What Does It Take To Earn A Place In Someone’s Inbox: Ely Delaney

Most follow-up breaks down long before the first email goes out. We’ve both seen it: someone buys a shiny new CRM, opens the campaign builder, and realizes they don’t have the “Lego pieces” to build anything worth sending. That’s why we bring on email marketing specialist and ghostwriter Eli Delaney, the guy who “fixes your follow-up,” to talk about what actually keeps leads warm and relationships strong.

We dig into the real goal of email marketing and lead nurturing: staying top of mind without becoming spammy or salesy. Eli shares a simple framework for writing helpful emails, using an 80/20 balance of giving value versus asking for the sale, and curating resources like books, podcasts, and tools your audience will genuinely thank you for. We also talk about consistency the smart way, including how “inconsistently consistent” timing can reduce that mass-blast feeling while still building trust over time.

AI and ChatGPT come up too, with a clear warning: speed isn’t strategy. If you don’t know your market, your voice, and your plan, AI can help you send mediocre emails faster and burn out your list. If you do know those things, it can become a drafting assistant that supports better copywriting and stronger results. We wrap with Eli’s new book, Follow-Up Code, inspired by the seven virtues of Bushido, and how respect, integrity, and clarity translate into email marketing that can last for decades.

If you get value from this conversation, subscribe, share it with a business owner who needs a better follow-up system, and leave us a review so more people can find the show.

Transcript

Start With Content First

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Step one, get your content together. This is where most people mess it up is that they go into their latest greatest software that they bought. There's say they signed up for a CRM that's 100 bucks a month ago. Okay, I'm gonna check it out. And they say, I'm gonna go build a campaign, but they don't have anything. They don't have their um, they don't have their emails written. If they want to have an opt-in for their page, they don't have the copy for the landing page or anything done. And then they get frustrated because they can't figure it out. It's like, well, it's like, how do you put a Lego set together if you don't have the Lego pieces?

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Welcome

Show Mission And Host Background

SPEAKER_01 0:46

again to the Commission Code Podcast. We appreciate you taking the time to listen and join us here today. We're here to help you increase your business revenue and have time to enjoy it. I'm your host, Maurice Sims, and I've been consulting and training business people for, well, let's just say over 40 years. We're focused on increasing revenue and having time to enjoy it. After years as a professional salesperson, I spent 32 years in the corporate world. I retired as Vice President and Chief Learning Officer of the Sales Department of a large insurance company where we designed and built and delivered training for over 12,000 professional salespeople. Now I get to consult one-on-one, helping people grow their business and organize themselves to make the most of the time they have. We also build online courses to support business owners in their work as they strive to build the business that they've always wanted. Our objective is really very simple. It's this we're here to help you get what you want from your business and your life. So, right now, let's get on with this episode. Today

Meet The Follow-Up Expert

SPEAKER_01 1:58

on the commission code, we have one of my friends joining us. That uh it's really been great to catch up because we haven't seen each other in a while. Eli Delaney is with us today. Eli is a rock star to say the least. He's just written a book and it's being released called The Commission, uh, pardon me, the follow-up code. It's not the, it's just follow-up code. You can find it at follow-upcode.com. We'll talk more about that. But Eli is the guy who fixes your follow-up. I mean, if there's one thing all of us have a struggle doing, it's staying in touch and following up and keeping things hot and moving. And Eli is the guy that fixes that for us. Eli, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

Thank you so much for having me, my friend. It is a pleasure to be here and always a pleasure to get to catch up with you.

