From Ads to AI: How Email Marketing Can Transform Your Revenue in 90 Days with Cat Valverde

In this episode of Business Chop, Audrey "Tech Diva" Wiggins interviews Cat Valverde, an email and revenue strategist and founder of Profeshh. Cat discusses her focus on email marketing as a high-return, low-cost alternative to traditional ads, especially with rising ad costs from AI developments like Google's Search GPT. By emphasizing transparency, personalization, and direct engagement, Cat has crafted email frameworks that help businesses, especially course creators and SaaS companies, leverage their email lists to generate substantial revenue—often reaching six figures in 60-90 days.

Cat shares insights on ethically connecting with clients, stressing that personalized email interactions and AI tools like ChatGPT can re-engage inactive audiences effectively. She also advocates for using owned data (such as email lists) to avoid over reliance on platforms like Facebook, where algorithm shifts or account restrictions can suddenly limit reach. This strategic approach not only reduces costs but also creates partnerships and referral opportunities, boosting revenue and business resilience. 

Here are some key highlights from the episode:

Cat combines AI tools like ChatGPT and Google’s upcoming Search GPT with email marketing, primarily for content brainstorming and keyword research. She notes that AI should serve as a supportive tool, not a replacement, allowing businesses to refine messaging while staying cost-effective.

With ad prices increasing due to AI-driven changes, Cat encourages businesses to pivot back to email marketing as a high-ROI channel, moving away from solely relying on ads for lead generation.

Cat invites listeners to her website, emailrevamp.com to access a free, 30-minute email marketing course.

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Transcript

Business Chop Transcript with Cat Valverde 

10-19-2024, Released 10-28-204

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Hello, Chop, squad and friends. It's great to be with you as always, and welcome new listeners. I hope that you will subscribe and become a member of the Chop squad.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Today. My guest is Cat Valverde, and she is an email and revenue strategist and the founder of profesh

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Cat has found a pragmatic pathway with email marketing beyond the doom and gloom hype and weird Hail Mary campaigns that we produce. It's a clear, straightforward process that she's eager to share with us. And she can. We can implement this implement. And we can implement the process that people out there that she's built at no charge. How about that? 

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: And her insights are tailored to support course? Creators, Sas founders, agency leaders, and e-commerce proprietors with joy in her heart? An MBA, a Harvard organizational psych masters in progress, and over 5 million dollars

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: and direct revenue created for clients to date. Cat is excited to laugh, take a deep breath and crack open the spreadsheet with us. Her focus is digital revenue strategy in the post as economy

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: that she's most curious about the part we tend to talk about least in the digital space. And that is how is it really going financially?

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: We'll learn more about cat. On the other side of this announcement.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Cat, welcome to the business shop.

Cat Valverde: Yeah, thanks for having me excited to be here 

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Great. Now as founder of profess and a digital marketing expert, Cat is on a mission to bring transparency and fairness into the marketing world growing up, knowing, better, growing up, knowing that her father pioneered the unsavory telemarketing scams of the eighties and nineties, schemes that preyed on the elderly and vulnerable cap of Earl Day;: developed a deep-seated commitment to ethical and equitable business practices her father's background in telemarketing fuels, Cat's passion for creating marketing programs that are built on transparency, trust and authenticity. With her latest program. She helps small businesses re-engage and reactivate our email lists, bringing tailored data, driven strategies to help us thrive.

She's most excited to connect with Saas and course creation agency and e-commerce teams. Cat believes that there is enough sunshine for everyone, no matter what the economy looks like when you're dedicated to ethical marketing, equanimity and bring a unique impact to the marketplace. You will win 

She and her team are profession here today with real cash flow solutions that you can implement right now again at no cost. Again. Welcome, Cat to the business shop. How you doing today?

Cat Valverde: Yeah, I'm doing great. Thank you.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: No, you're welcome. So, let's dive into some questions. And, you know, just get going. We want to learn about some fun facts from you. You know what's been. You know what's going on, and you know some of your achievements. So, if you wanna just bust out the gate with some fun thing that you that you've done.

