How To Use Email Marketing
Matt Rouse
Devin Miller
The Inventive Journey Podcast for Entrepreneurs
4/1/2021
How To Use Email Marketing
The Inventive Journey
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ai generated transcripton
are actually several steps
to having an email get delivered to the
person that you're trying to reach
before that system even decides to put
it in the spam box or not
and that process called deliverability
and deliverability has a number of
factors in it
some of them can be related to your
domain whether you're on a black list
do you have the correct things set up in
your dns settings for that those are all
technical requirements
hey everyone this is devin miller with
another episode of the inventive journey
i'm your host devin miller the serial
entrepreneur that's grown several
startups in the seven and eight figure
businesses
as well as a ceo and founder of miller
ip law
where we help startups and small
businesses with their patents trademarks
and other things related to their
business and
now if you and if you ever need help
with yours just go to
strategymeeting.com
grab some time with us we're always here
to chat now today we have another great
expert episode with uh matt rouse and to
give you kind of a quick intro so matt
does
several different things he also has his
own podcast and he was gracious enough
to have me on there as well and it's all
called digital marketing masters podcast
so he does a lot of digital marketing
with um with his firm and
offer those services now today we're
specifically you know name of his agent
agency is uh hook
or hook seo now what specifically we've
had a few other
people that are a bit in digital
marketing but one thing the area that we
haven't covered that
thought would be certainly of interest
and be worthwhile is
on email marketing so there are a lot of
questions on email marketing everywhere
from
should you spam should you not spam if
you don't spam or you do spam how should
you do it
you know what's the key to building a
list do you need to have a big list or a
small list and target it
and what software's to use and how to
grow this should you go out and buy a
list of a whole bunch of people or is
that a bad idea so
a lot of fun things to talk about that i
think we can dive into email marketing
so with matt that much is an
introduction welcome on to the podcast
map
thanks for having me on the show
absolutely so
maybe just uh before we dive into all of
the fun things of emo marketing
give everybody just a one or two minute
kind of quick background as to
why you're the expert why you know what
you're talking about and why they should
listen to you
sure so i've been working on email
marketing
uh since the late 90s um i was doing it
with a
company in western canada for a little
while kind of helping them out
as as just part of a role that i had at
that business
and and then i was an i.t contractor
for technology and some marketing
companies
and over the years uh you know a lot of
times it would come up they're just like
does anybody in the company know
anything about email marketing because
we have this issue or we have this
problem or
you know we want to say html email but
nobody knows html in the whole company
because it's
1999 you know so that kind of thing
happened
and then i would say probably the
biggest step forward in email marketing
was i got this frantic call out of the
blue
and there was an agency in downtown
portland oregon
and the person who handled their
largest email marketing client just
never showed up to work
uh like like kind of no call no showed
on them for like two days
and they have a list of over a million
people for this international furniture
retailer
and they have to code hand code and send
out
an email marketing message to them and
they had to send it out that day
and so they brought me in and i took
that over
and over the next uh six to nine months
ish
i can't remember exactly how long i
worked with them until they found
someone to take over for me to train for
that position
we were able to increase their sales
substantially
increase their list improve
how we determined what were the best
ways for them to send email
and uh and and uh how to do like certain
types of split testing and stuff like
that so
um and then from there you know through
the agency we've worked with hundreds of
clients doing email marketing so
i've made hundreds of businesses
millions of dollars with email
hey well that's a pretty good claim
hundreds of businesses millions of
dollars so
that's that's awesome so i think that's
a great introduction so
kind of now with that as kind of setting
the stage for
um or talking a little bit about email
marketing and how
what the do's and don'ts are and kind of
when you get into it
i'll start out with the hard-hitting
questions i put that in parentheses for
people that can't do it
but one of the questions that seems to
come up a lot
you know and you get everything from
spam email people that are trying to
sell you spam email lists that are
stabbing you
to linkedin to fiverr to and i know
there are a lot of other services
about buying an email list and i know
that there are a lot of different things
we talked about
but one of the things that you know i
get the question in a decent amount of
time and i see it come up
is should you buy an email list or
should you buy or grow it organically
and for
those of you that are you know maybe
less familiar buying an email list and
you can
certainly correct me where i'm wrong
matt it's basically the idea that you