SPEAKER_01 2:48

Well, we're gonna have a fun time. There's no doubt about that. We always do. Eli, tell us a little bit about you and what you do and and how it all comes together for you.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Yeah, so my background is in email marketing, and that's literally what I do for a business. I help people with their follow-up process because in today's world, we need to stay in front of people on a consistent basis. The problem is people run into two camps. They either um are afraid to do anything, so they don't follow up very often because they don't want to sound pushy or sound salesy or any of that kind of stuff, or they go into the yak, a complete opposite end of the pendulum, and they follow the internet marketing guys that are sending like three emails a day, and every one of them is a pitch for something. Yeah, and that's a good way to burn out your list. And so my my whole framework has been around finding the happy medium. How do you stay in touch on a consistent basis so you stay top of mind without being an annoying pest? And so, yeah, that's kind of me in a nutshell.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Yeah, and it's it's just so very important. I mean, come on, if you're not doing that, I don't see how you can keep going.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

Absolutely. Well, and there's so many different, there's so many different ways. Like for me, I specifically focus on email, but you mix that with your phone calls, with your social media, with your direct messages, with your texting, all the other things that you do, and you've got a nice rounded system. And the beauty of it is a lot of that stuff can't really be automated as much as we would like, but the email part can. And we've got the technology to do that. And it has, it's been around for almost 20 years now.

AI Versus Real Email Strategy

SPEAKER_01 4:24

Eli, tell me what AI is doing for you or against you here. Is AI coming into play here?

SPEAKER_00 4:30

AI has been a very interesting ride. Um, it has hurt me in some areas, but to be perfectly honest, it's actually help helped get rid of the cheap people. I mean, reality is that um I've had people, and it's so funny because I was actually at a business event one day, and I and somebody asked me what I did. And I said, Well, I help people uh with their email marketing. I basically am a ghost writer help writing for them. She's like, Oh, so you do what Chat GPT does. And I've just I just looked her dead in the face and was like, Well, I guess you could kind of say so, except my stuff works.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

And you're nicer than most people would have been at that point.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Oh, yeah, no. I matter of fact, I've had a few other people tell me that I'm a lot nicer than they would have been. They would have been very insulted. And at first I kind of was, but I was like, you know what? Um, the reality is that she didn't even get it. Like when I said, yeah, kind of, except my stuff works, she just had this dead look in her face. She didn't know how to respond to that. Um, because what's happening is a lot of people are just going with the, oh, I can just have you know, Chat GPT write all my emails for me. And so they go, Hey, I need to follow up with this prospect, write an email for me. And it writes them an email, and then they get it, and people don't do anything with it. They unsubscribe or they say, I'm not interested, go away. The problem is that there's no strategy behind it. Right. And I've got 20 years of experience on the strategy. And so can, you know, do I use AI to help speed up my process? Yeah, I do. Um, but I am using 20 years of experience as an email copywriter to back it. And all it's doing is helping me speed up the process. It is not replacing me. And the beauty of it is the people who are going to look at how I can replace this person with AI, they're usually the ones who don't really want to spend any money. The mass majority of those people actually can't afford me anyway. The clients that I'm attracting right now are the people who are very solid in their business. They see the value, they're like, I know you are the best of the best. I couldn't care less if you're using AI to make it done. I just know you're gonna give me a great result, and I don't have to do it myself. How much? Well, here's my credit card. Like, they don't they don't nickel and dime you to death. So yeah, so that's kind of where I am with it. And I still see a lot of stuff that people are like, check this out. And I'm like, Yeah, AI did a great job of looking at that one, still sucks, though. So I have fun with it.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

That's good, that's good, and you know, in even if you get AI, you're still gonna take that and make it real and make it right, right. And and if you don't have that skill and background and knowledge, nothing else is gonna work.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

