The Importance of Staying Organized with Melissa Seideman | 33
This week’s inspiring teacherpreneur journey is with Melissa from Not Another Virtual Assistant. We had such a great convo about growing a business with intention and staying organzied. She’s an email marketing genius and give so many great tips. I know you’ll love this episode as much as I did.
Melissa is a full-time history teacher, wife, and mom to two little boys. She is an email marketing specialist who helps clients work less and maximize their earning potential with the power of a single email. She loves sharing her knowledge on Instagram and her email marketing Facebook group.
We chat all about
how she got started with email marketing
some really helpful tips for planning your emails to build relationship and sell more
how she balances everything she does
and so much more!
I hope you enjoy this chat as much as I did!
Connect with Melissa
Instagram: @notanothervirtualassistant
Website: www.notanothervirtualassistant.com
Facebook Group: Email Marketing for Teacherpreneurs
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Thanks for listening to this week’s Inspiring Story! If you would like to share your story on the podcast head to www.marketscalegrow.com/journey to apply today. We would love for you to join us and can’t wait to hear about your journey as a teacher business owner.
Episode Transcript:
Intro: Hey there, I'm Jenzaia and this is Market Scale Grow. A podcast created for ambitious teacherpreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, flexibility, and ultimately make more money. With weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers just like you, my goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy, so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dreams. Okay. So before we jump into the episode, I am super excited to share a brand new freebie with you. It's my targeting ideas for Facebook ads. If you've dabbled in Facebook ads, or you've done them and you've tried them, and you're just looking for some fresh inspiration for your audiences, this freebie is for you. I share my top Facebook ad targeting groups for you, so that you can have inspiration and find those people that are perfect for what you have to offer. From warm audiences to cool lookalike audiences, to cold interest-based audiences. I cover all three in this freebie. Head to marketscalegrow.com/audiences to grab your copy today.
Jenzaia: Hello, and welcome to this week's inspiring story. Today I'm talking to Melissa from Not Another History Teacher and also Not Another Virtual Assistant. Melissa and I have had the pleasure of working together quite a few times, and I absolutely love working with her and chatting with her. So I'm excited that you guys can have a front-row seat to our conversation today. Before we dive into that, just a quick introduction. Melissa is a full-time history teacher, wife, and mom to two little boys. She's an email marketing specialist who helps her clients work less and maximize their earning potential with the power of a single email. She loves sharing her knowledge on Instagram, and her email marketing Facebook group. Both of which are linked in the show notes, so if you want to check Melissa out, I highly recommend you head over to either one of those places to connect with her. Like I said, I love working with her and so I could go on, but let's just jump into the episode.
Jenzaia: Good morning, Melissa. Welcome to Market, Scale, Grow. How are you doing?
Melissa: Good. How are you? I'm happy to be here.
Jenzaia: Yeah. It's a rainy day here. So I'm glad that I have something to do inside. Do you want to start by telling everyone who you are, where you're from, and a little bit more about your teaching?
Melissa: Sure. My name is Melissa Seideman. I'm from the Hudson Valley in New York, which is right an hour north of the city. I've been teaching for 15 years. So this is going to be my 15th year teaching high school social studies. So I'm really excited to be here. I'm also passionate about email marketing and helping teachers become better in the classroom.
Jenzaia: Mm-hmm. So how did you get started as a teacher partner? Was it email marketing or something else?
Melissa: I started my own business called Not Another History Teacher, and I started selling on my store, and working with teachers from around the country, and I've been really excited to be helping. I run workshops that are free, and I help teachers become better at their craft. And from there I learned about email, and email has taken my business and my life in so many positive directions that I've been really inspired by the clients that I've been working with, and how email marketing has been helping numerous people around the country and the world.
Jenzaia: Awesome. So what are some of the big milestones that you've noticed in your business as it's kind of grown and the shifts you've gone through I guess?
Melissa: So I was really excited when I first started my email list and I had like a hundred people on it. And now my list is way bigger than that, and I've been really proud of how far it's come. I think it's come from me just trying different things, and learning different tactics, and taking different courses. I think a testament to that is we ran a bundle sale in June, and I was one of the biggest sellers.. Actually, I was the biggest seller of the bundle sale. I sold 185 bundles, and I credit that to my ability to use email to my advantage in my business. A lot of the sellers were using email. They were using Facebook. They were much bigger sellers than I was actually. And the way I strategically used email to my advantage, I sold the most bundles and actually won the challenge, which is kind of cool.
Jenzaia: Wow, that's so exciting.
Melissa: Yeah.
Jenzaia: Could you ever imagine that happening a year or two years ago?
