Episode 11
Stop Sending Generic Emails: Email Marketing for the K–12 Buying Cycle
In this episode of All Things Marketing and Education, Elana chats with Kelly Cline, a former educator turned EdTech copywriter and email marketing strategist. With over a decade of experience in the classroom, Kelly brings a rare, grounded perspective to email strategy rooted in both deep empathy for educators and real-world ROI.
Whether you're building your first email list or trying to breathe life into your 10th nurture sequence, this conversation will help you sharpen your messaging, find your voice, and cut through the inbox noise.
What You’ll Learn:
- Why email is still the highest-ROI channel—and how EdTech brands can use it effectively
- Common messaging mistakes in EdTech (and how to fix them)
- How to build a brand voice that’s strategic, human, and distinctly you
- Low-lift ways to grow your list (even without a big team or budget)
- What metrics actually matter—and what to watch for beyond open rates
- Copy tips that boost engagement, including subject line tweaks, button CTAs, and storytelling flow
Why It Matters
Too many EdTech brands rely on email tactics built for other industries. Kelly offers a refreshingly nuanced take that centers educators, honors the buying cycle, and turns email into a true relationship-builder—not just a megaphone.
Spoiler: When she’s not writing high-converting emails, Kelly’s taking cold plunges in Copenhagen—yep, winter bathing is part of her creative process.
Visit our website for the rest of the show notes.
Transcript
Hi there, Kelly. Welcome to the show. I am so excited to talk all things email marketing with somebody in education. So welcome, welcome.
Kelly Cline (:Thank you so much, Ilana. It's so nice to be here. I appreciate it.
Elana Leoni (:Yeah, for almost over years, I was telling our producer, I was like, we need an email marketer, but we need someone grounded in education. So now I have the opportunity to selfishly pick your brain and our audience can benefit from it. So why don't you tell the audience a little bit about why email marketing? And the things that you could be doing, why email marketing? What do you think the power is? And talk a little bit about your background, because I think it's fascinating you come from an educator background.
Kelly Cline (:Yeah, sure. So I'll start first with a little bit about myself. So I was a teacher, a classroom teacher for 14 years. And I also was an adjunct professor for English language learners. And I quickly, I'm sorry, my son is screaming. So hold on a second. Sorry about that.
Elana Leoni (:Poor bear.
Elana Leoni (:You
Kelly Cline (:you
Okay. Sorry about that. All right. okay, sorry.
Elana Leoni (:No problem. Here, let me kick it off again, to re-center you. No worries at all. So before we get into a lot of the tactical things that you're going to be talking about, tips and tricks about email marketing, why don't you tell the audience a little bit about your background and why you've chosen the beautiful place of email marketing.
Kelly Cline (:Yeah, sure. So I was an educator. I was a teacher for 14 years. in, I want to say 2020, I, you know, during the pandemic, I started doing freelance copywriting as well, because I was teaching adult English language learners as an adjunct professor as well to supplement my teaching.
salary and I was laid off because you know as adjuncts typically do get laid off and I didn't want to wait tables. I knew I didn't want to tutor students and so I started doing freelance copywriting and I really loved it and more so I loved writing for education companies and EdTech companies. had the
usage myself and I understood the audience very well and so it just felt like a natural fit for me. And when I started doing freelancing I was doing email marketing as well and I loved it so much. I felt like it was a direct line of communication. You didn't have to worry about keyword research. You could really
implement some creative storytelling as long as it was relevant to the target audience. And I feel like it's one of those very high ROI strategies for very little cost. And I think when you've seen things happening in the media, like a TikTok ban and those creators were so upset because they had a
huge following, but then they had no way to get into contact with those, with their followers. They had no email that they could turn to. And then even now more so you have, you know, Google.
Kelly Cline (:flipping the script with keywords and SEO and it's AI overviews and people's content and blogs are so hard to find. And it's so really truly, think email marketing is one of those strategies when it's done right and it's relevant, it's very powerful.
