If you want to grow your business, then you need to get an email marketing strategy. Here’s everything you need to know about email marketing for beginners.
Email Marketing for Beginners
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What really is email marketing?
Email marketing is all about you. It’s a way to cultivate your ideal clients and use email as a way to market and sell your products and services to them.
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Believe it or not, an email list is the most important thing you can have for your business. Why? Because they’ve taken the extra step to opt-in – that means more than a like on Facebook or a follow on Instagram. In a world where we’re all protecting our emails against spam… giving that to someone else is powerful stuff.
The people on your email list are also filtered to be people who are probably interested in buying something from you. A lot of them probably got there because they already bought something from you, or they opted-in to get a freebie that’s similar to the content you’re selling. Capitalize on that!
This is a list of people who are interested in your business that you own. You don’t own your Instagram followers or your Youtube subscribers. If all the social media platforms shut down today and you don’t have an email list… you’d be stuck.
Email lists are also one of the best and most accurate ways to measure conversion rates. It takes out the guesswork when you try and figure them out from social media.
First thing’s first – you have to pick a software.
Building a email list definitely does not mean you’re making a spreadsheet of emails and then sending personal outreach from your Gmail account. You need to get on an email service!
There are tons of options out there. At Hey Jessica HQ, we recommend ConvertKit. It’s a platform built for content creators. It’s also cheap and easy to use to get started. (If you’re trying to decide between Convertkit and MailChimp… always pick Convertkit. This post can tell you why.)
Email Marketing Strategy
Your emails should NEVER look like an email from Old Navy.
You know the ones – tons of pictures and big letters that say “SALE ON JEANS” in all caps. That strategy does not work for small businesses.
You don’t want to constantly be abusing your email list with sales. They signed up because they want helpful content from you! If you’re a product-based business, you can get away with this more than others – but be cautious.
Use your list to nurture people!
Let them get to know you on a deeper level before you push your sales on them. The 80/20 rule is key: 80% of the time, your content should be helpful, free substantial content, and 20% of the time you can sell to them.
Date your email list.
Email marketing is a whole lot like dating. Selling to someone immediately after they give you their email is like getting someone’s number and immediately asking to marry them. You’ve got to date them first! Get the people on your email list to know you, like you, and trust you before you sell to them.
Now let’s say you’ve built your email list but you aren’t sure what kind of content to send. Try to follow these guidelines.
Four Tips for Starting an Email List
- Send an email like you’re talking to a friend.
- Send an email at least once per week.
- Give them helpful information that will help them on their journey, whatever that is.
- Sell to them AFTER you do all of the above!
If you use the right software, get people on your list, and take the time to “date” them – you're good to go!