Well, and here's a here's the thing, and I say this, I say this coming from like my clients, because I've been literally ghostwriting for clients for years, like many, many, many years. I did that along with the coaching and the other stuff that I did, but um, that's a skill that I have. Like I've had people before AI was a public thing, yeah, where I get on a Zoom call and I'm listening to them, I'm asking them questions, I'm pulling all the wisdom out of their heads, and then I go back and I'm writing in their voice. And so that's my magic sauce. And so what ends up happening is a lot of people um they could have something that's technically quote unquote right, but it doesn't have their voice in it, and they don't know how to make that right because the process is write like you speak. The problem is most people don't write like they speak, and so they don't know how to teach AI to even be better, and so that's kind of where that's where I know that I'm unique with it. And so far, every client that I've worked with is just like, holy crap, Eli, this is amazing. I didn't even know. I mean, you make me sound really good, and I'm like, it's all your words, I just made it sound pretty, you know.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Well, let's talk about uh how you actually practically do this follow-up stuff if you're out there and and you maybe maybe can't afford Eli, but you need to do that follow-up, you need to have a system for that. Yeah. What can we teach people? What can we help people with that to be able to take it and and do something real with it?

SPEAKER_00 8:59

Okay. So the

Helpful Emails And The 80/20 Rule

SPEAKER_00 9:01

very first thing you want to think about is writing stuff that's helpful, not salesy. The biggest problem most people have with their email marketing, and this is why email marketing gets such a bad rap, is because people send out a lot of stuff and it's all about them. It's about the things they're doing and the things they have for sale. And even when they're adding something that's supposed to be helpful for somebody else, it's all geared around their business. Like, hey, here's something cool. Um, but if you want us to do it for you, here just talk to me. You know, the those kind of things. It's all from a selfish standpoint. But if you can flip the script on the entire thing and say, hey, here's a podcast episode that I listened to last week that was pretty cool and it helped me get some ideas on XYZ. I thought you might find it interesting. Um you change the entire conversation. And when you mix that up with your, you know, adding books and videos and tips. And and when I say tips, it could be just something that you learned from somebody, like maybe a piece of software, like this. There's one piece of software that I'm highly like super hyper about right now called Whisperflow, where basically I can push a button and I can talk everything and it will translate it. It basically dictates it, and it's actually good. Like if you are if you well, you've been around long enough, you remember that dragon naturally speaking, which I think I bought like four different versions of it and they all sucked. Uh, this is not that, this is awesome. So I I'm sharing this thing with everybody right now, and yes, I'm an affiliate. So if you want to get it, please come to me, I'll give you my link. Uh, but but I mean, I share it because it's such a good piece of software and it's been it saved me so much time. I've literally written two books by talking, not you know, I mean, it tells it tells me I'm like at 240,000 words or something, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

And it's not crazy. Not for those of us that know you, you can do 240,000 words in an afternoon. Eli, come on.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

Well, uh yeah, sometimes I can. Uh but you know, if you can if you have something like that, a tool or a website or something that's helpful that has helped make your life better, that's the kind of thing you could share with your prospects and your clients as well. And then you mix those in with a couple sprinkles of stuff about you, about your business, about how you're helping people or asking for referrals and things like that. And it and you go back to like, you know, that 80-20 rule 80% should be giving first, and 20% can be asking. You know, it's like if you a lot of people have heard of the book, um, Gary Vanderchuk's jab jab jab right hook. It's that's the concept. That's a whole uh deep hole we could go down over that concept. But the idea is give a lot of value that have nothing to do with your business, but will be helpful to the people you're trying to reach. So they appreciate it and they pay attention because reality is like there's a lot of people out there these days that are literally saying email marketing is debt. My response is your email suck, dude.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

And you're absolutely right. I mean, it's still all over the place that your email list is your most valuable business asset.

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Absolutely, absolutely. And that's the thing, it's but it's it's not, and here's the thing, and I actually put this in the in the follow-up code book, which I'm like I'm super excited about because I literally got my copy last night. I know I was telling you about this. Um, this is a quote that I learned back in 2008, I believe. I think it was 2008, yeah, early 2008, from um somebody who I had met at an event that I was attending, uh, Sylvie Fortin. And sadly, she passed away many years ago. Uh, but she's still she made such a big impact on me, both as just a friendly soul. But she got up on stage um and she said something that I thought that hit me so hard, and it's been a basis of a lot of what I do ever since.