Elana Leoni (:Yeah, here, here, I was head nodding because as marketers, we want to have a diversification of channels that we invest in. But every single EdTech organization or education brand I work with, when I start coaching them, they say, gosh, know, I really wish the one thing I would have started sooner is building my own email list intentionally. Right. And not just building it for building sake, making sure you're consistently emailing it out. So we're warming it up. So it's not just staying doffy.
and becoming inactive, right? But that's the number one thing because amidst all of this moving and shaking that you alluded to, Email is here, it's here to stay, and it can be very, very powerful in terms of conversions, right? I think one of the latest stats were every dollar you invest in email, sometimes you can get 41 or 42 X return.
Kelly Cline (:Yes. Yeah, absolutely. It's a, it's an incredible asset and incredible strategy for any EdTech brand. And I wholeheartedly believe that you should absolutely have an email list, whether you're an EdTech brand or just a solopreneur, think it's so valuable and it really gets you to have that communication and direct communication with the audience and
You know, I think the most problematic thing I see in the EdTech space, it's just a lot of bad advice out there, not. I don't want to say bad advice. It's just that a lot of the advice that's available is geared to B2C and it's just not applicable to the EdTech space. And even a B2B strategy isn't always applicable to EdTech. It's just not because.
I think education is its own niche, its own industry, and you can't really tie strategies from B2B or B2C to EdTech. It just doesn't work.
Elana Leoni (:And for those of you listening now, want you to pause. if you've ever listened to an email marketing podcast or listened or read an article about email marketing, I want you to always pause and think critically about it. Because what Kelly's saying is really critical is that a lot of time that data comes from a big sample of businesses that aren't even related to you.
Right. And then even if we are lucky to find stuff around education, sometimes they lump in higher education, workforce development, career and college readiness, pre-K, B to C, E learning, all of this is an education. And these are fundamentally different industries. Right. So whatever you do, I'm not saying that that data isn't helpful for you to open up your eyes and say, well, let me try this.
but always test and experiment with your own audience because even within K-12, you'll find that your audience is drastically different to somebody else's too.
Kelly Cline (:Absolutely. I was actually just kind of talking about that idea of testing. I mean, you can have all these different tools to help you with your email marketing. You can have a subject line tester. You can do A-B testing. You do your segmentation. And those things are amazing. I want to get to the subject line tester. Again, it's just a tool. You could get a very high score for that subject line tester.
And that open rate could be terrible. So I think it's just important that if you know your audience, you kind of have to take that nuance and, say, okay, this is what they actually really want. Even if this score isn't so great, you know, it's something that you kind of have to move more intuitively and trust your gut.
Elana Leoni (:So why don't we talk about, when you talked about education and education marketing and EdTech, how fundamentally different it is from a lot of the other stuff you see out there. What messaging mistakes do you see most often?
on either websites or in launch campaigns or on email in particular. And I know this is a juicy topic so we could go on for hours, but what do you think those top mistakes are? So for the brands listening here, they can go, okay, let's make sure we don't do that.
Kelly Cline (:I think what it comes down to is your messaging. A lot of brands, I think they don't stop and really take the time to create a messaging matrix. One that's not 50 pages, one page that you can use internally and share across your teams with your marketing team, your sales enablement team, so that everyone is on the same page.
I think messaging is so powerful because when you have your messaging right, you're able to create emails that are relevant. You know, then you're not becoming just inbox noise. You're, you're actually providing something upfront of value. You're building trust. The thing I see most on education brand websites is it's so me focused.
and it's not you focused. And I think when you're going to be saying things like world's best in class something, or I don't know, product name engages students, you're actually ignoring the very people that take your tool and use it. They're the ones that.
are empowered and they're pushing play or they're asking the AI to do the data analytics, but then they have to do something with it.
there are people in the classroom or in the building and they're using the tool. So when websites and emails are talking about features or specs, it's not going to resonate, right? Like it goes down to neuroscience, right? It's that lizard brain is the first one that makes decisions and it does it from, you know, emotions.
