Will Bachman 00:01
Welcome to Unleashed the show that explores how to thrive as an independent professional. I’m your host Will Bachman. Today I’m going to discuss MCs Max, which gives you email superpowers. Currently, MCs max only works with Gmail or G Suite mail. So if you use Outlook or Microsoft 365, or some other email tool, you’ll need to do a search for immix max competitor that works with your email, I imagine they must exist. I’m not familiar with them. If you use Gmail or G Suite email, then you’re in luck. So what does MCs max allow you to do? Number one, you can create a template. A template can be just a phrase that you want to insert into an email to save you from typing that same phrase over and over all the time. For example, when I’m composing an email, if I’m in the body of the email, and I type semi colon, and then letters c a l for cow, mix, Max inserts into my email the phrase, if you’d like to book a call with me, you can find time that works for you on my calendar with my calendly link. And on the words calendly link, it has the hyperlink to my calendly. I discuss calendly By the way, in Episode 73 of this show. So that’s an example of a template that you can just insert into an email. A template can also be an entire email. So there’s two ways to create a template, you can write an email in your regular Chrome browser, Gmail compose window, and then save that email as a template from your Gmail compose window. Or you can go to the mix max website and compose a template there. And with that met method, it gives you additional options, such as you can add a person who will always get cc or BCC on that email. And you can also insert various variables to insert variable. When you have Gmail open in a Chrome browser and you have clicked to compose a message. Mix max adds a an extra toolbar with functions that includes meetings, remind me templates, sequences and follow ups. So you open up compose, you click on template, and then you can scroll down and insert into your email a template that you have written in the past. That template can include variables. And if you had a variable, for example, first name as a variable, mix, Max will have a pop up window and ask you to type in what the first name is. Or if you had a variable for a company name, what the company name is, and so forth. Now, if this is all that mix max did, I wouldn’t be talking to you about it. Since Gmail already does have a template feature, which you can find by clicking on the three little vertical dots in a compose window on the bottom right, just next to the trashcan. Mix max templates are more powerful. You can for example, save them in folders and organize them. But that isn’t that much more amazing than the built in template tool. real power comes when we get to superpower number two sequences with a sequence, you can create an email template, and then you can program logic such that if the recipient does not click on a link, or does not reply to your outgoing meme, email, or does not open the email, or some other logic, or after a certain number of days, mix, Max will automatically send a follow up email that you compose. And to compose a sequence, you’ll go to the mix max website, you create a sequence and then you can write the first stage. And after writing that first stage, you click Add another stage, you fill out the logic of when that second stage will get sent out. And you can have a go out, for example, if no reply was received at the first email, or if no link was clicked or various other criteria, you control how many days or hours you want to wait and you can control if it’s weekdays or just total days elapsed. You also control what time of day, the second email will go out. You aren’t limited to two stages, you can add a third or a fourth or a fifth. I’m not sure what the limit is. But you can certainly add multiple, multiple stages. So you keep pinging the person. You’ve probably been the recipient of these email sequences. And I’ll say here that as the sender of sequences, with great power comes great responsibility. In some cases, people do legitimately appreciate getting a follow up reminders. I know that I appreciate getting reminder about tasks that I actually want to do. And that’s relevant for me. Maybe I get an email with some action item on a day when I’m totally swamped, and I can’t get to it, and then I forget about it. So I appreciate getting a follow up email reminder, but you don’t want to spam people. If you do, you can get punished. So if enough people flagged your email as spam, and then you can get blacklisted and your emails will start getting shunted over to the junk mail folder of recipients so use this power sparingly and wisely, and be thoughtful and try to make sure that you only send a sequence if you think person actually wants to receive it. Mix max does allow you to add an unsubscribe link. And if someone clicks that link mix, Max won’t let you send to that email address again, with that sequence or any other. And that is a good protection for you. And you certainly should include the unsubscribe link, since it’s much better for a person to unsubscribe than to flag your email as spam superpower number three mail merge, so sending one sequence is helpful. Being able to send out a batch of customized sequences is really powerful. With MCs Max, you if you want to send out a batch of sequences, you first prepare a CSV file with all the data fields in columns. The minimum you’d need as a column of email addresses. If you want to customize each email with the person’s first name, then