I-10 – Email Marketing for Dog Breeders with Tori Mistik of Wear Wag Repeat

You’ve heard you need to have an email newsletter to sell puppies, but “ugh” what does that mean! It’s sounds like just ANOTHER thing to add to your plate and a new thing to learn.

In today’s podcast interview Tori Mistik explains what email marketing is, why it works, and how to implement it into your current marketing. I hope this interview will demystify this marketing task and make it easier for you to implement!

This conversation is just the start to a deep dive Julie & Tori took into email marketing which is available as a MasterClass inside the Dog Breeder Society along with a MasterClass with everything you need to get started using ConvertKit as a dog breeder.

Podcast Transcript

00:42 | Julie

All right, guys, you’re in for a treat today. We have Tori Mistik of Wear Wag Repeat. She’s the founder, and she’s also created a community for Petpreneurs. She is a digital marketing expert, and she is here today to help you all with e-mail marketing. We’re going to talk about what it is, why it’s important, and how it might be a little different for dog breeders, and what we can do about it?

Tori, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

00:42 | Tori

Hey, Julie. It’s always great to talk to you.

01:06 | Julie

Always good. Love your podcast.

01:12 | Tori

Thank you. Yeah, you’ve been on my podcast a few times, so we just, the two of us, we could talk for hours.

01:18 | Julie

It’s dangerous. I always chunk off a little extra time on my calendar.

All right, well let’s dive into this e-mail marketing.

So COVID hits.  Dogs were this everywhere you turned, you could buy a puppy. And so breeders, we didn’t really have to work too hard to sell puppies. It just kind of flowed. And it was almost aggravating talking to puppy buyers at one point.

And here we are now, as the markets normalizing, and that demand has gone down, and the marketing has shifted. And now e-mail marketing is actually, what I’ve seen as the most effective method, but it’s still kind of an abstract concept. Can you tell us a little bit about e-mail marketing from your perspective, and what it is, and where it fits in?

02:01 | Tori

Yeah, sure. So e-mail marketing, I feel like a lot of people think, oh, that, that dusty old thing, you know, emails who’s sending emails. You know, my grandma checks her emails or something. Everyone wants to be doing some trending dance on TikTok and going viral or something like that.

But e-mail really has been around for a long time and it’s still around because it’s very effective and it works. Everyone has an e-mail address, everyone checks their emails and people see pretty much every e-mail that comes through to their accounts through their inbox. Versus on social media, where they see very few of the posts that are being shared by the people they follow, or just by accounts in general.

So personally, for me, I love e-mail marketing. I have been a pet Blogger for over 11 years and I’ve been doing influencer kind of stuff on social media. So I have like 40,000 followers on my dog Instagram account and I’ve done tons of influencer campaigns and all kind of stuff.

And over the past couple of years, I’ve just noticed it’s gotten really, really hard to get any leverage on social media. You know, everyone wants to have tons of followers and tons of likes or views on their Reels or their TikTok videos or whatever. But it’s just becoming really hard. You’re competing with so many eyeballs and it’s just hard to keep up with the trends, right? And the algorithms are constantly changing and there’s just a lot to keep track of.

And the other kind of problem with social media is that your account can, and I hear this happening all the time, your account can get banned, or deleted, or hacked, or something terrible can happen to it. You know, I don’t want to scare you, but all that hard work that you’ve spent, like all the hard work I’ve spent building 40,000 followers, it could disappear tomorrow.

So my e-mail list is something that I own the list everyone who signed up on there. I could export that list and take it anywhere that I want. I could send them an e-mail and say “hey Jane, you know, I want to tell you about this thing I’m working on” or whatever. So my e-mail list is something that’s really steady and reliable and it’s something that I can use to keep in contact with my audience. Whether your audience is potential puppy parents, or people who’ve gotten puppies from you in the past, or if it’s like me and I just want to talk and educate pet parents. My e-mail list is the best way to reach them, because everyone’s seeing the emails that come through to them, whereas on social media it’s just kind of unpredictable.

04:49 | Julie

Yeah, I totally feel you on the social media too. And I think it is really hard to keep up with it. I personally, I love the frequency of e-mail. Like sending an e-mail a week or every two weeks, feels very personal, and way easier to do than posting five days a week on social media. I think it’s simpler, more tangible and like you said, it feels steadier.

