Melissa seideman: Today and not another email company, I have someone I'm really excited to meet. Annie Russell is the owner of a boutique marketing and ad agency. Annie owned Russell Media. Her agency specializes in funnel strategies and lead generation systems for established entrepreneurs. In the last year alone, she helped clients generate 8,000 plus qualified leads, achieve a 10 to 45 time return on ad spent, and drive six-figure enrollment growth using paid ad strategies on Pinterest, Meta, and Google. Annie believes the fastest way to grow a healthy business is intentional, put in the front of more of the right people. I promise you'll walk away with something you can use before you've and close the episode. Annie, welcome to the show.
Annie Russell: Hi, thanks so much for having me. I'm happy to be here.
Melissa seideman: So let's start off, dive right in. So number question number one I have is let's set the stage. Before meta-ad strategy, you're working with Shannon. What was Shannon's list growth like? What made her realize organic content alone wasn't going to cut it and that she needed to hire someone for support?
Annie Russell: Yeah, so Shannon is a client of mine for We started with Done For You Ads and I'm actually working on coaching her now to learn the ad strategies all herself, which is amazing. And she is a longtime coach, has had many, many years of successful client work and plan acquisition and all the things. So she has a thriving, healthy business already. And I like to make sure that's clear because one of the mo the biggest misconceptions that I see with ads is that they're like a rescue system or a lifeboat and that you can have something burning in the background and just throw on ads and it will save you. And that's Absolutely not the case. So, what I like to make clear is that this story in particular that I'm gonna share today, how we got Shannon 20 times 10 times more email subscribers with 20 times less content, she already had a really healthy organic presence and a thriving business on the back end. She was looking to really amplify and explode her new reach. Okay, so just to make that clear. and so what she was doing beforehand is as I said, she built up quite a substantial organic Instagram and Facebook base, so on Meta. And she primarily works with women who are in like their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s for health and fitness and rehab type of coaching. So she knew that her audience was significantly larger out there than she was actually reaching with organic content. She did have about 25,000 Instagram followers, so she had built up a presence, but she knew that she wanted to just really poke through the rest of like the ceiling of what organic content. feels like it can give you these days, especially with changes in the algorithm and you know the constant output that's needed to keep up with what you do have organically. And Shannon was really feeling that pressure. one of the first things she said to me when we started discussing working together was like I know if I just get my content in front of the right people that they're gonna love it and they're gonna want it. And that was definitely the case that we saw. So Shannon had been posting She was posting six times a week on Instagram for ten weeks straight. before we started working together for a really specific lead magnet. So she had created a new quiz that she wanted to put out into the world to see if these women, her target audience, would take the quiz, find out their their personalized result related to her courses and business, and then obviously move into some of her paid offers. So she had this quiz that she had developed and she was posting again six times a week for 10 weeks, which is 60 posts, all about her business and how she helps and a About this quiz that she could offer as a free resource to people. And in that time, she got 15 organic opt-ins, which is not necessarily low. It's just that it's a little slow and steady, a little snail pace action where she knew that the right people that were out there potentially had not even had the chance to see this thing. Her audience that she had built up, you know, some of them were engaged, some of them were DMing her about it, they were taking the quiz, they were moving forward. And nothing was wrong there, just to be clear. But she knew that there was just more potential. So We launched ads for that exact same quiz funnel. and we only chose three videos. We took one of her main concepts that she talks about a lot. She does a lot of talking, had real videos, and we took one concept and we made three videos about it. So three videos sharing slightly different perspectives on the same talk concept and call to action, which was the quiz. So we had posted those three videos in an ad and a campaign. and in the just the first 10 days that that was running, she had already gotten 155 new opt-ins, which was 10 times what she had gotten organically in such a fraction of the time. So that's just kind of like where she had started, what she was hoping to achieve, and then obviously the quick result that we got, but of course we can dive into all the nuances. That's just sort of like where she was and how quickly we took her to 10x more content with 20 times less of it.
Melissa seideman: Awesome. Ten times more subscribers with twenty times less content is like a striking result. What was the content piece that was actually working and what did you what did you cut that people assume they need?