Cat Valverde: Yeah, sure, I'd love to. Well, profesh, you know, we're a digital marketing like a full-service marketing agency. But, over the last year. So, 2024, the theme for us was email marketing.

And the more that you kind of circle back to it, we've all kind of left it in the dust, as innovation is just built and built and built up. When you circle back. You know, it's really exciting to see that we have left a lot of easy, helpful, valuable money on the table for ourselves and for our clients.

And what we're seeing is, if you can dedicate, you know 60 to 90 days to some of the frameworks that we've put together. You can easily bring in. You know what we’re seeing. If your average service is about $10,000, let's say, for coaches. For example, in those 60 to 90 days we're seeing people bring in an extra 10 or a hundred $1,000.

Cat Valverde: So, it’s possible it's exciting it certainly for me, as a marketer gives me that dopamine hit that we need to keep going and So, you know, just hitting it right out the gate. That's what's out there. If we're patient and can follow some quick and easy steps. 

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Okay, that's awesome. So, let's just go right toward the juggle here. We're talking 100 K in 90 days. So, for that profit. I should use AI to help pay me more and my team more. And how does that work.

Cat Valverde: Yes. So, you know this, all actually did start thinking about what's coming for us through AI. You know, Chat GPT is pretty common now, and what we are seeing as well is something new coming down, called Search GPT. And that's through Google.

And what is going to happen. And I know that many of you out there are already feeling this in anticipation of it is Google, knowing that they're going to hit this green. Go button on search. GPT, they're charging a lot more for ads. Yeah. And typically, let's say, you know, we go back a year or 2 prior to this AI frenzy. You know we would spend a lot of time with our clients on honing ads, honing their message, figuring out where their audiences are figuring out like what the exact secret sauce is to to hit that lightning in a bottle for an ad takes a long time and then, once we'd get it, we could pretty much rely month to month on. Let's say you're going to spend a thousand dollars.

We would know. Okay, from that $1,000 we can expect, like a 3 to 5 x return on investment based on the number of leads that would come in, it was pretty reliable. And now that we're seeing these pushes towards Chat GPT and Search GPT. That is no longer the case. $1,000 is not getting you the same return, and, in fact, many of my clients are realizing. Oh, gosh! Now I need to spend $2,000 to get that same result, or $3,000, $4,000 like, it's starting to compound month over month.

And so, that's really what brought me to this point, thinking, okay, how can we work with AI, use it to be able to scale, to save time, to save ourselves money, but also innovate around it. To get around these problems that it's causing. There are all these side effects. It's like a bad medication, right?

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Right.

Cat Valverde: And so, you know, that's what's happening is we're finding ways. Kind of circling back to email marketing to say, Okay.

Cat Valverde: you know, AI is great because I can start there. If I'm trying to tailor a really good catchy subject line, or trying to figure out what some good keywords are. I can use this to give me a good starting off point.

Cat Valverde: And then I can use things like email marketing instead of ads. So, I'm saving money there as well, to start reaching out directly to my highest return on investment clients to say, Hey! As a human, this is not the AI part emailing them directly and saying, Hey, you know, how's it going like, how's business? How are you feeling? It's crazy out there.

Cat Valverde: and just try to take a pulse on, let's say your top 10%. Most engaged highest revenue clients from the past, or that you're currently serving. And what we're seeing from that is a pretty high response rate. I think we're all. We're all in this struggle of the unknown, and you know, quarter 4. Going into the holidays is always, you know, a little bit more difficult, because we all get busy and distracted right? But just holistically. Even outside of that 2024 has brought a lot of innovation, but also, a lot of layoffs, a lot of, you know, scary feelings.

And so, we're ready to talk. And we're ready to see, you know, like, well, what are you doing? That's working? What? How can we collaborate? So, the response is really good. And from there you just ask questions like, this is where the you know, being a human is really helpful. Where, you know, you keep learning. What are these pain points of these top? 10% on my email list. 