I got hacked a couple years ago on Instagram. Oh my goodness. And uh, you know, I fell for it, ok? It was my fault. And it took me like a few weeks to get back into my account, and to this day, two years later, I still struggle with certain logins because of verification numbers and all these things, and it’s extremely frustrating, and you can’t call anyone.

05:45 | Tori

No. Yeah, you can’t call anyone, whereas for like the e-mail systems that we use, like we both use ConvertKit, you can message them. They’re so helpful. And on Instagram lately, I noticed a lot of people recently saying “this account got flagged as being inappropriate”. And I know that one of the policies on Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is you can’t promote the sale of animals.

So I think for a lot of dog breeders, your posts could get flagged, and you might not be getting as much reach or engagement as you should be, because Instagram is just like, their little alarms are going off of “this person’s trying to sell animals”. And I don’t know why that is. One of the one of their guidelines. But it definitely can impact how effective your social media is.

06:36 | Julie

Oh 100%. I had one where I posted the price of a dog at the bottom of the post, and I had it shared to Facebook. And this was before they were owned by each other. Instagram posted the post. It didn’t even hit Facebook. They deleted it before it even posted. And then, so here’s another funny thing. A lot of breeders will refer to it as like “this little boy” to not use puppy. Well, now they flag that because they think you’re doing human trafficking.

So it’s like, wow, definitely not what I’m getting into, but you can get flagged for so many things that dancing around this algorithm, especially when it makes you feel like a criminal and you’re not a criminal for raising healthy dogs and placing them in good homes. Like, come on.

07:20 | Tori

Right. Yeah. The policies exist to, I guess, protect against people who are doing bad things. But there’s no way for them to filter out the people who are doing good things.

07:29 | Julie

Right, exactly. And like you said, you can take your list, your e-mail list with you anywhere you go. So even if you know something happened to the company you’re using, you still own it. They’re still going to say “hey, we’re shutting down, download your stuff”.  And you have that flexibility, you own it. I think that’s the beautiful thing. You own it.

07:47 | Tori

Yes, exactly. Yeah, you do all this hard work, and you don’t want to do it you know, for something that you’re renting. Basically like if you rented an apartment, you wouldn’t put in granite countertops yourself, you know. So you don’t want to invest in something that much that you’re just renting, which is  you’re renting space on Instagram, really. So your e-mail list you do own and building it and making it stronger, and having a better foundation is a good investment, just like a home.

08:16 | Julie

Yes, I think that’s, yeah, a beautiful, beautiful analogy there.

All right. So a lot of people asking, OK, like I don’t get it. Like you’re telling me I have to come up with emails and do social media. And like, where does this fit into everything? How am I using e-mail marketing? So can you give us a little understanding of where it goes?

08:34 | Tori

Yeah, definitely. So I totally get it, it can be a lot, and if you have like multiple Instagram accounts like some of us do, you’re just like, Oh my God, how? How am I supposed to keep up with this? Like, keep churning out the content? Really. But the nice thing about your emails, I think people overthink it. We all do. We overthink everything. At least I do.

But for your emails, you can really repurpose a lot of the stuff that you’re putting on social media and vice versa. So you really should not be doing double the work, but this should be something that kind of complements each other, you know, so your emails, I think you want to provide a lot of value, you want to use them as a place where you can really get to know people.

And you don’t want to, you know, I don’t really encourage sending out an e-mail, that’s just all photos. I would really try to write something so that you can connect on a personal level with the people who are reading it. So that’s kind of how it might differ from social media, especially now on social media, it’s so video heavy. But if you’re say you’re doing a video, you want to do a Reel on Instagram, that’s like the top five things I love about my favorite dog breed.

You could use those five points and put them in an e-mail just written out in text, and you could say, “hey, if you agree, if you love this breed, here’s the link to the Instagram post, come over here and comment on it or share it” or something like that. So you could kind of make them something that that plays off of each other. They don’t have to exist in separate silos. So you know, your Instagram and your TikTok and Facebook you can reference your e-mails.

Sometimes I’ll say like, “oh, I I just sent my e-mail list this amazing story about blah blah blah. Are you on my list yet?” Something like that. Because you know, it’s hard. It’s also a challenge to get your social media followers to convert over to being e-mail subscribers. So I definitely do talk about my e-mail on social media.

And then in my emails you know, I think it’s, you know it’s always good to also kind of share what you’re doing on social media, so that it’s cohesive. You know you don’t want people to think these were run by two separate people.

