One year later: Adam Sobel goes all-in on email personalization

Allea Grummert (00:12)
Hey there, welcome to Happy Subscribers, a podcast that explores how bloggers and content creators can create more purposeful relationships with your audience through email marketing. I’m Ali Grimert, email marketing strategist, copywriter, email platform expert, and founder of the Done For You Email Marketing Agency, Duet. I started as a personal finance blogger in 2016 and have since helped hundreds of bloggers and creators like you maximize your email marketing for more impact, more traffic, and a better connection with your subscribers. Be prepared for some advanced email talk as well.

as tactical tips to help get your valuable content into the hands of your audience faster and easier. I’m excited you’re here, so let’s do it. We can create a deeper, more meaningful connection with the community you love and serve through email.

Wanted to give you a little bit of context for my conversation with Adam today. So Adam was on the podcast last summer and shared some really awesome advanced strategies he’s doing with his email marketing. And then I got an email from him this summer, and he has so much more going on that we just wanted to hop on a call and talk shop. And y’all, by the end of the conversation, I was like, Adam, can I use this fathom recording of our conversation for a podcast episode?

Because we covered so much and in such detail, I just didn’t feel like it could be replicated. And so that’s why the quality or the background noise is going to be different. But you get to sit in on a conversation with Adam Sobel and all of the updates that he has for his email marketing, his strategy, and why his email marketing is such an important part of his business. So I’m excited for you to hear this peer-to-peer conversation where we get to learn alongside of Adam.

and his why. So tune in, listen in, and if you have thoughts or comments, you’re always welcome to message me on Instagram or reply back to one of my emails. If you’re not on our email list already, you can do that at duet dot co do e t dot c o and you can always reply back to one of my emails and it will come into my inbox and we can chat more then. So enjoy this conversation with Adam.

Adam Sobel (02:25)
I thought the last time we talked, I was like already on some crazy like power user stuff in kit. And my big like a lot of people, you know, when kit like raised their prices like a year or plus ago, yeah. I was like, well, I’m already like using all the liquid code stuff. I’m already like doing what I thought was like relatively pushing.

It to its limits. I was like, yo, if I’m gonna have to pay more, let me like see what else is out there. And I started like having a major crush on Clavio. Yeah. I was like, yo, this is twice as much money, but like, look at all the cool shit you can do. Like, that would be so dope. And I was like talking to Clavio and talking to some contractors about moving my shit to Clavio and

It was gonna cost like way more than I had spent building my website. So I was like, yo, maybe like there’s some crafty ways I could use some third party things to like make my kit be on like super steroids if I’m gonna stay. Like, what are the like dream come true fantasy things I wish I was able to do? I was starting to build some of the things myself. I was like, there’s gotta be a slicker way to do this.

So I found Brad Hussey and hired him to help me build like the snippet of my dreams. In kit, I have this like mega nested snippet situation now where in an email, and you’ll see there’s like the first this like small snippet that’s basically saying, like, hey, like the topic of this email is Korean food, right? And then there’s this offer engine snippet, right?

Each subscriber, right? using a mix of write message and this like custom HTML type of thing. Basically, I’m getting like the information about like, okay, what kind of cook are you? You know, like what are your like biggest pain points? What are your like benefits you’re after? Are you gluten-free? Right. Yeah. And this little snippet rotates like relevant offers for that user. So

First, it’s gonna be like, if the topic of the email is Korean food, we’re gonna assume like the next offer you wanna see is Korean. But like if you’ve bought that one, it’s gonna show you a different one. If you’re gluten-free and that offer is not gluten-free, it’s not gonna show you that one. If you’ve been going to my website a lot and looking at Mexican recipes, even if it’s a Korean email, it’s gonna be like, We know you like Mexican recipes, like.

I’m gonna show you my Mexican cooking class in this snippet. It is like the most logic intensive snippet.

Allea Grummert (05:26)
Yeah.

Adam Sobel (05:28)
Brad helped me create helped create for me this like whole external interface for generating the content of those snippets. so it generates this whole like basically it’s the contents of like several different snippets that like

all controlling the content and logic for what shows for that specific user based on what they’ve purchased, what content they’re like chain smoking, if they visited a specific sales page a certain number of times or whatever. similarly, I’m using write message then like for when that user comes to the site to that sales page to like show them different headlines and calls to action and testimonials on that page.

And it’s red.

Allea Grummert (06:19)
I love that. How are you tracking like that somebody’s chain smoking Mexican restaurant like recipes?