you’d have a column of first names as well. You don’t need to stop there, you perhaps you want to mention their company name in the email, you could include the company name as a variable in your sequence. And then you’d put the company name as a third column in your CSV file. So you’d have email address, first name, and company name, and you could have more. When you want to send a batch you go to mix Mac’s website, you navigate to the sequence you want to send and you click on Add recipients. Mix max will compare your upload to all those who have unsubscribed from emails in the past. And if someone has subscribed or unsubscribed, it will remove that person from the sequence which is of course a good thing because you don’t want to spam people. superpower number four, MCs max allows you to easily schedule emails to be sent at some some point in the future. This is such an obvious feature that it strikes me as a little strange that Google doesn’t build send later into the basic Gmail interface, but they don’t. If you’re working on a Saturday night, for example, and you’re working drafting emails to clients, you might prefer not to have those emails released on Saturday at 10pm. For one thing, it’s a little creepy that to reach out to someone at that hour, and not that socially acceptable. Second, there’s a decent chance that by the time the client is ready to respond to emails on Monday morning, your email will be buried and never get seen. Max Max allows you to schedule those emails to go out when you want. Even better mix. Max knows when your recipients are most likely to be active checking their email based on all the other millions of emails that people have sent using mix max. When you’re composing an email in the Chrome browser, you can send a click Send as you normally would or click Send later, which pulls up a chart that shows the recipients forecast email activity level for the next 24 hours. And recommended send time when mix max thinks the person is most active. When you’re sending a batch of emails you scan, you can choose the smart send option. And for each recipient, mix max will send at the time when that recipient is most likely to be active, responding to emails, superpower number five, your emails can show rich HTML. So if you’re composing an email in your regular browser in Chrome, and you insert a hyperlink to some website, and you have mix max installed, then mix max will convert that hyperlink into a preview of the actual webpage. If you paste in a link to a YouTube video, for example, mix max will show a thumbnail for that video right in your email. Most of the time, I will cancel that pre preview and I’ll just send the link. But in some cases is really cool to have that preview as a nice visual of what the person is going to get if they click on your link. superpower number six, you can see who has opened an email and when and how many times. And this is one of the most amazing superpowers. So let’s say you’ve sent a proposal to a client and you haven’t heard back in three days. Did the client Get it? Did they open it and then ignore it? Did they just miss it in their email? Who knows? With MCs Max, you know, if a client has never opened the email at all, you might follow up differently than if the email has been opened 15 times. And if they’ve opened it 15 times that might suggest that the person has forwarded an email to her colleagues. You won’t know the identity of who’s opening email. But you’ll see all those opens against the name of the person that received it. Usually if there are a lot of opens like that, it probably means the email is getting forwarded around the office and a bunch of people are opening the email there and maybe they’re talking about it internally. So knowing if someone’s open your email is pretty powerful. If you send the email to two individuals client a and client B mix max will tell you if client a opened it and when and if client B opened it and when so it does differentiate, it tells you individually who opened it. You see all this open data right in Chrome when you click on a sent email. Additionally, if you go to the mix max site, you can see how you can see comprehensive metrics on that email sequence, or how many you have sent, how many got opened, and how many led to a click superpower number seven. Max Max has a scheduling tool that is somewhat similar to calendly, in which you can share your calendar availability with the recipient. And that person can pick a time and book it on your calendar right from within the email. I haven’t used that tool since I’m happy with calendly. But if you don’t have a scheduling tool, you might like that superpower, superpower number eight, you can do a variety of simple surveys within the body of the email, you can include a poll or a yes, no question or simple q&a, or a group event poll. They don’t actually have to click and go out to some other website, they can do it right from within the email. I’ve tried the survey feature. It worked okay. And I should probably experiment to learn how to use it more effectively myself. And I believe that you can set it up to have all the results saved to a Google Sheet. I have not mastered the survey feature. Me I have got a survey monkey account. And so I usually use Survey Monkey but if you want to do polls in your email or Yes, no questions. Nice way to engage folks. It’s a pretty cool power. So hope this episode has been helpful. If you use another email plugin tool other than mix, Max. I’d love to hear about it. You can email me at unleashed@umbrex.com Thanks for listening