10:49 | Julie

Yes. No, I totally agree. I totally agree. Having the just the same imagery, a little bit back and forth helps and just the way you talk being more familiar.

10:58 | Tori

Yeah. If you’re just yourself, you know, if you know, kind of this, this is the way that I talk about my business and my dogs, and that kind of stuff, and just be consistent. It also can help if you have some sort of like a brand style guide of like these are colors I like. These are words I like. Like for me I do not like the term furry friend or fur baby, so I will never use that on any of my stuff. But I say my dogs, I call them my pups. So those are words that I like. So you know, if you kind of sit down and think about it yourself like, you know, what’s your style of how you communicate and just keep that consistent amongst everything.

11:39 | Julie

I like that too. Putting together a little brand word bank is really, really, really handy. That makes sense. So you’re saying we’re taking social media and we’re using that as a way to get people onto the e-mail list, right? So you’re kind of building your following. They might meet you on Instagram and then carry the conversation to e-mail, right? Which is like in a way, I feel e-mail is maybe more intimate, not like in a creepy way, but in like, a it’s a closer relationship is than what I see. I’m also a little bit more picky, I’ll follow a lot of Instagram accounts, I’m not going to get on everyone’s e-mail.

12:16 | Tori

Exactly. I know. I think I follow like 5000 Instagram accounts. But I’m definitely not on that many e-mail lists. But yeah, you know, and especially how social media is now with Reels and TikTok and everything designed to be delivered to a wider audience. You know, that was one of the algorithm updates that Meta made this year, is that your content is being delivered to people who have shared interest with you, not just your own followers.

So if you are reaching a lot of people with shared interests, who don’t follow you yet, it’s a great way to get them to follow you, and then ask them to join your e-mail list. So, I kind of think of social media as like I’m casting a wide net, and then the people who are on your e-mail list, yeah, it’s that more intimate, more personal connection. They’re the people who are probably more inclined to be buyers, more inclined to be like a super fan of yours, and social media is just like that wider pool of people.

13:21 | Julie

Yeah. No, that makes sense. That makes sense. I kind of feel like we’re, you know, you go to like the community event, or the community fair, and you kind of meet a bunch of people, and you’re stuck in line with someone. And when you become friends while standing in line, like, that’s when they transition from just seeing you at the fair and social media, to we’re like on my e-mail list.

13:43 | Tori

Yeah, exactly. And it’s like, you know, if you were to go to a dog show, there’s going to be tons of different people with different interests. There’s the agility people. There’s the groomer people there’s, you know big dogs, little dogs. There’s all kinds of different people. But when you see the people who are like, oh, my, that’s my person. This is my event and you’re sitting front row or you’re maybe you’re participating in it or whatever it is. You know, sure. Everyone there has a shared interest of dogs, but there’s going to be like a smaller pool of like, a dozen people who you guys like really connect with each other. So that’s kind of like your e-mail list.

14:23 | Julie

Yeah, I love that. I love that. And we think the other side of it too. We have, as our emails go out, I feel like we can separate ourselves from other breeders, you know, like, do you find I find the people I follow on e-mail. I feel like I start to get to know them.

And there’s like, in a way, where, like this last week with my breeding program, I sent out an update. It was my ten-year anniversary of breeding. My original litter turned 10 years old that day. And so I kind of went through, and I pulled three memories that I have that were like, really pivotal moments in my breeding program. And I posted pictures and then I shared, you know, our family to say like, “my son’s the water, my daughter’s the dog feeder, here’s Bill he gets stuck helping me build everything” and you know it felt like I was sharing our story, you know. And I just don’t feel, I don’t feel like those do as well on social media. I think people are interested in it, kind of.

15:28 | Tori

You know, on social media, we’re always trying to fight like, how do you stop the scroll? How do you post something that’s like so exciting?  But on e-mail, you know, you do have that chance to kind of tell a longer story. You’re getting to know people over a longer period of time, and hopefully you’re emailing consistently, like once a week or something like that. So it is like a friendship, you know.

Imagine if you go to the same class at your gym every Wednesday at 5:00 PM or something. You’re not going to be best friends with those people the first day, but if you go to that that class every Wednesday, week after week, you’re going to get to know them. You’re gonna strike up a little conversation one day and find out what they do for a living, or how their kids are, or whatever. And after a couple of months, you know, you’re going to be friends and maybe go get a coffee afterwards or something.

