Not even social media, organic SEO, paid advertising, or affiliate marketing is proven to have the benefits of email marketing.
But what is email marketing?
At its most basic level, email marketing happens when a
business owner uses email to send you information about their products and
services. but a truer definition goes beyond that.
Email marketing is the best way for business owners to build
relationships with their audience. Like I mentioned above, email marketing is a
more powerful form of communication than social media or even paid advertising.
It’s a direct line of contact between a business owner (you)
and an email subscriber (your audience/customers). Nothing stands between the
two of you, making it a very effective way to build your business and increase
your conversions.
And it’s an effective tool for increasing conversions in every niche.
You might be a recent college graduate who is looking to become a full-time freelancer while building a powerful personal brand that will grow with your career.
Maybe you’re a full-time parent who is building a side hustlr that gives you the time and space to stay present for your kids in their
youth.
Or you might be a passionate content creator who is
interested in building a location-independent business that gives you the
freedom and flexibility to create projects you’re proud of on your own
schedule.
No matter what stage of your business or career you are in, email marketing can help you make a living online.
The importance of email marketing
Email marketing is a crucial part of your overall marketing and sales strategy. It
allows you to turn website visitors and social media followers into loyal email subscribers so you can stay in touch
with them long term.
Through email marketing, you can send educational and
promotional emails directly to your subscribers without having to worry about social media algorithm changes or noisy advertisments distracting from your email content.
Since your email list is one of the few marketing channels
you own—meaning you have full control over how often you communicate with your
subscribers—you are able to cultivate an audience of people who are excited to
hear from you.
Bloggers,video content creators podcaster, freelancers, eCommerce shop owners and digital products creators alike can all experience the benefits of email
marketing from growing their own email list. There are a few additional reasons
why you may want to start building an email list.
Building trust with valuable educational
content
People only buy products and services from people they can
trust, but before you can build trust, you need to provide real value to your
subscribers.
One of the best ways to do this is by sending several educational emails and a welcome email sequence before you introduce a product you’re selling. It will
show your audience that you care more about nurturing your relationship and
establishing a good rapport with them than just sales alone.
Additionally, your educational content will solidify your
expertise and credibility any time you share a behind-the-scenes look of your
creative process and teach your subscribers everything
you know.
You can also give your audience upfront value by offering lead magnets and
content upgrades, which allow your readers to gain free and
exclusive access to some of your best educational resources. It’s smart to use
these as a way to educate on niche topics that relate to your offerings.
Thoughtfully promoting your products and
services
Once you’ve been providing relevant, valuable content to your
audience and educating them on topics that relate to your niche, your audience
will be primed the next time you decide to launch a new product or service.
If you only send promotional emails, you may turn off your
subscribers since you haven’t taken the time to nurture the relationship.
Instead, you’ll want to lead with your actionable educational content.
By creating educational emails, you can show how much you
know about each topic and begin to understand the
needs and desires of your audiencebased on how well they are engaging with
your emails.
Email marketing is especially valuable when you are launching
a new product or service. Sometimes launch announcements can get lost in your
follower’s social media feed. It’s much better to send a launch-based email
that will be sent directly to your subscriber’s inbox so they won’t miss it.
If you have products and services that have already been
created or that you’re currently selling, you may want to think about creating an automated email sequence that helps you market them in a personalized, engaging
way.
Nurturing relationships through your ongoing
email marketing
While turning email subscribers into buyers or clients is one
of the main goals of email marketing, it’s hard to accomplish this without
building and nurturing relationships with your subscribers first.
People don’t want to feel like numbers or dollar signs. They
may contribute to your sales goals, but they want to feel
respected, heard, and understood in the process. One of the best ways to build
relationships with your subscribers is to lead with value.
We’ve already mentioned the importance of sharing educational
content, but there are other ways you can provide value. You can share personal
stories of how you overcame an obstacle or learned a new skill to build a
stronger connection with your readers.
Along with telling stories from your own experience, you may
want to peel back the curtain by crafting client case studies that introduce
your ideal clients to people who are just like them. This will help your
audience feel like you understand them and can provide solutions to similar
problems they have.
Lastly, nurturing relationships through your email marketing
means prioritizing dialogue. Conversations are what connect us to one another
on a deeper level. These conversations could start by you sending a survey or
offering to reply back to some of your subscribers’ emails. Get creative!
How does email marketing work?
With an understanding of what email marketing is, you may be
wondering how it works. If this is your first time building an email list
around a brand, how do you know where to get started?
The easiest way to get started is by following our simple
three-step process.
