User Spotlight: How Meg Casebolt uses MV

In this fun interview with Meg Casebolt from Loveatfirstsearch we discuss how she uses MV to deliver a user focused webinar replay experience for her customers in her small group and 1:1 offerings.

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Transcript:

Remi Oduyemi  
Hi, everybody, welcome to another user spotlight. My name is Remi, I'm part of Team MV. A User success lead with member Vault. And today I am interviewing the lovely Meg case bolt, who is also the MV SEO expert. Is that fair to say?

Meg Casebolt  
Yeah, every time Erin has a question, she shoots it my way. And so it kind of became the default setting.

Remi Oduyemi  
Can I say I actually have to give you a thank you here because Erin, CEO of memorable if you don't know, you should know. But she asked me last week to do a podcast episode. And she was like, Can you do an episode around like the first three blogs that you're writing? And I was like, No, Erin, I've got writer's block. I don't know what to put in my blog. And then she's like, Okay, we'll do a podcast about that. Like how you overcame that. And then I listened to your episodes with Aaron, I needed to do did you do three or four?

Meg Casebolt  
We did four. We did an intro to blogging. We did a people who are new to blogging people who are thinking of moving things and people who are trying to figure out a new way to use the blog feature. Yeah, well,

Remi Oduyemi  
it just got to the end of Episode Two. And let me tell you, I have a Trello card filled with blog ideas. And I was like, yes. Or even message me going. Oh my god, this is brilliant. You and Meg have just given me so many ideas, and it's gonna be so helpful to us. Thank you for that.

Meg Casebolt  
You are welcome. Some of my friends say like, if I had a hashtag, it would be that's a blog post. Yeah. Like you If someone asked you a question, that's a blog post. anything funny happened to you that you can use as a metaphor about how you run your business. That's a blog. If you have an Instagram story, highlight reel. That's a blog posts, right? Like, why are we creating so much crap that that disappears? Absolutely. Repurpose the hell out of it all. Everything can be become evergreen content on your own. Yeah,

Remi Oduyemi  
honestly, I had so many light bulbs going off. And I was just like, Oh, my God. I had to pull. So I can't wait to get free episodes three and four. So honestly, thank you for that. Because I was I was genuinely stuck. Even though I have a blog that I don't. I didn't use it enough. But I was really excited for this member role feature because I wanted to get rid of WordPress. And then it was here. And then I was like, I don't know.

Meg Casebolt  
What What. What are the next steps? The Oh, yeah.

Remi Oduyemi  
days? Yeah, I've got Trello boards filled of content and archive. And I'm like, I don't know what to write.

Meg Casebolt  
Well, I'll be honest with you. That happens to me too. Like, legitimately yesterday, I sat down because my hair looks good. So I was like, Well, I guess I have to. Like, that's how we make our decision. Oh, yes. I'm like, Okay, I have a list of 40 YouTube ideas. And I just stick with the list. And when what do I have to say? Like, you don't even have outlines pre done. I have the keyword selected. But when it comes time to actually say, yeah, there's a there's a block there. There's an energetic like, oh, I have to like, I'd have to like pep talk myself.

Remi Oduyemi  
Yes. Type? Yeah, I'm so pleased. It's not just me. Okay, this is brilliant. Brilliant.

Meg Casebolt  
I think anytime that we're creating something, especially creating something from scratch, there needs to be both like a long term goal that we're working towards, and a pep talk of the energy in the moment. Absolutely. Like, because I have to do this is not enough of a reason. Yeah. No, I don't want to break my streak, or like so many people ask this, that having this piece of content, whether it's a video or an audio or whatever, you know, like having it to be able to share with them will save you so much time.

Remi Oduyemi  
Yeah, no apps frickin lately. So I totally glad that I'm not alone with this. Alright, let's get into the questions for today. So the first question is, how long have you been using MV Meg?

Meg Casebolt  
I think I signed up for a free plan. And I'm gonna say late 2018. Okay. And that was back in the era of free plans. And then I hit my I hit my like number of users until I had to go up to a paid plan in September 2019. And I remember that because it was the first time that I ran a free challenge called SEOctober.