So it really is kind of more gradual, and I think that’s where people can get a little bit frustrated with e-mail marketing, is because it’s not necessarily you know post this thing and immediately we’re going to sell out, or get 1000 likes, or whatever. It’s about building real relationships with real people on the other side of the e-mail. It’s not just about numbers, and like how many likes you got. You really have to consider you’re emailing one individual person out there. This emails going hopefully to hundreds of people or thousands of people, but you’re really sending that message to the one person who’s reading it.

17:01 | Julie

That makes sense. Yeah. And so I think that is important to stress, and I do talk with breeders a lot, like a lot of people are getting, you know, they get desperate. They have older dogs. They’re not as cute as they were a few weeks ago. They’ve really gotta go.

And they’re like, where do I put them? And I’m like, if it doesn’t really work that way, like there’s no, like one magic, you know, like, you know, when you want to get rid of your car, you can walk into a dealership, and they’ll might give you $500, but they’ll take it, and you just can’t do that with dogs like that doesn’t really exist.

17:35 | Tori

Yeah, maybe you’ll get a buyer, but like, who’s the buyer, who’s that person? You want to make sure that they’re someone that you want to give the dog to.

17:42 | Julie

Right. Like not $50 on Craigslist, right? Exactly. So I I think that is a key piece of it. And what I think you’re bringing up, which is something I’ve always believed in, is that it’s the relationship we’re building. And I don’t think you can have the same relationship on social media that you can with e-mail.

18:02 | Tori

No, and I think you can be more honest, I mean, raising dogs isn’t always pretty, and so, you know, on social media, we like to post the cute photos and “ohh I took my dog out to like a brewery”. Or like all these cute things, cute pictures and cute videos.

But on e-mail, I think you can tell the real story of like “I took my dog to this brewery. It was a frickin nightmare. They were like, trying to eat everything on the floor. They almost bit this person.” Like I think on e-mail you could tell like the real story. I mean, hopefully that doesn’t happen, but you could really tell what really happens.

You know something that you overcame. You know, I learned from this scenario and maybe it’s a little longer story. You can put that in e-mail, that I just don’t think would perform as well on social media. And it’s not all about performance, you know we need to share our story and have the right people see it. But I just feel like with e-mail people, when people respond to your e-mail, it’s personal, and it’s only going to you and you’re the only one who’s going to read it. When someone comments on social media, it’s very surface level because the world can see it. So if you share this personal story of you know, I took my dog out somewhere and it was a nightmare. It was awful. You know, maybe you end that with, “Do you have any advice? Has this ever happened to you? Do you have a story like this?”

People are not going to tell you their story in your Instagram comments because they’re embarrassed.  But in e-mail, they might write back to you and be like, “Oh my gosh, I have a story just like that. We went somewhere and my dog pooped right in the middle of the café.” or whatever.

And that’s how you get to be friends with the people on your list. And that’s how you build those relationships.

19:53 | Julie

That’s oh, I think that’s so juicy and true. And have you ever been that point where, like, I’ll read through like, like a post will come up on Facebook and it’ll be a question. And I’ll have a good answer to it. But then I realize there’s already 80 comments. So one, I’m like, I don’t need to answer this. And two, I do not want to be notified every time somebody posts a comment. And so I just don’t engage, and I can’t be the only one who does this. So I feel like we are missing hearing from people by not giving them a private place to do that. And is email that private relationship?

20:31 | Tori

Yeah, there’s so many people who I feel like I’ve been able to keep up friendship with them, who live all over the world, because they replied to my emails. And not just personal emails, my e-mail newsletter, my broadcast that I’m sending out. They’re personally replying to them. And, you know, we just have a little back and forth and it’s nothing major, but it maintains that friendship.

20:54 | Julie

I think so. And I think if you can, if your people are emailing so they’re, you know, imagine your new potential buyer gets on your e-mail list and I see this especially in our industry, because we are larger purchase items, and it’s a lifestyle change, and all these things. People will jump on a list, and they’ll sit on it for a while before they’re actually ready to buy. Which is great because we can keep nurturing them. But you know it gives an opportunity for them to reach out to you, and you can build that rapport with them. So if they know they get an answer from you, and they haven’t even told you they want a dog, it completely builds it.