Kelly Cline (:Do I trust this? Does this sound like it would be enjoyable? Is this going to help me? Those are very real questions that every human brain is asking. And I don't care if you're talking to the most logical school administrator, they're still making a decision first with that brain, and then they're gonna use logic to back it up and data.
and testimonials and social proof, like they're going to make the decision emotionally. And then they're going to, you know, rationalize it with numbers and that kind of thing. And so if your message and your copy end up talking about those features and tech specs, you're just not going to, to resonate. And the jargonated lines are, are something that I can't.
I can't get on board with it because it just goes over everyone's head. And if your message is murky and it's talking about all the features versus the benefits and the transformation that's going to happen from using your product, then you've lost them. That's it.
Elana Leoni (:Yeah, and let me summarize because what you said is so good. And a lot of the times we talk about this in just general messaging too. It's like, know, a la story brand and making sure that the customer is the hero. You're not the hero. You're not the savior, right? But you said, let's make sure that
It's not that you don't want to do product marketing. There's a time and place for product marketing, but your messaging, you said, should align with the challenges and the solutions that they're, you know, needing. Like these are real solutions. These are real goals they have. And if you're, if you don't have messaging that aligns with that, like it's always a gut check on whatever you do. So I heard that. I heard avoid jargon and then you do a very good job in your emails to make it concise.
Kelly Cline (:Yes.
Elana Leoni (:digestible, relatable too, when we get into actual email copy too. So the customer being the hero, maybe less about the product, and just cut out jargon. And we don't need things that you're like, all right, student outcomes, but how, what? All the things. Did I get right a little bit of a summary?
Kelly Cline (:Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I would just say what I like to say to brands and clients that I'm working with is the easiest place to start is it's your features because they're so tangible and concrete, right? But the question you have to start asking yourself to get to the benefits and the value proposition is,
Well, what does that do? Why is that important? Why is an AI data analytics important? So what? And then you keep asking those questions. It's an exercise to get you to those benefits and that value.
Elana Leoni (:Yeah, so I can do what? And then for those of you on the sales side, what are they currently using? What's the status quo? How does that align with line item and budgets and all of that too? So really trying to connect so that I can do what? But what do I currently use? Maybe that's not really working. Maybe I still have that challenge. So being able to connect the dots there is really important. I wanna talk about voice. Voice is so critical.
Kelly Cline (:Yes.
Elana Leoni (:It can differentiate your brand amidst the sea. You know, we get tons of emails flooding our inbox and I look at emails that have a distinct voice that aren't generic, right? So how do you help education brands find a voice that's really authentic, but also align strategically with their brand and their audience, right? We never want to turn off their audience. But, and especially a lot of our brands are talking to educators, teachers in the field.
and people in the district and the school level too and leaders. So how do you begin to way find to a voice around all of that?
Kelly Cline (:I am obsessed with doing voice for education brands because it's just one of my favorite things to do. So I do three very concrete things. So I will interview the internal teams and...
just get their point of view on the product or the solution that they're offering. I like to know, you know, I'll talk with the sales rep and get a product demo. I just want to really understand what they think about the product. Then I like to interview their customers because I feel like customer interviews are just so illuminating,
they're so rich with insights, you can learn about why they chose that product or how they use it, you know, how did they implement it? Why, what makes it so great? And you get their words and their language and, you know, use cases. And then my final step is I like to do market research. So that means I'm going into Reddit, going onto Facebook groups.
I'm going on from those Facebook groups. It kind of tends to lean to stalking a little bit, but then I'm on LinkedIn trying to find those people. What are they posting or reposting? How are they presenting themselves to the world? And then I take all of that information and I'm trying to find that common thread and the pattern.
within how the internal product and the team members see the solution, how a customer actually sees it, and then market contextually as a whole, how do they see it? And I like to put that all together because I think that that'll give you a strategic and different voice than anyone else.
Kelly Cline (:And what I like to do is I try, it's one of the only times I was an English teacher, it's the only time I'm saying, you should plagiarize. I would try to keep their words, the customer's words and you know, the market research, I pull interesting phrases and language that they're using as much as possible to mirror that back to them within the voice, the messaging and the copy.
Elana Leoni (:I love that because when we think about your audience, they're always doing like right now they're deep in consideration phase or into purchasing the EdTech cycle is so long, but they're always keyword scanning for what they need their words. And I love how you go out with outbound research, whether it be on social media or, you know, looking at personas on LinkedIn, seeing what they're posting, how they're talking.