Annie Russell: Yeah, so one of the things that I always dissect with my clients, whether it's done for you or when they're coming to me for coaching, is what are you already doing that's working really well? Like what can we build upon? Whether it's content or a sales strategy or, you know, moving people through your offers, whatever it may be, what are you already doing very well and what is resonating with your audience? And so that's of course where we started with Shannon. We looked at all of her most recent from the past couple of months, Instagram content that was resonating well with her audience. And we took again some of the the concepts, but really the style, the style of just how she creates content and how her audience resonates the most with it. I'm not saying that real Are the only way to get success whatsoever. But for her, her organic reels were what was resonating the most with her audience, and they were getting the highest engagement with the most organic movement, right? So we built upon that. We thought clearly this is connecting with people and it's working. So we filmed, we scripted together and she filmed three reels that again like touched on the same concept, and that's something that I don't think a lot of people who are maybe newer to ads. realize is you can achieve so much like larger and faster results with so much less content but you don't just only put up one video or one slideshow or like, you one carousel, one graphic. So what we talked about with Shannon is according to what she felt comfortable with budget, with spend, we decided to choose three talking head videos that we scripted for ads on on purpose. and we launched those in one campaign. And we left all three on. And this was a lead generation campaign, so we left all three on. And one performed better than the other two, and that's totally expected, right? So what I would not want to do is only launch one creative or launch like 12 or you know, 10, 12, 15 creatives. We started at a pretty healthy place at three and found clearly which one was resonating with now her new ad audience, which was a cold audience, people who didn't know her. and so one clearly took the lead, and then the other two were just there to kind of pick up the traction that was connecting with whatever audience they could find. So they were still bringing people in, but the one that outperformed the most, again, just all three talking heads, reels, the messaging and the hook probably aligned best with her ideal audience for that one. And that's pretty common to see.
Melissa seideman: That's awesome. That's really awesome. For someone listening who's never run meta ads and is starting from scratch with their list, what is one thing they need to have in place before you even think of turning on ads?
Annie Russell: Yeah, so tech tech wise, if you're considering starting to run ads, especially if it's gonna be on meta, you have some options. I also run ads on Pinterest and Google, as I as you mentioned, so the tech is quite different across the platforms. I'll just kind of touch base quickly on some requirements, but meta tends to be the most popular that people begin with. So you may have heard of something called a MetaPixel. It's a tracking communication piece that goes back and forth between your website and the Platform. They've actually renamed it to be called a data set. So if you're inside your meta business suite and you're digging around and you can't find the word pixel, it's because they've renamed it. But most people know that term pixel. So it's the communication and tracking piece that goes back and forth from your website to Meta. Although, so that would need to be installed early. However, that's not actually an absolute requirement. And sometimes my clients really want to like just dip their toe in ads and they don't want to go full fledged. Full tracking and everything from the beginning. And you can actually run ads on Meta without having a website at all, without having tracking or pixels, because Meta has something called an instant form, which is actually one of the things that we are now doing with Shannon. That this original quiz funnel was not an instant form because she had built a quiz on her website, right? So we had to get people there. So of course we did need her pixel and tracking. But honestly, a lot of my clients Probably 30 or 40% of them just run ads with the instant forms for lead generation. And in that case, again, you're not sending people to a website. So you actually really don't need tracking in place. Although it is considered best practice because if you have a website, the idea is eventually you'll be sending people there and you do want to build up that tracking in that audience. but if someone is just looking to kind of dabble and they might want to start by collecting some leads through an instant form, What you would really need to do first then is set up your ads account and your ads manager. So you would do that through your meta business suite. You have to, you know, set up a whole account, like you have to create your account there and make sure it's active and functional. And then through Meta Business Suite, you've got your ads manager and you would start working on campaign information in there. But with the instant form, your leads that are collected are all housed right there within Meta as well. So you really don't need to go anywhere else. if that's the way that you'd like to start with ads.
Melissa seideman: That's awesome. That's awesome. A lot of entrepreneurs are scared of paid traffic means low quality subscribers who never open anything. How did Shannon's engagement hold up once these ad-driven subscribers hit her list?