21:30 | Tori

Yes, oh my gosh. So that is the biggest thing about e-mail is it builds trust. So you know you can show up, and show people that you know you’re talking about, that you have the experience, the credibility, you can share testimonials and reviews from past puppy parents. You can, you know, like you did, show 10 years, 10 years into it. Here’s the dogs. Here’s my kids. Like, 10 years later, that shows that you’ve been in business for 10 years and, that you’re not just going to ghost these people once they get a dog, you’re not going to disappear tomorrow.

So all of these emails that might seem like, you know, they might seem like there’s not a big deal, but showing someone that you’ve been in business for 10 years or that, you know, “I went and took the dogs to get these tests”, you know, that they need to get these tests right. It’s kind of read between the lines, and it tells people that, you know what you’re doing, and it really it does build that trust, and especially like you said, if you’re replying to an e-mail from someone who hasn’t even bought from you yet, that’s just showing them, you know, the character that you bring to your business and just how great you would be to work with. So yeah.

22:45 | Julie

I think it works good. It’s so funny because you were talking about it. And what did I put in that e-mail? I posted the very first picture. I only had one picture of the first litter I had, and I didn’t know what day she was going to have the puppies and she had them on my daughter’s toddler bed. She was like 2 years old. You know, I think she was a year and a half. So she, like, went in there. She ripped off the sheet. So it’s a bare mattress. And she started, like having puppies, absolutely gross. But I know that if I had posted that on social media, people would have been like: “What do you mean you didn’t know what day they were due? Were you not paying attention? And why weren’t you doing this? And why wasn’t it a whelping box? And why is she unattended?” And blahhhh, you know.

Yes. And so it was just fun to be able to share that with my people, because here I am 10 years later, obviously, I’m not having problems on toddler beds, I don’t have toddler beds anymore.

23:39 | Tori

Yeah, well, but exactly, and it just shows, people love to see where you started, where you came from, how you got here.  People love that. I was just working on an e-mail welcome sequence for a client, and I’m like, do you have any photos? It’s two cofounders and I like, do you have any photos of you guys together, and because they don’t live in the same city and she’s “like, well, we have one photo. It’s from like 2012. The first business trip we ever went on. And it’s in New Orleans. And it’s a crappy picture. I don’t think we should use it.” And I’m like, yeah, you should definitely use it because like you guys have these huge smiles on your faces and you look so excited, and yeah, it’s not a professional picture. But people love to see it’s relatable. You know, everyone does have that picture from 2012 with the big mirrored sunglasses, you know, like I’ve been there. I’ve done that. So it really, you know, sharing those kind of things that helps people relate and connect with you.

24:40 | Julie

Absolutely.  Oh, I love that. I know. I think it just gives it that little touch. Like people miss real, social media is so scripted and so, kind of fake, you know.

24:53 | Tori

Julie, I am like, so over all these videos where it’s just lip syncing, and you never hear anyone’s real voice, and it’s all just like, oh here, copy this template or copy this Reel. I’m like, I don’t want to copy anyone. I want my own thing. And I want everyone else to do their own thing. It’s not creative or fun anymore. It’s just like here’s a Xerox copy of the same thing over.

25:18 | Julie

I know I was like, I don’t understand. So my son, he’s 9 and about a year and a half ago, he was obsessed with watching people discuss other people playing Minecraft.

I was like “whoa, like how many removed are we from actually doing?” Like, we’re not even just playing a game, but we’re like watching someone talk about someone playing. It was just it was crazy to me and I think people are craving going back to real.

25:51 | Tori

Yeah, people are. People are craving like, you know, I think authenticity has become a buzzword of like a thing you have to check off like, “oh, is this authentic?” It’s just like nothing is anymore because you can’t check it off. You just have to be you.

26:06 | Julie

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Just be you. Use your own words, right? Don’t call them fur babies.

26:13 | Tori

I just I don’t have fur babies, ok, people.

Get the MasterClass for more with Tori Mistik and Email Marketing for Dog Breeders.

26:18 | Julie

I know like don’t remind me of the shedding. Ok, let’s not call them fur babies.  But I think it makes a lot of sense.

I think to clarify, I’ll put a note in here. A lot of people are like, you know though, you’re going through a crisis, like I was going through Parvo, you know, a few years ago with the litter and I don’t think the time to talk about it is while it’s happening.