Remi Oduyemi  
That's what I did. That was that was

Meg Casebolt  
an SEO October I built entirely a member vault and set it up I remember actually being on live chat with Mike at like eight o'clock on a Friday night because I was like I'm just I just gotta figure out how to make this work. And he and I were like going back and forth like what about a drip sequence? How do I can I like set it to drip for some people and then they can upgrade to it, you know, like just trying to figure out how to make it work and how to gamify it as much as possible. And once I once I started to see how The, like the gamification process helps people move through it without a lot of work on my side, I was like, I am hooked I am, I need to figure out how to do this better and more consistently, because and I think I have a blog post that I've shared that we can put in the notes are there just like that first year that I did it, I was able to watch and see people finishing something at again, like eight o'clock on a Friday night, because that was when the challenge ended. And I saw all these people like really engaging with it, because they had a deadline and things they were like, unlocking bonuses, like. Yeah, you don't think SEO can be fun, because the content itself, really boring.

Remi Oduyemi  
But you made it super fun. And your users were engaging with it, which is brilliant.

Meg Casebolt  
Yeah, yeah. You know, and then at the end of it, because people are actually finishing the thing, and getting the bonuses and benefiting from it. It didn't feel like a bait and switch or anything like that to be like, Hey, I just gave you free stuff. But now do you want to come pay me like it felt very natural, that code, tell people how they could continue to work with me? What are the next steps after this? And because I had that information about who was engaged with it, and who was finishing it? I did more direct outreach, both Yeah, I sent them more emails because I had them tagged. And I was able to just reach out and go, Hey, I saw your answers. Yes. Talk about them. You answered his questions. Let me just email you and be like, You did a great job with this. Have you thought about this? And that kind of personalized outreach was like gangbusters for Yeah,

Remi Oduyemi  
yeah. Amazing. And I think that's probably why I signed up as well, it was it was that that feeling of going through the content, and feeling nurtured and loved and the gamification side of it? And it's like, okay, oh, oh, by this woman's thing, why not? Heiligen. I love that that member vote in that it? Does it help to building those relationships with people? It's really powerful in that way. Tell me make sure who is it? Who do you work with? Who's your sort of ideal client?

Meg Casebolt  
Sure. So I work mostly with online entrepreneurs. So if people are selling courses, if they are service providers, whether that's one or one group coaching, those are typically my people, I do have some ecommerce folks in my audience too. But they just the it's mostly service providers, and course creators are the ones that come to me the most frequently.

Remi Oduyemi  
Okay, and how do you like to work? Is it more one to one? Or is it membership or small group programs? What's your sort of preferred way of working,

Meg Casebolt  
we have kind of three different levels, depending on what where, where people are and what they're looking for. So we have done with you services, where we're helping people come up with, you know, hey, Remi, let's talk about what your business is, we'll come up with a plan, here's how you can adjust your website, here's the things that you need to create, Oh, you already have blogs, here's how you can get more eyes onto those existing blogs. Yeah, and then giving people feedback while they're making those changes. Yeah. So that's our one to one service, we run it through memorable, you know, so people will pay for it on Thrive cart, and then they'll get in there. And they'll be able to do our intake form and, and be able to get feedback directly through that that quiz question process. And then I have a group program that is a combination, of course, plus group coaching. So they're in member vault, they can watch the course and then they can come to office hours, or they can come to coaching calls and say, Okay, I get this theoretically, but how does this apply my business?

Remi Oduyemi  
Well, that kind of leads into the tech question really, that I was going to ask you about what tech do you use? You mentioned thrivecart? Where are you doing like your group coaching calls and things like John talked me through some of the tech that you use alongside member vault as well?

Meg Casebolt  
Yeah, of course. So we are on circle for our community platform when member vault builds out their community piece, we'll be looking into that at this point circle sort of our off of Facebook groups alternative. The community was like, Please, can we okay, we looked at like, Okay, let's do we want circle, do we want to Slack do it right, like, but we because we wanted to stick with member vault. It made sense to just integrate with circle. But we made that move two years ago. We do all our processing through Thrive cart because it has a really strong affiliate process.

Remi Oduyemi  
Yep. Amen.

Meg Casebolt  
Active Campaign. Okay, brilliant. We were on ConvertKit for a number of years. And we moved over to Active Campaign about a year ago, in part because of some of the cool things that you could do between active campaign and memorable. And what WordPress website. Yeah. And what about the show? Like I've been building WordPress websites for a decade. It's not hard for me and there's not as much of a learning curve as there is. Yeah. People, it's not the best choice for everyone. But for me, like, give me all the customization.

Remi Oduyemi  
Fair enough. And so I don't use circle but in circle, can you do like video calls in circle? Or do you like zoom or something else to do?

Meg Casebolt  
You know, I think now you can I think you live live streaming. Yeah, but we still use Zoom. And they have like an event calendar. So I can put in a zoom link, and people can get to it directly from circle and add it to their calendar and kind of have that taken care of which is nice.