Step 1: Increase traffic to your website, blog,
and social media platforms
One of the first steps to growing your email list is to focus on increasing your website and blog
traffic by targeting a niche audience. If you don’t have the right
eyeballs on your website or blog, it will be more difficult to build your email
list.
To improve your traffic, you could:
Use SEO best practices when you create content (with Google and Pinterestin mind)
Partner with influencers or like-minded people in your field
Start guest blogging on other people’s websites
Regularly post your content to
social media
Participate in engaged social media
communities
You don’t need to have a specific number of website visitors,
blog readers, or social media followers to getting started with email marketing. We
recommend investing in building an email list as soon as you can in order to build an engaged audience on a platform you’ll always own.
Step 2: Entice visitors and followers to sign
up for your email list
As you build your online following, you’ll want to
incentivize readers to join your email list. Some great ways to do this include creating an email
opt-in form or a dedicated landing page that lead to a free downloadable lead magnet.
When you craft blog, video, or audio content, you’ll want to
create it to strategically go hand-in-hand with your desired lead
magnet. This is why it’s beneficial to find your niche early on in the brand-building process.
Once you become known for something within your niche, you
can build an engaged email audience by leading with upfront value. If you are
struggling to come up with ideas for lead magnets, ask your audience! They’ll
be excited to be involved in the ideation process and, hopefully, inspire you
to create a resource with them in mind.
Step 3: Send an automated email sequence to
your new subscribers
When your audience member becomes an email subscriber,
they’ll be added to your email list after they click the double opt-in confirmation.
Once they confirm their email address, they’ll receive your lead magnet as they are enrolled in your automated email sequence.
In your automated email sequence, you’ll want to send
educational emails with the primary goal of providing value to your audience.
While you teach your audience about a niche topic, you can also share personal
stories, client testimonials, and relevant insights.
You may also want your subscribers to self-select what
content they are most interested in receiving as part of your email
segmentation strategy. That way, you are only sending the most relevant content
to your subscribers.
After your reader works their way through the end of your
automated email sequence, you can transition them into another
email sequence or send single email broadcasts to nurture your subscribers.
What are the benefits of email marketing for
content creators?
If you still need to be persuaded that email marketing could
be a game changer for your business, we have a few additional benefits to share,
backed by statistics we think you’ll appreciate.
Email marketing is more valuable than growing
your social media following
Growing your social media follower count doesn’t mean you are
growing your sales. When your focus is solely on growing your follower base,
you’ll distract yourself from the true goal: increasing your profits.
As social media gets noisier, email marketing provides a nice
break from mindless scrolling. With each new social media algorithm change, it
becomes harder for your content to organically reach your followers without
heavily investing in paid advertising.
Why bother with the frustrating social media changes when you
could focus on growing your email list? It doesn’t hurt that email subscribers can be worth 15
times as much as social media followers (or more) when we consider overall conversion rates.
Email marketing is a cost-effective way to
build your audience
When you have fewer expenses, it means more profit for your
business! Having an email list is a cost-effective way to automate parts of your onboarding
process and sell your products on autopilot. Think about
the tasks on your list that you tend to repeat over and over, and consider how
you could automate them through your email marketing strategy.
You can measure your email list growth and
performance
If you were asked where your last few product sales have come
from, would you be able to determine what each person’s customer journey looked
like? Without this valuable information, you won’t be able to further optimize your marketing funnels.
Email marketing, however, gives you the tools to measure your email list growth and performance over time. By calculating your open rates, click rates, and
conversion rates, you can track how well your emails are driving sales and
increasing audience engagement.
You can utilize automation while remaining
personable
Automation can be powerful when it is used strategically. By automating your email sequences and sales funnels,
you can spend more time interacting with your audience and creating valuable
content that they’ll love. Simply set up your email sequences and funnels one
time and then you’re done!
There’s a higher return on investment (ROI) for
email marketing
As a content creator, you wear a lot of hats. It can seem
like everything on your to-do list should get first priority, but only the
things that are bringing you more sales deserve to be at the top of your list.
Email marketing is one of the best ways to increase your ROI
and reach your sales goals. For every $1 spent on email marketing, the average ROI is $38.
Who wouldn’t be excited about that kind of return?
Find out the benefits of email marketing for
yourself
Above all, it’s easy to get started! You don’t need to put
your entire schedule on hold to get the hang of email marketing. Instead, you
can start where you are now and learn the basics with our easy-to-follow guide
to email marketing.
And if you’re ready to experience the benefits of email marketing
in your own business, you can sign up for a FREE trial of Convertkit today!
Click the button below and you’ll be in for your 14-day trial.
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