Annie Russell: Yeah, absolutely. And to be honest, that is Part of the risk of running ads, and I should say risk meaning like testing phase. That is part of what you prepare to tackle when you run ads, at least the right way, which is never setting and forgetting anything. We are constantly launching ads, following the traffic through the funnel, seeing what they're doing all in the middle, and then are they eventually buying? If it's especially if it's a higher ticket made to high ticket offer, of course, we're not expecting a sale like the same day you meet somebody. It can happen, it has happened, but that's not. the expectation. The expectation is we get these leads, they're moving through your funnel in various ways, which is something I support my clients with because it's so absolutely essential with running ads. And so for Shannon, part of her funnel was the email sequences, right? And so we're following those people, we're watching their movement. Are they opening emails? Are they clicking the links? What are they clicking? Are they booking calls? Are they buying all these things? And that's that's when I say like the testing mindset. It certainly it can be a c the case where you launch ads, the ads look beautiful, but then whatever's behind the scenes may be broken or missing pieces and then maybe people aren't getting sales and maybe they then I often see them blaming ads, saying, Well, my ads didn't work. Well, the ads probably looked just fine because usually that's the case when I go in and dissect things, is the ads actually were beautiful, but what happened after, maybe it was broken sequences or like the email Actual emails themselves just weren't converting the way that you'd expect. Or maybe there were some other pieces in there, sales page, all the things that could potentially stop somebody from moving toward a conversion step. So for Shannon specifically, she had a again, it was a quiz where you get like a personalized result. So she had three email sequences that were all prepared to you know funnel her leads through depending on which answer they got from their quiz. And so what was really interesting and pretty nuanced, this really isn't the case. For, like a beginner, but for you know, this may apply to someone listening down the road. When you have a quiz with different answer choices, like different answer results, and thus you're speaking to the these people differently. Shannon was trying to offer the same thing to everybody, but her sequences were well done that she was like touching on different different pain points and like really addressing their individual unique situations and struggles pretty well. And but honestly, that's where we started to see. our first bottleneck was okay we're getting tons of leads very cheap this is amazing her click-through rates were like off the charts fantastic from her ads so her videos were working very well and then we were funneling these like three pathways right and they were all such different types of people like different mindset different behaviors because part of her quiz was helping to identify these women into like which pattern are you stuck in right now right so their behaviors in relationship to how she coaches her clients where's it was three very different types of women that she was speaking to. And so we did see way healthier movement in some of those pathways that like in one compared to the other two. Do you know what I mean? Where like the behavior of the person who's reading the emails, Shannon and I work together to really tweak and figure out like how can we speak to this audience now best? Which is a pretty nuanced thing compared to if you're just bringing a mass group into one email sequence and you know that you're supposed to hit on, you know, a a broader array of situations or touch points that you're having with these these people. But we did still see some healthy movement at first, especially when this was new and untested for her, which was so much it was healthy for her to test this out. And I say this to all my clients and people that I'm coaching of When you when you launch ads and something is untested, something in your funnel at all, which in her case it was the the lead magnet was pretty new, her offers were set, but her lead magnet was pretty new. So we were testing that new combination of pieces. And what we found was even though her email rate or her yeah, her emails were getting like 35 to like 45, 48% open rates, and like between one and two-ish percent click-through rates, which are not terrible. Obviously, that's not ideal for click. clicking, but that wasn't really that wasn't necessarily the problem. It was like, how are we speaking to these people and trying to move them closer to something that's relevant for them to opt into. And so once we kind of so we turned the ads off after a couple of weeks when we were dissecting that information, because that's normal. And we ended up deciding to pivot to something that was a lot more relatable to like the action driven person who's like, I need I need something now. I need a result now in her industry for health, right? So we ended up running ads to a another version of a lead magnet. And some of those quiz people bought into that like kind of more middle step offer that didn't exist before. And we built it literally because of what we saw from the data from her email. So that's like and now those people are in her coaching cohorts, people are applying to get into her couple thousand dollar programs, like they're booking calls with her and moving into private coaching. Whereas if we had just like stopped our ads and stopped our analysis, I don't know if those people would have actually moved. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.
Melissa seideman: Yeah, that's awesome. That's absolutely awesome. that's so interesting and I think so valuable that you have to have a sequence in place and funnels in place to make sure that the the ads are working the way they should be. N last two questions. If you could tell your sixteen year old self one thing, what would you tell them?
