Email newsletters give your business a great opportunity to reach out to your audience regularly and build better relationships. That audience will be made up of your existing customers and anyone who has subscribed through your website.
Do you have an email list? If yes, are you using it?
It’s really easy to set up an email newsletter. It’s even easier to fail to use it effectively. I’ve lost count of the number of times that I’ve spoken to business owners in this position.
For example, I recently spoke to a business owner who was surprised that he didn’t have much engagement with a promotional email that he’d sent out. There were very few sales.
Unfortunately, he set up his email newsletter a couple of years ago. Between then and now, he’d sent out a small handful of emails. Half a dozen at the most.
His audience was not able to remember his business, because they didn’t hear from him regularly. This meant that many of them were unsubscribing or reporting his emails as spam.
As I mentioned above, email is a great medium for building better relationships. It’s a way of educating, nurturing and delivering value to your audience.
The emails that you send out will be on topics that are important to your audience. They could be about a specific problem that your audience suffers from. Perhaps it’s an educational piece that will help them to move the needle in their business or lives today.
The most important thing you can use in emails is stories. People love stories. They’re something that we all learn as children and we continue to enjoy through books, movies and music throughout our lives.
Adding stories and your personality to your emails helps to bring your audience closer to you. They get to know more about you and the team behind your business. This creates a better relationship.
When you set up an email list, you’re committing to a process. This is the process of sending out emails and delivering value. You may choose to send an email each week or perhaps you prefer to send a monthly email.
To get started, all you need to do is open up your email software and write an email. Popular platforms include MailerLite, Active Campaign and ConvertKit.
One final tip from me in this email is to write in advance. Every good email marketing platform will allow you to schedule your emails.
Write enough emails in advance so that you have a buffer of at least a month. For example, if you are sending out weekly emails, write and schedule four emails when you start out. Then keep topping up the schedule when you can.
Creating a buffer allows you to be busy. It gives you and your team an opportunity to focus on busy periods and to take time out of the business if you need it. Your emails will still be delivered to your audience on the schedule that you’ve set out.
Sending out emails to your subscribers is one of the best nurturing opportunities that you have at your fingertips. Use it to deliver value, stay memorable and be front of mind.