The Money Is In Relationships

SPEAKER_00 13:09

Um, people talk about the money's in the list. You've probably heard that quote multiple times over the years, because it's always like the money's in the list, gotta grow the list, the money's in the list. The money's not in the list. The money's in your the money is in the relationship with the list. How do they see you? Do they see you as a trusted source or do they see you as a vendor, which generally is a necessary expense? It's a very, very different mindset. And when you can build a relationship with that list, it's powerful.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

That makes perfect sense because let's face it, everything we do is based on our relationships. We either we know like and trust someone or we don't. And if you don't, then you're definitely not gonna do business with them, but you may not even want to talk to them.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

Right. Well, and that's uh, you know, so many people like we live, there's people that are in more, and I and I've talked a lot about this a lot more, especially since I was writing the book. It

Two Buyer Types Need Different Language

SPEAKER_00 14:16

came more to my head is that there's we have two different types of markets that are out there. And if you understand this, it actually really it's kind of it can be an aha moment. We have what is uh taught in the internet marketing space, which is essentially the sell every day, make a make the more offers you make, the more you're gonna make, blah, blah, blah. And there's some degree to that. But the reason that that works is because that buying market is uh hyperactive to addictive dopamine hits. So they get a hit by buying things. They're I like to call them digital hoarders. They buy more stuff, and we've all been through that. I've been through that as okay. Yeah, you're raising your hand, I'm raising my hand. We've both been there. Um, but if you're in a market like like the people that I'm working with right now, and the and my clients' clients are in a very different market, they are much more sophisticated, and we're not saying you know, we're not discounting the intelligence of the other people, it's just that they're in a much more hyper addictive persona, where the other ones are like, no, I need my the my biggest thing is I need time, so I don't need more stuff. I need to make sure what I do have gives the gives me the most results, whatever that looks like. And so we have to talk to those people differently because you use the hyper internet marketing buzz and the language and the jargons with it, they will get turned off and they will not do business with you. And so when you think about that differently, you figure out what kind of buyer do I have? Do I have a buyer who gets excited about a sale on Amazon? Or, you know, are these the people that are, you know, hanging out and forming lines on Black Friday? Or are these the people that will pay more money? They're okay waiting a little bit because they know it's worth it. Like, are they going to Walmart and and standing in line for Black Friday? Or are they setting a up a reservation for a steakhouse? It's a very different personality type. And when you understand that, you can tell what kind of communication that type of person needs, and the hyper stuff ain't it.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And it is in all of that comes back to building that relationship with people. Absolutely, and it doesn't really matter how you do it, it's all about building that relationship. And email marketing is just one very excellent way to build that relationship with folks.

Consistency Without Spamming

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Consistency, I would think, though, is the real key, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 17:08

It is, and and consistency is also like you don't have to email every day like the internet marketing crowd does. Yeah, no. But you want to go, you know, week, two weeks. Um, I don't go much further than two weeks out. Um, what I like to do for most of my clients is do what we call inconsistently consistent, meaning it might be five days, it might be 10 days, it might be eight days, it might be seven days. We just kind of mix it up a little bit. It might be in the morning, it might be in the afternoon, might be on a Sunday. Um, you know, there's always another thing with the email marketing crowd. They're they're like, never email on a Sunday because it's the worst day. It depends on who you're talking to. Yeah, my people open it up on Sundays. I'm I always joke about the fact obviously I attract heathens that are paying attention to their phone while they should be paying attention to the pastor in church. Uh but reality is that you have to test it, you have to figure out when are your people paying attention? Because that isn't there is no one size fits all. And so when you're sending stuff, and this is a big thing, is if you decide to do roughly once a week, which by the way, you don't want it to be exactly once a week, because subconsciously, if they get an email at 7:30 every Monday morning, their brain is going to know it's a list. Now they know it anyway, but it's going to trigger them as, oh, this is a mass mail. But if it's inconsistently consistent, different times, different days, things like that, that doesn't trigger that awareness as much. And the beauty of it is as long as there's something of high value in there, even if they don't have time to read it, they're going to appreciate it. Because if I get an email from Morris talking about a great book that it that he read that he recommends that I check out, I'm going to look at it and I might read the book and go, you know what, this is really an awesome book. I appreciate that. And I'm going to reply back and say, hey, by the way, thank you so much for sharing that with me. And then a week later, when Morris sends me another email and says, Hey, here's a podcast episode that I did that I thought was really good. The guest was amazing. I'm going to be more likely to go check it out. And even if I don't have time, I'm going to appreciate it because I know the last one was good. So there's probably something good in the next one as well. And we train our people to expect either good things or a whole whole bunch of ES that we don't really want.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