Annie Russell: man. Okay, so I would just I I never wanted to be an entrepreneur, so this is super funny and ironic for me. I thought I was gonna be a teacher my whole entire life. I was up until about three years ago, and I think I would tell my sixteen-year-old self to Still do everything that I did. I would never change a thing. I loved, I love my journey. But the life that I'm living right now, my husband and I own our agency together. We have so many done for you clients. We get to coach now. Like, this is literally my dream job that I never even knew I wanted or could have. But now that I'm in it, it's the best thing in the world, and I wouldn't ever want to change it. And so I think I would maybe go back and just say, do what you're gonna do, like stay driven, stay determined, stay focused, but be open. to the change because my husband is actually the one who encouraged me to step out and and start a freelance business three years ago when I had my son and I left teaching. I knew I wanted to leave c the classroom so that I could have the freedom of time and and flexibility and This is just like beyond my wildest dreams of what we ever could have developed together. And so I think definitely be open minded, be open to the changes, and just like roll with those punches. Cause now here we are.
Melissa seideman: It sounds so similar to my journey. if you listen to the first episode about why I'm a hockey mom and why I prioritize being a hockey mom and cutting off leaving at work at three o'clock is because of that. So so much of that resonates with me. how can
Annie Russell: Yeah.
Melissa seideman: we find more information about you?
Annie Russell: Yeah, so my website is Annie Russell Media dot com. I'm also Annie Russell Media across Instagram, threads, and Facebook. I'm actually most active on threads, so and Instagram too, but threads is where I believe we first connected even
Melissa seideman: Mm-hmm.
Annie Russell: and I just love love connecting with business owners on threads. So anyone who may be listening who wants to hop over there and connect with me, come say hello. I'd love to meet you. and most excitingly, I recently opened up A free coaching community for business owners, ideally service providers and coaches who sell mid to high ticket offers who want to three to five X their enrollments and bookings with ads. So I coach on ads, funnels, all the pieces in between that brings a stranger to becoming a buyer or a long term client or customer. And it is so much fun. I love it so much. So if you want to hop into my free community. It's called Lead Lab. I drop in miscellaneous trainings and just free coaching for anyone who's maybe newer to ads or just like wanting to dabble but not wanting to do it completely alone.
Melissa seideman: That's great. I love it. I want to check that out. So it will be on the show notes if you want to check that out later. that's a wrap on today's episode of Not another email company. Thanks Annie for being on the podcast. If it gave you something to think about, something to test, or just remind you that email's worth showing up for or share with a business owner who needs it to hear it, you can find me at nonotheremailcompany.com and I will see you next week. Thanks so much for tuning in, Annie.
Annie Russell: Yay, thanks so much.
Annie Russell: Hi, thanks so much for having me. I'm happy to be here.
Melissa seideman: So let's start off, dive right in. So number question number one I have is let's set the stage. Before meta-ad strategy, you're working with Shannon. What was Shannon's list growth like? What made her realize organic content alone wasn't going to cut it and that she needed to hire someone for support?
Annie Russell: Yeah, so Shannon is a client of mine for We started with Done For You Ads and I'm actually working on coaching her now to learn the ad strategies all herself, which is amazing. And she is a longtime coach, has had many, many years of successful client work and plan acquisition and all the things. So she has a thriving, healthy business already. And I like to make sure that's clear because one of the mo the biggest misconceptions that I see with ads is that they're like a rescue system or a lifeboat and that you can have something burning in the background and just throw on ads and it will save you. And that's Absolutely not the case. So, what I like to make clear is that this story in particular that I'm gonna share today, how we got Shannon 20 times 10 times more email subscribers with 20 times less content, she already had a really healthy organic presence and a thriving business on the back end. She was looking to really amplify and explode her new reach. Okay, so just to make that clear. and so what she was doing beforehand is as I said, she built up quite a substantial organic Instagram and Facebook base, so on Meta. And she primarily works with women who are in like their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s for health and fitness and rehab type of coaching. So she knew that her audience was significantly larger out there than she was actually reaching with organic content. She did have about 25,000 Instagram followers, so she had built up a presence, but she knew that she wanted to just really poke through the rest of like the ceiling of what organic content. feels like it can give you these days, especially with changes in the algorithm and you know the constant output that's needed to