Email marketing is a key component of content conversion strategy.
And business owners who use email marketing to establish connection and nurture relationships get more sales. But this isn’t the case for everyone and it doesn’t always happen with ease. And, more importantly, when it doesn’t go well, it’s easy to lose hope.
Without results and revenue, frustration sets in and many business owners burn out and give up. They think that no one needs another email in their inbox so why should they bother.
This is where they go wrong. It’s not the quantity of emails that gives email marketing a bad name, it’s the lack of quality.
Email marketing that helps your audience connect with you and get value each time you email leads to them opening more of your emails. And the more emails they open, the more opportunity to connect with you and your solution.
Before We Get Into Email Marketing
The customer journey has a few steps before we get to email marketing.
Generating more sales begins with clarity. As a business owner, you need to get clear on your core message and your ideal audience. From this you can start the process of capturing leads and building your email list with an effective lead magnet or opt-in.
Then you create offers, packages, service listings, and figure out your pricing. It seems like you have everything lined up and in place … but the sales don’t come.
Lead generation begins with a compelling free gift that invites your specific ideal prospects into your world and on to your email list. Then there are a series of critical steps that invite these prospects to become paying clients.
Are all of these statements true about your free gift or lead magnet?
Highly desirable content topic.
Easily consumable format and delivery.
Establishes your expertise and credibility.
And initiates meaningful connection with your audience.
If you can’t confidently say, “Yes!” to each of these, address what’s missing because you need this foundation before focusing on email marketing.
Email Marketing: Nurture Sequences
Having an email nurture sequence is a standard way to follow up your opt-in with a series of emails that helps subscribers put your free gift into use. This series, typically called an autoresponder sequence, is filled with opportunity that many business owners fail to optimize.
Email marketing is the fuel to ignite sales or the firehose that reduces them to soggy debris. And the process begins with this first email marketing sequence of autoresponders.
It’s not enough just to have these emails in place and loaded up for delivery. With the right strategy, the way you communicate during this early stage in the relationship can set the stage for connection that leads to sales. Yet, many small business owners don’t recognize the hidden potential here.
Following up with new leads by initiating and nurturing relationships is the foundation for generating more sales.
Your Practice for New Leads
Review your current practice for new leads. As they join your email list, what comes next?
Assess Your Email Nurture Sequence
Assess your nurture series of email autoresponders against this criteria:
Are you acknowledging new subscribers with a timely, warm welcome?
Are you delivering high-value, actionable content?
Have you introduced yourself and highlighted your relevant experience?
Do your emails invite conversation and engagement?
Are you sharing outcome-based results your solution delivers?
Do you address the cost of not solving the problem?
Are they saying “yes” to your next step offer?
How well do you cover these? Are there holes in your process? This is your opportunity to create a foundation that leads to more sales.
Better Email Marketing
After assessing your current email marketing practice and your nurture sequence, make a commitment to address the shortcomings you discover.
Use the criteria to make improvements. Revise emails that can be more impactful, add ones that are missing, and remove content that doesn’t contribute to establishing a meaningful relationship with your new leads.
When you use email marketing to set a system in place to create this connection, more sales follows. Help new leads see you as their best option so more of your ideal clients purchase from you and recommend you to others.
Connection that Leads to Sales
Connection is one of the pillars of my 4 C Method for content that leads to more leads, clients, sales, and referrals. Learn more about how to use this strategy to serve more people and generate more revenue with immediate access to an on-demand masterclass here.
If you don’t know where your next client is coming from, your content cycle needs some tweaking.
What is your current practice for creating and sharing your content? Are there certain steps you follow? Are you consistent?
Without a clear plan and regular action, results suffer … or are non-existent. But no need to despair, there is a way out.
The Content Cycle
An effective content cycle includes creating a new piece of content and following these next steps:
Post new content to your website blog.
Email your subscriber list.
And share the new blog on social media.
Three fairly simple and straightforward steps. And yet, many business owners only do this part of the way, or occasionally, or even not at all.
Why All 3?
When you fall short of creating valuable new content and sharing it on your blog, in email marketing, and on social media, you are leaving money on the table. A comprehensive content marketing strategy checks all three boxes. That’s what makes it thorough, aligned, and well, … comprehensive!
The Blog
The blog on your website is truly your real estate online. You design the layout and the messaging and the customer journey once people are there. As I’ve done here in this blog, you can direct people to a related topic in another blog like this one on Content Strategy and the Customer Journey. You decide the pathway and create the steps.
Another strategy is to position your opt-in in the sidebar, at the end of the blog, or as a call to action. For example, as we talk about the content cycle, here’s some help for you to avoid these 3 Common Content Mistakes.
This way when new people find you and come to your blog they have even more opportunity to learn about you, explore more of the website, assess your expertise and credibility, and to stay more connected by becoming a subscriber.
Your Email List
Your email list of subscribers … so often neglected or bombarded with promotion. And these are the people most likely to buy from us.
The sweet spot in email marketing is regular, engaging conversational emails to share valuable content that sparks discussion and a desire to learn more. When you create new content on the blog this is a prime piece of content to share with your audience of subscribers.
And rather than just plop it into the email, give people an introduction and some context to build an interest in reading what you have to share on the blog and then drive them to the blog post with a link.
Social Media
Social media posting is not just for cat videos and your latest vacation spots. It’s an ideal way to connect with potential clients, referral sources, collaborators, and other online business owners who can enrich your online business journey.