So

Pick A CRM And Keep It Simple

SPEAKER_01 19:37

to create this stuff, obviously you got to write the content. I understand that. But then there are a lot of folks that look at me and say, Morris, I don't I don't have time to to make sure that I get the list all into an email and then email that out to that whole list. Well, there are platforms that do all of that, and I think we all realize that nowadays. If you're not getting a couple of Mail Chimp things a week, something's wrong. But how do you how do you recommend people begin if they're especially if they're not doing it today? Where do you start? Because I mean, you can get on some of those platforms, and it might take you a year to learn how to use the damn thing. I know I've been through that where it was like it was it was more more trouble learning how to use, I won't use the name, but it was more trouble learning how to use it than it was to actually do it.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

So where do you begin?

SPEAKER_00 20:32

So here's a big thing with it. I am a I am a fan of using a real CRM. Uh things like uh I'm and I will I'll throw them under the bus. MailChimp is definitely not one of my favorites. Um, the ones that are single email only type of things are not my favorite. I think everybody should have a CRM if you're in business, because you can not just do the not just have your emails, but your tracking, you can put notes about a client or prospect. All the stuff you need is all in one place. But the anytime, any platform, any software, step one, get your content together.

Map The Funnel Before Software

SPEAKER_00 21:06

This is where most people mess it up is that they go into their latest greatest software that they bought. There's say they signed up for a CRM that's a hundred bucks a month ago, okay, I'm gonna check it out. And they say, I'm gonna go build a campaign, but they don't have anything. They don't have their um, they don't have their emails written if they want to have an opt-in for their page, they don't have the copy for the landing page or anything done. And then they get frustrated because they can't figure it out. It's like, well, it's like, how do you put a Lego set together if you don't have the Lego pieces? And so I always tell people don't ever even log into the software until you have all of your content, all your graphics, anything and everything you think you're gonna need all ready to go. Because then you know, okay, I have, you know. Five emails and I want them to go out three days apart. And they go, they're going in right after they go to a landing page and give me their email address. So I need copy for that landing page. I need a form. What fields do you want on the form? Is it just their email, or do you want their name in their email? And do you want their name and email and phone number? You know, I mean, you have to think through this stuff. Don't forget you have a have a thank you page on the back end. So you got to have that too. And you need to just spend the time to think it through, map out your strategy first, and then log into the software. Because if you know what you want to accomplish, number one, is it's a lot easier to find the help with the tutorials and stuff that most platforms have. But two, a lot of times if you go to get on support with them, they'll help you build it out right there if you have all your ducks in a row. And they'll because the problem is that you say, I want to build a follow-up campaign. They're like, okay, what it, you know, what's it going to look like? I don't know yet. They can't help you.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