have people that go and collect
information some of them are more
reputable
some of them are less and it could be
everything from they go scrape the
internet
or they scrape linkedin they could
actually go and have people that
opt in so sometimes it's more legitimate
where they go to websites or they sign
up to actually get the information
but a different various different ways
where they compile lists of a lot of
different people
that then you can actually go buy that
contact information from that email
that individual and then send out an
email to all of those people on the list
and that's generally how
a lot of spammers get to where they're
at not all of us spam but a decent
amount that's why you get
emails that you don't ever remember
signing up for that are people that are
sending you whatever the ad is or
whatever service they're trying to sell
you
so maybe jumping into that good idea bad
idea
good ways to do it bad ways to do it on
kind of buying an email list and kind of
maybe give us a bit of insight on that
map
sure so i think for the majority
of companies do not buy an email list
and the reason you don't want to buy an
email list
is a lot of times those lists are either
not up to date
or they were not collected in
well let's say a very business friendly
way
so they could have been pulled from
companies that have had like email
information stolen out of their
databases posted on the dark web
they could be buying databases and then
posting them as legitimate lists
you never know what the quality of your
list is gonna be when you buy it
um a lot of mail sending companies will
put what they call trojan horse emails
in those which is an email address that
tells them that you bought the list
because they know how to get on the
lists to get purchased
and then they'll just lock out your
email account for spamming
and because when you use an email
service provider you are agreeing
that you are bringing in people who
asked to be on your list
that's part of the terms of service so
they can deny you service
based on that problem now that said
if there are some instances where buying
a list
um is okay it may even be a good idea
there's not very many of those but you
can there are services and stuff where
you could what one question is so that's
kind of its own episode yeah one
question for you
is you know diving into and i want to
hear when it is or when is a good way to
do it if you do it but what is
sounds like generally don't go buy an
email list you're going to get on as
spammerless you're going to have
negative repercussions and if you don't
know what you're doing it's better not
to do it
what are some of the reasons why you may
buy an email list or why that may be
beneficial or why it's not
why it wouldn't be a bad idea
well so a good example is like trade
show lists i know there's not a lot of
trade shows right now obviously because
but um
if you were an exhibitor at a
trade show they would give you an option
the trade show list
the trade show list is an opt-in to say
that they are going
to give that information potentially to
vendors at the conference
and so that is a list that you can
purchase safely
that has correct email addresses on it
and you know what industries those
people are in
so if you're going to for example the
specialties coffee conference
then you're going to have all the people
who are buyers of coffee go to that
conference and if you have
if you're like a coffee roaster that
might be a good list for you to purchase
okay no that makes sense but that one is
almost your point is
then it's not going to be one that's
filled with illegitimate emails because
it's not the ones that are sold on the
dark web
right not the one that you're going to
be marked as a spammer necessarily
because they've opted in and they're
now you may still have a high
unsubscription rate and you may have a
lot of people who don't like it but at
least it's not the one that is full
hey we're going to get the email
provider that's going to say they they
bought the list and we're going to
blacklist the type of a thing
so now one kind of question to follow up
so let's say either
you you do buy the list and maybe it's a
legitimate we take it either way let's
say you bought it illegitimately which
as we said don't do or you bought it
more legitimately what's a trade show
or you know kind of like those home you
know almost it used to be the home and
gardens or sometimes you go to
gun shows or you go to you know you do
the different
trades or whatever it is where you sign
up for those you know
should you be should you just take the
you buy the list should you take it
whole cloth and just simply
go through and start using the list or
should you scrub it or what should you
do because you know
at least my limited knowledge is
sometimes if you get a huge unsubscribe
rate or it's an abnormal for your
industry
you can have the email provider that get
flags you or otherwise you know bans you
or limits you
and otherwise so if you were to go by
legitimate or illegitimate and we'll
just treat them as the same for now
what should you be doing with that list
before you just start blasting it to
everybody
so there's everybody thinks
that the only thing that you need to
watch out for on email
is to get out of the spam box but there
are actually several steps
to having an email get delivered to the
person that you're trying to reach
before that system even decides to put
it in the spam box or not
and that process called deliverability
and deliverability has a number of
