A beginners guide to creating an email marketing strategy
I know that when you run a small business, marketing can feel super overwhelming. Therefore, I’ve written a beginners guide to email marketing. Hopefully, this will make the mountain of digital marketing a bit easier to climb!
If you know me then you will know that I bang on about email marketing strategy *quite* a bit. In my opinion, it is the number one most important part of your digital marketing strategy. I go into a few of the reasons why I think this in this post here.
Aaaand I know. It’s daunting. A lot of people HATE writing emails. They don’t think their audience wants to hear what they have to say. Nearly all of my clients come to me with either no list at all. Or, they have a list and they haven’t contacted them in months (sometimes even years!).
With this blogpost I’m hoping to make things feel a little easier when it comes to your email marketing strategy. I’ll be giving you some actionable tasks that you can take and implement when you have the time. And, bit by bit, your email marketing strategy will be born!
Here are some quick points on why I LOVE email marketing, just to get us started…
It is the only marketing data that you actually OWN. (You don’t own those Instagram followers and not to be a scaremonger but it is possible they might one day disappear!)
It counts as permission marketing which means the audience on your email list literally OPTED IN to receiving your emails. This is NOT to be taken lightly!
There is no algorithm. You get to decide how often you want to contact your audience and you won’t be penalised for changing things up now and again.
Get yourself set up on an email marketing platform.
There are quite a few of these out there to choose from and this can be daunting in and of itself. I’ve created this blogpost to discuss my top three favourite email marketing providers to hopefully make this decision a little easier for you!
Decide on the types of emails you want to send.
This will depend on what your business is, who your audience is and what you’re ‘selling’. It also depends on what feels right for YOU. There is no one size fits all with email marketing and my biggest piece of advice would be to work in a way that suits you. If you don’t feel good when you’re writing your emails then your audience won’t feel good reading them either!
The emails could be a single story email, multiple stories email, a sales only email, or a hybrid of all the above!
Single story email - it does what it says on the tin. It’s one long form story, usually quite impactful and / or valuable to your readers. They don’t tend to have any sales pitches in them as it’s aim is to just give value to your audience.
Multiple story email - I love this type of email as a monthly round up to your audience. They basically pull together several pieces of content that your audience will gain loads of value from. Plus, because it’s quite a long one, this is where you can give them a taster of each story and then link out to blog posts / tutorials / websites etc. It’s a great way to pique your audience’s interest and then get them over to your website for more value. You *could* add a little ‘salesy’ pitch at the bottom of this one. Nothing too pushy but maybe mention something you have been working on, some tickets you have live for an event or a sale coming to an end.
Sales newsletter - This one is straight to the point and again does what it says on the tin. The goal of this newsletter is to get sales - after all you’ve gotta make some money!! This type of email is to be peppered in between your value rich emails. We want to give, give, give to the audience.. If we do nothing but send them sales emails then they will eventually get bored or frustrated and hit that unsubscribe button.
The hybrid - and here we bring them all together. Mix it up with lot’s of value - maybe an inspirational story alongside smaller value rich content pieces and then add a sales pitch in there too. You want to keep it more value than sales still, so i’d recommend 80 / 20 value / sales.
Decide on how many emails you want to send per month / week
Now you know the different types of emails you could be sending, it's time to decide which ones suit you best. (Remember, I wouldn’t recommend 100% sales, your audience needs value above all else if they are going to be nurtured to buy from you!) You need to decide how often you want to send them emails. Consistency is key here, so don’t put yourself under too much pressure and decide to start off with three emails per week!
Planning your content
This can feel scary but it should actually be the fun part!! Creating content is all about sharing your passion, knowledge and skills. And the main thing to remember is this… the people on your email list literally signed up to receive YOUR emails. They did that on purpose, not by accident. They want to hear what you have to say.
A few tips for planning content…
Batch create your content in one sitting for the fortnight / month ahead. This is a much easier and productive way to create content. Carve out some time in your diary to concentrate solely on this rather than flying by the seat of your pants each day trying to think of something to say. (Don’t worry, we’ve all been there!)
Recycle your content. Anything you have posted on social media or your website’s blog can be used in your email too. Some people on your email list may have already seen it but chances are that most of them haven’t, so make sure you’re sharing your content across all channels.
It doesn’t always have to be super in depth, inspirational, long form content. It can be light and fluffy - top five tips for XXX, 15 min tutorial on XXXX, your latest podcast / youtube video.
Build your list
It’s time to start building your list so that there is someone on there to actually receive all of these lovely emails you’re sending. You can do this in a number of ways…
Create a lead magnet / freebie to entice people into joining
Create a discount on your product if you’re a product based business
Advertise it on your social media accounts as a VIP club. Give them access to exclusive discounts, freebies, early access… that kind of thing!
Whichever email marketing platform you choose will allow you to create sign up forms. Here are a few of the types of forms you can use…
In-line forms - a form that sits embedded on a page on your website / blog. This can be in the form of a banner or a box.
Full-page forms - a form that has its own stand alone link and appears as a full page in the browser.
Pop-up forms - a form that pops up when someone lands on your website.
So, that covers pretty much the basics of getting started with your email marketing strategy. I could talk about this subject until the cows come home but for now I think that is enough to keep you going as you get started on this wonderful marketing adventure!
I’ve written another blog post with my top five tips for your email marketing strategy where I go into a little bit more detail on lead magnets and setting up your welcome sequence, so head over there if you’d like to dive deeper!
And if you would ever like to get some help with your email marketing for your small business then check out my services here. I’d love to help!