Cat Valverde: Once you learn them, you go back to the drawing board and you say, okay, I know that I've had XY or Z services in the past that these clients have really really liked and I know that these are their pain points. Now, what can I do like what is in my control right now, can I offer a new service? Can I tweak a different product that maybe you would solve for this for them? 

AI is really good for this kind of brainstorming, and you know, plugging in different prompts and seeing what other AI services are out there are doing to see if you know just a nice way to kind of get the ball rolling for yourself and then, once you have what that new thing is, you take it back to that that same group. And you say, Okay. I heard you, and I know you didn't ask me to, you know. Come up with a solution. But I did. And you know, do you want to try it out? You know, here's the price point. But given that, you know, you helped me on the starting off point. Let me offer you a little bit of a discount to give it a try, and then I'd love your feedback and the adoption is great. I mean, because you're you know exactly what their problems are, because they told you. It's like a free, a free R&D session, right?

And then what's really cool about this is, let's say you had a smaller email list of about a hundred people. And so, that top 10% you were talking to were 10 different people, a mix of clients and former clients, people that have subscribed to your email lists and are very engaged. 

Cat Valverde: So, you have that top 10% you've offered this service to. You've gotten good feedback on it. So, now you go back and you offer it to all 100 people on your email list, because what you've learned from that top 10 is a pretty good extrapolation about what's going on in the industry. And from that we're seeing that you know the assumption is correct, that that is a good extrapolation, and that new service that you've just developed over the last 30 days and offered up is resonating with the full email list. And they are buying

So, it's pretty fun to see, and it’s free like, I said. Free R&D, and a nice mix of AI, and your own kind of power source. And then what is built on top of that, after you've emailed everyone, and they've all tried it out. And they love your new service is you send out a follow up email saying, hey you know, I know to the people that purchased and enjoyed it saying, Hey, you know thank you So, much for buying this. I am enjoying the feedback. Keep it coming. And you know we're really looking to expand this. Do you know anybody that could be that this new service or this new product could be of use to. And if so, maybe we can build a partnership. Maybe we can share email lists. Or you know, I know that our values are aligned and our product or services could be aligned. You know, let's do like a referral type of program where you know I'm emailing your list. You're emailing mine. Let's build our email lists together. And then I'll give you a kickback for anybody that you refer to me that makes this purchase.

And what I tell people the hook here is it needs to be a meaningful. So, you know, when people come to us and they send people through our programs, we give them a 20%, a referral fee which can be in the thousands depending on.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Yeah, and that's reasonable. Yeah.

Cat Valverde: Right it is, and especially if you go into it knowing. Okay, I'm baking this into my costs and into what I'm you know what profit I'm having. But that piece of it, you know, making sure that it's equitable for both sides is what is going to make this a really really valuable partnership. And we're seeing huge increases. I mean, 2, 3, 4 times increases in return on investment on both sides. So, it's really exciting. And it's really fun like when you both win. What else could you want.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Right is exactly so. What motivated you to take this? This, this spend on email marketing. And how did you? Or where did that decision come from. 

Cat Valverde: Yeah, you know, it's a bit of a forcing function to be honest, like, I said, 2024 was all focused on email marketing, thank goodness, but I you know I've been working for myself for a couple of years. After about a decade in corporate.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Congratulations.

Cat Valverde: Thank you. Thank you So, much. Every day is really fun. And then also, a little bit scary. Last, forever!

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Yeah.

Cat Valverde: Yeah. But you know, after a couple of years I got to the point where I realized, man, I am still just as burnt out as I was in corporate like, I thought, leaving this leadership role where I was responsible for a large team and didn't have the autonomy. I thought I would have, and I was very much on this rat race. I thought that was the problem, and that's why I was So, tired. That's why I was So, burnt out. 