26:44 | Tori

I completely agree with you. Yeah. And besides, you know, we’ve all had dogs for a long time. Sometimes things don’t turn out how you think they’re going to turn out. Sometimes it’s an unexpected solution that you find. So, yeah, I wouldn’t share too much up front. I mean be yourself, and share what’s going on, but if there is like a real crisis going on, you know you are a business that you want people to trust you, and you don’t necessarily want to share everything that’s going wrong.

27:16 | Julie

Yeah, I think Amy Porterfield was the one who said “share your scars, not your wounds.” And I love that perspective. And so, you know, after it’s said and done, and you’ve learned from it, then go ahead and share the story. Like, Giardia was terrible for me in the very beginning. But then I figured it out. So now I put in that e-mail that was something that really made me debate whether or not I wanted to quit breeding, and then I ultimately decided to stay, but this is why –  I figured out a solution.

27:47 | Tori

And see that’s how it becomes a story, because there’s, like, a moral to the story. If you’re just like, sharing what’s going wrong, that’s just like vent session, you know?

27:56 | Julie

It’s a crisis, and it feels like you’re looking for kind of sympathy or compassion from your listeners or your readers, or your e-mail list. And I think that’s not great. Like they might appreciate you as a person, but now they’re not going to be sure if they want to get a dog from you.

28:17 | Tori

Right. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think that’s a great thing to point out.

28:22 | Julie

All right. One more thing. And then we can wrap up the podcast, but, so many times you’ll Google e-mail marketing as a dog breeder and they’re like, “you need to give away a freebie.” You know which is like a download in exchange for their e-mail address. And like, I’m going through this with breeders and it’s like it’s hard to figure it out. So I mean, from your perspective, what do you think dog breeders, I mean, what are we giving them in exchange for being on our list? And do we need to come up with a freebie?

28:50 | Tori

Yeah, so, yeah, so these freebies like opt-in freebie, lead magnet, opt-in incentive, there’s like, all these different words that mean the same thing. It’s, you know, it’s I think often incentive is maybe the best term to use for it because you’re giving them something to incentivize them to give you their e-mail address. So people like you said, you might follow 5000 accounts on Instagram like I do, but there’s like a dozen e-mail newsletters that you are on that you actually open and read and really like. So just looking at the numbers for that, I don’t give my e-mail address up for just anything.

So what’s going to incentivize me to join your list? So of course, yeah, there’s tons of freebies you could give away. We could brainstorm a million ideas of a PDF or a video, or a quiz or whatever. But what you really have to think about is what is: What problem is your incentive solving for your potential people?

So the problem that you’re probably solving is they want to know when you’re having a litter coming up. They want to know when the puppies are available. When can they get a dog? So really, you know, I think the incentive to join your list is so that they can find out ASAP when you have a new litter available, or when you have puppies or dogs available.

So you know, I don’t think that we have to get so caught up. It’s good to know about these opt-in freebies. But I think it’s better to know the reason behind them. Which is solving a problem for your audience. And so that problem is like, how do they know when the litter is available? You know, maybe they follow you on social media. But like I said, we don’t see all the things people post on social media, because there’s just too much these days. Or I’ve been hearing from a lot of people that they’re not even on social media anymore.

So joining your e-mail list, you could really be solving the problem of them not knowing when a litter is available, and that’s all it has to be. It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that. But you know, if you want to make some kind of cool PDF, there’s a million things you could do, but just always think about is it solving a problem, not just something that’s fun or cute. It really needs to be solving a problem for people.

31:11 | Julie

Yeah, I agree. I kind of feel like it bridges that gap where, ok, so like, I was ordering shirts the other day. I stink. You know, I’m one of those, like, sweaty humans. And so I’ve been, like, buying, like, more merino wool shirts, you know, alpaca whatever.

31:25 | Tori

Yeah.

31:27 | Julie

So they had a color I wanted and it was out of stock. And they’re like, put your e-mail and we’ll notify you. And I was like, yes, I want that because I’m not gonna keep checking your website again and again. And I think that’s where this e-mail comes in, too. It bridges that gap so that we can let them know? Hey, we’re back in stock.

31:45 | Tori

Yeah, exactly, because I think a lot of the freebies are probably things that would be helpful to people after they get a dog.

So those are things that you could send out to people, you could set up an e-mail sequence that after someone gets a dog, they automatically get an e-mail every couple days with like “here is answering your FAQ’s, here’s potty training advice, here’s this kind of advice. Don’t forget to get your vaccines” yadda yadda. You could schedule out all these emails after someone gets a dog, but it doesn’t make sense to have that be your opt-in freebie because they’re just, they don’t have the dog yet.