Adam Sobel (06:25)
it’s a little bit tricky, but you can do it in in write message itself. the tricky part of it is that many recipes have multiple categories, right? And so being able to make decisions about what’s like the primary intent of somebody looking at a specific recipe, that’s the trickier part, but

Luckily, there’s a few different ways to get out the like Yoast primary category. Like Yoast is what I use for designating that primary category, right? So like there’s just certain ways of tracking through write message that like somebody keeps visiting things that that’s the primary category of. So you know, like if they’ve visited over this number in a specific time window, and then like you can have that.

either decay or completely refresh after a certain period of time. Yeah. if you’re not like primarily making your living by selling stuff, that’s like a hard extra cost. Like there’s already people who are like, I can’t justify the cost of kids. Yeah. Like if all you’re doing is just driving traffic back to your site, like

It you’ll like a little more than break even with that or whatever, but it is it worth like this massive amount of effort? I don’t like I don’t know. It’s a lot of effort to me.

Allea Grummert (07:53)
It is.

Adam Sobel (07:53)
where where it like pays for itself all the all the way is like if you’re making like a dozen sales a day, then it’s like a no-brainer, including, in my opinion, the cost of write message. I think it’s fucking the future of the internet. Like I really strongly feel like

Like I’m radically changing the experience now that people who are email subscribers of mine have on my site in general, not just on sales pages. My plan in the next few months is I’m completely planning to like reframe the idea of what my email newsletter is to being like not just a newsletter, but like a free membership to my site type of thing. Where, like, okay, if you’re on my list and I know you’re like,

New to vegan cooking and you’re gluten free, like first of all, your homepage on my site is not going to be like a generic homepage. It’s going to be more like a Netflix style for you page. That’s more if you’re gluten-free, like why I’m going to show you Satan recipes on that page. You know, like if you’re a new cook, why am I going to show you stuff that’s advanced? Like if you’re somebody who I see always goes to Mexican recipes, like that’s going to be your

suggested stuff on your for you page, right? But similarly, I’m also using write message or like this is what I’m working on right now on a staging site. That if you are on my newsletter and like basically have this free membership to my site is how I’m framing it. When you go to like a regular blog post, you also have a very different experience of that than like somebody just landing there from Google who like

Doesn’t know, right? Like and the the situation there is that you’ll see like, you know, a couple sentences above the hero image. You’ll see that hero image. Then the entire blog post up into the recipe card is like collapsed, which you can open if you want it. Then there’s like a custom for you block that gives you personalized tips on how to make that recipe. So like if you’re gluten-free.

How to make this thing be gluten-free. And like, so you cut out all the bullshit that like I would say most users don’t want anyway. And they’re being encouraged to like actually look through the blog post because the tips they’re being given are really specially curated for like the kind of person they are and they’ve told me they are, right? Actually, only using write message for the like telling the system what content to give it, but

I’m using this plugin called what is it? Something custom fields that like that’s where all the the actual variations of stuff live. So like write message doesn’t have to do a lot of heavy like JavaScripty stuff.

Allea Grummert (10:52)
It just sends it to the

Adam Sobel (10:54)
It basically like write message will identify that person as a subscriber, look at its custom fields to be like, this person is advanced and this and that and that will inform the s the custom fields on like what to populate in that for you block, if it makes sense.

Allea Grummert (11:14)
Okay, so then when you go to craft those emails, are you are you using Brad’s part of Brad’s system to kinda say this is the message I’d want to send to each and it generates the code for that? Like the console.

Adam Sobel (11:25)
Well I use that that like email functionality built into write message most of the time. Like I just set up an SOP for it now that like a VA follows, but they’ll I’ll have like a basic email that like speaks to everybody and then I’m like all right like make variations for this section, make variations for this section. And I’ll just like use the built-in AI in write message for that because it’s

Pretty darn good. Like it’s good enough for purposes.

Allea Grummert (11:55)
I mean he’s a developer, so that helps.

Adam Sobel (11:58)
but yeah, I mean right message also has an MCP now, which is pretty rad. But you know, like why I mentioned, I think that it’s really the future is like I think people are now leaning more on AI because they can be like, Hey, I have these ingredients or I have this allergy, like give me a cookie recipe that works around that. And if people like

genuinely creating and testing recipes are able to give a more personalized experience to readers. Like I think that’s what’s going to survive against just generic AI that has no human oversight in it. You know, in a couple years, people who just have a static website experience, like I don’t know if they’re just going to be totally left in the dust or what, but my feeling is it’s going to be very hard to

be right for like a wide number of readers. Like

Allea Grummert (12:55)
Yeah. I’m trying to think of how ’cause I like even you know, even if this is kind of out of some people’s reach, having your input on kind of like what you see the future of blogging being around customization is

Adam Sobel (13:09)
There’s tons of ways for free to like personalize people’s email experience. You know, like in my opinion, the ROI for that is really if you’re selling something, but still, you know, there are plenty of different ways that people could, you know, have a cut like custom fields for specific or even using tags. It’s a little more bootleg, but people could do it with tags and just have like

on the form that people sign up for, some check boxes or some link triggers that add those tags at some point in the onboarding or whatever. And you know, there’s lots of ways they could use that just like with simple liquid code to like, you know, hide things from their not from their gluten free readers in an email that goes out to everybody, or to, you know, send specific readers down a different nurture or welcome sequence.