And then I think what you also are alluding to is you're like, you're mirroring it with the company itself too. And as you were thinking, I'm like, well, every brand that has a more well-established presence, I know has somewhat of a voice. Like a magic school is going to have a different voice than a power school. Right? So how do you go about like tweaking the voice to align with like your brand personality? Once you know what the customer
says and those phrases and all of that. Like how do you create that cohesive voice there? Because I think that could be really fun too. And you have such a great voice personally in your brand. It shows a way to be authentic, you know, and express the humanity a bit.
Kelly Cline (:Yeah, yeah, thank you so much. I would say to develop a personal voice that's going to be different from your competitor. So I think it really takes finding that angle. And I think what it comes down to is all roads lead back to that messaging. And so...
A really helpful book that is like my EdTech messaging Bible is Emma Stratton's Make It Punchy. If you haven't heard of that book, it's amazing. It's a great place to start to help you kind of differentiate yourself to figure out how to put your message in layman's terms and in a workable, usable framework. So I would say
To differentiate yourself, would need to look at, you would have to do a competitor analysis and just flip it on its head, I think, and go a completely different route. That way you stand out and you're refreshing. That's the only way I think to do it. You might be offering the same thing, but maybe,
I don't know, I just interviewed a principal for their reasonings behind choosing a schedule maker. And one of this person's reasonings was because this particular product.
was so close to the founder. Like she could talk to, have personalized conversations. The customer service was just so fast. But also there was a feature that was important to her, which was traveling teacher schedules. And no other competitor had that. And that was part of the messaging that was on their website. Like it took that into account. And it was...
Kelly Cline (:basically giving a whole view picture of an elementary school classroom or a middle school or high school. There are teachers who are traveling. So I think it really just listening to your customers and figuring out, why are they coming to me versus someone else? Why did you choose this product over the other guys? And then using that because it's again, their language, you can mirror it back and that'll help you stand out as well.
Elana Leoni (:Nice. And for those of you that are listening, I don't want you to think, Kelly and Ilana said you need this big brand voice thing and you need to do all this market research. Like we don't want this to sound inaccessible. And you can do a variety of different things within this, right? But what we're doing is giving you some best practices. And, you know, a lot of the times in LCG, we talk about the magic in the middle, right? So we look at...
What is unique to your brand and your brand goals still goes with brand voice. What does your audience want is really important. And then what's uniquely capable for you as a brand, you know, and how to like maybe you tease out those differentiators and then come up with that beautiful voice. As long as you have some guidelines to start, know that you're gonna be tweaking it and doesn't need to be perfect, doesn't need to be some agency you hire for six figures to do this. There's a way to get down and dirty.
Maybe speaking of getting down and dirty, let's talk about under-resourced teams and startups. And for those of you that are in big companies and you're in a team, I know how much you work. I know lifecycle marketers are tasked with so much, email marketers. how do you, like, where do you think is the best place for them to start ROI-wise if we're thinking about, like, low-hanging fruit or, like, how do they start prioritizing with, like, no time?
Kelly Cline (:you
Elana Leoni (:But they know email marketing is important. And maybe we talk about different types of copy that's more high ROI, whatever you want to take it. But we know our audience is time constraint, like crazy. But we also know email marketing is like gimme. They already have your email. They're warm audiences. So how do we make sure that we not take advantage, but we are able to use that in a way that as marketers and people in sales.
Kelly Cline (:Yeah.
Elana Leoni (:they can do what we want them to do eventually while providing them value.
Kelly Cline (:Right, yeah, so I think if you're a lean team, email marketing is hands down one of the best strategies, the best ROI to go for. But I think it just, the things you need to focus on, wait, let me go back to this. Okay.
Kelly Cline (:just one second.
Kelly Cline (:Okay.
Elana Leoni (:Not made it to you up. Make it easier.
Kelly Cline (:What? Yes, please.
