:[].

Surefire Ways To Build An Email From Scratch

Building your email list should be your first priority, I know there’s a saying going around that email is dead, just take a minute to look in your inbox and tell me if that’s true? I’ll wait 😀

Just look at businesses large and small, everytime you go to their website they are asking you to signup on their email list to either receive some sort of incentive, like free shipping or 20% off your first order, this should tell you how important building your email list is.

Take a moment and examine the emails that are sent to you from brands and coaches that you love. Organize your emails into categories. Promotions, Challenges, Optins, Webinars.

You can gain some valuable information from their emails:

  • Headlines
  • Copy (how they word their email)
  • Offers
  • Promotions

Now you have a good idea of what goes into getting your customers attention, I am not saying use their ideas verbatim, but utilize it as a guide when drafting your own emails.

Once you have a clear plan as to what product or service you are creating, then you can begin developing a process to take them through your sales funnel.

Another reason why it’s a good practice to plan out your emails in advance is, you want to continue to keep your brand before your audience, or else they will lose interest and opt-out, you also don’t want them just sitting on your email list.

Creating An Email Campaign

Your money is in your list, and this is why it is important to be constantly list building. When you have offers you can promote them to your list and give them coupon codes and free shipping as an incentive to being on your list.

One way to kill an email list is to give them a free resource and never follow up and just leave them hanging there, after a while when you do send them an email your open rates will be low or non-existent.

Begin by creating an email campaign for what you’re promoting, but first, you want to nurture, nurture, nurture. I don’t know about you, but I get annoyed when I just signed up on someone’s list to receive a free resource, and the next email is trying to sell me something.

Wait a minute I don’t even know about your brand, that’s like going out with someone on a first date and they ask you to marry them, that would be so weird 🤔 You have to build a relationship with your subscribers telling them about your business and how you can solve their problems.

Create a FaceBook group and invite them there so you can continue to give them more content about your brand and how you can help them.

 

Targeted Email Campaign

  • Welcome Letter (thanking them for downloading the free resource)
  • Email within the next 2 days You can use getresponse for your email autoresponder to drip out your emails. (This email is inquiring if they have taken action on the information in the free resource) this is where you can have a link to your Facebook group so you can continue to give them value.
  • Next dripped email can ask them a question, where are they stuck at, you can guide them to reply to the email or join your Facebook Group where you can answer their question via live or recorded video.
  • Next dripped email can be a free resource that you have already created and it’s a bonus because you appreciate them being a subscriber.
  • The next dripped email can be about a free webinar or challenge that’s in your Facebook group so they have to be a member to get the free content.
  • The next email is about an upcoming offer that you have and for them being a subscriber you are giving them an incentive to purchase a coupon code/ free shipping/ discount, you give them a heads up when the product/service will be available with a cut off date because you want them to know it’s for a limited time.
  • The next email is what you are promoting with the discount in the email.

 

This is a targeted email campaign and you can rinse and repeat this process for all of your promotions. You have just created an email sales funnel via nurturing your subscribers.

Now what you want to do with those who are already part of your Facebook Group is to segment them so this way you’re not constantly sending them emails to join your group.

Segmenting your email list is a great way to send your subscribers the information they want instead of random emails.

When you send out emails ask your subscribers what content would they like to recieve from you, this will ensure your open rates are higher.

And for those subscribers who haven’t opened up your emails within the last 30-60 days remove them, your goal is to create a clean list with engaged subscribers.

Each time you create an email campaign determine what is your end goal and reverse engineer your emails to give value so when they get to the offer it’s a no brainer to purchase.

 

Welcome Series

A welcome series is a set of messages that you have set to go out on various days for those who are new subscribers to your list.

The welcome series is to get them familiar with your brand it’s a way of onboarding them as vip’s to your list. Here are some emails that you can send out as your welcome email series.

1. Freebie/Welcome (goes immediately
2. A link to one of you most popular podcast or videos (send after 24hrs)
3. Your personal story of how you got started and why. (send after 2 days)
4. Send a link to a PDF that has a list of the tools you use in your business. (Send a day after the last email)
5. Send an email asking them a question of where there struggle is and invite them to join your Facebook group where they can ask the question and receive feedback from you on a live video. Insert Facebook group link in email. (send this email (1 day after the last email)

These examples keep your subscribers engaged and this allows for your open rates to be higher. WARNING, do not flood your subscribers with emails everyday, or you will run the risk of having low open rates or unsubscribes. let them know in the 1st welcome message how many times you will email them.

