How often have you signed up for someone's email list then never receive an email from them after the "welcome" email? Or maybe you only got emails randomly and they were always sales pitches? It happens way more than it should. In fact, I was this person a few years back: Collecting emails from my new customers and only emailing them when I had a new product launch. This is the wrong way to go about having an email list, and today I'm going to talk about why and what you can do to remedy it.
It's a great feeling to see your email list grow, right? It means that people like what you were offering and want to know more. They're reaching out to you by signing up. You should do the common courtesy to keep the lines of communication open with them. This means engaging with the people that want to hear from you ON THE REGULAR. That's the key...on the regular. People receive enough emails in a day, so if you want to stay in their inbox, you have to be consistent with them. You need to get a plan together and decide what you will be sending to your peeps! Only sending sales pitch emails isn't going to cut it because you are just blending in with the other sales emails that they are receiving. You definitely don't want to blend in...in fact you should be standing out by providing helpful, useful content to your list! Otherwise, queue the unsubscribes. If you're having trouble thinking of the kind of content that you can start sending to your list, here are 10 different ways that you can engage with them:
1 | New blog posts
If you are a blogger, you can send your RSS/blog feed to your list. I'm a fan of this because you can customize the email template and include other information that you may want to share with your peeps such as upcoming events, a new product, or accolades from customers.
2 | An E-Course
You may want to educate your list on a topic related to your blog/biz, so setting up an automated e-course is something that they will appreciate and look forward to receiving. You could even have a course per season that is exclusive to your email list, so that can be an incentive for new peeps to sign up!
3 | A Podcast
You can create a special podcast series and only send it to your list members. If can be interviews, quick tips/strategies or question and answer style from your list where they submit questions and you answer them in the podcast.
4 | Behind the Scenes
People love to see what's going on behind the curtain, so you could email updates of your blog/business happenings from behind the scenes. It's kind of like an extension of Instagram but you are talking directly to people that truly want to hear from you...so they care!
5 | Quick Tips
I'm an advocate of sending short to medium length emails because humans get bored looking at letter upon letter upon letter. Because of this, you can provide quick tips or ideas of things that are related to your niche that your list could implement for themselves and quickly. Little wins are everything!
6 | Rewards + Coupons
So there are the traditional coupon codes that you can send to your best (or all) customers or birthday coupons, but lets take this a step further...maybe you could send rewards based on the people that engage the most with your emails? Who has the highest click rate, who has the highest open rate? These people are just as important as customers because they give you more insight and clarity for your list.
7 | Your Products In Action
If you sell a physical product, this could be a way to showcase how your customers are using your products! This can also give people ideas of what can be done with your products that they haven't thought of. Also, this could potentially start engagement among your list! If you include the name and social handle of the people that you are emailing about, it may encourage following and connecting with each other since they have a commonality...You!
8 | Playlists
You can send a playlist of music that you are currently listening and working to. I love to hear the music that my favorite entrepreneurs and bloggers are listening to, so a weekly email of music would be awesome!
9 | Special Content
You may have a blog and post there consistently (awesome!). You can take this one step further and send blog-style emails that have a little more juiciness to them. Maybe it's a special recipe, cookbook, photoshop brush set, etc. Send the special content directly to your peeps! They have already signed up for your list, so go ahead and make special content for them that people off of the list will never have access to. Elite...nice! This is a great selling point for getting people to opt-in to your list.
10 | Relatable Content
Want to really get to know your list? You could share personal stories of pitfalls and problems that you encountered (or may still be encountering) in your blog/biz and tell them how you overcame them. People like to know that they are receiving an email from a human, so showing some of your vulnerabilities can be seen as admirable (especially in this "fake social media lives" world). Oftentimes people may open up to you in a response and tell you a story of a similar struggle that they have or are still facing. This is the best engagement because you are truly getting to know your list, they are building their trust in you and you are building your true tribe.
If you want to get your Email Engagement strategy together the right way and deliver content to your list that they are itching to read, #EmailParty is your answer! Engaging with your list from sign-up and beyond is a huge focus of the course as well as in depth tech training on the backed setup of MailChimp. You have to have a strategy when it comes to Email Engagement, and you want to create a party in those inboxes that you are sending content to! Otherwise, you will be the leader of an unsubscribe fest, and that's no fun :-(
