“Email is dead,” they all say. Who, you might be asking? Just go to DuckDuckGo and search up ‘email is dead.’ “Experts” have made their predictions that email is going to be obsolete by such-and-such year.
But look at where we are now:
I still use email, the people on my email list still use email (Otherwise they wouldn’t be reading my emails, you know?), the business owners I know and follow still use email. Are you starting to get what I’m trying to tell you? If not, it’s that…
EMAIL IS NOT DEAD
Not even close.
Even though we have a lot of popular social media platforms at our disposal like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and the newest platform (At the time I’m writing this), TikTok, email still trumps them all at the end of the day.
Why Is Email Marketing the Best?
Here are a few good reasons why email marketing is the best:
1. Email Is Direct
Email is very personal and is one of the easiest (And fastest) ways to contact your potential customers. You can write emails that are tailored to their personal interests, and that helps build your relationships with them.
2. Higher Reach
Your readers are more likely to see your emails than to see your social media posts. According to Forrester, an American market research company, 90% of emails get delivered to your reader’s inbox, whereas only 2% of them see your posts on their social media news feed.
Yes, I’m especially talking about the people on Twitter or Instagram who follow thousands, or tens of thousands of people’s content. What do you think the chances are of them seeing your social media content?
3. Your Email List Belongs To You
When people willingly add their email addresses to your list, that information is rightfully yours to own. And you can contact those people whenever and (For the most part) however you want. In other words, you have more control.
Now let’s compare that to social media and search engines. Depending on your following, your social media content may be seen by hundreds or thousands of people in a rather short amount of time. When you work hard to optimize your website content to have it rank on the first page of search engine results, you’re going to have consistent traffic being directed onto your website.
Now for the bad news:
Social media and search engine companies can change their algorithms whenever they feel like doing so. And when they do, your social media exposure will most likely drop as well as your search engine rankings.
So what I’m trying to tell you is, it’s a terrible idea to rely on building your business on platforms you don’t have control over.
Here’s a true story where someone experienced this firsthand:
There’s a YouTube content creator I’ve been following for almost 10 years. In one of his podcast episodes, he revealed that at the peak of his career, he was making over $10,000 per month. After YouTube changed their algorithms multiple times, demonetized a bunch of his videos, and made their policies more strict after they got fined for violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, his income dropped to under $2,000.
And that’s just one real example. I’ve heard multiple stories about businesses and influencers getting screwed over by social media algorithm changes, even as far as getting completely kicked out of the platforms, which caused their income to completely disappear.
So When Should I Start Planning My Email Marketing Strategy?
You should’ve started yesterday, but that’s not possible now, huh?
So the next best thing to do is start today.
Without further ado, let’s get into the step-by-step strategy guide to help you set up your cyber bulletproof email marketing system.
Get Started With Email Marketing
STEP 1: Create a Lead Magnet
Most, if not, every single time you see a business ask for your email address, they’ll give you something in exchange. That’s called a lead magnet. When you do that, you’re basically giving them access to your inbox so they can send you newsletters and promotional emails.
But the lead magnet they gave you in exchange for your email address isn’t useless either. They’re supposed to give valuable information that’ll solve an immediate problem you’re facing and/or improve your business, lifestyle, or whatever it may be.
As an example, my personal lead magnet is the sample chapters of my book, How to Become an Email Titan. You can click on the hyperlink to check out the landing page.
The last thing you want to do is ask your potential customers for their email addresses in exchange for nothing. When you go to those websites and read something along the lines of, “Enter your email address to get biweekly or monthly updates,” it doesn’t really make them want to opt in.
Think of it from the potential customer’s perspective.
Assuming their inboxes are already bombarded with hundreds of other emails, it wouldn’t make sense for them to allow another person to send them newsletters. And if their inboxes are too busy, the chances of them reading your emails are very unlikely.
So the key is to give them a reason to look out for your emails.
One of the ways to do that is to send the lead magnet to their inbox as soon as they opt in.
But how about every other email you send after they get your lead magnet?
Slow down, we’ll get into that in a later section. But first, we go onto step two.
STEP 2: Create an Opt-in Page
So after you created your lead magnet, it’s time to create a page where people can get access to it.
This is going to be your opt-in page, or landing page.
Think of it as a shorter version of a sales page and that you’re selling your lead magnet instead of a paid product.
