Merit House  ·  Email Strategy  ·  July 2026

Money Talk Mal
Email Strategy

A plan for turning an engaged list into a Millionaire Room of 600.

Prepared forMallory Baska
PlatformKajabi
Scope1 email / week  ·  1 flow / month
Read this first

Your list is engaged and your voice is excellent. Neither is the problem.

What's missing is architecture. There's no welcome sequence, no purchase tagging, and no email that asks for one clear thing. The result is a list that opens at 40–65% and clicks at 0–4% — people who show up and then have nowhere to go.

The path to 600 Millionaire Room members doesn't run through better discounts. It runs through the funnel that's never been built. Trump Accounts is the proof of concept, and the window is open right now.

01

Where we're starting

Your list is healthier than most

6,774
Subscribed
3,347
Engaged / 90 days
2,882
Engaged / 30 days
3,427
Dormant 90+ days

49% engagement at this size is above average for a creator audience. But the number that matters more is this one:

The finding

86% of everyone who opened in the last 90 days also opened in the last 30. That's not a list slowly fading. That's a real, active core of roughly 2,900 people who show up every single month.

You're not sending monthly. You're sending sporadically.

DateSend
Jan 1MTM January Newsletter
Jan 4–5Budget Blueprint sale (3 emails)
— three months of silence —
May 3MTM May Newsletter
Jun 1MTM June Newsletter
Jun 26Travel Hacking Deep Dive
Jul 16Trump Account PDF Delivery

The newsletter is named monthly but shipped in January, May, and June only. Moving to a consistent weekly rhythm is the single structural change that makes everything else in this document possible.

Opens are strong. Clicks have room to improve.

SendSentOpenClick
MTM January Newsletter6,03148%3%
Budget Blueprint — Email 45,82347%1%
Budget Blueprint — Email 55,79951%0%
Budget Blueprint — Email 65,79950%0%
MTM May Newsletter6,24741%4%
MTM June Newsletter6,29340%3%
Travel Hacking Deep Dive6,52740%1%
Trump Account PDF51565%23%

40–65% opens mean people want to hear from you. The click rates say the ask isn't landing — not that the content is wrong.

The pattern worth building on

The Trump PDF pulled 23% clicks against a 1–4% norm. It was requested content, so it starts with an advantage — but the structural lesson holds: one clear ask, and people take it.

The newsletter subject line is costing you

All three newsletters used the identical subject: "MTM Monthly Newsletter." Opens went 48% → 41% → 40%.

That's the same subject line losing eight points across three sends. It's a filing label, not a reason to open. Subscribers are opening on your name alone, with no information about what's inside — which is why so few click. They didn't arrive wanting anything specific.

The label
"MTM Monthly Newsletter"
3%click rate
The model
"Trump Accounts: the honest math (your guide is inside)"
23%click rate

Topic named. Angle named. Deliverable named. Everything answered before the open, so the click is the natural next step.

Two different opportunities. Two different fixes.

Newsletters can win at the subject line. A generic label earns a moderate open and no direction. Name the value, give one ask per send.

Sales emails can win after the open. "I don't see your name, [Name]" and "FINAL NOTICE… 4 hours left" are good subject lines — they earned 50–51% opens from ~5,800 people. The copy at the top is working; the opportunity is in giving those readers a clearer, better-targeted reason to click.

The backend isn't set up to do this work yet

Tagging is barely in use. Here is every tag on the account:

TagContacts
Fuel Your Fortune Purchaser658
TRUMP FORM IMPORT534
APRIL COHORT21
Landing Page Trigger (fires at nothing)0
Risk — this blocks the plan in Section 04

Only one of four products has a purchaser tag. No Millionaire Room. No Budget Blueprint. No Negotiation Navigator.

Workarounds exist — offer-based filters can approximate some of this — but without tags we can't efficiently: suppress buyers from their own product's sales emails · upsell by what someone already owns · cleanly separate members from prospects.

Building the tag taxonomy is unglamorous, one-time work. It's also the thing that makes 600 members reachable.

The biggest gap: there's no welcome flow

The "Join the MTM Fam" opt-in — your primary list-building form — double opt-ins someone and then drops them. No welcome. Nothing until the next broadcast happens to go out.