factors in it
some of them can be related to your
domain whether you're on a black list
do you have the correct things set up in
your dns settings for that those are all
technical requirements
then there is large providers like your
gmail hotmail rocketmile yahoo comcast
all these types of providers
they will have a scanning system that
they use to try and get
it's kind of a first check to see if
they can get rid of stuff that might be
full of viruses
or just unwanted emails um
the next step a lot of them and this the
use of this
is kind of some use it some don't
but nobody tells you what they use for
security and that's an engagement based
process where let's say your list has a
hundred thousand people on you got a
nice big list
and you send i have that hundred
thousand ten thousand of them go to
gmail
well gmail is not gonna deliver all 10
000 emails right away
they'll deliver like a thousand and
they'll see if those
thousand people if the majority of them
mark it as spam
they won't deliver the other nine
thousand they just delete them
so they don't even end up in a spam box
they just don't get delivered
at all so engagement can be
an effect on your deliverability also
once it actually gets delivered
then it can have a decision whether it
goes into a promotions
folder or like on gmail or it could go
into a spam folder
or if you get into the inbox so there's
all of these steps that happen
before the email actually reaches
somebody's inbox
now if you have a 100 opt-in list
you have a way better chance of that
email
making it to the person who's going to
read it
and you got to remember we haven't even
talked about whether somebody's going to
open a read your email yet
this is just getting it to them right so
there's a lot
of things that have to go right for your
emails to get to your clients
so now let's say because one and that's
interesting i didn't know that on gmail
but it definitely makes sense and so
is that you know do they look at it as a
pure is it marking it
when you say engagement and backing up
there's a couple things that come to
mind with engagement one is that
if people market as spam you know a
threshold amount of people mark it as
spam
gmail's just not going to do it and i'm
sure there are some that may other
providers that may do the same thing
and then the other one is okay
engagement can also mean
not only do they get it in their inbox
should they delete it or they actually
open it
does gmail look at the open rates or the
whether they get it or they does that
not factor into that portion of it yeah
they're going to look at the open rates
too
um you know people are opening
and reading it it's probably gonna get
but if everybody deletes it or you know
even some of the market is spam it's
probably not going anywhere
um also the wording
that's in your emails like the actual
wording of the subject line
the wording that's in the body who the
reply to email address
is who the email is from all of those
things including the headers
the ip address range it's sent from all
of those things can
affect whether it goes in the inbox or
the spam box
so getting everything right is difficult
so now let's say you get first of all
getting everything right you know
it's difficult you know some of the tips
i think that if i did maybe summarize
are the takeaways one would be
don't go buy any especially if you don't
know what you're doing good don't go buy
an email list and you know we can talk
maybe in a minute about if you buy an
email list or you talked about their
ways to scrub or otherwise
give you a better likelihood but let's
general person if you don't know what
you're doing
don't go buy an email list two is if
you're buying an email list
don't do it that it's too spammy in
other words that people are they going
to market as spam and they may have
opted in and
what's interesting is we have an email
list you know with miller ip law
we'll have people that opted in that are
clients that they will they'll still
unsubscribe and some of them still
market as spam
even though that they they signed up and
they legitimately opted in just because
they don't necessarily know what spam is
or they don't know what it means when
they get that list of four or five
questions when you unsubscribe and you
choose one of the options that no i
didn't sign up for this well you signed
up you just didn't remember
but you get past those hurdles right so
one is don't make it
you know don't buy a list don't make it
too spammy make it so they actually want
to engage and open it so
you make it past that first hurdle and
it gets in their inbox
then what are some tips on how you
actually get them to open it or get them
to be active with it or actually
work you know actually review the
content you spend time doing it
right so those percentages of people who
unsubscribe that
that did subscribe and stuff like that
they're going to be really small
especially if you're delivering good
value in in your emails and stuff
they're going to remember who you are
they're going to see it repeatedly
they're going to know your name that
kind of thing and
and they're pretty unlikely to
unsubscribe or mark it as spam
you're always going to get a few
unsubscribes you know as you go
you're gonna get kind of an attrition
rate and you'll get to know what that is
and you'll be able to say well how many
subscribers do i need to consistently
get to grow my list compared to the
number that are leaving
once you get to bigger lists you know
you'll you'll start to learn what those