There are two ways you can do this:
1. Built-in Landing Page Builder
The first way you can create a landing page is by using a built-in landing page builder provided by email marketing softwares.
Every single email marketing software that exists should have a built-in landing page builder that you can use so people can sign up for your email list.
Even if you don’t want to use this method and want to use the second method that I’ll talk about later, you’ll still have to sign up for a software anyway otherwise, how else are you going to send out emails?
Despite what people in the Internet Marketing community say and what the expert articles say, all email marketing softwares function the same, they just have their own unique flaws. Assuming you’re just starting out, you’re going to want to sign up for a free email marketing software. As far as my knowledge goes and at the time I’m writing this, the following softwares have free plans:
Heyluu.com
Mailerlite.com
Convertkit.com
Aweber.com
Sendinblue.com
Mailchimp.com
I suggest you sign up for at least two of these in case one of them stops working for whatever reason, or they kick you out of their platform.
Once you sign up and finish setting up your account, you can use their builder to create your landing page, publish it, and start building your email list.
2. Create a Website
The second way you can create a landing page is by starting up your own website, which is what I personally did obviously, because you’re on it right now.
In order to do that, you’re going to start off by signing up for a web hosting company. I personally suggest using Bluehost because they’re inexpensive and very reliable in terms of keeping your websites up at all times.
Now, you don’t have to build a whole website. I’ve seen people’s websites where it’s nothing but just a landing page. If you want, you can start your website off with something as simple as that. Then later on, you can slowly expand it and turn it into a full website.
STEP 3: Set Up a Welcome Sequence
So after you get people to sign up for your email list, it’s time to set up an automated sequence, or workflow, in your email marketing software so that it will automatically send the lead magnet to your new email subscriber.
There are two reasons why you’d want to do this.
The first reason is to save yourself time. Setting up an automated system to send out welcome emails to every new subscriber that signs up for your email list will make your life a whole lot easier than if you were to do all manually.
The second reason is to kickstart the relationship between you and the new email subscriber, with a huge emphasis on relationship. As you read further and learn more about email marketing, you’ll start to understand that email marketing is not just a way to sell your own products and services, but it’s a way to build strong relationships with your subscribers as well.
Now, there are two ways you can approach setting up your automated sequence:
1. The Simple Welcome Sequence
The Simple Welcome Sequence is exactly what it sounds like. A short and sweet welcome email. It can basically consist of something like a warm welcome, a link that directs your new subscriber to your lead magnet, and things to expect from now on.
For example:
At the time I’m writing this, when you sign up to get the sample chapters of How to Become an Email Titan, you’ll get a simple welcome email that’ll say…
Welcome!
It’s good to see you on my list. As promised, here’s the link to the sample chapters of How to Become an Email Titan.
(Link to the lead magnet)
Just to remind you once more that I send emails everyday. If you ever want to leave, the unsubscribe button is down below.
Talk to you later.
-Ellisen
Some people could say it’s a bit too simple, and sometimes, I agree. Your welcome sequence is going to be one of the most-opened emails you’ll ever send, so take advantage of that attention.
If I really wanted to, I would add a little more content to my welcome sequence, but that’s not really my priority (Though it might be in the future). My main focus is on the daily emails I send to my email subscribers afterwards, but that’s a whole different topic I’ll get into later.
2. The Less Simple Welcome Sequence
If you want to put more effort than I did into your welcome sequence, that’s fine too.
The other way you can set up your welcome sequence is to create a whole email series where you just give a lot of value.
For example,
One of my former business coaches had an old opt-in where her lead magnet was the email series itself. The lead magnet was called “Seven Days to a Side Business,” and it was a seven day email series (One email per day) that taught you how to start up your own side business.
I did something similar with my old blog, EZPC Building. For that blog, my lead magnet was a computer building checklist PDF, and I would include the link in the welcome email that my new subscribers can access and download. After that, I would talk about myself and the story behind EZPC Building. For the next few days, they would get an email series that went into more detail about computer building.
So the checklist basically helped people make sure they have all the essential parts they need to build their own computer. At the same time, it helped them make sure all the parts are all compatible. Then, the email series went into more detail about every single part. On the first day, I would talk about what you need to look for when you shop for your processor. On the second day, they learned what they need to know about when it comes to their graphics card. And it kept going on until I covered all the essential parts. So overall, the email series would last over one week.
My whole intention was to build on top of the value of the checklist with the email series teaching.
So take note of that and keep it in mind.