And there’s lots of easy ways like that that I think your average listener could have some benefit to think about.

Allea Grummert (14:15)
Well that’s like often what I’ll talk about at conferences and whatnot, because that’s still like such a bar for people. And like the the thing I hear the most, I heard it on a mastermind yesterday, was just like the time it takes. And there there’s a contemplation of whether it’s worth your time. And meanwhile, people are also like, I’m just gonna send a bunch more emails using AI and I wonder how much of that is like the benefit would be actually to send fewer and more tailored emails.

Adam Sobel (14:42)
I mean I think I don’t know, man. Like people spend so much time on this food blogging stuff. Like so much insane amount. Like I don’t spend all this time people spend like doing the amount of keyword research and all this bullshit that people like obsess about. Like I think it that’s boring. that’s not a really great use of my time. Like I don’t I feel like

Google is just gonna like randomly promote random people at all times and you just have to live with that and not obsess about it. And I think if people spend as much time as they do, like looking at their Google analytics and like actually put some system together for themselves, it would be so beneficial. And it’s like more fun and it’s more like caring about your reader. You know, like that’s the whole thing about this personalization stuff is like

I think it’s a very loving approach. Like, yes, there’s a benefit to me because I’m like being more effective at selling something. But I mean, that’s something that benefits people too. Like, and more important than that, it’s like just like caring enough to be like, that person is allergic to tree nuts. I’m not gonna make them a tree nut thing. It’s like the same thing. Like it’s an expression of your care and your love for that person that you take the time to like.

Pay attention to who they are and give them what’s actually good for them instead of just like barfing all over everybody, like what’s easy for you to make or something, you know? and I I think that I hear all the time from readers that like they really appreciate that they feel really seen because they they took the time to tell me, hey, I’m gluten-free and I’m like new to all this. And I took the time to like give them.

that instead of like everything, you know? And and people really appreciate that.

Allea Grummert (16:43)
that’s something that I’ve been working with a personal branding coach in the last couple of months on a project, just like I’ve never really explored personal branding. And the part that came out of it, like once one of the three pieces of like what makes me unique is my genuine care for my audience, for my clients, for their audience. Like and so it’s just really fun to hear somebody else also say, and I’ve I’ve said for years, like

Even if no one knows that you’re segmenting them and that you’re keeping them from getting stuff they don’t know, you know that you’re caring about your subscriber.

Adam Sobel (17:16)
And I think it you know, whether they can see it or not, I think it’s very evident to people when they’re just like when they when they’re spared the noise and spared the like irrelevant stuff, whether they realize like you’ve gone to really extreme lengths to make it very personalized or not. Like I think it comes through that you you genuinely care. Like it’s I think that’s something that’s like an intangible

feeling or something that gets gets transmitted, you know?

Allea Grummert (17:50)
And then even just thinking about the time and effort that you’ve put into it, knowing, especially on you know, because you have such a tight knit community, like that it’s worth it’s worth all of that. And I think that I wonder if people just have to debate within themselves how much is it worth caring this much about your email list or caring about these email.

Adam Sobel (18:12)
It’s funny because I I hear a lot of food bloggers who are like, My main place is my blog, and like my email list is to send people to my blog. Dude, my main thing is like my email list for real. It’s like my main like I sure I make money when they go to my blog and like they I get the ad revenue or I get the sales or whatever, but like the main engine driving that is email and like even the website personalization stuff, like the

Only source of truth for all that is like the values in these custom fields that I’ve like set up the process for doing. Like that’s the actual brain that’s informing everything that’s people are experiencing on the site and stuff. Revenue. Yeah.

Allea Grummert (18:57)
Good to see you. Always. Thank you for sharing so generously. I appreciate that. It’s good to

Adam Sobel (19:01)
Yeah,

yeah, my pleasure, my pleasure.

Allea Grummert (19:07)
Thanks so much for listening to Happy Subscribers in our conversation about email marketing today. I hope you feel inspired to take action, even if it’s a small change, so you can more confidently share your valuable message with your community through email. Special thanks goes to my team who makes it possible to produce and share these episodes with you. Seriously, thank you guys. If you want to hear more email marketing tips, strategies, and success stories to help you develop deeper, more meaningful relationships with your email subscribers, be sure to subscribe to Happy Subscribers so you don’t

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