How to Get Your Emails Opened

Before you can get any results from email marketing, your list needs to be full of targeted and interested audience members. The next important aspect is getting your emails opened. Let’s explore the different ways in which you can entice your audience to open your emails so that they can receive the value of your messages.

Build Trust and Relationships From the moment they provide their email address and join your list, it’s time to use every opportunity to establish trust, promote your expertise, and build a relationship with each member of your email list. You can accomplish this by understanding the process your prospect goes through once they provide their information.

Then use each step of that process to reinforce what your promises are.

Thank You Page – Depending on how you have set up your system your audience may be taken directly to the thank you/ download page to download the opt-in. This is where you can explain what they can expect from your email messages, along with the download instructions.

This page not only provides info but shows respect and appreciation to your subscriber, which is important to building a trusting relationship.

Double Opt-in Message – If you’re using an email system that requires a double opt-in message, readers may be taken to instructions about opting in for your list so that they can receive download instructions. You begin to build trust by explaining that you use the double opt-in for their safety and security as well as to verify that they want to receive the info requested.

First Email – Once someone opts-in and/or verifies the opt-in, you will need to send the first email, also called the “welcome” email. Although you may have given the reader all of the information needed, it’s important to remind them of the info and links in an “official” message.

Be sure to thank them and let them know when to expect the next email. These first messages are often part of an autoresponder series. Remember, when you make these promises to your prospects you need to stick to them. So, don’t blow smoke.

Tell them exactly what to expect, when to expect it, how it will work, and follow through. Let them know how often you’ll send emails, the type of information they will contain, and other pertinent information.

 

Create Actionable, Personalized Subject Lines

If your subject line doesn’t resonate with the person receiving it, they’re not going to open it. If it looks like it’s from a stranger, or someone they don’t know, like, or trust they’re not going to open it.

These tips will help you create subject lines that really make sense to your recipients, ensure more emails are opened, which means your audience is more likely to answer your calls to action.

Be Clear Not Clever – When you create an effective subject line ensure it both considers your audience and your goals while conveying a sense of urgency. The more you can personalize the subject line the better. Avoid the use of puns, unless it really works with your audience, because you want them to know what’s in the email.

Ensure Your Subject Line Matches Your Email Copy – Don’t try to trick your email recipients into opening an email with a subject line that doesn’t match the copy of the email. What is the email about, who is it to, and what is the benefit for them to opening it? Try to express that in the subject line.

Use a Friendly Reply Email — Don’t use a “no reply” or look too corporate with your reply email address. When possible, use your name. People are more likely to open your email message if they feel it came from someone that they know. You want your audience to be able to hit reply to send you a message if something in the email resonates with them. It builds trust.

Email subject lines that are actionable, personalized, and relevant are more likely to be opened than emails that use trickery to get people to open them.

Sure, we’ve all been fooled by an interesting subject line that tricked us to open it, only to find information that was not relevant. This is not a good practice for a business owner who wants to earn money through email marketing.

Keyword Research

Focus on the highlighted area, when you place this tool on your browser and search for a key word, you will see the results of how much this keyword has been searched per month. 18,100 people are looking for ways to lose weight.

If  your industry is health or weight loss related, then this information would be gold for you, because you can now create products around what people are searching for.

With this tool you can also download the CSV file to see what topics you can create based on the number of people who are looking for it.

Now creating content to build your list becomes doable, as well as creating the products that assist in solving your target customers problem.

  • Keyword Search Resources

Here’s a list of keyword tools to get you started some are free and some are paid subscriptions, choose what’s best for your business and rock it out!

I want to thank one of my readers Alicia for sharing a how to guide that she found on Answer The Public to help you get the most out of the platform here’s the link https://www.websiteplanet.com/blog/ultimate-guide-answer-public-go-pro/

 

Lessons I learned About My Business

List building is such an important component in your business, and many entrepreneurs skip this step at the beginning of their business, how do I know? Because I was one of them. 

 One of the key distractions when starting out in this digital space is following coaches or influencers who boast about how to make 5 figures in 30 days, how to 10x your Instagram followers or how to grow & monetize your YouTube channel fast or sell out your online course in 48hrs

The key point is when you sign up for their free resource that boasts of their promise, they are building their list and offering you content on how to achieve those results.

One of the problems is, if you don’t have an engaged list of followers then it will be pretty hard to achieve those results. 

One thing you must be mindful of as a new entrepreneur, don’t buy into someone’s results without having to go through your process to get to your results.

 Everyone’s journey as an entrepreneur is different depending on these factors.