Melissa: Definitely not. I think it's because the way I do email marketing, it warmed the audience up. I don't always constantly sell to them, and I think that's a really big point with emails. You can't always sell to them. You got to do a difference between conversion and conversation emails. So the difference is conversion emails are when you're trying to convert into a sale. So you've got to be very strategic on when you're doing that. So if you know, a TPT sale is coming, let's say in August, you've got to give an email or two before that are free emails. More conversation emails. What's going on in your life? How are you doing? How is the summer going? How is getting ready for back to school? What are you doing? Offer a freebie. So I know coming up, there's another bonus sale coming up, and I want to market to them with that bonus sale, but I don't want to just sell to them every single time. So the email before, the week before is actually just saying how appreciative I am of them being in my community, how I love getting feedback, how I love getting ideas, and I thrive off of them. I even give them a gift card to Starbucks. So they can get a gift card, Starbucks coffee in that email, to my email list. Which is a nice incentive just to show how much I appreciate them and love them being on my list. So, then the next email is then a conversion email, I'm going to sell you with a sale, and try to get you to buy from my store. But you got to be very conversational, and also conversion at the same time, and mix it up with different emails, and be conscious of that. So if you know, you have another big, like I know October, I have a really big sale coming up and I want to make sure that my emails in September are not selling one thing. They're more conversational, more educational, more helping them. So I gave my whole lesson on how I teach 9/11, for example, as an email, the first week of September. So they have an email, a lesson ready to go about how to teach 9/11. I'm very strategic in the way I send my emails and I think that's helpful. So they know what to expect. They don't know what to expect, but they, I think appreciate the free emails, the free advice, the free problem solving that type of thing.
Jenzaia: So I don't want you to give away too much coaching or anything, but I have a question. What percentage of conversation versus conversion do you recommend? Or have you found in your business as to the best balance?
Melissa: I try to do 50/50, and I know that's really hard to say. Half the e-mails should be conversion, and half the emails should be conversation because if you're just selling to them every single sale, and you're not sending regular emails, they're going to instantly unsubscribe from your list or not want to buy from you. But if you're building a rapport with your clients and rapport with your customers, that's going to sell big time when a sale comes. And I think that's a great testament to why I did so well in my bundle sale in June, was because they were used to conversation emails. I was talking about how hard it was teaching during the pandemic, and this is the tool I was using in the classroom, and this is how you could use it. I was teaching them about ways that my life was easier during the pandemic teaching. So I think they were already loyal customers and then as soon as I had a sale, they were like, wow, this is awesome, this is a great deal, I'm going to take advantage of it and buy.
Jenzaia: So did you just stumble upon email marketing? Like people were telling you, you should do it and you're like, oh, whatever, I'll try. How did you really get into it?
Melissa: I went to the TPT conference, I want to say three years ago. I started with MailChimp and I hated it. I hated MailChimp. I just started getting into it more and more. As I got into it, I went to ConvertKit. I loved ConvertKit. I took a few email marketing courses. I took a course by Lisa Fink on email marketing. I highly recommend it, it was great. That's how I learned how to do everything I did. And then the following summer, I implemented automations into my email marketing. So when someone clicks a link, they then get a series of emails to up-sell a product, or up-sell a service, or up-sell something I offer. My sales skyrocketed. I went from making like $1,000 off of my own website to probably $8,000 or $9,000 in a month, just with automated emails, and the best part about automated emails is they sell themselves. You can be eating, you can be sleeping, you can be playing with your kid, you can go to the park, and someone's getting an email about something they clicked, to try to buy a course or buy a product in your store. It's something that I think a lot of teacher authors don't utilize, or they don't start until it's too late. I wish there was a way to learn, as soon as you do emails, do automated emails. You should have a welcome series set up. As soon as someone joins your store and has a welcome automated series, welcoming them to your brand, giving them freebies, giving them some lesson ideas, giving them an up-seller too, and that should be your welcome series. And then as they get through the welcome series, click a link, or click a link in a weekly email, get an up-sell to a product. I learned from Jamie Sears' podcasts, that she does that strategically when she sells a conversion email. So if she's talking about selling a particular product, someone clicks a link on that product in her email, and then they get a series of emails to up-sell that product automatically every week. And it's something that does take more time because you got to set it up, but you're making a lot more money. And the bundle sale, when I did the bundle say in June, I sent three emails to my whole list that week about the bundle sale. I had one the first day, the last day, and the middle of the week. Then if someone clicked any of those emails in the week, they got a series of emails an hour later, and then five hours later, did you buy the bundle? If you didn't, this is why you'd like it. This is what people have said about the bundle. I had up-sells in the emails. So people potentially got five emails that week from me about the bundle sale, but it paid off significantly.
