Episode 007 – Email Marketing

Marketing today is overwhelming, there are so many people screaming at you to do so many things, You don’t even know if its working or reaching your prospective audience. The market is completely saturated for so many industries and we are being asked constantly to put our hands in our pockets and pay out big dollars for the privilege of speaking to our audience. For many small business owners this is just not possible, I am apart of so many groups and I keep seeing the same questions being asked, what can I do to reach my audience for the least amount of money. Email marketing is at the top of the list when it comes to effectively reaching your audience for the least amount of money!

Statistics

Year after year there are the rumours that this different marketing techniques are dead, and email marketing is no different, but I am here to tell you that its here to stay so get on board! There are so many statistics floating around about email marketing, and I wanted to share some of them here with you! Did you know that for every $1 you spend in email marketing you make $38 back, this is a huge return and you are probably wondering why. Emails themselves are tipped to reach over 4.9 billion users worldwide, that is half the worlds population all having access to an active email account.

Everyone Needs an Email!

Social media channels all need an active email account to sign up for their services, so when Facebook claims to be the most effective way to reach prospective audiences I smile knowing that they all need to have an email to join in the first place. Email is the currency of the web, and will be for a long time to come. With past pressures on social media channels to tighten security and privacy issues there are so many individuals rethinking how they use social media, with some abandoning it all together. By no means am I saying that social media is dying, its not but my focus is on the most effective way to market to your audience.

I want to share with you that 90% of emails get to their intended recipient, if we compare that to social media where you are lucky to get 2% of your facebook fans to see your posts! Facebook and other social media channels want to encourage the use of their paid features its just business for them. If you posted to 10k fans then only 200 people would see it on facebook versus 9k people getting your email.

Another element to look at is people on your email list have told you specifically that they want to hear from you, where on social media your message is going out cold and to people who may not be interested in what you have to offer!

Email Marketing as part of your strategy

Email marketing should be used alongside your other marketing efforts and shouldn’t be the only marketing you do, this includes your social media channels. Give your prospective audience the best opportunity to sign up to receive information from you directly into their inbox. For me my email list is like welcoming prospective audience members into my lounge room, its not like I’m standing out the front of my house and simply yelling into the unknown, with the hope that someone will hear me!

My aim is to get you to understand just how amazing email marketing is, and why its so important to create a strategy now to utilise this great avenue to grow your business. I hear from many business owners that it is complex and time consuming, I want to clarify that today, I don’t believe that it is hard but I do agree initially that setting up an email marketing strategy can take lots of time. My accounting background gives me a great insight into numbers, and for me I test and measure everything, and this takes time. You can pay someone to help you and it will speed up the process and learnings, but putting it together yourself will take time. There are so many resources available on the internet to help you setup an email marketing campaign and it can be really confusing trying to understand what you need.

Demystify Email Marketing

I want to demystify that for you now. You need an email marketing platform to build your email list on, and this can range from providers like Convertkit, mailchimp, keap or mailerlite, these are only a very few available and you can check them out on line. This will be your mechanism to send out your emails, then you need to work out what to write!

Your audience wants to hear from you regularly, I recommend once a week, but if that is too much at the beginning then try every two weeks. Any longer than that and you will be lost in the noise that is life today. The content itself should be carefully considered, I have discussed content planning in episode 001 and client onboarding in episode 004, these will help you to understand that you content needs to be specific. Specific to where your audience is right now in their journey with you. When first welcoming a new subscriber you really need to showcase who you are and what you do in a series of emails. This is not just about you, but about allowing that person the ability to understand if you are the right person to help them. You do not want people on your email list if they are not active and wanting what you have to offer, clean them out and keep attracting those that do want you!

With a 90% success rate on delivery, you need to beat the next hurdle, an amazing subject line! We get lots of emails daily and having a great subject line can be the difference between your email being opened or not.

Your content should reflect you and what your business stands for. It should not just be a mechanism to sell the current course or product, but a way to connect and ask questions. Audiences have become very savy over the last decade and ultimately we all want to be heard and work with businesses that have a soul. Connection is so important, people do business with people they like, simple!

Content ideas are so wide and varied but to name a few you can send out a blog post that you have written, discuss current topics and where you stand on them, talk about all the facets of what you do, no one knows their market better than you. But I feel like this can be curse for some, we can be too close to our own business to see all the amazing information that you have inside and can share.

Ask your audience for feedback, or help them to receive the information that is important to them through segmentation. Segmentation is the process of splitting your email lists into groups so only they get the information that they want to hear. A great example I saw recently was from Pat Flynn where he sent out an email asking what stage you were at in business. There is no point sending out information that is for people about to start their business to people who already have a business.

Email marketing can do so much of the heavy lifting when it comes to connecting with your audience. There is a feeling across the board that customers are feeling like they don’t matter and simply just a number in your process. Please I urge you all to make sure that when you do write your emails, write them with love, and a real intention to serve. To be of service is to honour all the people before you that helped you get to where you are now! If no one cared and didn’t share their wealth of knowledge, then the internet and business would be a very lonely place.

Email marketing is such an exciting subject and one that you need to dig into and get friendly with. In my mentoring roll I believe that email marketing is more important to setup first than a website, check out my great information sheet to find out why I think it is so important and steps that you can follow to get your email marketing on fire.

Download and additional help.

Check out my great checklist outlining the important steps that you can follow to get your email marketing started. Please as always share your ideas in the group or ask for help! If you are not part of Plan to Profit community then please check out the link below and join our brand-new community!

Meet Your Host

Carol Lange 

From a young age I have been surrounded by business success. Having formally studied a Double Degree of Bachelor of Commerce and a Bachelor of Management, this led to many successful opportunities.

I have been an employee for large accounting firms and international companies. I have run two highly successful businesses, becoming sought after in my industry internationally.

I have spoken nationally on the topic of money management and loved having the quiet coffee making radical changes for my clients. I am not a limelight chaser, just a quiet achiever looking to make a difference in the world.

Thankyou for joining me on the podcast, my dream is to inspire you to take action that will create a difference in your life! Dream no more and live the life that you have always wanted.