STEP 4: Write Nurturing Emails
And now for, in my opinion, the most fun part of email marketing:
Writing and sending your nurturing emails.
These are the emails that are going to get you the results that you’re hopefully looking for, which are sales.
Now, one mistake I’ve seen people make is getting too caught up in the small details of this step.
They ask questions like:
What are the best times and days to send the emails out?
Should I make it look flashy or plain?
Why are my open and click rates so low?
Or, how many times a week should I send emails out?
For the last question, it really depends on what you’re comfortable with. Though, I will say that you should email at least once a week. From my experience, that is the bare minimum frequency where emailing doesn’t take up too much of your time and your subscribers will somewhat remember that you exist. Ideally, you want to send an email everyday, and there are actually a lot of benefits to doing so.
Besides, even if you don’t send emails everyday and you write the way I’m about to teach you, then you’ll build stronger relationships with your email subscribers, which means you can make a lot more sales too.
Let’s start, shall we?
First off, let’s go over how you shouldn’t be sending emails. Take a look at these two email newsletters below.
At first glance, they look pretty good. Their design is very clean and they are informative. However, there are a couple of things I don’t like about it and would do differently.
1. Personalization
Just by looking at the emails, they look like the type of emails that would be blasted out to an entire audience. But the people receiving those emails most likely already know that they’re on an email list, however there are still simple ways to personalize the emails.
You can include their name, which you should be able to do on your email marketing software only if you collected their first name. Personally, I only require people to type in their email address so it’s not possible for me to do this. To take it one step further, I would also write the emails as if I’m only writing to one person.
2. Include Only One Call to Action
These types of newsletters tend to have multiple calls to action. In the case of Ben & Jerry’s and General Assembly, their newsletters have four to eleven different things for their subscribers to click on. I believe that when you write emails, you should include only one call to action for the sake of keeping things simple. When you give people multiple options, they’re much less likely to take action. If I were in their position, I would break the newsletters down and write one email for each call to action.
3. More Text
The last major thing I would do is write more to the point where their email newsletters are almost entirely text-based. And the reason why I say that is because it’s the words that create the connection with your email subscribers. It’s the words that build relationships with them. I would have no problem keeping the pictures in there as long as they support the text. The point is to write something that’ll further the relationships you have with your subscribers. Have a conversation with them, tell a story, share something interesting that happened in your business. Get them involved in your world.
Here’s an example of an email that does just that. This is one of the emails I sent to my subscribers that they particularly liked.
Subject: The case of booty calling your subscribers
In April of 2019, I purchased an affiliate marketing course from a rather nice New Zealander.
Very useful course back when I worked on my old blog, EZPC Building.
But that’s not what I want to talk about here.
I was going through my inbox and I looked at all the emails he sent me from April 2019 and on.
This man has been emailing me so inconsistently that I almost forgot I was on his list. Let’s just say, the number of times he emailed me is less than the number of toes I have.
And when I looked through the content, everything started to make sense.
You see, there are two types of people in the email marketing world:
1. You have the people who email you consistently and want to build a solid relationship with you.
2. There are the, what I like to call, “email booty callers.” You barely hear from these people. And when you do, it’s when they come across an opportunity to make money off you.
The New Zealander is a great example of an “email booty caller.”
Looking through his past emails, all he did was promote his affiliate offers to me and everyone else on his list (Blatantly too, I should add).
There was zero relationship building.
Zero useful or entertaining content.
It was just pure promotion to the point where he might as well send me emails that look like the newsletters that big corporations send out.
It would’ve been the same difference.
You don’t want to be like that. It’ll do you nothing but give you a one way ticket to the trash bin and your subscriber’s exiled newsletter list.
No, you want to be #1. Pun absolutely intended.
It all starts with learning the ways of email copywriting taught in How to Become an Email Titan.
Link is below.
(Insert Link)
-Ellisen
If I were to guess, there were several reasons why my subscribers liked this particular email.
1. I kept the email fun to read. I poked fun at the way this person was emailing me and everyone else on his list, but not to the point where it’s considered slander.
2. It starts off with a short story to pull their attention in.
3. There’s a learning lesson that my subscribers can take away from the email.
If you want to read more emails like this, you can go over to my blog.
And if you want to learn how to write emails like these for yourself, you can pick up a copy of my book, How to Become an Email Titan. However, I suggest you check out the sample chapters first to see if it’s right for you.
Here’s the link to get it.