Franklin Taggart's Blog

Seth Silvers started his first non-profit organization while still in high school. His experience in organizational leadership and communication ultimately led to an opportunity as a marketing director for another non-profit. In this role he began to see the power of storytelling in marketing. Recently he took the leap and created a marketing consultancy called Story On whose mission is to help businesses of all sizes, but especially small businesses to tell their stories. His new podcast, The Small Business Storytellers Podcast features in-depth interviews with a variety of small business owners telling their stories, insights and wisdom to help other owners on their way. It’s available on several podcast listening platforms: https://anchor.fm/seth-silvers You may find Seth on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StoryOnCo Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sethsilvers/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seth-silvers-912a7989/ Join the Success with Stories Facebook group: https:/

** Disclaimer: This isn't my normal blog fare. If you're interested at all in email marketing, this article might be of interest, but otherwise it's long and potentially boring. I'm also not offering it as a prescription for how anyone should do email marketing, or email in general. It's just some observations of my own. A couple of weeks ago I was presenting a workshop in which I was talking about my recent experiences with email. The gist of the story is that a few months ago, after getting tired of the vitriol in many online exchanges, I wanted to bring a more uplifting message to people. I started a weekly email message, now called Inbox Encouragement. I was telling the group about how I was seeing open and click through rates that were the highest I'd ever seen. Open rates as high as 80% and click through rates ranging from 25-45%. At one point in the discussion I was asked if I had any idea of any of the clicks were converting. In sales language that

No one knows your whole story. What people know about you is usually limited to knowing the role that they've seen you in, or that they've heard about you. For the students at my kid's school and their parents, I'm known as Bodhi's dad. At Unity I'm known as the music director and occasional speaker. People who have seen me play music at breweries and bars know me as a singer who covers other people's music. People who have seen me play in concert settings know me as a songwriter. Some people know me as a guitar teacher, and some people know me as a coach. One challenge I see frequently for the clients I work with is that it's hard for people who already know them in another context to see them in a different way. It's almost easier to start building a new audience from scratch than to attempt to get people who already know you to see you in a new light. Sometimes we're passed over for opportunities that would be a great fit for us only becau