Reader,
Let me ask you…
What’s wrong with internet marketing about essential oils?
Well, there are probably a few things, but these are the issues as "I" see them.
- Blog posts are guided by keywords that people search for. Poor writers repeatedly regurgitate the same information, preventing you from gaining any depth to your knowledge.
- Often pages are written by people who have never even smelt an oil, let alone gone and got qualified to use them.
- In addition, Google only can answer the questions you have thought to ask.
But what about the questions you never even knew existed?
My name’s Elizabeth Ashley. I am a Clinical aromatherapist with almost 30 years professional experience. I have published more than 20 aromatherapy manuals in my own name, including 12 Amazon category number 1 best sellers, and a dozen others for other people. I have a working knowledge of 450 essential oils and practical experience of using over 200. I’ve written more aromatic blog posts than your granny has had hot dinners, edited tons more for other people and probably thrown several thousand in the bin.
VineVida’s Managing Director, Jake Myara has asked me to run his newsletter with a difference. No interest in SEO, just chatting about essential oils and helping his users learn to use them more lovingly, safely and dynamically.
My team and I are excited to bring you something new and fresh.
For me, it feels like coming full circle.
Back in the early 90’s I used to run a newsletter for my mom’s company. Jill Bruce Aromatherapy was one of the first aromatherapy companies in the UK, and manufactured aromatherapy skin care, botanical perfumery and medicinal products. She ran one of the largest schools in the country and was one of the founder members of the International Federation of Aromatherapy. It traded for over forty years until she retired.
Each summer, we’d pack up the car and caravan, with stacker boxes of creams and lotions, three dogs and two cats, and head off up and down the country. We’d carry this mobile phone you had to plug into the mains. You could hardly lift because it was the size of a cinder block!
One year, at Hampton Court Palace we saw the queen, and made a pot of cream for Cliff Richard. It was boom time. I’d never seen so much money before, or ever since. These were the days before medicine’s control’s laws. People would come to the stall, completely befuddled that you would put a cream for headache on your head. But when you can make someone’s hay fever disappear as they walk around a flower show, it’s very easy to take money out of people’s hands and to generate all manner of strange orders. I treated humans but also dogs, horses and parrots.
We had these pink slips that people would put their names and addresses onto, and each month, I’d create a newsletter that went into what we now call snail mail. Our tele sales team would call and see what people wanted to order. It was hard work, but it was great fun.
That is, until one day.
After creating an eight side A4 brochure full of recipes and secrets, I sent it to the printers. Copied 10,000 times with colored ink, it arrived back at our office. The team folded each one, put them into envelopes, slapped on address stickers and stamps, then popped them in the mailbox.
It was beautiful. The newsletter looked amazing. The system worked perfectly. We arrived on Monday morning, rubbing our hands with glee. The recipes we’d written were amazing. We’d got some fantastic new creams to sell the bank manager was going to orgasm with how much money we were going to make him.
I remember we’d even booked a buffet because we didn’t think we’d have time to pop out for lunch.
But the phone did not ring once.
We looked at each other perplexed, until my mom said in her best Joyce Grenfell voice: “Elizabeth, we have no contact details on this….” In the days before websites…how on Earth would people know how to find us. Well, the answer was, they couldn’t of course.
I felt sick.
With five thousand left to go out, thank goodness we had an address stamp.
Open the envelope. Stamp it. Put it in the envelope and readdress it.
I really wasn’t popular that month!
That is just one of the benefits of internet marketing over snail mail! It automatically puts on the address.
Ah well, you live, you learn!
So, in that time, as well as the importance of being a bit less excitable, I have learned a thing or two about essential oils. As have the two other writers on my team.
I am joined by Natalie, another aromatherapist, this time from Australia, and Natalie, a beautician and Massage therapist from her in the UK, with me. Together, we intend to share the crone wisdom. The knowledge of the plant elders that normally remains in oral record. Some might say our gray hair is nudging us to impart it before it’s lost.
I could not possibly comment.
The newsletter will remain weekly, but rather than sending you to a blog post now, we’ll send you juicy nuggets of how to use essential oils and carriers in ways people don’t usually talk about on the internet. The stuff that takes you from someone who can use essential oils, to one being one who holds plant secrets.
We hope you come to be excited about us knocking on your e-mail box on Fridays.
To achieve that though, we’re gonna need your help.
As Aromahags, we want to be sure we’re giving you the information that’s right. Stuff that excites you and that you’ll find useful.
To that end, please will you help us by filling in our quick survey? Help us to give you curated content.
In the meantime, thanks for checking in, and I look forward to getting to know you all better.
Wishing you days full of rosey scents and nights of lavender dreams.
Elizabeth Ashley