Cat Valverde: You know, a couple years in reflecting and realizing. Okay, I've matched and exceeded my prior salary, which was the goal like great. But I'm still pretty tired and pretty burnt out like, is this a me problem like what is going on.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Yeah.

Cat Valverde: So, a lot of reflection. But then, you know, at that same time, I realized, okay, I don't really have even an extra minute in the day, or an extra dollar to spend at the end of all of this like this is great, that I've gotten to this point and met my 1st round of goals. But what does this look like long term like? How am I going to do this? And how am I going to scale if I don't have the time to scale, if I don't have the time to keep continuing really high client service and client satisfaction and without being able to reach out and build my business in any sort of meaningful way. So, it was a good problem to have that I was So, busy, and had that the client roster that I did, but then also, a bit scary to say, well, I can't do this forever. And how the heck am I going to do this? If I don't have the capital like I don't have all this extra money coming in to be able to. Is it throwing money at ads, is it, you know, paying other people to do sales for me like, what am I going to do?

And that's what led me to kind of exploring these other nontraditional ways. And it even seems kind of crazy to say, email marketing is non-traditional. It's just. it's like, I mean, it's marketing 101, right, but we all have kind of, and myself included as a marketer. You know we scoff at it because it just seems So, archaic, it seems So, you know, like old school. But in reality, it's really not like its marketing 101 for a reason.

Cat Valverde: and it's been actually really refreshing to see that my clients and people on my email list who haven't, you know, even been a client before they are refreshed by hearing from a person-like hearing from a human, and I think that resonates with all of us as consumers like we're exhausted by our spam calls our spam. 

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Yes.

Cat Valverde: Like, Oh, my gosh! Enough! So, that's like a fun, exciting, unanticipated validation of okay. If the way we differentiate ourselves as brands is by being ourselves and being a human. Then, you know, that's a good sign, like I can do that, you know. So, there's that. And then the second piece to it is, I have now been able to build this in a way where I don't charge upfront for any of these programs, because I myself understand, like, okay, I didn't have the capital to be able to scale. How do we solve for that problem long term? How is it that, you know, underrepresented groups who otherwise wouldn't have the opportunities to build their very valuable businesses.

How can we solve for that? And So, what we've done is just reinvented, how we structure our revenue and our campaigns. And it's such that when we find the right client that aligns with our values, they are ready to scale. They have really happy customers, really happy clients. They have an email list that they just haven't utilized properly, maybe, or in the right way that's resonating.

We don't charge anything until revenue starts coming in. So, we say, Okay, we now have the ability to front the time and the money to dedicate to these campaigns and we'll do a revenue split. For example, when those clients start coming in. So, if it's 3 months campaign, you bring in 200,000. That's 100,000 to our team and 100,000 to you. And then from there we talk. Okay, who are your partners like? Let's build in what your referral fees are for them, like. We kind of lay out all of this for both teams, my team and yours.

Cat Valverde: Kind of work together to make sure we're all making money right, because at the end of the day it’s, you know, we all need to make it. We all want it, but we also, want to make sure we're adding value and be proud of what we're putting out there.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Yeah, absolutely. So, how is that track? Then? So, are we using the email platforms, email marketing platforms? That you know that we have? Or is there a different platform that you know that we're using when we connect with you? How does that.

Cat Valverde: Really good question. Yeah, I you know my motto in most things is to meet people where they are. And so, if you have good systems in place already. Then it's up to the client. So, whoever we're working with to say, okay, are you really happy with this? Are your clients happy with this?

Cat Valverde: Are they receiving your emails like, if you have programs and platforms already in place that are working well, then we can handle it from here, or we can be more of a you know, Advisor, and your team can keep handling these things that we can walk you through them. And then, in which case, of course, we would say, instead of a 50 50 split, let's do a you know, 80, 20, if you're doing the bulk of the work. 

