get harder
as we go. So for step three, could be Excel, could be Google Sheets, but you're
going to want to make sure that you have their first name, their last name,
their email, their company if they have one, a tag that categorizes them, for
example, directors or casting directors or actors, and then room for any notes that
you might want to make on them. You are going to want that first name column to
be separate, because if you end up doing mail merge, you might create an email that
can be personalized, depending on the program that you're using. These are just the
bare minimum basics, first -class email, and then company.
As you're creating this master spreadsheet, you're going to want to make it 10 times
bigger than you think it needs to be, literally 10. Let's say that you want to
email a bunch of casting directors and you think, okay, what's a good number of
casting directors to let know that I exist and I have a new film that's coming
out. I don't know, 20.
No, 200. With 200 casting directors, that's when you start to move the needle on
how many people are going to get back to you. Because you can expect maybe one out
of 10 people to respond, maybe one out of 20. So if you're only emailing 20
people, that's maybe one response. I don't like that number for you. I want a
bigger number. I am greedy. I want more interaction for you. You just have to
operate at scale. You have to meet the market. The only reason not to email 200
casting directors. There's two reasons Number one is You're lazy and if you don't
want to advertise yourself and you want to make money for your work, you're running
a business All businesses have to advertise The other reason that you might not want
to email 200 casting directors is fear fear of rejection Fear of being seen as too
much Being cringe, guess what 2025 is a year of cringe. Be cringe,
be too much, be too excited. Be too into what you're doing.
Just go a little bit too far with your effort and your enthusiasm.
Step number four, you have to find the emails. Give yourself a week to do this, so
maybe 20 hours total. The hardest way to find people's emails but also the most
effective is by hand. So individually going through Google, go through and you find
their emails. But another really cool secret trick is this website called VoilaNorbert
.com, V -O -I -L -A -N -O -R -B -E -R -T .com. It is incredibly useful for finding people's
emails if they have a company that they work for. And that company has a .com URL.
You put in the first and last name of that person, and you put in the website
.com, and Voila Norbert finds their email for you. This is only if they are a
corporate email. You get 50 free searches. Another place that you can grab emails is
IMDbPro. And if you're an actor And you're serious about your career, you should
have IMDB Pro as opposed to just IMDB. And if you're looking for like agent emails
or emails at casting offices, you can go down to the junior people in the office,
like the most junior, like scroll all the way down. Often those people will list
their emails, even if the higher ups don't. And often those emails follow the same
formula. So if it's like first name, firstname, lastname @office .com.
You can hazard a guess that Jessica is going to have the same formula as Jerome
and you can just carry it over, right? Another place that you can find emails and
you'll want to use this carefully where I'm on an email that should have been a
BCC but it was as easy. And so my email is now visible to everyone.
And let's say it's someone who's emailing a whole bunch of directors. Well, suddenly
I'm on an email with a bunch of directors and somebody is now able to copy all of
the other emails on that CC list from that email and sort them and put them in
the right categories, but they have those emails. From then on, they have access to
that email until they're blocked, right? So, you know, if you're looking to grab a
whole bunch at once, you can find emails that way. Obviously, those people didn't
consent to you emailing them, but it is the United States of America. And we don't
have very strict laws around sharing email addresses. Whereas in other countries like
I know in Europe and the UK, they have pretty strict data laws. But that ain't us.
So, you know, it's kind of like, do what you need to do to make the money you
got to make. Within reason, have some decorum, people.
Finally, there are existing databases out there that may have the contact info that
you need. Like I said, IMDb, Pro, and LinkedIn, there's,
I know there's scraping tools for LinkedIn, where if you sign up for a certain
software, You attach it to your LinkedIn as a plug -in and it will show you
literally the emails of anyone who you look up. It's kind of shocking. So there's
existing databases and you can either access them for free or pay to access them
and grab a lot of emails along the way.
Step number five is you're going to want to craft your pitch. So You've got their
emails now, you've got their names, you've got their companies. What you say is
critical. So give yourself a week to create this pitch and I'm going to go with
the three examples that we already covered. So let's say example one, you want to
book one indie film in the next six months. You might want to create for this
pitch a Canva document with all your actor materials plus a five -sentence
personalized piece of writing that you're going to put in the email that can be
scalable. So you can make it bigger or smaller depending on what it's gonna say in
that five sentences. For example, I caught your latest film at Sundance and I
absolutely loved it.
Your Caste is extraordinary and so aligned with my own. I noticed you're based in
New York. I'm an actor and would really love to buy you a coffee and hear more
about what it was like to create that film and of course what you're working on
next. Here's my website that includes the film and TV work that I've done. Please
let me know if you might be interested, sincerely, your name. Pretty compelling,
and there's only one ask. So that's really critical for each email, is you kind of
just want one ask, because more than that, you start to feel like overwhelming, like
you're just taking and taking from them. And I think requesting a meeting is a
perfectly legitimate ask if they're a lower tier or indie director.
If your goal is to sell out a class, you're going to want to include the web page
for that class, and possibly even creating a social media post to go alongside that
pitch email, so that people can see, "Oh, when they visit the Instagram or
whatever." "Oh, yeah, like there's the post for that class." And then if you're
trying to get that job that makes more money than you're currently making, well,
you're going to need your resume. You're going to need it looking us, not a single
typo to be found. Ideally, if other people have looked at it, update your LinkedIn.
And you might also need a cover letter as well. So when you're done creating your
pitch for this email campaign, have three people look at it. Ask for their honest
feedback. And really take on board what they say. Try to get people who are gonna
be close to your target market to weigh in so that they know what to look for and
they can give you feedback that's actually gonna be helpful.
I think I'm gonna pause here and pick it up next week for part two of email
marketing. We've gotten through crafting your pitch and we're gonna pick up next week
with what your subject line has to be. Subject line is so important.
So I'm gonna give you some tips on how to create a great subject line and also
how to send this email campaign. Next week, can't wait. The Vermillion podcast is
sponsored by Vermillion, a home for artists. We offer classes, coaching, and community
for creatives and innovators in the arts. If you're ready to find your voice and
build the life of your dreams. We're here to support you every step of the way.
Check out clubvermilion .com and schedule a free call today.
