Out of all the ways to market your company, building an email list will be the most important one.

People often forget about the power of the mailing list. You start a business and the first thing that is often done is snagging your profile name on Instagram and the effort is put into growing your social media following. The reality is, you can spend years building content on other platforms like Facebook and Instagram but you don’t own those leads; Facebook, Instagram and Google do.

What would happen if Instagram and Facebook shut down tomorrow?

Social media is constantly changing its algorithms and sometimes you end up with a penalty without even knowing what you did! Even if your search rankings disappear and all your social media followers disappear, you’re still able to use your email list to promote your company and you never have to worry about a third party changing the rules on you. Facebook can decide tomorrow to decrease the reach you had with your fans to encourage business to pay for ads, but you don’t have these types of restrictions when someone has given you permission to send them useful emails.

Your clients want to have their hand held and be nurtured!

Building an email list is so so crucial because you’re building an intimate relationship with your potential clients. Your email is sitting right in their inbox next to the emails from their friends, family and coworkers. Emails also don’t go anywhere until they are read! When you write a really useful email people might save the email and refer to them more than once and even share it with friends and family who might find the information useful! This is the opposite of our good friend social media which may disappear (think Instagram stories) or may not even be seen by your following because the algorithm decided to not even show someone your content.

EVERYONE CHECKS THEIR EMAIL.

After you wake up, what is one of the first things you do in the morning? I’m sure I’m not the only one who eagerly opens her email! Especially as a business owner (which you either are or are going to be since you’re taking this course), we know the importance of checking the email to see what our clients were up to while we were sleeping to help us plan out our day. One thing that I have heard over and over again is that people think emails are spammy and annoying. Emails might be annoying if you really don’t want to be receiving them and don’t care about what the emails are about. I’m sure we’ve all been there where the incentive to sign up for a list is so good, but then the content fizzles and we aren’t interested anymore. The truth is, we don’t care about those people who don’t care about our content because they most likely won’t purchase or care about what you have to say anyway. Your ideal clients will WANT to open those emails and will be eager to hear from you!

Nothing gets engagement like email. If someone has given you their email address, they are ready to engage with your content, services or products. The open rate for emails is much higher than then the ratio for social media…

The average social media view rate is 5% while emails average around 11%! More than double!

Ok, so we know important building an email list but now what, Noella?

1.Pick an email service 

We use ActiveCampaign!

I feel like we have tried every service out there and had been using MailChimp until recently when ActiveCampaign won us over. There are so many benefits to using ActiveCampaign and we are going to outline a few of them right now.

Automation – ActiveCampaign also allows you to set up automations. Setting up an automation is like doing the work once then letting ActiveCampaign do the rest. You might not realize it but most campaigns you receive in your inbox are automated– especially if the emails are leading up to a big sell like a course, event or other big-ticket purchase. With ActiveCampaign automations are simple to set up and then they do the work for you.

There are also heaps of features that might be especially helpful depending who your clients are! ActiveCampaign seamlessly integrates with your website so you can send abandoned cart emails, product notifications, order notifications and more.

Basically, if you’re using anything else other than ActiveCampaign, you’re missing out!

2. Delivering powerful content at the right time:

Delivering powerful content is great, delivering powerful content at the RIGHT TIME is ideal.

The right time has a couple different definitions we are going to look at; day of the week and keeping your content relevant.

Day of the Week

As with anything you put out into the online world, there is an optimal time to do so. Sending out your newsletters also falls under this category. Just think of the time and effort you’re going to put into creating newsletters each week or each month. You want to be sure that when you hit send, you’re setting yourself up for the maximum return on investment and making the most of the calls to action you are providing those subscribed to your newsletter.

Studies show that TUESDAY is the best day of the week to send out newsletters. The best time to send out newsletters is MIDDAY. Why do you think that is? Well, we think it’s because by Tuesday, the person receiving your email will have already gone on a deleting spree of emails that stocked up over the weekend, making Tuesday (followed by Wednesday in second place) the best day of the week. As for time, it can be easy to wake up in the morning, open your email, and just delete everything that seems irrelevant. By mid-afternoon, people are perhaps searching for a distraction or something to fill their lunch or midday coffee break with. This is when you can optimize on your ideal client and put effort into learning what their email routine is like.

Relevance

The second piece of the puzzle is Relevance. You want your email blasts to be relevant to what is happening in the world. If the holidays are coming up, there is a clear hot topic to be mentioning. If a big event is happening in the world (think election time, etc) then there is another key point you can jump into. Even the seasons changing provide a great area for you find some relevant content to slip into your newsletters. This leads us to a nice little tip for you– double check before sending your newsletter. If you like to plan in advance, do a quick pop in and read through of your newsletter before sending to be sure all the information is still relevant.

Being sure information is also relevant is also helpful when considering what kind of helpful content you can provide for your subscribers. Maybe you can create a fun Instagram Story template that can be used to say ‘I voted’ or to ‘fill in your Holiday wishlist’. If you’re trying to provide free, strategic planning resources to help people stay on track with their goals, January or September are a great time to release these pieces of content because there is that fresh, new year vibe in the air at these two key times.

Considering these two points can change how you approach the content you are sending out. You’ll feel less inclined to recycle blog content and more inclined to relate to your subscribers, which will turn into a more devout following and ideally, more clients for you!

3. Grow your list:

Harness the power of social media!

You can place your opt in on your facebook page, in private Facebok groups, in your instagram account #linkinprofile, a blog post, instagram stories and a facebook live or on a podcast interview. Include call to actions and invite people to join your list rather than a sales pitch.

Create a valuable freebie!

You’ve seen them all over, the ad or post that says “download my 5 tips for taking over the world”. You click on the download button and you’re promoted to give your name and email address before getting the freebie. This is the most popular way for entrepreneurs to grow their email list, because it works! You offer your ideal client something that they really want, something that will solve one of their problem. Make the freebie enticing and amazing and you just sit back and watch that email list grow baby!

Want to learn more about growing your email list and the steps that you need to take to get there? Visit my Business Coaching page and learn how I can create a strategy for you and give you the steps needed to start growing that list!

xo

Noella