And yet many business owners view this as a nicety, an after-thought. Social media is an integral part of a comprehensive content cycle. That newly created piece of valuable content on your blog needs to be shared on social media … and not just once. Circulate and repurpose your content over time.
Encourage and prompt conversation on the topic. Listen to what people are saying. Continue the conversation and when appropriate, offer to take it further into a private message or a call. This is how we move from social media to potential sales conversations that lead to enrollment.
And it all starts with your content.
Here’s a quick video about making the content cycle work for you in your business.
Do you have a content cycle and are you following it? Tune in to the conversation about mapping out a strategy for new content so that you can attract and enroll more of you best paying clients.
Email marketing is a core component of effective content conversion strategy. And yet, many business owners aren’t using it to attract and convert more of their best paying customers. Dispel some of the myths and assumptions about your email practice to nurture the relationship with subscribers.
How Often Should I Email?
The first place many people stumble is when it comes to the frequency of emails to their subscriber list.
Some almost never email, believing they don’t want to “bother” people on their list or promote their business too frequently. (More on Email Marketing Assumptions here.)
And some bombard subscribers with emails, using almost not discretion about what is valuable enough to warrant an email.
Neither practice works for most of us. Rather, it’s important to find a cadence and a schedule to guide your email marketing practice in a way that delivers value, engages, and builds relationships.
What Gets in the Way of Emailing?
There are endless reasons why business owners don’t use email marketing to effectively nurture subscribers. Let’s get some of them out in the open here. Some of the ones I hear most frequently include … I don’t:
… have that much time.
… know where to begin or what to write about.
… want to sound overly promotional.
… think it’s long enough since my last email.
… want to email when I haven’t done it in months.
And even more challenging are the ongoing mindsets we cling to about email marketing:
I’m not good at it.
I’ve always hated writing.
They don’t want to hear from me.
And the list goes on. One of the most common thoughts about emailing is “I only want to email when I have something of high value.”
Defining High Value
By telling ourselves we only want to email high value content, we allow a boulder of an obstacle to get in our way. After all, high value is relative. And we many entrepreneurs don’t give themselves enough credit for what they know. So this becomes an easy way to cop out of sending an email.
Yet, if we take a moment to examine this we would recognize that the very content, tips, and strategies we use daily ARE high value to our subscribers. In fact, what comes easily to us is often the very reason people subscribed in the first place. They want, even need, for us to share our knowledge and skills in the area that they find challenging. And when we don’t email consistently with this value, we’re not holding up our share of the arrangement.
How to Choose Your Topics
There’s an endless supply of email and content topics unique to you and your business. They are so close to us, we often don’t recognize them. And when we do, we then fall back into thinking they’re not high value enough. Let’s dispel that right now. Here are a few of the ways we come up with content topics in The Content Conversion Lab.
List the components of your core service or program.
For each component, identify the related challenges, solutions, and first action steps.
Decide on a short series of content from just one of these lists and begin creating the content.
Come back to the other lists and either do a next series or mix and match between lists for even more variety.
Your Next Steps
Today I’d love you to your imagine your ideal customer out there in the world struggling with the challenge you solve. What one piece of content can you share with them right now to make a difference?
Write that down. Then email it to that person and all the rest of your email subscribers.
Create.
Show up.
Be the solution.
And each time you do this you’re nurturing the relationship with that person who is getting closer to a decision about hiring or referring someone to you.
Email marketing best practices include analyzing data about customer behavior rather than making assumptions.
In this video we’ll examine some of the common assumptions that drive email marketing decisions.
Common Assumptions
When creating content to share with your list of email subscribers, it’s easy to get caught up in assumptions. Here are some of the most common:
“No one wants another email in their inbox.”
“They already know about this. (So why email again?)”
“They’re not interested.”
“If they cared, they’d be clicking.”
These are just a few of the things we tell ourselves when we pretend we know what our clients are thinking. And often, these are not in the least bit true.
What Does the Data Say?
We have access to data that tells a more accurate story about email marketing behavior.
Email platforms typically have data in the reports for each email. At a minimum, statistics on what percentage of subscribers opened the email and what percentage clicked on particular links are common. Even if you were to have excellent open rates at around 30%, this means the other 70% never even opened the email. Which (of course!) also means that same 70% certainly didn’t even see the links or consume the content.
So, an assumption that “They already know about this” doesn’t really hold true at all!
And yet, many small business owners won’t send out a second email about the same offer because they buy into this assumption instead of the reality. Don’t let this be you!
Not only is a second email in order, but there needs to be a series of emails to give subscribers ample opportunity to consume enough valuable content to help them make a decision to act on the offer.
Another Costly Assumption
Let’s take a look at click rates and behavior. Yes, actual data. Click rates tell even more of the story.
What links were clicked?
Where were they in the email?
What information was shared before the link?
The data informs on whether people made it over to a sales page or a shopping cart or your blog. Once again, if we assume they don’t care about our content or “already know,” that is impossible if they never even saw the information to begin with.
Take Action
When a subscriber gives us an email address in exchange for our opt in or lead generator, we are responsible to deliver. And as part of that delivery, we need to show up consistently with content and action steps to help them with the challenge we solve. This is a relationship and we need to be active to nurture it.
Look at the data from your email marketing. Analyze it and make decisions based on what you learn … not on what you assume.