Jenzaia: So this is kind of like in my gut where I get afraid of doing that, is I don't want to feel too salesy or too pushy. Do you have any tips of how, I think that's a mindset piece. So do you have any mindset tips for anyone who might be feeling that same, I don't want to be too salesy or too pushy?
Melissa: I think as long as you have your rapport with your customers, and they know you're not always selling to them, that that is something that is going to pay off. I mean people are going to unsubscribe. Unsubscribes are not a bad thing, because they just don't want to be on your list. They don't want to be on your list. They don't want your services, and they're not a bad thing to unsubscribe because they're saying I'm not your person. I don't want to be with your program or your service. So, I used to always take unsubscribes personally. It's hard not to, but don't because they're dragging down your open rates if they don't open emails, and they're also lowering your open rates, and they're costing more money because you'll pay for these email subscribers in some programs. But I think you got to be, there's a fine line between too salesy and not salesy enough. You got to plan your time and batch your content. Like anything with TPT, you've got to batch everything you do and batching, for example, plan ahead. I know there's going to be a cyber sale in November. I know there's going to be a bundle sale in October. I know December is going to be pretty slow. So I got to think of some content that I could sell in December. You got to plan ahead, which will help writing emails also.
Jenzaia: Yeah. The planning ahead piece is something that I personally am working towards in my business of, trying to look ahead. I know we're not talking about Pinterest, but it's very similar in there. You have to, even now be starting to do Halloween pins, and next month be working on those Thanksgiving pins, and all of those pieces of how much pre-thought and planning really goes into the business.
Melissa: It starts with just being organized. I have a simple Excel spreadsheet that I keep track of. Excel spreadsheet has you plan your emails, and I even do my own emails that way, and I have clients’ emails that way too. But the Excel spreadsheet, you can see where you've, what types of emails you ran in the past, but then also where you're going. So you can plan the next month ahead. Well, I know I'm doing this email as a sales email. This email is a conversion email. This is a conversation email. Then you can plan ahead. Some people like Airtable, you could do any of those options, whatever works for you, but plan. Planning helps significantly, it'll make your life easier. I also say that planning takes a lot of stress out because I have my clients plan the week before the month starts. So next week or two weeks, August 20th, they're going to plan for the following month ahead. So the whole month of September, they're not thinking about anything email, they're not doing anything email. I have already batched my emails for next month because I know I'm going back to school. I'm going to be stressed out. So my emails are already written for September and October, which is kind of crazy to think about, but planning ahead helps.
Jenzaia: Definitely. You just brought something else up that is another question I have for you. You have two businesses, you're doing the email marketing and your TPT store. Plus you have kids, plus you're a full-time teacher. How do you balance all of it? How do you make it all work?
Melissa: I'm nuts. I like staying busy. I think that is probably, my personality is I like staying busy. I mean, this week I watched three movies on the couch and I was like, this is so weird to watch a movie for fun. But I like working. I work at night on my email marketing business, afterschool I work, and then I try to balance. I set goals. My goal last year with running a business and teaching full-time was, I'm not doing any schoolwork at home. I know that sounds really hard to say as a teacher, but I was, I didn't do any schoolwork at home. I left school at three o'clock. I was done for the day. I worked through lunch. I'm very efficient, I'm very organized. I have a planner everywhere. I have planners everywhere and I have digital planners, I have paper planners. I think that really helps me keep track of what I'm doing and how I'm managing all my different clients and all of the different things that I got to do.
Jenzaia: Absolutely. Yeah. I think you're right, and it's come up quite a few times with just being organized and keeping a plan and knowing kind of where you're going helps in the moment, but then also to relieve that anxiety of what's going to come, right? Because you know, you have that plan.
Melissa: Yeah, no. I've been full-time email marketing this summer and running my store, and I've been loving it. It makes me think can I do this full-time? Can I quit teaching? It's kind of crazy to think about that as an option, but I'm loving what I'm doing this summer.
Jenzaia: That's so nice to hear. I love when people love what they're doing and just have that passion, that fire that's lighting them and pushing them forward.
Melissa: But it's funny because I know the moment I go back to school, I'm going to say the same thing. Oh my God, I love the classroom. I could never leave it. I know as soon as I get back in there, it'll be good. I'm excited to see what the year brings. Hopefully, we're not teaching with the pandemic that bad.
Jenzaia: Fingers are crossed, knocking on wood.
Melissa: Yeah.