But then the reverse. If we get in there and realize, man, all your bones are pretty good, but you know, maybe over here we can adjust. That's part of the onboarding. We do a pretty thorough kind of onboarding and consultation to see if there's anything we can recommend that would be better.

And then we're certainly aren't proud. I mean, this is the other thing that is really cool about what I get to do is then I'm learning a lot like there's plenty of times where there's things to the side where they have put together a really amazing system that I hadn't thought of before that's working great. So, then, something that I can learn from too.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Okay, that's awesome. So, you know, beyond that, what gives you the most hope about content marketing or the current. You know, marketing landscape, because I can remember at the beginning of the conversation you talked about. You know Google, and you know their change with AI search. And So, you know the price for ads are going up. It used to be that coming to the Internet for small businesses, startups. And you know all of you know the wannabes that it it leveled the playing field to be able to afford to advertise, and to you to reach their niche markets or some new markets.

Cat Valverde: Yes.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Oh, it's the opposite! Go ahead, Cat.

Cat Valverde: It is. It is what I tell people that surprises them is, I, personally do not pay a dollar for ads, and that alone is a Testament to like. It is possible to get around this. And whenever I 1st started and I still have these moments, of course we don't know what's coming. We, you know, innovation's great speeding up right like it's just time is getting faster and more and more is coming at us. What I tell people is, I am constantly thinking about. Okay, what can I control?

And what is it that I can do right now? There's So, much I you know I can't control what Google is doing. I can't control what Meta is doing or what YouTube is doing. And the answer for that is owning your data. So, making sure, if you have a platform that your audience is hanging out on primarily, that's great. But making sure that you're taking them off of your that platform as well, and saying like, hey, make sure that you send me over your email or subscribe to my list So, that you can stay up to date on XY, or z right.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Good advice. Hmm.

Cat Valverde: It is. And you know this is the thing. You know there are a lot of scary stories that my clients have experienced where they've been booted out of Facebook for weeks at a time. And that's where their primary lead generation was from, or Facebook groups, or where they're connecting directly with their audiences.

And so, you know, that can be really scary. And then the solution to that that makes it far more manageable and empowers us as business owners is, you know. Keep talking to them there. But you know, if you are moving them off platform, then that's okay. You still have a way to connect with them. You still have a way to sell, and it's free.

Cat Valverde: And so, if and when things like that happen or algorithms change. Or you know, YouTube decides they don't like your content, for whatever reason they don't even have to give you a reason right.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Right.

Cat Valverde: Then you're not starting from scratch. And that's really, that's what gets me excited to talk to people. That's why I've been going on podcasts.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Okay.

Cat Valverde: You know, telling people like, hey, this is coming, but it's going to be fine if you are preparing for it. And then that's you know you said it perfectly. It kind of is another way that we can level the playing field for ourselves. And so, we can get back to that feeling of empowerment, and, you know, kind of bring it on innovation, like, I'll just use you to my benefit, and I still have everything I need to decide to build what I want to build.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Right, and usually I you know, I close out and always ask, you know, nugget of advice, but I think you just gave it.

Cat Valverde: Definitely, yes, get your email list guys.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Absolutely. Yeah, cause we, we do put a lot of trust into to the to these systems, and you know, but they're these are businesses just like we are. And so, everyone's in it. You know, we want to bring value and trust and bring service and a good product. But it's still end of the day that they're a business, too. So, they're going to be changing and doing things to in their best interest.

So, yeah, definitely. So, chop squad. This has been an amazing conversation here with Cap over a day So, definitely plug into her. And what's the what's the website, we should go to Cat.

Cat Valverde: Yes, go to emailrevamp.com, and you can see the free course that's there. It's only half an hour genuinely free. I'm not going to upsell you there and then there's also, a booking link. If you want to chat, you can click that link and put a meeting on my calendar and let's talk.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Awesome. All right thanks again, Cat.

Cat Valverde: Thank you. This was So, fun.

Audrey “Tech Diva” Wiggins: Yes, you're welcome.