Priority — highest leverage on the account

Opens decayed 48% → 40% between January and June while the list grew from 6,031 to 6,527. New subscribers arriving, never onboarded, never activated.

This is the single highest-leverage permanent fix, and it applies to every subscriber you will ever get.

The blog is broken

Only six posts show on the blog, and several — including your most-loved ones — attempt to redirect to fuelingfinancialfreedom.com and don't resolve. Anyone clicking through from an email, Instagram, or search hits a dead end.

The Travel Hacking send should have been a teaser

The June 26 deep dive is a blog post, sent in full as an email. It's long enough that Gmail clipped it — most readers never saw the bottom without clicking "View entire message."

The finding

The content is genuinely good, and it already lives on the blog. The email just shouldn't be the whole thing. The send should be a short, sharp teaser that drives to the post.

That does three things at once: respects the reader's inbox, drives traffic to a property you own, and gives the blog a reason to exist.

02

Who we're talking to

Your audience splits into two revenue relationships, and this shapes everything downstream.

Stream one
Education → products

People who want to learn finance and buy in. Millionaire Room, Fuel Your Fortune, Negotiation Navigator, Budget Blueprint. Higher intent, higher ticket.

Stream two
Tools & deals → affiliate

People who want the recommendation. SoFi, Copilot, GetUpside, Amazon storefront, Chase & Southwest cards. Lower commitment — but you earn whether or not they ever buy from you.

Why this matters

You've sold roughly 437 memberships against a list of 6,774. Affiliate content gives us a way to serve — and earn from — the people who may never buy a course.

Segments to build

None of these exist yet.

SegmentEst.What they wantWhat we send
Millionaire Room members 319 Belonging and a clear return on $37/mo Retention, not acquisition. Suppressed from every Millionaire Room promotion — a member getting a "join now" email is a churn risk, not a sale.
Trump / NYT cohort 534+ Clarity on Trump Accounts — what this means for them, their family, their kids The Trump Accounts flow, ending in a Millionaire Room invitation at full price. See Section 04.
Fuel Your Fortune buyers not in the Room ~600 Ongoing access to how you think about investing — they already paid $497 for it once A dedicated campaign selling them into the Millionaire Room. Same appetite, lower barrier: $37/mo vs. $497 up front. The warmest audience on the account for the 600 goal.
Course buyers, not in the Room ~900 The next step after the course they finished The Millionaire Room, positioned as what comes after the course — and suppressed from ads for products they already own.
Engaged non-buyers ~1,500 Free value and tools they can use now Affiliate and tools content, plus nurture toward the entry offer — Budget Blueprint at $99, the lowest-friction way into paying.
Dormant 90+ days 3,427 Unknown — we haven't asked in a long time A re-engagement sequence in month three, led by tools and affiliate content. Asks nothing of them and tells us who's still there.
New subscribers ongoing Orientation — who you are and what they just signed up for The welcome flow. Currently they receive nothing at all. See Section 04.
To discuss — Millionaire Room members

We don't yet know what members currently receive by email versus what lives inside the community platform. If member communication already happens in-community, email's job here may be minimal — or there may be a gap worth filling. Worth a conversation before we build anything.

03

Voice & guardrails

Position

Your voice is a genuine asset and it's consistent across Instagram and email. It's not the problem and we're not "improving" it. Everything below is documentation so the team can write as you, not instruction to change how you sound.

How you sound

Opens with real vulnerability, then pivots to money

Real talk before anything else: I've been in a bit of a rut lately… the constant GO GO GO of life + running a business + being a mom to 2 little toddlers 😮‍💨

Specific about your own numbers

$60K debt paid off. $100K invested before kids. ~$100K saved on travel. $43K wedding. You're ahead of them, not above them.

Positioned against the noise

"47 tips before coffee." "People who just take a news headline to IG and run with it for virality."

Self-aware about the sell

Quick honesty note, same as always: I earn a small referral bonus if you sign up through my links… Love ya, mean it. 🤍

Mechanics

Lowercase. ++ and ^ as markers. Em-dashes. 🤪 / 🫠 / 😮‍💨 for self-deprecation. "Xx Mal." "Love ya, mean it." Direct address — "If you feel this too, I see you."