Remi Oduyemi  
And just being nosy because I don't use Thrive cart. But do you do upsells and stuff with that? Yeah,

Meg Casebolt  
yeah, I used to do more of it. I don't know if I just got out of the habit of it. Or if it's like, you know, it just feels a little like, often. So a lot of people will do like bonuses as upsells or like short term everything. But there's a part of me that's like, I shouldn't penalize you and not give you as much you signed up later because you didn't open your email on a specific day that I don't know. And I would just end up like giving people bonuses and like, forget it, just Yeah.

Remi Oduyemi  
I feel like that's a very member vote align.

Meg Casebolt  
For a couple of times, I've done upsells or bump offers, but the buffers tend to be more like, let me help you with it. Let's get a call on my calendar upsell, and it gets to a point where I'm like, actually, you get everything that you need in the coaching. Yeah, and then sometimes we'll do an upsell, we have a couple self study courses. And so we'll have an upsell or something along those lines to get them into the group coaching because people get better results when they ask questions. Yeah, not for everyone. Some people like self study, they don't want to show up something. So

Remi Oduyemi  
they want to talk to humans. Sometimes they're like, just give me the stop. I'll figure it out.

Meg Casebolt  
Yeah, and you know, like SEO can be a very introvert friendly marketing strategy. And so those are the people who are like, I don't want to sit on a call with strangers. And I'm like, Cool, that's fine. Sometimes people will come to me and be like, can I just like buy the self study course? And then just like buy an hour of your time after I've gone through it? I'm like, Yeah, let's do it. Yeah, you get your questions answered. You don't have to show up at a specific time. It works for your calendar. Yeah. So we try to be as flexible as we can for different learning styles.

Remi Oduyemi  
I think that's I think that's brilliant, and really adaptable business models. I think that's really cool. So want to get a little bit into your business a little bit. Now I know, Aaron wanted to ask you to explain or walk through your webinar replay experiment that you created in member vault? Would you mind taking us through how you set that up and built that integrated that?

Meg Casebolt  
Yeah, so I've been doing sales webinars for a couple of years, I've been through a lot of trainings with other people who are sales coaches who are like, this is the way that it should be done. And you should put the webinar replay on the sales page. So that way, you know, everyone who goes to watch the replay will then automatically be able to see the thing and buy it right there. And like, that's what I've been doing for years because it makes logical sense, right? If I'm going to try to use a webinar to sell you into a program, let me Yeah, put it on the sales page for that program. But this particular webinar that I just ran this is we're recording this in March. Yeah. So this is February? I don't know, I don't

Remi Oduyemi  
know what that is. I often don't know what day it is. So Oh, my

Meg Casebolt  
gosh, what year is it? So I did a webinar in February. And I kind of started to think like, maybe that's not the only solution to just put it on my sales page. Especially since I kind of adjusted the way that I was running the webinar, I didn't just say like, here is the program that I am running right now. And that is the right choice for you. Because like I just said, it's not the right choice for everyone. And so instead of just saying, like, go to the group program, that's what you've got, I actually put the webinar replay into a product in my member vault. And I included links to each of those. So in the webinar replay, or in the webinar itself, the live webinar, I said, here are the three levels of how you can work with me, if you're just getting started and your budget is low, and you want to DIY it, here's the self study intro course, if you want to come to the group program, here's information about that we start Monday, if you want one on one support, here's how to get that right. And instead of just saying like, this is the choice for everyone, yes, I gave them all three choices on the replay. And then I took the replay put it into the product and linked to those three choices in memory vault. And by doing that people were able to go take a look at those specific products while they were already logged in. So I could see when people were watching the replay which of those products they were most interested in.

Remi Oduyemi  
That is very clever mag. And if they were interested

Meg Casebolt  
in a one to one, I would be like, Hey, let's hop on a call. Let's talk about it. Right, that's a higher investment. It's a higher price point. It's more one to one high touch so I would reach out to them and if If they were only looking at the done for you, I was like, Okay, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna pressure you, I'm not gonna send you a ton of emails because this, this isn't what you're looking for. You're not looking for the program. So let me not push you to. And then I also was able to tag and figure out who was interested but didn't buy and reach out to them and be like, Hey, do you want to join next time? Because yeah, maybe February just didn't work for you. You want us to put you on the waitlist for the next time we open the doors. And people love that. Oh, no, I just I didn't know that it was opening. I don't have time in my schedule. But if it's opening again in May, then yeah, like, I'll put it on my calendar now. You know?