  1. Time Investment
  2. Money Investment
  3. Having a strategy in place
  4. Monitoring data
  5. Consistency
  6. Mindset

Time Investment

Not every entrepreneur has the same amount of time to invest in their business which makes the process take longer if they don’t have the capital to invest to receive quick results.

Money Investment

Having the capital to invest in your business will save you time and open doors for the resources you need in your business and not everyone has the same amount of money to invest to get the results they desire.

Strategies come in many forms:

  1. Marketing
  2. Content
  3. Social Media
  4. SEO
  5. Email Marketing

And the list goes on so you have to know where your focus needs to be when starting out, or you will be all over the place.

Monitor

How often do you check your social media analytics? How often do you change your tactics/strategy based on those numbers?

Consistency 

Consistency is key when growing your business, just as you are consistent in showing up to a 9-5 you have to be more determined in your business, because you have to hold yourself accountable to get the job done no matter how many hrs it takes to complete it.

Mindset

This was something I had to overcome If I wanted to see growth in my business, I had to get out of a scarcity mindset (thinking that there wasn’t enough to go around) limiting beliefs had me stuck in believing that I couldn’t achieve the success that others were experiencing in their business.

Once I made a commitment to myself to go forth and stop sabotaging my business, that’s when I had a mindset shift.

When you know what the key factors are surrounding your business, then you won’t waste time trying to skip your process to get to someone else’s results. 

They may show you the process they did to get to that result however, what you don’t know is:

  1. How many times did they have to perfect the process before achieving success
  2. How much money did they invest
  3. Did they work alone or with a team
  4. Did they meet their money goal
  5. Did they spend more than they made

The reason why this is important for you to know this is because it’s very rare for you to achieve success on your first try, you have to measure and tweak until you come up with a repeatable process or system.

And just because it worked for someone in their business doesn’t mean you will achieve the same results in your business. 

Do you ever read the fine print on some of the claims of a site that goes something like this 

(Any reference or income examples of our businesses and/or the examples of others on any of our web pages are exceptional results, which do not apply to the average person and are not intended to represent or guarantee that anyone will achieve the same or similar results)

Example:  If I am new on the scene and I am a life coach I help women 45-60 who are empty-nesters and are in a stage of their lives where they want to start their own business now that their children are grown but don’t know how to get started.

I know I want to connect with these women however, I have not put out any messaging to attract my audience.

If I see a coach or influencer on Youtube, Facebook or Instagram telling me If I download their free resource to make $5000 in the next 30 days, or take this training that will show me how to sell out my online course in 48hrs.

Problem: The problem isn’t with the free resources or even the training, the problem is that I am trying to receive a result without putting key components in place, that would have made their resources more valuable to me.

Working Backwards

What is the first thing that you as an entrepreneur should be doing, when starting out?

  1. Developing or creating the product or service that you know solves a problem for your target audience because you have had success with it yourself.
  2. Creating Free or low-cost opt-ins to build your subscribers list.
  3. Creating email campaigns to nurture your target audience before selling to them.
  4. Creating landing pages and driving traffic to your opt-ins
  5. Sending your subscribers an upcoming promotion that you’re having and creating a webinar around it to give them more information about the product or service you are promoting.

Testing 123

Starting out in this space I did nothing to know if my time online was producing any results because I was not testing or utilizing tools like Google Analytics or Facebook pixel to measure  my traffic or optimizing my website on what needed to be adjusted or 86ed all together.

You need to test what type of emails your subscribers are interested in, sending them surveys and asking them questions. Email marketing is the most cost-efficient way to grow your business and has a higher ROI than running ads.

Testing takes time, growing a business takes time, and many entrepreneurs want to skip the process of learning about their business just to make money.

In one of my podcast interviews I spoke to a successful digital marketing expert Leanna Debellve, who told me how she worked in a chiropractor’s office doing insurance claims for her boss, and he needed help with marketing she didn’t know much about it but learned how to do it for her job, and soon the doctor’s clients were asking her could she help them with their marketing.

From Leanna taking the time to learn a valuable skill set, she now runs her own social media marketing agency. She travels all over the world, London, Sweden, Dubai, and Canada speaking to business owners on how to use social media marketing to grow their business.

It would make good business sense to double down on learning all you can with email marketing because truth be told, you don’t need a large list to make a good income, however, you need an engaged list of loyal subscribers who believe in your brand.

Here’s to creating an awesome email list 😃

Michele

 

 

 

Protected by Copyscape
.
Copyright © 2021 Michelecriley.com