The core promise: the honest math

This is the brand in three words, and you state it outright:

My honest filter: I'm not here to hype these accounts or trash them. The guide gives you the genuinely-great column AND the where-it-falls-short column.
The test

Every email should pass this: if it only has the good column, it isn't yours.

What you'd never say

Guardrails

Risk — must fix before the Trump flow ships

There is no financial disclaimer on any send we reviewed.

You recommend specific credit cards, tell readers "the right moment was 10 years ago, the next best moment is today," and are about to email extensively about a federal investment vehicle to families making a real money decision.

Required in the footer of every send. Educational purposes only; not individualized financial advice; consult your own advisor.

Recommended standard — affiliate disclosure

A short note at the top of any email containing affiliate links, and the full disclosure in the footer of every send. Visible before the first link, restated at the bottom.

Written in your voice, not legal boilerplate — you already do this well ("Quick honesty note, same as always…"). We're making it consistent rather than occasional.

This matters because affiliate income runs on trust, and your positioning is built on being unbought. Clear disclosure is what lets you keep earning from recommendations ethically and indefinitely, without spending the credibility that makes people take them in the first place. It protects the revenue stream, not just the compliance box.

Consistency standard

The January Budget Blueprint campaign used two different coupon codes — 26GOALS at the top of one email, SAVE26 further down the same email. Both were valid, so nothing broke. But it's a moment of friction at checkout, and the same email advertised "20% off" while the final-notice email quoted $77 (a 22% discount).

Standard: one code per campaign, stated identically in every asset. QA pass before every send.

04

The architecture

The core strategic problem

Our goal is to reach 600 Millionaire Room members. The pricing history says that can't be bought with discounts.

Millionaire Room — every member you've ever sold

Nobody buys at full price.

$17Founders
293
$27Evergreen sale
93
$37Black Friday
33
$37Regular
18

67% of all members came in at $17. Only 18 people have ever paid regular price. Your list has been trained to wait — because a deal always comes.

The strategic conclusion

Discounting to 600 converts $37 buyers into $27 buyers and drops MRR per member. The number can't be reached by promotion. It has to be reached by acquisition — which requires the funnel that doesn't exist.

Two signals say full price is achievable

  1. Five of the 18 lifetime full-price sales landed in the ten days before July 16 — 28% of all full-price sales ever, in a week and a half.
  2. The Trump cohort has no price anchor. They've never seen $17 and don't know a sale is coming.
Recommendation

Do not discount to the Trump cohort. Sell at $37, confidently, no urgency theater. Discounting them would take your most valuable segment and teach it the exact habit that trained your existing list to wait.

Flow 01 — Trump Accounts

Ship this week

Why this before the welcome flow: it's live traffic on a time-boxed news cycle. Accounts went live July 4. Families are deciding right now. The sequence already exists, is wired to the live form, and is taking people today.

Build: extend the existing TRUMP ACCOUNT PDF sequence. Do not build parallel.

The urgency engine — already written, and it isn't a discount

DROPPING SOON IN THE MILLIONAIRE ROOM
Watch me open & invest in a Trump Account for my own son — end to end. The form, the app, the account opening, the investment choices — every step, on screen… No guesswork, no $400/hour professional required.

This is the way out of the pricing trap. Real scarcity, costs nothing, trains no bad habits. Join because the walkthrough is coming — not because $10 off expires Tuesday.

Flow recommendation

Five emails, tight timing. The guide gives them information; this flow gives them your read — which is the only thing they can't get from the news, the government site, or another creator.

  1. PDF delivery LIVE · 44% / 27% / 0% Deliver the guide, set expectations.
  2. The honest math +1 day Your actual opinion — the tax-trap timing, the $250 add-on most families miss, and why you're opening these for your own kids. This is the email that earns the pitch in #5.
  3. Trump Account vs. 529 vs. custodial Roth vs. UTMA +2 days The comparison everyone is Googling. Pure value, no ask. There's no single winner — you match the account to the goal.
  4. Where everyone stalls +2 days Name the logistics wall — the app, the form, choosing the investments — and the fact that even an advisor can't do it for them. Soft introduction of the Millionaire Room as where the walkthrough lives.
  5. The walkthrough +2 days The direct ask. Millionaire Room at $37, no code, no discount. Here's what's inside, here's what I'm doing for my own son, here's the room. The drop is the urgency.
Required before launch

· Unsubscribe trigger on Millionaire Room purchase — anyone who joins exits the flow immediately. Currently there are zero exit triggers, which is fine for single-email delivery and unacceptable once it ends in an offer.
· Financial disclaimer in every footer.