Remi Oduyemi  
Yeah. That's really clever stuff like exactly

Meg Casebolt  
being able to know based on here, are these three pads? what's appealing to you? And let me adjust the segmentation and the ways that I'm reaching out to you, yeah, to be more personalized for people who are interested or the hot leads the people who came back to the webinar replay more than once, okay, let me reach out to you.

Remi Oduyemi  
I mean, it's brilliant, because it's, it's really about meeting people where they are, you know, and not forcing, this is what you can buy now on people. And I think that's a really clever approach. And I think there are a lot of MBA users who can take some inspiration from that, thinking about how they, how they use their webinar model moving forward. And it's that thing of getting people to log in to get it, which means, inside a member, we're able to track what people's movements are and what they're looking at what they're clicking on, and enables you as the, the host to really serve people better. So I think they'll

Meg Casebolt  
be able to see how many people had been through my intro course when we're now coming to watch the webinar, because they were tagged that way. Yeah. So as I was going through and saying, Okay, where are the people who are watching this webinar? Where are they already? What do they already know? Have they been through my free? You know, I have five or six different free trainings about like, what are your keywords? And what are your analytics, how to get started with it? And what's like the basics you need for SEO, and I can see how far they've gone into the free training. So they bought lower training. And then I can adjust kind of if I'm doing that direct outreach, say, Hey, I saw your answers from Yeah. Have you thought about joining the group program, you know, and being able to customize in some ways that's been really

Remi Oduyemi  
well, I think that's I think that's genius, Meg, absolutely genius.

Meg Casebolt  
And I do want to share that this was all done by the seat of my pants. If people are like, well, she really plan ahead. No, this was me like, huh, where do I want to put this webinar replay that I need to send people in an hour, right? Like, sometimes we don't always have everything figured out. But my using the platforms and testing how it can work? You can kind of come up with the approach on the fly. So if you're like, that sounds complex, okay. Don't do all of it. Just start with one piece.

Remi Oduyemi  
Yeah, try it? Well, I've got I've got some alarm bells ringing off because Aaron's, like every time you're doing these user spotlights, if somebody says something that's really cool. I can now go away and kind of recreate what you've done and give that as a training for other members of how they can embed their own webinars. And so yeah, if that's okay with you, if you don't mind us sharing that? Because yeah, there will be some users like That sounds really cool. But I don't know how to do that. So I could

Meg Casebolt  
go get the webinar transcribed. And we put that in as a file. And like, I think Aaron would do, I think she was already talking about turning into a bit of a template that people can then customize and make it your own. Yeah. While thinking about how do I get people to look at the offer? And then how do I track and see that they're looking at it? It's a really interesting process.

Remi Oduyemi  
I think it's absolutely genius. So thank you very much for sharing that with us. So when you start using memorable in 2018, was you already quite tech savvy or not so tech savvy?

Meg Casebolt  
I am. So I wish I could say like, No, I didn't even know how to turn on a computer. It was so easy. But no, I I was raised by an engineer. We I got my first email address in 1992. Like, yeah, it's always been there.

Remi Oduyemi  
I really so for you, um, how have you found using MDM? Have you used other platforms before we've courses? Or was it always just only envy that you've used?

Meg Casebolt  
Yeah. When I started, when I started my group program in 2018. It was on a different platform. And I was actually complaining to Jacqueline Malone who we also will interview. She and I mail. Yeah, she and I live a mile apart from each other. We're grabbing coffee, and I was complaining about the other software I was on. She's just got a memorable name was What's that? Right? So when, you know, and as somebody who did a lot of analytics tracking, we're like, how do people hear about the software? You can't track a coffee date. Try to use our affiliate link. So maybe it's trackable, but and now there's no affiliate program anymore. So it'll be harder for us figuring out but you know, it's like Sometimes you just have something that doesn't work. And, and it wasn't until I started to really play with gamification that I was like, This is my tool, man, this is, this is my this is what I want to know, the tracking and the stuff that isn't obvious. You know, as a user, it feels, if you don't know how all these tools work, it can feel very similar to a more traditional elearning platform. But once you get into the back end of it, and if you love, if you love numbers and metrics, like I do, great, but also just like, you don't need to do that, you can just see how people are behaving, you can see your leads, you know, like the dashboard gives you so much that other software's don't tell you anything aside from like, who's in the program?

Remi Oduyemi  
Yeah, definitely. And your users, what feedback do you get from your users about using MB? Do they find it easy to find things? Are they enjoying the experience of kind of consuming your content on the platform?

Meg Casebolt  
Yeah, and I, you know, I haven't really heard all that much pro or con, I think they're just like, well, this is just how it is. Yeah. And they do tend to, you know, answer the quiz questions on the things that I have that on and the new folks, if we take some time to reach out to them, they really do appreciate getting that personalized feedback directly from what's happening. You know, we're emailing them based on their quiz question answers. Yeah, I see that that works.