Elana Leoni (:So when we think about email, how do they prioritize within a small team that doesn't have a lot of time? Where do they start first? What do you think is the more, like if I was gonna navigate and try to prioritize, where's the highest value? And with email, there's short and long term value. But like, how do you advise all of that?
Kelly Cline (:Well, I feel like for most edtuk startups that I've worked with or spoken to in the past, and especially those that are doing founder led sales, email is definitely one of the highest ROIs that they can invest in early. But the reason being is that it's not a huge lift and it's not as, it's not as
costly as other things like paid advertisements, a super crazy webinar funnel. You can go to an email service provider. Some of them are more affordable than others and you can get yourself set up rather quickly. I think having a website that answers who you are, what you offer, how you help.
very clear, very you-focused to your target audience that has as simple as a pop-up that asks website visitors to subscribe. I think that that's very powerful. It works because those that are visiting, they're going to maybe be intrigued enough to organically get onto that email list so that, again, it's not a huge lift.
It's not a big ask, but it can actually get people onto that list quickly. Maybe not always quickly. You could always do a lead magnet where you are offering something useful. I always like to recommend to use your best judgment with that because you don't want to create friction for your website visitors. So you have to be very thoughtful in what you're going to gate versus not gate on your website.
Where I like to get the most inspiration for a helpful lead magnet is to look at schools RFPs or RFIs. I think there's a lot of useful information in there that you can actually create helpful usable lead magnets. You might not be able to solve or get that purchase.
Kelly Cline (:from that person or that school district, but you could at least take the information that's being provided publicly and use it to your advantage and create something that can solve one part of that problem. very, like you could take a slice of that problem and be as helpful as possible. You could have a webinar, a free webinar for.
how to support newcomers that are coming into your school district. You could create a summer checklist for getting a newcomer and newcomer families engaged and welcomed. You can do all different kinds of things that are going to support and show that you are here, you're offering authority, but also building that trust. So I think you can do certain things to get
people onto your email list without having to do a huge overtaking and hiring, you know, an agency to set up your sequences and, you know, paying them a lot of money to do that. You can actually just get them right on the email list, send an email once a month with blogs or case studies or anything that's very helpful.
and then you'll be able to support them. think email is just such a great strategy to build that long-term trust. You've got nothing but time with the EdTech and the education sales cycle. There's nothing but time. So I think email marketing just aligns so beautifully with the school sales cycle.
Elana Leoni (:Yeah, and you said a lot around this and when we started the conversation around like ROI and like where do we focus within email to really get the bang for the buck with short amount of time. And you said a lot of things around list building in particular. So first, if you don't have email and everyone needs to be list building regardless of the size of your email, right? So you said, hey, make sure that we've got a compelling pop-up and it's not just join my email, but there's actually a real compelling reason for them to sign up.
right? Privacy policy, the whole thing, transparent K-12. You said lead magnets and for our audience that doesn't know what a lead magnet is, it's a visual, it's a resource fully designed to capture emails, aka leads, and I always say the information has to be good enough that people are willing to give their precious email address to. And I loved your tip around going to those RFPs or RFIs and trying to come up with ideas. They could be anything from cheat sheets, workbooks.
infographics, there's 10 million ways to slice and dice a lead magnet, but I like your focus on, let's look at what the challenges of our target audience first and foremost, create something that they're willing to give their email address for. So consistent list building through lead magnets is really critical, right? When you're actually thinking about emailing and you talked about like just consistency,
But how do they get started? What do they do? Some teams are more sophisticated and have a cadence and it aligns to the buying cycle. Some people are just getting started. Some people have a newsletter, some don't. Where would they prioritize in the mix of it? They've got some lists, they're growing, maybe they're going to conferences, they're growing consistently. Where do they start?
Kelly Cline (:That's a really good question. would say the thing you need to think about is what is your goal with the email? You're not just sending to send, right? You want to make sure that every single email has a reason for being sent. I think when you get into that area of being noisy and just sending to send, then you're
really taking away that relevancy and personalization within the email. So I think it comes down to how often can you feasibly and consistently email your list? So that's the answer that you need to figure out. And then how can you do that on a consistent basis where you're not just sending to send, but you are sharing
helpful resources, and you're just trying to be a guide for your subscribers. You're trying to be as helpful as possible because that will build the trust, that will build the intrigue, and you'll be top of mind when it does come time to buy. As long as you're staying consistent and sharing those helpful things when it comes time for the buying window to open because it's very small.
in EdTech, you'll be remembered and thought of. And I think that's why email is just such a powerful strategy for EdTech brands.