Flow 02 — Welcome

August

The highest-leverage permanent fix on the account. Triggers off the newsletter opt-in, which currently drops people after double opt-in.

  1. Who Mal isWhat "the honest math" means, what to expect and how often.
  2. Your story with real numbers$60K debt, $100K invested — and what it bought.
  3. Best free valueThe money tracker or a tools recommendation. Serve first.
  4. The entry offerBudget Blueprint at $99 — the lowest-friction way into paying.

Flow 03 — Post-purchase & upsell

September

Requires the tag taxonomy from Section 01. Three jobs:

  • Fuel Your Fortune buyers → Millionaire Room. ~600 people who already paid $497 for your investing education. The warmest audience on the account for the 600 goal.
  • Course buyers → Millionaire Room. Positioned as the next step after the course they took.
  • All buyers → suppressed from sales emails for products they already own.

Flow 04 — Re-engagement

October

The dormant 3,427. Not a sunset flow. Tools and affiliate content lead — it asks nothing of them, serves them something useful, and tells us who's still there before we decide what to do with the rest.

The weekly newsletter

The structural fix

The June newsletter contained: a personal rut essay, a Millionaire Room pitch, a 2,000-word travel hacking deep dive, two credit card sells, jean shorts, self-tanner, a market update, a member spotlight, and an expert intro. 16 links.

The diagnosis

The newsletter isn't underperforming because it's badly written. It's underperforming because it's six emails wearing a trench coat.

And here's the good news

The kitchen-sink format is a symptom of sending monthly. When you only get one shot a month, you cram everything in. Weekly cadence fixes this structurally. One topic, one ask, per send — and nothing has to get left out, because there's always next week.

Content pillars

Rotating, aligned to the two revenue streams:

The honest math

One financial topic. Both columns — what's great and where it falls short.

Product · your best format

Money tools

One tool, one real use case, one honest take.

Affiliate · serves non-buyers

Real talk

Something personal. The vulnerability that makes the rest of it land.

Brand · feeds everything else

Inside the room

Last week we talked about X. Here's a member win. Here's what the expert call covered.

Product · proof, not pitch

Subject line standard

Model: Topic: the angle (what's inside). Never a category label. "MTM Monthly Newsletter" is retired.

Rules

Platform decisions

Kajabi's reporting ceiling

Kajabi shows per-broadcast and per-sequence metrics but no aggregate view across sends over time. There is no month-over-month email dashboard.

Merit House will maintain the rollup and deliver a monthly performance report — a deliverable you've never had, because the platform structurally cannot produce it.

Cleanup

"Landing Page Trigger" tag fires at nothing (0 contacts). The "Healthy Personal Environment Guide" form and sequence attach to the discontinued #HealthIsWealth column — retire both.

05

Decisions & asks

What we need from you

Financial disclaimer approvalWe'll send draft language. Blocks Flow 01 from shipping.
This week

Open questions

Things we're chasing down on our side — flagging them so you know what we're looking at.

  1. What drove the early-July full-price spike?Five $37 Millionaire Room sales in ten days, predating the NYT feature. A podcast, press hit, or post that landed? If we can identify it, we've found a repeatable full-price acquisition channel — which is exactly what the 600 goal needs.
  2. How often does the Millionaire Room go on sale to $27?Determines whether $37 is a real price or a reference price. If the sale runs constantly, we can't build genuine urgency around anything — every "sale" is just Tuesday.
  3. Where do these sequence forms live?The Year End Money Date Download and Free Budget Template forms both have sequences attached, but we can't find where they're published — Instagram link-in-bio, a blog post, an old landing page, podcast show notes? We need to know what's still driving traffic to them so we can invest in the live channels and retire the dead ones.