Email marketing workshop

These are the notes from the email marketing workshop session on 1 March 2016. Thanks for coming along I hope you got a lot out of the session.

If you’re reading this because you stumbled across it on the website, that’s absolutely fine and I hope you get lots out of my rules of email marketing

Your first easy win with email marketing

For a first, very simple way of getting into email marketing, and because you can create some quick wins, to give you some enthusiasm to getting going, remember that I suggested that you should just go through your existing address book to find:

• current clients
• ex clients
• people you’d like to work with
• people who might refer a you to nice clients
• nice people you met at networking events

Think about the last time that you spoke to each of these people, and then if you haven’t spoken to them in the last month, drop them an email. Send them some think useful, send them a link to something can your website, take time to say hi.

This is a good step for getting in practice in reaching out to people, and because their particular people that you already know, at least a little bit, you’ll start to think about what would be useful from their point of view.

The rules of email marketing

1. You need to be able to give people something valuable. If it isn’t useful to them, they’re not going to read your emails
2. You have to have their permission to to send them emails in the first place – never ever ever be tempted to spam somebody and just add them to your list. They probably won’t read your emails, and they might just end up hating you
3. Like most marketing, email marketing takes persistence. You’re in this for the long run though, even if it takes you a year to actually get somebody to buy, that’s money in the bank next year
4. To get permission to send people emails, you usually have to have a lead magnet, or an ethical bribe.
5. Your lead magnet should be something which can be sent out automatically and it needs to be:

• easily digestible, and short
• of high-value, not some trash they can get anywhere else
• relevant to your audience

6. Make sure that your signup form is really prominent on your website
7. Repeat your signup form in different places on the website
8. Think about using a lightbox’s to get more signups
9. Do some traffic building to get people in front of your signup box, so they get a chance to get your GC lead magnet
10. Make sure that you send out your emails regularly. I cannot stress enough how important this is
11. Seriously consider automating your emails, and writing a whole batch of them all at once so you can just set up and then forget about it for a while while you get on with other things
12. Use a natural tone of voice, not some boring corporate speak
13. Use stories and illustrations, as if you’re telling me (or a particular person from your target market) about that subject
14. Just keep to one item per email, don’t overdo it. Remember you want to keep some content back for the next email
15. Here are some ideas on what to send people

• ideas on how to use the things that you sell
• expertise and tips to show that you really know your stuff. Don’t be scared to give away your expertise, even with your email tips your audience is unlikely to be able to do the core things that you do
• tell people about new products, including previews, discount codes and exclusive deals

16. Engage people with your emails. Just because your sending them out to hundreds of people doesn’t mean that you can’t talk to them as if you are talking one-on-one. You can engage people by:

• asking them for advice about something
• asking them for their opinion
• ask them what they would have done in your case
• do a quick survey
• send them the results of the survey

17. Your emails should not be about selling all the time. But also don’t be too hesitant to sell
18. Remember to give them some value 1^st to build the relationship, so you might send three or four emails before you get to trying to influence them
19. Remember to add links and drive them back to your website where they can see all the other cool things
20. The PS part of the email is a great way to slip in a call to action, or a suggestion to buy something
21. Every third or fourth email can be specifically about something you’d like to ‘them to buy
22. If you offer a free consultation (also known as a sales meeting, to us) you can offer this within the email
23. You can also just mention that you were doing a free consultation with somebody last week, so your audience get the idea that you do these free consultations

Slides from the email marketing workshop

Here are the slides from the session.  If you weren’t at the session, these probably won’t make much sense to you as you weren’t there for the talky bit, and I don’t do bullet points.

email marketing bite size march 16v5

Favourite chocolates

Don’t don’t forget to send me my chocolates as a reward when you get lots of lovely new customers from this. My favourite brand is Montezuma’s

Good technology

Here is a list of some of the technology I’ve used to manage this process, but Ian Brodie has some great tips and webinars in his Momentum Club on how to really get to grips with all of this.

• Mailchimp
• Thrive for wordpress sites – you don’t have to use their themes, but they have tons of other useful tools you can add on to an existing WP site, including software to monitor and test
• Optin Monster, Sumone and LeadPages if you don’t have a WordPress site

More workshops coming up

I regularly run seminars like this email marketing workshop about how to do great things with your business, usually through the Brighton and Hove Chamber of Commerce Bite Size Learning programme.  You can keep up to date with when I’m doing another session by following me on Twitter, or by getting my weekly emails where you also get some great tips and stories about how run a really successful business.