Elana Leoni (:Yeah, that's great. you said consistency is key. Do you look at any signals within the data to make sure that you're cutting above the noise or you're not over emailing? When we think about, you know, we get a lot of questions around, all right, what's the quantity? And you answered it's like lead with value. But what are the signals you look for to really make sure that you've found that right balance?
Kelly Cline (:I would definitely take a look at your email metrics. think email marketing is a science experiment through and through. So if you're seeing high open rates and high click through rates, higher than the rest of your emails, you need to start.
doubling down and tripling down on that particular content. I would analyze that email in particular and figure out why. Why was this the one? What about it made everyone engage with it so much more than any of the other emails? And you can look at benchmark data. You can Google email marketing metrics. And HubSpot has some metrics that you can take a look at.
have to take into account, know, in our industry there are companies that buy lists and they buy subscribers and so those email metrics won't be the same as an organically grown email list. Just it won't because those are cold and you have to kind of nurture and warm them up a lot more than
a prospect that comes to your website and saw something that they really liked and decided to join your email list.
Elana Leoni (:Yeah, I love, so you said open rate, you said click through rate. A lot of times in our industry, all of those depend not only on your industry and specific stakeholder you're talking about, but it depends on the size of your list. A smaller list is going to have hopefully a higher open rate because those are all warmer for you, right? So,
Think about all of those things in terms of benchmarks. And then we also look at unsubscribes. For me, that's the pulse of like, all right, if I'm seeing a high unsubscribe rate, people are getting annoyed with me. And making sure my domain authority is high. All of these metrics we want to make sure to inform our consistent outbound approach as much as possible.
Kelly, do you have any specific things that you love doing like tips or tricks in emails that you're like, just do this and I'll add in a couple too. But I think sometimes when I talk to email marketers, I'm like, I never even thought of doing that. That's so genius. Are there any kind of tips or things that you love doing in emails that are helpful in terms of conversion or just engagement?
Kelly Cline (:Yeah, absolutely. One of my favorite things to do is, well, actually I wanted to back up a little bit because when you said looking at the unsubscribe rate, I think that's a really great tip. But I would also say sometimes what I find is that educators and administrators aren't necessarily unsubscribing. They're just straight up ignoring, right? Or they're like, this isn't going to work for me.
and they don't even have the time to unsubscribe. So I would actually start looking if your open rates start to drop as well on, if you're seeing a trend that way, because then maybe you need to go back to the one that performed better and try that angle again. But my tips and tricks, I tell my email subscribers all the time.
The easiest tip is to write your subject lines in all lowercase letters. I think because a lot of EdTech brands have their own style guide, which is very important. And a lot of them, a majority of them are using title case. And so I think administrators are, they're scanning their inbox. And so
on all lower case subject line kind of is that it sticks out. stops that scroll from happening. And, you know, I'm in a beta email marketing course with my students right now. And that's one of the tips that I've shared. And they said it works. It's surprising, but it works. But that tip only really can work for you if you're a smaller startup and you don't have that style guide established.
but I think you can break that rule a little bit. I think open loop subject lines are incredibly helpful in making your open rates go higher. Because again, if you don't get the email open, then you don't get the click through and then you don't get the conversions or anything like that. And the way I like to do open loops is that I...
Kelly Cline (:I like to ask a question, something that's going to either agitate a pain point or it's a question that's kind of alluding to a motivation of the target audience. But the very important thing with open loop subject lines is you have to be careful. It's not a click bait situation. You need to close the loop in the email.
100 % otherwise you're going to annoy and aggravate your audience. You don't want that to happen. I would also say I have noticed even with my own list that you need to have a CTA button. It can't be hyperlinked. It doesn't perform as well as a button. You can use color psychology, but I think your CTA
shouldn't say the words learn anymore because nobody wants to do more work. But it should be an action verb tied to one of the benefits that's in your messaging and then trying to gauge them that way. I've seen good success that way.