Remi Oduyemi  
And I mean, this is just an extra question. Because, again, I'm super nosy. But I'm like, let me pick next brain. With each of your digital products, do you have a set up email sequence that goes with every one of your digital products to kind of welcome and nurture people in? Do you have an onboarding sequence? Do you have an off boarding sequence?

Meg Casebolt  
Talk to me about great if I did.

Remi Oduyemi  
But also, I'd be like, Oh, my God, she really is perfect. And I've got so much work to do. So please tell me you haven't?

Meg Casebolt  
No, no. I have. I have onboarding sequences once people buy. Yeah, so if they spend money, they got a, you know, a three to five email sequence that talks through what's in the course? And have you gone in check this out? It's kind of like, if I have a module on it, I'll send an email on it about two or three days in between and just say, hey, you know, how's it going? Any questions? No, I really, I actually was just thinking that I need to create something more for the folks who are going through my free Google Analytics training. And I'm like, Okay, put that on my list for q3. Time to sit down. Right, like, yeah, and I think that's the thing is, like, I can see people moving through things, I don't necessarily need to hold their hands, if they're curious about it in the course of structure, you know, they can kind of just explore it. Yeah. Without it needing to be they're still on my email list. They're still getting like, you know, weekly, or every other week emails. But it's not always necessarily that specific nurture sequence of, Oh, you just went through this product? Yeah. Don't you want the next thing? Or what are your questions? Like, I should have that setup, and I don't.

Remi Oduyemi  
And that's okay. There's just constantly stuff for us business owners to be doing all the time. So you know, I just thought I'd ask. And I

Meg Casebolt  
think we also as as business owners, as visionaries, as creatives, whatever phrase we want to use to talk about ourselves, like, we want to create, yes. And the backend operations stuff is not always our top priority. No, it's like, people ask me this question I'm going to have a lot of my free stuff is like, I did a challenge. And then I turned it into, like, I did a live challenge, which I then turned into a mini course. And so I was doing a lot of the nurturing. Yeah, in real time. Yeah. So I knew the content worked, and people were getting results from it. But then I didn't do the backend stuff. Like, and this is this is the extrovert talking, right? Which is like, if I can run something live and get the energy from people in my audience, then awesome, I'm here for it. But then if I'm like, oh, but people have to go through it on their own. And I don't really feel like putting in the nurture sequence. I know my weaknesses, right.

Remi Oduyemi  
Yep. though. I'm very similar to you. So I totally I totally relate. Um, yeah. Okay. And so all right. The final question. Final question is, how can people find out more about you and your SEO programs where can they find you online and connect with you,

Meg Casebolt  
you can head over to my website which is loveatfirstsearch.com you can go to my member vault which is learnloveatfirstsearch.com I also have a podcast that I just started this year, which is called Social slow down, socialslowdown.com As you can tell, I'm big on naming things very obviously. And that's all about you know, trying to think about ways to approach your marketing that aren't exclusively dependent on social media, like trying to diversify, so that if LinkedIn crashes or you know, something happens in the world, and we're all told, like don't post for a month Yeah, your business isn't gonna come to a screeching halt.

Remi Oduyemi  
Amazing. And I will put all of those links into the show notes of the podcast and onto the blog as well say thank you very much, Mike, thank you for the time. And thank you for sharing so much really good stuff about how you're using memos inspired me and I'm sure it's gonna inspire loads of our users as well. So thank you,

Meg Casebolt  
it was my pleasure. And I'm loving these, these user conversations because all of us are using the tool a little bit differently.
So I was just watching the one with Adrian Dorison. Okay, Team, circle the cards like how are we doing this? What are we doing? The campaign integration work better?
Oh my God, no, even those of us that are using it and these really interesting ways are learning from each other and going wait, what do you do?
Justine Rodriguez sending dunking cards when people hit a certain point? How do we automate that? you know, that people are using it is fascinating.

Remi Oduyemi  
I had the same thing with Adrienne. I use Mailerlite and I was like, Oh Man!, I need to get my butt over to Active Campaign. I was like, Oh, now like,

Meg Casebolt  
as soon as she said visual pipeline of where people are, I was like, I need it!

Remi Oduyemi  
I was the same. So these are they're proving so useful.
And they are they're motivating, inspiring so many different people.
But yeah, and with this episode too that you've done today is really going to help a lot of people.
So thank you so much.

Meg, I look forward to talking to you again. Take care

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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