And so they're going to tell you how to put it into the system, make it work if you don't have an idea of what you want. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Yeah. And so that's the number one thing that I always tell everybody is look at what you want. And even if like you buy a platform that has an all-in-one and it has 500 different features, look at the two that you need. Like, okay, I want to build a follow-up campaign for my list, build that. You want to build a landing page, build that. Don't worry about setting up your calendar yet or worrying about the uh Google Reviews software that it has built in or any of the other crazy things that it has. Just do the one thing. Even my own CRM, I only use about half of it, probably not even that much, because I don't need all the other garbage. They are coming out with new bells and whistles and extra cool stuff with it all the time. And I ignore 99% of it because it's not relevant. And that's where most people go wrong with most software is they try to do everything all at once. And they literally are like, if you've if you've ever had a dog who like your dog gets super excited about a tennis ball, um, go buy a bag. You can buy bags of tennis balls that have like 30 balls in it, and you open that bag up and you just dump it on the floor so balls are bouncing everywhere. Your dog will lose its mind because it can't decide which direction it's going to go. I have personal experience. My pup used to do that. I used to do it because it was fun because I could watch his eyeballs spin around in his head. It was fun. But that's where people miss the boat is that they're trying to do too many different things and get very strategic one step at a time. Have your content ready. The rest of it is super easy.

SPEAKER_01 24:53

It is, it is amazing. And

Focus And One Course Until Successful

SPEAKER_01 24:56

once again, we're back to focus. You can't have 15 different strategies, and you can't do 15 different things all at the same time. Oh, well, Morris, I can multitask. Yeah, well, that's a myth. Next, you can't, you can't, the human brain can only focus on one thing at a time. So if you have, you know, five different business strategies, which one are you going to really become expert in? Which one are you really going to delve deeply into? So that's a key principle as far as I'm concerned. One or two business strategies that you're going to focus on, and you better limit it to that or nothing's going to work.

SPEAKER_00 25:32

Right. There's a there's a great acronym that I learned years ago from Robert Kiyosaki. Uh, focus. Follow one course until successful.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

Follow one course until successful.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

Which, of course, if you look at the first letter of each one of those, is focus. I love it. And it made it just it just hit home so hard because that's the reality, is it's not like it's not like that you can't do all these cool things you want to do, but you can only do one at a time. And you need to get it done up and running before you start on the next one.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

Absolutely. Eli, this has been great, man. And you've given us some great things to think about. And the most important thing you've given us to think about is the follow-up code. Yes. And followupcode.com is where you go to find that. Tell us a little bit about it, real quick before we wrap up here today.

The Follow-Up Code Book Framework

SPEAKER_00 26:25

Yeah. So that's a book that's just coming out right now. Literally in my hand is my proof copy of it. Uh, by the time this goes live, it should be totally live on Amazon, all that kind of fun stuff. So uh I'm setting up the website as of this moment, followupcode.com. And um it's basically, I took there, there's a Eastern philosophy that's that it was basically the code of the samurai called Bashido. And some people have heard of it, a lot of people haven't, but it's all about seven virtues of how to be the best human you can be. And it's like honesty, integrity, respect, kindness, all the kind, those kind of things that we should all do on a day-to-day basis anyway. Um, and unfortunately in society, we've lost a lot of that. But what I ended up doing was I actually took those seven virtues and turned them into basically the seven virtues of email marketing. It's like, what are the things you should be doing to earn the respect to be in somebody's mailbox, to earn the right to be there? And how can you be honorable in the stuff that you're saying? And you look at some of the hypey tactics that are out there that are very incongruent with good human virtues. And so I share some examples. Some of them are my own, some of them are things like, hey, go take this template and go run with it. Um, but it's basically teaching you how to respect your inbox and other people's inboxes using email marketing to build a relationship that will literally last for decades.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

Wow, that sounds great, man. I'm looking forward to getting my hands on one of those.

SPEAKER_00 28:02

Thank you. I cannot wait to get it finalized. We're almost there.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

Well, that

Where To Learn More And Wrap-Up

SPEAKER_01 28:12

does it for this episode of the Commission Code Podcast. This is the place where we want to help you find the Commission Code to success in your business. Remember, go to Morris Sims.com for more information. And in the meantime, hey, have a great week. Get out there and meet somebody new, and we'll see you again next time right here on the Commission Code. Best wishes, I'm Morris Sims.