keep up with what you do have organically. And Shannon was really feeling that pressure. one of the first things she said to me when we started discussing working together was like I know if I just get my content in front of the right people that they're gonna love it and they're gonna want it. And that was definitely the case that we saw. So Shannon had been posting She was posting six times a week on Instagram for ten weeks straight. before we started working together for a really specific lead magnet. So she had created a new quiz that she wanted to put out into the world to see if these women, her target audience, would take the quiz, find out their their personalized result related to her courses and business, and then obviously move into some of her paid offers. So she had this quiz that she had developed and she was posting again six times a week for 10 weeks, which is 60 posts, all about her business and how she helps and a About this quiz that she could offer as a free resource to people. And in that time, she got 15 organic opt-ins, which is not necessarily low. It's just that it's a little slow and steady, a little snail pace action where she knew that the right people that were out there potentially had not even had the chance to see this thing. Her audience that she had built up, you know, some of them were engaged, some of them were DMing her about it, they were taking the quiz, they were moving forward. And nothing was wrong there, just to be clear. But she knew that there was just more potential. So We launched ads for that exact same quiz funnel. and we only chose three videos. We took one of her main concepts that she talks about a lot. She does a lot of talking, had real videos, and we took one concept and we made three videos about it. So three videos sharing slightly different perspectives on the same talk concept and call to action, which was the quiz. So we had posted those three videos in an ad and a campaign. and in the just the first 10 days that that was running, she had already gotten 155 new opt-ins, which was 10 times what she had gotten organically in such a fraction of the time. So that's just kind of like where she had started, what she was hoping to achieve, and then obviously the quick result that we got, but of course we can dive into all the nuances. That's just sort of like where she was and how quickly we took her to 10x more content with 20 times less of it.
Melissa seideman: Awesome. Ten times more subscribers with twenty times less content is like a striking result. What was the content piece that was actually working and what did you what did you cut that people assume they need?
Annie Russell: Yeah, so one of the things that I always dissect with my clients, whether it's done for you or when they're coming to me for coaching, is what are you already doing that's working really well? Like what can we build upon? Whether it's content or a sales strategy or, you know, moving people through your offers, whatever it may be, what are you already doing very well and what is resonating with your audience? And so that's of course where we started with Shannon. We looked at all of her most recent from the past couple of months, Instagram content that was resonating well with her audience. And we took again some of the the concepts, but really the style, the style of just how she creates content and how her audience resonates the most with it. I'm not saying that real Are the only way to get success whatsoever. But for her, her organic reels were what was resonating the most with her audience, and they were getting the highest engagement with the most organic movement, right? So we built upon that. We thought clearly this is connecting with people and it's working. So we filmed, we scripted together and she filmed three reels that again like touched on the same concept, and that's something that I don't think a lot of people who are maybe newer to ads. realize is you can achieve so much like larger and faster results with so much less content but you don't just only put up one video or one slideshow or like, you one carousel, one graphic. So what we talked about with Shannon is according to what she felt comfortable with budget, with spend, we decided to choose three talking head videos that we scripted for ads on on purpose. and we launched those in one campaign. And we left all three on. And this was a lead generation campaign, so we left all three on. And one performed better than the other two, and that's totally expected, right? So what I would not want to do is only launch one creative or launch like 12 or you know, 10, 12, 15 creatives. We started at a pretty healthy place at three and found clearly which one was resonating with now her new ad audience, which was a cold audience, people who didn't know her. and so one clearly took the lead, and then the other two were just there to kind of pick up the traction that was connecting with whatever audience they could find. So they were still bringing people in, but the one that outperformed the most, again, just all three talking heads, reels, the messaging and the hook probably aligned best with her ideal audience for that one. And that's pretty common to see.
Melissa seideman: That's awesome. That's really awesome. For someone listening who's never run meta ads and is starting from scratch with their list, what is one thing they need to have in place before you even think of turning on ads?