32:27 | Julie

You’re absolutely right. Like they don’t make sense, or like a lot of people will have like, the quiz, like, “is this dog right for me?” Well, by the end of the quiz, you know, potentially there’s a good chunk of people now on your e-mail list who don’t fit what your dogs. So if you did a quiz that was for something like that, can you think – what would it be?  If they had two different breeds or two different sizes? Maybe figuring out what size is better for them?

32:53 | Tori

Or maybe male or female?

32:55 | Julie

Yeah, I could see that, but I just want them to talk to me. You know, so like I, you know, I really do think that it comes down to letting them know, like, we’ll keep you in the loop. Like, you don’t have to. We’ll come to you. Let us come to you, we’ll come to your inbox.

33:09 | Tori

Yeah, and I think that out of stock notification, we’ve all seen that online shopping, that’s such a good comparison to this really. Yeah. So I mean, you could even really lean into that and play it up and send an e-mail like “back in stock” – we’ve got dogs.

Yeah. I mean, you just have to think, like with this quiz or whatever this opt in is, is it pulling the right people in?  Because you know, where are they in their journey. You know, if this question is like what kind of food should I feed my dog? Those people already have a dog, or maybe a quiz would be like, you know “how old should my current dog be when I get a puppy?” I don’t know this. I don’t think that be a good quiz, but that could be like a blog post, or an e-mail, or a social media post. Like that could be something else. That’s just kind of building awareness and starting conversations with people.

But yeah, your e-mail list is really that service you’re providing people with a value, of keeping them up to date, so they don’t have to go back to the website and go digging and seeing if what they want is available yet. You’re gonna take it straight to them.

34:27 | Julie

Yes, I love it. And it also gives you a place to collect that in between group of people that say: “Call me when you have a puppies available”. Because like I’m going to remember to do all that. No. So, “oh, I’ll put you on my e-mail list and then I’ll notify you when litters are coming.”

34:42 | Tori

And because you don’t know if they’re serious or not, and maybe their life circumstances will change between now and then. So just put them on your e-mail list.

34:52 | Julie

Yeah, it actually really reduces our workload as breeders, I think. You know, breeders think it’s adds work to have an e-mail list. I think it takes work away from you.

35:00 | Tori

Absolute. Yeah, I just sent an e-mail the other day. That was, you know, my most frequently asked questions.  And you know, I’m just like, save this, print it out. Do whatever you got to do. But this is what people are asking me over, and over, and over again. So here are the answers.

35:16 | Julie

That’s really good. Yeah, I like that. And then also, you know, it’s a way to stay in contact. You know, I think that’s so useful to stay in contact with somebody who has one of your dogs. So let them know because I think a lot of times, you know, have you noticed, like when you hang out with a friend who does like some line of work, and then all of a sudden you talk to somebody, and all of a sudden, you immediately think of your friend because they’re in that industry. But if you hadn’t seen that friend, hadn’t talked to them, they’re out of your mind. And so you don’t always think to refer them, or whatever. So I think having people know that you have litters, that they were born, you know, even if they’re not going to buy another dog from you, at least they know.

36:01 | Tori

Yes, they know that you’re still in business, that you’re still, you know, you’re still available. That when they are ready, if they are ready or maybe they never are, but they have a friend who will be, so it’s a great opportunity to stay top of mind. I’m obsessed with Boykin Spaniels, even though I have two chocolate Labradors.

They’re, my dogs are 12, and I’m not like I’m not rushing for them to die or anything, but I’m like next dog Boykin Spaniel. So I follow all these these Boykins online, and I have signed up for an e-mail list for a breeder, because I’m like one day, one day. I mean it might be like five years from now but I like just keeping in touch, and seeing their new litters, and seeing who the puppies are going home with. They post all kinds of stuff and put all kinds of stuff in their emails, and so I just like staying in the loop. Even though I’m not getting one of those dogs anytime soon.

37:05 | Julie

Right. But if somebody came up to you, you would probably tell them, you know, or they mentioned, Oh my gosh, I’ve been looking at those too you would tell them about it.

37:13 | Tori

Exactly. Every once in a while, I find another person who’s obsessed with Boykins, and then I can tell them about those.

