What to do with your subscription list
After last weeks' topic of what to give away to your subscribers, I had a few requests to dive a little deeper and explain what exactly you need to do with that list once you have them, so, here we are.
Like I mentioned last week, if you don't have (and use) a newsletter subscription list, you are missing out on dollars, like, a lot of them! Your subscription list is, or at least should be, full of your loyal customers – people who are in your ideal client mold that will want to buy what you're selling. So, you've given something away and you've gotten the right kind of people to subscribe, now what?
You need to keep them around, that's what! You need to provide them with valuable information in a consistent manner and keep them remembering you and your services. Let's break it down in steps, shall we?
- Pick a consistency schedule. Are you going to publish new content once per week, once per month, etc? You decide what you feel is sufficient for your audience and stick to it, be consistent! Your audience will forget about you, and the value you have, if you're not delivering consistent content that they can count on.
- Give away valuable content to your audience. So, let's say you're a wedding planner and your list is built of brides-to-be (which are obviously your ideal customer), you want to give them something they can use! Maybe one week your newsletter talks about how to deal with bridesmaids that aren't pulling their weight and the next week you touch on picking the perfect mother-of-the-bride gift. You want to give them content that they'll appreciate and use AND that will pose you as an expert in the field.
- Position yourself as an expert. I just said this up there ^, but, you need to produce content that's not only valuable to your subscribers but, also, positions you as an expert in your field.
- Don't push your products/services too much. You don't want an entire newsletter pushing your services, that's painful to write and painful for your subscriber to read and will almost guarantee some unsubscribes.
- Do advertise your services. Ha! Double-edged-sword, much? You do want to take a minute in each newsletter and address your services. This can be something as simple as a line that says, “Are you ready to take the stress out of your wedding and hand over the details?” with a link to your contact/services page – OR – it can be a graphic showing a preview of a new service or product. You need to advertise your services and do it well but not make the entire newsletter about it.
- Get Interactive. Ask your subscribers to share your newsletter in some way. That can be a super simple box with icons to share on social media sites or a premade Tweet to share or even a, “hey, I'd love for you to share this with someone that you think would value this”, etc. Or, you can get interactive by asking a question; maybe this could be something like, “Are one of your bridesmaids driving you crazy? I'd love to hear about it, email me at ****!”
- Continue promotion and subscription giveaway. Your giveaway can change periodically if you want it to or you can keep the same thing for a long period of time – just make sure you're continually promoting subscription to your list and, once you have content, you can use that to promote it as well!
I hope that helps, this business stuff is confusing!
And again, speaking of newsletters, I am sending one out today talking about how you shouldn't start fights in grocery stores – you don't want to miss it, so check your inbox or subscribe!