My Email Businesses Generate Over $3.1M/Year [Update]
This is a follow up story for Email Paramedic. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published over 1 year ago, check it out here.
Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.
I’m Troy Ericson, the founder of EmailListMangagement.com, EmailDeliverability.com, and recently exited Copywriting.org. Me & my team have generated well over 9 figures in sales for our clients since 2020 by improving email copy & deliverability. In short, we’re email ghostwriters. We write marketing emails for over 30 different major companies every day while ensuring they land in the primary inbox. Our revenue is over $260k/mo.
Just a few of our clients have been Publishing.com, BioTrust, Rich Schefren, REPP Sports, V-Shred, Joel Erway, Zipify, SmartMarketer, Perry Belcher, 10X Advisor Network, David Meltzer, Sam Ovens, Jason Capital, Joel Marion, Alex Cattoni, Douglas James, Russ Ruffino, and hundreds more. I was also ranked as the #20 Copywriter in the world by Peter Tzemis from Traffic & Funnels.
I’m also a musician, former college baseball player, and live in Tampa, Florida with my wife Julia. You can read my first Starter Story from last year here. Since then, I also won 2 Clickfunnels awards, which was a fun day:
Tell us about what you’ve been up to. Has the business been growing?
Since the last interview, we’ve made a ton of changes to my company, Email Paramedic. We are primarily shifting from B2C to B2B, meaning that we’re less focused on selling education products and more focused on selling done-for-you services.
Why?
I realized that’s where my place is. I got started in services, I love running my company, and it’s a lot easier to handle a few dozen clients than handling several hundred coaching students at a time. We’re not closing down our B2C sector (it will stay open), but our focus is shifting to B2B.
For the same reason, we sold Copywriting.org at the beginning of the year and are actually trying to acquire a more prominent B2B domain right now. We also put more emphasis on generating leads from my email spam testing software, MailGenius.
On the services side, we’ve been listening to the market, and added a brand new service: our Email List Growth Software! Over the years, people have always asked me if we can help grow their email list.
Looking back, I’m glad I focused on getting good before focusing on websites, branding. It becomes a lot more important as you scale and try to reach bigger audiences and bigger fish at the same time
Previously, we only worked with existing lists. But now we have a software that works like this: Simply install a line of code onto your website that collects the email address of people who visited your website but didn’t finish opting in. We also set up an email sequence to go out to these leads and optimize the deliverability as well.
On that same note, we’ve also started social media advertising & funnel services for some of our existing clients and just made a hire to help extend this service to more businesses. The first client we worked with was able to book over 100 calls from the webinar funnel we built for them.
I’m still waiting on the first month’s stats, but I know for sure that they received a 2.4x ROI within an hour of the webinar launching! It’s crucial to have add-on services that help clients get even better results, otherwise they’ll look to someone else for help.
The next thing we’re working on that’s been in HOT demand is cold email. I mean, who doesn’t want to book more calls & close more clients without spending a dime on ads? The funny thing is, I’ve actually realized that when most people hear the word “email”, they think of cold email, not warm email (aka Email List Management) like I’ve done my whole life. This was pretty eye-opening to me, and I’m betting this department will double the business.
What have been your biggest challenges in the last year?
The hardest thing for me to grasp has been that the amount of businesses who need Email List Management (or believe they need it) is extremely small. Small isn’t bad - as they say, the riches are in the niches. But in order to scale, we absolutely needed to offer cold email services. Everyone wants them - and nearly every single business wants more leads & booked calls… Whereas the number of businesses with a sizable email list who want to pay $5k+ per month is a lot smaller.
I spent a lot of time & money on ads to learn this lesson. Since then, I built out my own Cold Email Software for the past 9 months and used it for myself and a few beta testers. The most recent version closed a $9k deal for my company in less than a day after launch.
So, I’m a user of my own product, which is always a good thing. I will go back to running ads, but only after I’ve extracted all of the clients that I can out of my current email list.
The #1 mistake I see entrepreneurs (and clients) making all the time is listening to the peanut gallery… don’t freak out & panic when people leave mean replies. Listen to the data, not the peanut gallery.
What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?
I’ve thought a lot about increasing the value of my company. I’m not planning on selling anytime soon, but you have to think about it before you do it. Coaching businesses have the lowest multiple, so we’re focusing more on done-for-you services. And to go a layer deeper, software has a higher multiple than that, so we’ve developed 2 over the past year in addition to further developing MailGenius.com, the internet’s best email spam tester.
I’ve also realized that narrowing down and focusing on fewer things is such a hard but difficult skill for me (and probably you too). I say “NO” to a lot of things now (but had to say yes to Starter Story because of how great it is lol). Right after this, I’m getting back to work!
What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?
I’m actually in the process of acquiring a high-end domain right now and considering a company rebrand that I believe will separate us from every other email marketing company. Under that name, I’ll host our suite of services & software's and finalize my dream of creating a company that can help new businesses as well as massive corporations with any email-related project or service.
Looking back, I’m glad I focused on getting good before focusing on websites, branding, etc… But it becomes a lot more important as you scale and try to reach bigger audiences and bigger fish at the same time. It’s cool to see it all unfold, and it takes a lot of hard work and patience to get there.
What’s the best thing you read in the last year?
I don’t read a ton of books - mainly just marketing material from very wise people I follow on Facebook. Nothing Held Back is a good group to find them. As far as actual books, honestly, the Bible. It humbles me and reminds me that no matter what happens in my life, everything’s going to be okay. Now I get why a lot of successful entrepreneurs are Christians! They’ve realized that money doesn’t solve all problems.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?
The #1 mistake I see entrepreneurs (and clients) making all the time is listening to ‘the peanut gallery’. For example, when you start to send more emails to your list, you MUST understand that your best customers will simply click the link and buy.
All the replies you get saying “stop emailing so much” are from the peanut gallery… AKA people who don’t run a business (especially not YOUR business). Guess what? Those people will never buy from you. They’re just trolls. So don’t freak out & panic when people leave mean replies. Listen to the data, not the peanut gallery.
On that same note, I find it weird that most entrepreneurs agree with the idea of posting every day on social media but don’t think that they should send emails every day. What’s the difference? Other than the fact that email has your most dedicated fans and generally reaches more people than your posts do. Again, this is a clear case of “you must listen to the data, not the peanut gallery.”
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
Right now I’m looking for cold email account managers. I want people who are hungry to learn about cold email and have good communication skills via email and Slack.
You’d be setting up email inboxes, setting calls with leads via email, and communicating results to clients via Slack. If you’re interested, send an email to [email protected] with the subject line “Cold Email Account Manager” and simply tell me why you’re interested.
Where can we go to learn more?
- I’d recommend you join my email list (you’ll get a free Email FAQ Cheat Sheet that answers all the FAQs I get about email marketing)
- My personal website
- My Facebook (mostly B2B content)
- My Instagram (mostly B2C content)
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
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