Elana Leoni (:Awesome. I love these little kind of tips because as marketers, again, you want to be able to say, gosh, Kelly said this, let me test it. Because email is just such a hotbed for testing, right? So you said, you know, play around, be innovative with the subject line and all your email service providers have A-B testing tools. So if you're getting flack from your higher ups and saying, it's not our voice, they just say, hey, let me test some 20 % of our audience and let the data speak. And usually that helps me get away with more innovative.
Kelly Cline (:Yeah.
Kelly Cline (:Exactly.
Elana Leoni (:practices around the subject line because you'd be surprised as when you have data to present that this is actually going to get in front, people are going to open it more. People are like, okay, you can do the lowercase. Okay. So go ahead.
Kelly Cline (:Yeah, and there's actually one more tip that I would say is there is a copywriter that I follow, but she's B2C. And like I said earlier, not all B2C or B2B strategies work, but one that I have found, her name's Laura Belgray and she's phenomenal. I love her emails. They give me good inspiration. She recommends to...
Begin and media res. So bleed in the first line. So skip the niceties. I hope this email finds you well. We don't need to be doing that. You can just, even the greeting can ask a question that sets up the story and it can be very quick. It doesn't have to be a long winded story. It could be just one sentence. I find that I'm quite long winded. So I usually will write my emails and then I just, I'm deleting everything.
and trying to be as precise and concise as possible.
Elana Leoni (:Yeah, and your emails in particular, they tell a story, they're concise, but they're also visually appealing, right? So a lot of the times an email, think mobile first. And I love when you, I get an email from you, I can scan it really easily. It doesn't feel a chore to read. I love your tip on when we're trying to get a call to action.
visually, let's use some color psychology with buttons. We found testing, sometimes we play around with first person. Yes, I'm in. And that first person on buttons can be better than just like RSVP. So test those things, play around with those things. But there's so many little things you can test. what all the things you're saying is, how do I stand out from the noise? But how do I do it in a way that aligns with my brand and my audience?
And maybe that's always moving and fluid, right? And that's the fun of email marketing. And we want data to support what we do.
Kelly Cline (:Yeah, absolutely. think it just, again, it just goes back to that messaging and making sure that you're not just emailing to email. You can go back and literally look at your messaging framework and say, okay, I want to write this email. I had a great, one of my students actually was saying how she was speaking to a technology director.
And the tech director said that this school year testing season was not stressful. And she loved that feedback. She thought it was amazing because most school districts when they're in that testing time, they're feeling very stressed. And then we were reviewing the copy and the email. And really the question that came up was, well, does this align with your messaging?
Are you just sending to send? And it's an important question to always ask yourself. And is this going back to what our value proposition is, what we're providing, what we're giving to our audience? If the answer is no, then don't do it. Don't email them. You don't need to do it. You need to always just make sure that you're staying relevant and you're repeating that same core message again and again.
Elana Leoni (:Yeah, that's really, really good advice. Kelly, you mentioned that you've got some students and you kind of hinted on a course. Why don't you tell people about the course that you just launched? Because for those of you that are tuning in on this conversation, you're like, wow, email marketing is a lot. It can be a lot, start small, but it's really important to have some proper guides that can guide you in the best practice direction. So you're not spinning your wheels and you're not damaging your brand reputation.
Kelly Cline (:No.
Elana Leoni (:So Kelly, why don't you talk a little bit about your course?
Kelly Cline (:Yeah, sure. So I just launched a beta email marketing course for specifically for EdTech. It's called Inside the Inbox and it's to help, you know, EdTech marketers or founders of a startup or even EdTech copywriters or freelancers help them to really figure out an email marketing strategy.
develop the cadence and really align with the school sales cycle with email. So we're going through it right now and I've been getting great feedback. I just met with my students a couple days ago and they were sharing their goals for the course, which was amazing and it was a really collaborative space. So I'm very excited to see where it goes.
