When I was in school, I feared the day I would write my first newsletter.
I’m dead serious.
I had no clue what to say to my peeps (which was, in all reality, a list of about 17 people). What should I write about? Would they even care about the emails I sent (or open them in the first place)? When should I send the emails?
These were just some of the questions going round and round in my head as I tried to tackle this huge issue of writing to my list.
Over the years, I’ve learned a few tricks (both from the pro’s and through my own experiments) that have made me more comfortable with writing emails to my list, and I’ll be sharing them with you today.
So, let’s chat: Email Marketing – I’m gonna break it down for you old skool style today. What is it, how does it work, and why should we do it?
First off, what the heck is it?
Good questions, my friend. Questions I’m here to answer.
Email marketing is when you send emails to your email list to build a relationship with them, make offers, and convert your subscribers into paying clients.
In order to have really effective email marketing, you have to consistently email your list BUT NOT TOO MUCH that your people want to unsubscribe.
When you’re not emailing on a regular schedule, it’s easy for your emails to get lost in the shuffle. Worse yet, if you’re not popping in often enough, your peeps will think, “Who is this?” and unsubscribe.
You don’t want that to happen.
So let’s talk about how often to send emails.
How often is often enough? Well, that depends on your list.
Some people email once a week, others twice a week, and still others more or less often.
NOTE: Do not make the mistake of sending TOO many emails leading to the UNSUBSCRIBE.
I have hit that button way too many times because I was getting 2 emails a day or 5 emails a week.
Consider this: If I have signed up for your webinar or an event and you are sending me an email sequence post-webinar, that is fine. BUT, if you are sending too many emails to your main list, you may loose them, especially if they are NOT content driven and only sell..sell…sell.
The best way to figure this out is to ask your audience directly.
I like to poll my audience without sending out a survey (this actually has lead me to unsubscribing from many people because it just does not feel authentic).
You can poll your audience by simply asking questions in an email or testing out your niche and their needs and desires on Facebook or tracking opens in your newsletters.
At a minimum, a weekly email sent on the same day and time will build trust in you. If your audience knows that you’ll be sending them an email on a certain day and time every week, they come to expect it. And they get to know you in the process.
Bonus tip: Your audience may prefer video over written text, or they may want to see gorgeous images. In the early, days, adjust your style to see what your audience responds to most (you can tell what’s working with how many emails get opened for each style)
TAKE ACTION:
Let’s put all of this together in an action plan to get you moving. Do this:
- Look at your email marketing stats. What’s working and what isn’t? Which types of emails get the most opens and the most clicks? What can you learn from that to make your email marketing more relevant to your audience?
- Decide on a day and time that you’ll be emailing your list every week
- Test. Test and Test. Learn what your community likes and how they like to be spoken too. You will see this by evaluating your open rates and your click rates.
Love & Healthy Hustle,
Rachel Feldman
P.S. Check out the latest Done for You Opt-in Freebie here. Challenges are the hottest thing right now. You can email your list once to join and once before the official start date. Keep it simple when you email your list and make sure there are tips, tools and tricks in your emails. People buy or sign up for challenges because they SEE value. Give them value.