percentages are
and you know if you're if you have an
existing business
you probably have a number of customers
that you have served in the past
people who are vendors um people who may
be in networking groups and stuff like
that
and the best way to kind of start off
your list for your company
is to reach out to all those people and
ask them
if they would like to be on your list
right and that's an important step is to
say
you know this is what we're offering to
send you
if this is something that you would like
then you can join our list
that'll give you a base right somewhere
to start
and so the next step
probably after that is going to be
making something that you think your
prospects or whoever it is that you're
trying to reach
with your business you need to find
something that they want not
necessarily what you want to send them
but what
they want to receive from you and once
you figure that out
you just ask them if they want you to
email them that thing
and then you email them that thing and
then you should have some kind of
ongoing reason
why they want to stay in touch with you
and that is the reason for your future
emails
and there's a number of ways to do it uh
there's there's as many different types
of businesses
there's as many different types of
reasons to be sending someone an email
and you want to use that system to build
a relationship where they're used to
hearing from you
they value what you're sending it's
important to them
they like it and from that that's how
you
keep people on your list from
unsubscribing
and that's how you use your list for
things like
you know sales and revenue and getting
meetings and
you know whatever the purpose of your
list is you know it could be charity
donations it could be event
marketing there's all kinds of things
that you can do
but instead of buying a list getting
that opt-in list
um usually that'll be what we call lead
magnet but it's something you're going
to give someone if they sign up
and then you need a reason for them to
stay on your list
and that's your content where you build
a relationship with them over time
so that when they need your product or
service you're the person who comes to
mind
no and i think that that definitely
makes sense and i think there's a lot of
good value and i think almost now i
this is an area that first of all i just
find interesting so i i have a lot of
questions myself but it's also trying to
infuse questions that i've
had other clients come up with as you do
that you know one of the things
that generally you're told that i think
in the industry as
is a level of consistency right in the
sense that you want to
consistently providing that value so one
that they you're top of mind
two that they're you know that you're
continuing to reach out to them
that they kind of get used to it and
then they you know open it up but
then they always have that trade-off of
consistency versus value in the sense
that
if i you know and it seems like and
interestingly i say that you know
different industries you send to
different amounts i mean
i know some people that i've signed up
in their email list and their newsletter
list
i get it every day i usually unsubscribe
after a while because it's too often
and yet others it only send it once a
month or once a quarter
and by that time it's yeah you don't get
enough of you know you don't get enough
contact or enough you know
information it's usually the once a
month or once a quarter it's a
we got this new policy or this change
and it's not really information i need
so
how do you balance consistency with
providing that value to them such that
you're consistently
providing sending that in or newsletter
emails out but you're also providing the
value such that they actually want to
open and interact with them
right so you can't
send too often if people want what
you're sending them
um if you have enough interesting things
to say in an email
that someone wants to read them every
day then every day is fine
but for most people every day is
probably too much
um you can also
and we're talking about ongoing email
marketing because there's other types of
email marketing campaigns also we can
get to that in a second
but like a business like mine
we send weekly we send them the same day
and roughly the same time every week
people kind of
they expect it they know it and it's
important
to really try to deliver what it is that
you've said you're gonna deliver to
people
and and just do the best you can at that
thing
um and for example ours we have a
marketing agency
so we tell stories that are related to
marketing
and when you sign up for the list it
says
we have interesting stories and
marketing tips and that's what you're
gonna get weekly to your inbox
so they know what it's coming they know
how often they're gonna get it and then
they get delivered
that thing and it's not
uncommon for us i would say
most times in most weeks when we send
out
our newsletter from our company we will
get multiple emails back where people
reply to our email
and that is a foreign thing to most
businesses and it shouldn't be
if your email is good enough people
should be replying to it
and a lot of companies like larger
companies will send out emails and they
put like no reply as their address which
basically is like saying
i don't want to hear from my customers
so that's a terrible idea
but if you are
a business that has maybe a retail
component that gets used really often
because it's going to depend on your
sales cycle
a good example is like a
very specific like a real estate swag