Jenzaia: So at this point in your business, how are you marketing it? Because this is a marketing podcast. So I always like to know what people are doing to grow their business and get new people into it.
Melissa: I've been organically growing emails. I started at a hundred emails my first year, three years ago. I've been building on emails every summer to bring new clients. Every summer I run workshops for free, and that usually adds about 700 or 800 emails a summer, which is pretty awesome. So I run a free workshop. People sign up for the free workshop, and then they get on my list. Or they buy a product, they get on my list. But this summer was the first summer I hired Jenzaia to do email list building. My list building has paid off significantly. I think I've added close to 700 to 800 emails, which is pretty amazing, to my email list. What's really cool is they're buying from my store now. So I'm seeing a huge return on the investment of hiring someone to do Facebook ads. So, that is something that I just did with marketing, and this is the first time I've ever done it. I was super nervous, obviously, like anybody when you hire a marketing specialist, but that is how I'm marketing. I have Pinterest a little bit to get some traffic to my store and I do have Facebook, but to be honest, my email list is what does my marketing for me. My email list is what helps me. My email list sells. I do. I do lots of different things with emails. I do workshops to get new subscribers. I do refer friends where, if I send an email out to somebody that is like a free conversion email that has a free lesson in it, I say forward this to a friend and then give them the link to join the email list that way. An interesting idea because they're sending it to clients or customers, not clients, but teachers they work with. So you gain more subscribers that way. It's an interesting way to build more clients. But email marketing has been my main tool for marketing without a doubt.
Jenzaia: Awesome. That makes total sense with how your businesses kind of work together with the history teacher side, and then the email marketing side. Can you talk a little bit more about the workshops because having.. Are they paid workshops, or are they free workshops?
Melissa: Free, completely free. I have thought about doing paid, but I'm not really into that yet. I haven't started that yet. I know some people do pay. I've been offering free workshops, and I do it really simply where they do a resource share. So they come in for an hour and they leave with a Google Doc of hundreds of resources that are free. This was the first summer I collaborated with three other social studies teachers. We all led the sessions, and we shared four resources that we love about teaching government, or love about teaching sociology, or love about teaching personal finance, or US history. We shared about three or four resources, and then we opened it up to teachers who came to share resources too, and they added to this collaborative Google Doc. It's actually called a Smackdown, is the name of it. If you've ever been to an Edcamp, this is Edcamp Smackdown. And the idea is that you talk about a resource for less than a minute, and then people can go back to the Google Doc of resources if they want to learn more. So it's really quick, it's really fast-paced, it's great for no prep. So you could do like a Smackdown of reading, or a Smackdown of writing resources, or a Smackdown of how to teach centers, or whatever you want to teach. People sign up, they join the zoom link, I send them the Zoom link via email, and they come, they love it. They've actually been asking for it all summer. I think I have to add another one in August because they've been asking for it again. But I had, I think I gained about 800, 900 emails just from the workshops. Then I had automated emails set up to when they went to the workshop, they got an email with the Zoom link. They got an email with the Zoom link the day before. They got an email with the Zoom link an hour before. And then two days later, after going to the US history workshop, I had an up-sell of my US history course attached to the up-sell. For my AP government workshop, I had an up-sell of the AP government course. So you could strategically write emails ahead of time, so when people go through these workshops, they get automated emails trying to up-sell a product that you offered in your workshop for free.
Jenzaia: Did you mention those courses at the workshop themselves, or was it just hearing the..
Melissa: I actually didn't, I actually didn't. I just shared free resources, and I did a slight like, here's free research that's also included in my course but that is the only line I dropped. That is it.
Jenzaia: It wasn't like a 15-minute pitch at the end.
Melissa: It wasn't a 15-minute pitch. It was not selling, it was literally free resources sharing session. And then, I said, this is included in the course, but I want to give it to you because it's such a great product. Here it is. Then a few days later they got an email saying about the course without selling the course. Then they got an email, a soft sell of the course, and then they got a hard sell email of the course.
Jenzaia: I like that. I think a lot of time there's pressure in those workshops to pitch at the end and to sell. But if you're really just trying to nurture people and give them value, then the Smackdown, which I've never heard of before, but the Smackdown seems like a really cool way to get people resources free, make connections between other people, learn about different things. Then like you said, you can have those emails set up afterwards to bring them in.
Melissa: And as you know, teachers love talking. So it's such a great way to bring people in and love to talk, love, to share resources, and they feel like the expert too, because now I'm sharing. I'm only.. I only had to prep for four free resources and then the rest of the workshop, other teachers in the workshop are adding resources, sharing what they like about teaching government, sharing what they like about teaching US history, and then coming together to share. So it's a cool way to build a collaborative community too, because again that's my email list, that is now a community on a Zoom, that you can pull back into Facebook to have a conversation, or pull back into your email list to have a conversation with you.