37:19 | Julie

I always think of the scenario that like they’re out at the dog park, or they’re out walking their dog, or their other kids sporting event, and they have your dog with them.  And somebody’s like, oh, my gosh, your dog’s so wonderful. And if they had gotten your e-mail that morning that said, you had a litter on the ground, they’d be like, “Oh yeah, she came from so and so, she just had a litter” and it just feel like, that’s such a great way to get exposure.

37:40 | Tori

Yeah, well, I think it’s just a big difference. I, you know, one of my dogs is a rescue lab, so I call him like a farm lab. He came from Amish country, so who knows what his deal is. But my other dog, Lucy, she’s an English lab. And when I see other beautiful, well-bred English labs out around town, I always say, “where did you get your dog?” And a lot of people will say “a breeder in Ohio” or “a breeder in Virginia”. And I think that if you were to say an e-mail contact with them, they might say the actual name of the breeder, they might say, you know “Julie’s Dogs in Columbus Ohio.” Or whatever it is. Instead of just saying some breeder in Ohio. You really, I think that’s a great point that you do kind of need that continued name recognition, even after they’ve taken the dog home and maybe the dog’s five years old. You want to stay in touch so that when someone does ask, they’re going to mention you by name.

38:40 | Julie

No, I agree. And from a branding perspective like so I called, so my ranch is Bear Paw Ranch. So I have Bear Paw GSPs and so you know I’m always putting in the emails like thank you for choosing a Bear Paw GSP, you know, and I’ve had people on the trails in Arizona meet each other on the trails not knowing each other, both have GSPs and be like, ”Oh my God, you went to Bear Paw Ranch too.” And like that, to me is beautiful. Or I’ve had people call me: “I saw one of your dogs at Sportsman’s Warehouse when we were shopping. I need to know when you have another litter coming up.”  They are such good ambassadors for us.  They’re like walking advertisements.

39:17 | Tori

Yeah. You know, maybe you have a great name like Bear Paw Pack, you know, or something like that. But you know, if you don’t consider coming up with kind of a fun name, you know, like Lady Gaga, I think her fans, I don’t know if they still are this, but I remember when she like first came out, all her fans were called the Little Monsters.

Which has like doesn’t have her name in it at all, but you could come up with a name like that for your puppies, for your pack, and maybe they are little monsters, and people could kind of identify with that. So you can have fun with it. We don’t have to take it so seriously. But you know, you want people to have some sort of name recognition of who you are, where your dogs came from. So they talk about you. You want people to talk about you, you really do.

40:09 | Julie

It is, it’s good.  And it usually with dogs, it’s pretty good.  I love it. I love it.

40:13 | Julie

All right. Well, thank you so much. I know you help people in the pet industry get their e-mail series going, and get ConvertKit up and running. Can you tell us a little bit about what you do, what you offer?

40:23 | Tori

Yeah, thank you so much. So I do have I have a membership called Wear Wag Repeat Society, which is a monthly membership full of all kind of digital marketing. It’s basically how to grow your pet business online. So we do blogging and e-mail. Earlier this year, I had some guest experts come on and talk about money and you were on the podcast and I had some other people in the membership go through like accounting and how to set up a 501(c)(3) and all kind of detailed stuff. So we cover all kind of stuff in there, and it’s really a great group.

But I also have a couple of different services that I offer. So I do one-on-one strategy sessions, and then I just recently started writing people’s welcome sequences for them. So you know we touched on it a little bit in this conversation, but your welcome sequence is a series of emails that someone gets when they first sign up on your list, and it’s your first impression with them really. So it’s really important that those emails touch on a bunch of different things that show people your credibility, why they can trust you, your experience sharing testimonials, sharing, you know what makes you you, the secret sauce of your dog breeding business. So I’ve had a lot of fun writing these e-mail welcome sequences for people, and you can learn more about that at wearwagrepeat.com. There’s a little tab that says Learn and all my courses and membership and services are all under there.

41:55 | Julie

Perfect, and I will link that in the show notes for anybody that wants to.

41:59 | Tori

Thank you very much.

42:01 | Julie

You’re welcome so much. Well, thanks for coming on the show. I am so excited that we’re about to record our MasterClass with you, really deep diving into e-mail marketing.

42:10 | Tori

Yeah, I’m excited. I we’re going to go deep. This was like the why and now we’re going to talk about the how.

42:14 | Julie

Exactly, oh, I love the technical details. Thanks.