store
you know maybe they sell things like
stickers and stuff like that like all
things real estate store is a good
example
or the a red store they would have
one email a week that has maybe
whatever's the new product that's in
that week or any sales or anything
and then they would have another email
that is
like an interview with an agent or has
some tips about
you know how to do real estate marketing
uh and sales
and then they would have another one uh
and that other one would be like an
announcement like we have a new podcast
we have a video out something like that
so you'll get two to three emails a week
for that same company
but in that context if the people want
the stories they want the information
they want to know when something like a
new podcast or something is out plus
they also want to see when the new
products what's new what's cool
that's perfect right two or three emails
a week is fine if you're a plumber
two or three emails a week is way too
much right
so it's gonna be different according to
what
kind of company you have and what you
know what your business is and
how much tolerance your clients have for
the amount that you're sending
so now no and i think that that's
definitely valuable insight so now let's
take you know
intellectual property law firm as an
example and i'm just using that because
that's
or what i do you know how do you because
there's an a myriad of things that we
could send out in an invoice and i'm
sure that a lot of people face that
they're not an invoice our newsletter um
but they could send out as
in you know as is type of content it
could be everything from
blog posts and it could be videos it
could be podcast episodes you know links
to those it could be
you know um a myriad of different things
and so
and on different topics it could be very
specific to patents or trademarks or
copyrights
it could be more startup or business uh
generally related
and all that so how do you kind of sit
through and figure out
which type of content best resonates
with your audience do you do
a b testing and trying different things
out do you ask your audience or
all the above or different things or
kind of how do you gauge what is the
best way that they what content that
people want
yeah so you can ask your audience
um you can do split testing but then now
you're writing two emails every week or
whatever that you know every two weeks
whatever your
frequency of sending is i think
most businesses that have been in
business for at least a little while
have a pretty good
understanding of their clients um
it can be a good idea to do something
like a customer
avatar worksheet or something like that
where you can
you know kind of rough down the
information about you know who is your
perfect client kind of thing and get the
idea of who it is that you're talking to
but uh for some
someone like ip law like for miller ip
law
personally i think um stories
about ip law would be an interesting
thing for businesses
where you know something like
you know somebody maybe invented a
product or they created something
and some other company you know in china
tried to knock it off
and and so they had to fight with amazon
about you know getting their listing up
and getting the old listing off or
whatever it is right and those kind of
interesting business stories and then
people can relate that to their business
and maybe not everyone is going to be
relatable to every person reading it
and you know maybe they'll just delete
that one but sooner or later they're
going to get one that relates to them
and they're going to still see miller i
p law miller ip law miller ip law every
time right
especially if you're sending it you know
from your name which you should be
right devin miller is coming up
in their inbox every week and then once
in a while they're reading through the
whole thing and reading the story and
it's interesting and
uh you know finding out about how
businesses um use trademarks and
you know um and and all the things that
are around
you know intellectual property uh
but they you become identifiable
in the rolodex for for all you young
kids out there that's a
that's a thing that people used to use
before the internet to keep track of
businesses uh your the rolodex in their
brain will say devin miller is the ip
law guy
and they know that because you send them
an email about it every week showing
what an expert you are on that topic
and when you are the identifiable expert
in their brain for that topic no one
else is the expert for that
topic just you right somebody can say
well i know 10 ip lawyers but they're
only going to call one
right so you want to be the one and you
want to be the expert that's in their
mailbox
every single week telling them a story
telling them something interesting
right that makes them understand that
not only do you know your stuff
but you have entertained them you've
informed them you're top of mind
and then when they need an expert when
they get that
inevitable call from you know hey this
blog that you had in
2016 had a photo that belongs to someone
in france and now you owe us ten
thousand dollars
maybe i'm going to call devin miller
because i got his email two days ago
talking about something similar
right no and i think that that's great
and you know i think that
i one of us it took us a little bit of
time to really hone in on that and it
wasn't necessarily a b testing you said
that's
that you know that becomes difficult we
did try you know different formats and
different types of images and layouts to