Annie Russell: Yeah, so tech tech wise, if you're considering starting to run ads, especially if it's gonna be on meta, you have some options. I also run ads on Pinterest and Google, as I as you mentioned, so the tech is quite different across the platforms. I'll just kind of touch base quickly on some requirements, but meta tends to be the most popular that people begin with. So you may have heard of something called a MetaPixel. It's a tracking communication piece that goes back and forth between your website and the Platform. They've actually renamed it to be called a data set. So if you're inside your meta business suite and you're digging around and you can't find the word pixel, it's because they've renamed it. But most people know that term pixel. So it's the communication and tracking piece that goes back and forth from your website to Meta. Although, so that would need to be installed early. However, that's not actually an absolute requirement. And sometimes my clients really want to like just dip their toe in ads and they don't want to go full fledged. Full tracking and everything from the beginning. And you can actually run ads on Meta without having a website at all, without having tracking or pixels, because Meta has something called an instant form, which is actually one of the things that we are now doing with Shannon. That this original quiz funnel was not an instant form because she had built a quiz on her website, right? So we had to get people there. So of course we did need her pixel and tracking. But honestly, a lot of my clients Probably 30 or 40% of them just run ads with the instant forms for lead generation. And in that case, again, you're not sending people to a website. So you actually really don't need tracking in place. Although it is considered best practice because if you have a website, the idea is eventually you'll be sending people there and you do want to build up that tracking in that audience. but if someone is just looking to kind of dabble and they might want to start by collecting some leads through an instant form, What you would really need to do first then is set up your ads account and your ads manager. So you would do that through your meta business suite. You have to, you know, set up a whole account, like you have to create your account there and make sure it's active and functional. And then through Meta Business Suite, you've got your ads manager and you would start working on campaign information in there. But with the instant form, your leads that are collected are all housed right there within Meta as well. So you really don't need to go anywhere else. if that's the way that you'd like to start with ads.
Melissa seideman: That's awesome. That's awesome. A lot of entrepreneurs are scared of paid traffic means low quality subscribers who never open anything. How did Shannon's engagement hold up once these ad-driven subscribers hit her list?
Annie Russell: Yeah, absolutely. And to be honest, that is Part of the risk of running ads, and I should say risk meaning like testing phase. That is part of what you prepare to tackle when you run ads, at least the right way, which is never setting and forgetting anything. We are constantly launching ads, following the traffic through the funnel, seeing what they're doing all in the middle, and then are they eventually buying? If it's especially if it's a higher ticket made to high ticket offer, of course, we're not expecting a sale like the same day you meet somebody. It can happen, it has happened, but that's not. the expectation. The expectation is we get these leads, they're moving through your funnel in various ways, which is something I support my clients with because it's so absolutely essential with running ads. And so for Shannon, part of her funnel was the email sequences, right? And so we're following those people, we're watching their movement. Are they opening emails? Are they clicking the links? What are they clicking? Are they booking calls? Are they buying all these things? And that's that's when I say like the testing mindset. It certainly it can be a c the case where you launch ads, the ads look beautiful, but then whatever's behind the scenes may be broken or missing pieces and then maybe people aren't getting sales and maybe they then I often see them blaming ads, saying, Well, my ads didn't work. Well, the ads probably looked just fine because usually that's the case when I go in and dissect things, is the ads actually were beautiful, but what happened after, maybe it was broken sequences or like the email Actual emails themselves just weren't converting the way that you'd expect. Or maybe there were some other pieces in there, sales page, all the things that could potentially stop somebody from moving toward a conversion step. So for Shannon specifically, she had a again, it was a quiz where you get like a personalized result. So she had three email sequences that were all prepared to you know funnel her leads through depending on which answer they got from their quiz. And so what was really interesting and pretty nuanced, this really isn't the case. For, like a beginner, but for you know, this may apply to someone listening down the road. When you have a quiz with different answer choices, like different answer results, and thus you're speaking to the these people differently. Shannon was trying to offer the same thing to everybody, but her sequences were well done that she was like touching on different different pain points and like really addressing their individual unique situations and struggles pretty well. And but honestly, that's where we started to see. our first bottleneck was okay we're getting tons of leads very cheap this is amazing her click-through rates were like off the charts fantastic from her ads so her videos were working very well and then we were funneling these like three pathways right and they were all such different types of people like different mindset different behaviors because part of her quiz was helping to identify these women into like which pattern are you stuck in right now right so their behaviors in relationship to how she coaches her clients