As tempting as it may be to start an email list to promote your business because you've heard it is the thing to do, hold your horses! Emails may be easy to send, but you can screw yourself over if you start sending them out without being strategic in your approach.
Some people do email marketing for a living, meaning that there are job titles for this marketing activity. This information should let you know that it may not be as easy as you think to execute email marketing campaigns. So before you step your foot into the email marketing pool, ask yourself the following:
Do I have a brand strategy?
A brand strategy helps you to communicate a consistent brand message. Your emails will be nothing but messages. You should want them to connect with your audience on a deeper, emotional level to give you a competitive advantage. Every business owner needs a brand strategy before promoting their business.
The brand strategy will provide you with your brand's position, personality, voice, tone, message, and story. It will also give you direction as to how you can best express your brand. Until you have a brand strategy, you will lack the humanization of your brand that is needed for your email marketing messages to work well for you.
Do I know who my ideal consumer is?
If you do not know who you are trying to reach, what is the point of sending out emails? Knowing who your ideal consumer is will determine everything from when to schedule your emails to the type of information you will be sharing.
You should know your ideal consumers' wants, needs, fears, and desires related to your services. Then, you want to speak to them in each of your emails while providing readers with value (education) or an opportunity to work with you.
Do I know what I am going to write about?
You can write about anything. But does it make sense to write about everything as a business owner? Probably not, as you should focus your attention on writing content that your audience wants to read.
And like all pieces of content, your content should have a goal in mind or a call to action. Thoughtful emails take time, so make sure they serve a purpose. Some goals for your emails can be to:
Sell a product (educational, digital, physical)
Drive traffic to your website
Build relationships with who you serve
Increase subscribership
Do I know how often I will be sending emails?
How often do you like to receive emails from one company? Trick question. How frequently you send emails is never about you. It is about your audience. If you can share phenomenal content each time, then sure, send out emails daily. But if your subscribers start to run away, you may want to lower the frequency of your emails.
I send an email to my list bi-weekly. It is a content schedule that I can manage. It is a schedule that allows me to write thoughtful content that people say they enjoy. The exception would be for promoting something time-sensitive, like signing up for a class by a particular date.
When you are promoting something, you want to increase the frequency of your emails, sending out emails every few days until your event or sale ends.
Would I enjoy reading my own emails?
The best way to know if your email is enjoyable would be to listen to it. If it doesn't interest you or make sense to you when you hear it, edit your email or scrap it. You do not only want to listen for the quality of your emails, but you want to determine if it is really of interest to your audience. You don't want subscribers to read your email and feel like they could care less. And if you are using images, do your pictures support the message of your email?
Lastly, reading starts with your subject line. Would you click on your email in your inbox if you read your subject line in it?
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