kind of
see what is you know a bit of optimizing
i think that one's a little bit more
easy to optimize
but i think that you know honing in on
what the audience is
is certainly one you know one that makes
it more valuable
keeps it for front of mind and you're
also resonating with the people you're
sending it out to say don't feel like
you're spamming because
i think everybody gets spam all the time
where you know that's why
if you look at email open rates people a
lot of times they go down just because
people are overwhelmed with emails and
sometimes it's even emails
from people that i want to hear from and
i just don't want to hear so frequently
because it's not providing that value as
you said now one kind of question
especially for
a startup or a small business is just
getting into it
just getting you know maybe they just
started their business or they've you
know this started growing or
getting a small cut or a client or
customer base is when they do that
what are some of the softwares that they
should think about using you know should
it be uh
i know there's a mailchimp there's
constant contact you can do it through
your crms like a hubspot
or you can do it so is there a better a
better software maybe
whether it's usable or better or
anything of that nature that softwares
that they should be thinking about
implementing it really depends
on what the emails are going to be used
for
so an example would be if you're just
sending out stories maybe
they got a picture here and there uh my
favorite program to use for that is
called send fox
and send fox is free up to a certain
amount of subscribers
but after that it's a one-time 49
payment and not a subscription
so it can save you a ton of money over
the years
and you know it doesn't have a lot of
the integrations and stuff you would get
with other systems
that you may need if you say have an
e-commerce store
um so you know if you have an e-commerce
store you're on
you know shopify or woocommerce or
something
if you want really advanced
uh targeting and stuff like that with
your emails
then you'd want to use something
like you can use mailchimp has some of
those integrations as well as
activecampaign is pretty good with that
stuff
but um if you don't need those kind of
e-commerce integrations then you can go
with
um you know a mailchimp or a constant
contact or something like that
if you need say drip campaigns
um or you want to use templates because
you don't really have those in something
like send fox
there's tons of email marketing choices
out there
and it's difficult
to kind of figure out which one you
should use because here's what usually
happens is
they either took it over from another
person at the company who used to do it
so they use what the company's always
used
or their buddy uses mailchimp so they
use mailchimp
right they don't ever look at what are
the features of all
the different programs and what are the
features that i need to be using and
then kind of match it up by feature
which is difficult to do when you don't
know what all the features of all the
programs are
so it can take a little bit of research
but man once you get the right fit with
the right tool
it's going to make your job a lot easier
and you're going to you know be able to
especially on the e-commerce side
you're using procedurally generated
emails to generate revenue
so an example of a procedurally
generated email would be something like
an abandoned cart so if you've ever
tried to buy anything but you left it in
your cart
and you didn't purchase it you've
probably seen an abandoned cart email
and that is did you leave something in
your cart don't forget click here to go
back and purchase it
right and some programs you could do a
banny cart series
where it'll say okay after an hour send
them a banner card email
after 24 hours send them a second
abandoned card email and
after say 48 hours send them a 5
off coupon if they haven't purchased yet
you know so you can do things like that
if you use other
kind of more advanced e-commerce
applications like active campaigns stuff
like that
then you can do things like if somebody
buys
say like a barbecue
then send them an email the next day to
see if they want the barbecue cover that
fits that barbecue
right that's the kind of thing you get
like from amazon right it does this all
the time
you buy one thing and then they send you
related things do you buy a book that
was written by one
guy they'll send you the you know the
next three books in the series will show
up in your email the next day
right so that kind of procedurally
generated emails for
e-commerce can really really grow your
business and grow your revenue
and uh it could be very profitable
no i think that's some awesome insight
and and definitely a lot of things
to consider well as we start to wrap up
the podcast and there's always so many
more and this is an area that i find
personally interesting so there are
always so many more things that we could
dive into
but to keep it at a reasonable scope for
the podcast if um we do have just as a
reminder
to people we have the bonus question
coming up after the normal podcast where
we talk a little bit about intellectual
property and that's a top
top ip question but before we do that as
we wrap up for the normal episode
if people want to reach out to you matt
they want to know more about digital
marketing in general they want to pick
your brain on email marketing
they want to be a client a customer they
want to be an investor an
employee your next best friend any or