where's it was three very different types of women that she was speaking to. And so we did see way healthier movement in some of those pathways that like in one compared to the other two. Do you know what I mean? Where like the behavior of the person who's reading the emails, Shannon and I work together to really tweak and figure out like how can we speak to this audience now best? Which is a pretty nuanced thing compared to if you're just bringing a mass group into one email sequence and you know that you're supposed to hit on, you know, a a broader array of situations or touch points that you're having with these these people. But we did still see some healthy movement at first, especially when this was new and untested for her, which was so much it was healthy for her to test this out. And I say this to all my clients and people that I'm coaching of When you when you launch ads and something is untested, something in your funnel at all, which in her case it was the the lead magnet was pretty new, her offers were set, but her lead magnet was pretty new. So we were testing that new combination of pieces. And what we found was even though her email rate or her yeah, her emails were getting like 35 to like 45, 48% open rates, and like between one and two-ish percent click-through rates, which are not terrible. Obviously, that's not ideal for click. clicking, but that wasn't really that wasn't necessarily the problem. It was like, how are we speaking to these people and trying to move them closer to something that's relevant for them to opt into. And so once we kind of so we turned the ads off after a couple of weeks when we were dissecting that information, because that's normal. And we ended up deciding to pivot to something that was a lot more relatable to like the action driven person who's like, I need I need something now. I need a result now in her industry for health, right? So we ended up running ads to a another version of a lead magnet. And some of those quiz people bought into that like kind of more middle step offer that didn't exist before. And we built it literally because of what we saw from the data from her email. So that's like and now those people are in her coaching cohorts, people are applying to get into her couple thousand dollar programs, like they're booking calls with her and moving into private coaching. Whereas if we had just like stopped our ads and stopped our analysis, I don't know if those people would have actually moved. Do you know what I mean? Yeah.
Melissa seideman: Yeah, that's awesome. That's absolutely awesome. that's so interesting and I think so valuable that you have to have a sequence in place and funnels in place to make sure that the the ads are working the way they should be. N last two questions. If you could tell your sixteen year old self one thing, what would you tell them?
Annie Russell: man. Okay, so I would just I I never wanted to be an entrepreneur, so this is super funny and ironic for me. I thought I was gonna be a teacher my whole entire life. I was up until about three years ago, and I think I would tell my sixteen-year-old self to Still do everything that I did. I would never change a thing. I loved, I love my journey. But the life that I'm living right now, my husband and I own our agency together. We have so many done for you clients. We get to coach now. Like, this is literally my dream job that I never even knew I wanted or could have. But now that I'm in it, it's the best thing in the world, and I wouldn't ever want to change it. And so I think I would maybe go back and just say, do what you're gonna do, like stay driven, stay determined, stay focused, but be open. to the change because my husband is actually the one who encouraged me to step out and and start a freelance business three years ago when I had my son and I left teaching. I knew I wanted to leave c the classroom so that I could have the freedom of time and and flexibility and This is just like beyond my wildest dreams of what we ever could have developed together. And so I think definitely be open minded, be open to the changes, and just like roll with those punches. Cause now here we are.
Melissa seideman: It sounds so similar to my journey. if you listen to the first episode about why I'm a hockey mom and why I prioritize being a hockey mom and cutting off leaving at work at three o'clock is because of that. So so much of that resonates with me. how can
Annie Russell: Yeah.
Melissa seideman: we find more information about you?
Annie Russell: Yeah, so my website is Annie Russell Media dot com. I'm also Annie Russell Media across Instagram, threads, and Facebook. I'm actually most active on threads, so and Instagram too, but threads is where I believe we first connected even
Melissa seideman: Mm-hmm.
Annie Russell: and I just love love connecting with business owners on threads. So anyone who may be listening who wants to hop over there and connect with me, come say hello. I'd love to meet you. and most excitingly, I recently opened up A free coaching community for business owners, ideally service providers and coaches who sell mid to high ticket offers who want to three to five X their enrollments and bookings with ads. So I coach on ads, funnels, all the pieces in between that brings a stranger to becoming a buyer or a long term client or customer. And it is so much fun. I love it so much. So if you want to hop into my free community. It's called Lead Lab. I drop in miscellaneous trainings and just free coaching for anyone who's maybe newer to ads or just like wanting to dabble but not wanting to do it completely alone.
Melissa seideman: That's great. I love it. I want to check that out. So it will be on the show notes if you want to check that out later. that's a wrap on today's episode of Not another email company. Thanks Annie for being on the podcast. If it gave you something to think about, something to test, or just remind you that email's worth showing up for or share with a business owner who needs it to hear it, you can find me at nonotheremailcompany.com and I will see you next week. Thanks so much for tuning in, Annie.
Annie Russell: Yay, thanks so much.