Jenzaia: So cool. I love that so much. Is there anything else that you want to share with the audience?
Melissa: I think a lot of people are very nervous to start email marketing. I say the sooner you start the better, even if you just start collecting the emails and start building up the email list. I always suggest starting with a small goal, start a goal in place. So, some people, like some of the big clients I work with have one email a week. That's kind of overwhelming to some people. Start with a goal that you want. I'm going to send an email on the first of the month, that's it. And you could tell your list, literally, I'm going to say, I'm going to send you an email once a month on the first of the month. They'll look forward to it. They'll know when to expect it. Send the email at the same time during the month. So if you send it on Tuesday morning at 7:00 A.M. make sure the next Tuesday you send it is at 7:00 A.M. Set a goal of the time, the date, and how often you're going to do it, and just try to batch your content, plan ahead. I'm always thinking of, I have an email, like Trello. I use Trello to stay organized. But Trello, I have a Trello board that literally has email ideas. So as the month goes on, I'm thinking of ideas for the next month ahead. So I'm not sitting there being like what do I write in the emails, I already had last month to plan my emails, and what I'm going to write the following month ahead.
Jenzaia: Yeah. I love that. Just keeping that ongoing list.
Melissa: Yeah. It's super helpful, and especially helpful if you have it digital, because then you can find, oh, this is a great website I want to share. This is a great link I want to share. This is a great lesson I'm going to link to. So you just put all your links there. Then when you go to write the email, it's so much easier because you have the content already batched out.
Jenzaia: Awesome. Okay. So my rapid fire questions. What is your favourite social media platform?
Melissa: I, oh my gosh. If you asked me a week ago, I probably would have said Facebook. Now I'm loving Instagram. I've just got on Instagram and I've become addicted to it. I was only using it literally to share my kids photos up until a week ago. Now I created a business Instagram page and I'm loving, absolutely loving Instagram.
Jenzaia: I thought you were going to say TikTok. It seems to do that to people like, oh, I just found TikTok and I'm obsessed. I also am sometimes a little too addicted to Instagram though, so I feel you there. What is your favourite tool or software that you use in your business?
Melissa: Trello to stay organized. Trello is kind of my go-to for organization of my own business, but also my clients' businesses. Each client has their own Trello board, so I can keep track of colors and links and landing pages. I have a to-do list where I check off when I do stuff every week. So Trello is probably my go-to resource and I love Canva too. So if I had to pick two, sorry, I gave you two more than one. Trello. Trello is my number one.
Jenzaia: Last one. What advice do you have for someone who's just getting started on their teacherpreneur journey?
Melissa: I think take it slow. Don't be afraid to invest in your business. I took a course called Socus success, and I feel like that really helped me market myself as a teacher, author, and I learned a lot more about it. I almost wish I'd invested in the business, and the course sooner because my business would have been so much better. I think don't be afraid to take risks. Don't be afraid to ask for help and join communities on Facebook or Instagram that are willing to help you. So, I'm learning Instagram, I instantly joined an Instagram reel challenge this week. I'm learning about Instagram reels, and I'm playing with it and learning about it. So I'm trying to do all that this week as I'm learning. So it's kind of cool. Don't be afraid to learn something new too.
Jenzaia: That's one of the really great things about starting now is that there are so many communities, and so many groups, and people that you can find. I felt.. I started back in 2013 and I felt really alone for a lot of it. There weren't the same Facebook groups and there weren't the same people on Instagram. I don't even know if Instagram was really a thing back then. Right? So it was a huge, there's been a huge shift. So it's nice to know that you're not alone and that there is groups of people that you can connect with. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. If people want to find you, where can they go?
Melissa: Thank you so much for having me. I'm really happy to be here. If you can go to, if you want to find my website, NotAnotherVirtualAssistant.com, or you can find me on Instagram, @notanothervirtualassistant. I post lots of email tips and email questions. If you have questions, you can Instagram me or any of that. Then I also have a Facebook group called Email Marketing for Teacherpreneurs.
Jenzaia: Awesome. I will make sure all three of those are linked in the show notes, and I hope you have a wonderful day.
Melissa: Thank you so much.
Outro: Thank you for listening to this week's inspiring story. If you'd like to share your story with us, then head to marketscalegrow.com/journey and complete the quick application form. Then, head to our community at marketscalegrow.com/community, so you can join our group of inspiring teacherpreneurs who are working on growing and scaling their businesses, too. See you soon.