all of the above
what's the best way to reach out connect
up to you and find out more
sure you can give me at matthewrouse.com
or at our company address is hook
seo.com
and if you're interested we actually
have a email training course
as well that's just go to hook seo.com
there's a button for training
awesome well i definitely encourage
everybody to reach out
find out more user services i think that
email is still a very pr
dominant way to connect with people and
when done right it can definitely
have a big impact on your business and
and grow it more along with a lot of
other
expertise that matt offers well as we
wrap up thank you for coming on the
podcast and now
for all of you that are listeners if you
have your own journey to tell whether
you're an expert or you just have a
journey to tell
feel free to go to inventiveguest.com
apply to be on the podcast love to hear
your story
if you're a listener make sure to click
subscribe so you get notifications of
all the awesome episodes come out
and leave us a review so new people can
find out about it as well
last but not least if you ever need help
with your patents trademarks or anything
else with your business
feel free to reach out to us at miller
ip law by going to strategymeeting.com
so with that we're going to transition
over a bit and i always get asked the
questions on the normal episode
we got to flip the tables a bit and you
get asked your number one intellectual
or top intellectual property question
and i have to answer that question so
with that i'll turn it over to you matt
to give me a give me your top question
sure i have a good one for podcasts is
what are the rules around using somebody
else's music
on your podcast yeah that's
that's always a good one and it's it's a
hard it can be a hard one the general
answer and i'll give you the easy answer
the general answer first is
if you don't have right if it's a if you
don't have rights to the
the music don't use it in the sense that
that's the easiest rule of thumb that if
you don't know
if you don't know if it's somebody else
owns it if you don't know if you have
rights to it
don't use it because more likely than
not not the answer is
you don't have ownership now no the
question is is hey one's if there's just
a small
snippet or a small bit of you know music
that i really love and i just want to do
it
then you then if you want to if that you
know if it's a popular song
it's something that's out there you need
to go get a
license to it or otherwise sign up to
get an agreement with them usually it's
going to be with one of the
few major publishing houses that are
going to you can get licensed to use it
because if you don't and they catch you
it doesn't
the myth that's out there is oh if i
only use and there's a lot of different
if i only use three seconds or five
seconds or 10 seconds or whatever that
is
then i'm okay then i'm not infringing
the copywriter they never catch me and
that's really not the case 95 percent of
time
you're going to get yourself into
trouble unless you really know what
you're doing
now the other option is when you're
looking at music
is if you don't say hey i don't want to
go spend an exorbitant amount i'm just
getting my podcast going here i'm just
starting to use the music incorporated
to whatever we're doing and the other
kind of similar is if you're putting in
like an intro video for your website or
something
or a youtube video but if you have that
music there are
several platforms that give you
copyright fear
license free type of music that you can
integrate into it so that's another way
that you can actually get some free
music that has some good
or good or good good music to it
now the one caveat i'll give to that and
it's not necessarily on uh
on whether or not you're infringing
someone's copyrights is sometimes if you
use that music that's on those platforms
a whole bunch of other people also use
that same music
and then you'll get onto youtube or some
of the other ones that actually
flag or look to flag if you they think
there's a potential for copyright
infringement
they don't necessarily know whether or
not it's copyrighted so they're going to
see
is this same music being used by someone
else and more frequently
earlier on and you may have a copyright
free music that you're using and you
still get flagged by youtube and it's
not that you've done anything wrong
but it's just their algorithms they use
so the last thought i'd give is the
other way you can do it is you can go on
their services like fiverr
others that will actually can pay
someone they will generate a
a new intro just for you make sure that
they're reputable or they're doing it
exclusive to you so they don't sell it
to somebody else
but then just say pay someone five or
ten bucks have them create an intro to
you
then you don't have to worry about
copyrights you don't have to worry about
getting flagged because somebody else is
also using it on youtube or other
platforms
and it creates the biggest headache so
those are a few different thoughts as to
how you start to navigate that minefield
does that answer your question
it does all right well with that i
appreciate coming again on the podcast
matt it's been fun it's been a pleasure
it's been a great time
definitely wish there was more time and
lots of things to go through
but he imparted a lot of knowledge and i
wish the next leg of your journey
even better than the last thanksgiving i
appreciate you having me on the show
you
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