Elana Leoni (:Okay, and for those of you going, where's the information? We'll put it all in our show notes as well, but Kelly, how can people find you in particular and kind of navigate to the course if they're not going to the show notes? And also, Kelly dropped some really good resources. She talked about a book, she talked about some copywriters she liked. We'll put that all in our show notes at leoneconsultinggroup.com. You can go to our podcast, navigate to this episode with Kelly Klein. So Kelly, how can people find you in general?
Kelly Cline (:you
Kelly Cline (:Yeah, sure. So you can find me either on LinkedIn or you can go to my website. It's www.kellyclineagency.com. And I will be posting, I'll share the wait list for anyone who is interested in just finding out more information about the email marketing course. Right now it's in its beta form. So I'm taking all the great feedback that I'm getting and then refining so that I have an even better.
product to offer to everyone soon.
Elana Leoni (:And you also have a resource you wanted to give our audience too.
Kelly Cline (:Yes, I have a resource. It's the school sales cycle and how to align with the administrator's priorities. And it has swipeable subject lines so you can send timely aligned emails and you can take them and try them out, test them out, and it's free to have.
Elana Leoni (:Awesome. We will link it in our show notes. Kelly, thank you for thinking about our audience and just extra resources and putting the stuff that you talked about in action, right? So thank you. We always love to end our podcast with one fun conversation. And this is just Kelly as a human. Kelly works in education. She has a heart of gold. You know, at the end of the day, sometimes you might feel depleted. What are some things or like, what's the go-to thing you do of like either reading, writing, exercise, kids?
What's the go-to thing that immediately replenishes you as a human so you can get back and working with powerful brands and education on copywriting?
Kelly Cline (:what I would say is there's, there's a few things that I do. I really like to, I like to listen to a podcast when I go for walks, it gets a lot of the, the creative juices flowing and it's Ellen Yin, cubicle to CEO. She offers a lot of B2C strategies, but I've found that some of them are applicable.
to education at tech and that helps to kind of get some different ideas going and it's a very, it's a good podcast to listen to. I also love to do morning pages. This is where I get a lot of my inspiration for my storytelling in my emails. So I just put a timer on for 10 minutes.
I try to do it every morning. I'm not perfect, but I do write just anything that's coming to mind to kind of get it out there. And it helps me to maintain my voice and personality because think with AI out there and everything, just practicing writing something from scratch to finish. it doesn't have to be this.
final, beautiful, published piece. It's just a very rough stream of consciousness, but a lot of great ideas come out that way and help me with developing some of the stories that I tell in my email marketing. Yeah, and I would just say, I do cold plunges. Yeah, I live in Copenhagen. I do them. Yeah, that's the last thing I would say I do.
Elana Leoni (:What? and by the way...
Kelly Cline (:It's a thing here in Denmark, it's called winter bathing, but I don't know why they call it that because the water remains very cold all year round. But I do go in and I try to stay in for at least three minutes and I feel like it clears the cobwebs for me. People think I'm crazy, but it's good for my mental health and I absolutely love it.
Elana Leoni (:love it. And what you talked about in the beginning is like, how do I professionally develop? Maybe there's some cool podcasts, and we'll put a link to that podcast in the show notes. But how do I maintain my voice and get into that flow as a writer? That's so important rather than the hardest part of writing is starting, right? So that helps you with flow and orient to voice. And then you just wake the heck up in a plunge. I love it. Well, thank you so much, Kelly, for joining the
Kelly Cline (:Yeah, exactly. You just wake it up. Yeah.
Elana Leoni (:show I've learned so much personally love hanging out with education marketers specifically in email. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And I hope people check you out, check out your course and get on your newsletter so you can see that beautiful copywriting in action. So thank you for joining the show, Kelly. For those of you listening, thank you for listening to all things marketing and education. We will be back in a couple of weeks. We talk about email. I'm excited in the next couple of months to have
famous email marketer Liz Wilcox. She is from Survivor. We're excited to talk to her and pick her brain. She isn't based in education, but there's so much goodness we're gonna pick out of her as well. So stay tuned for that. Thank you all for joining. We will see you next time.
Kelly Cline (:Thank
