Whether you’re a small business owner, a startup founder, or the CEO of a multimillion-dollar enterprise, having an email list for your business is essential for success.
The email list helps establish a relationship between a business and its customers, and it also helps establish a business as a thought leader in its field, which is one of the most important and most underlooked aspects of running a business.
But did you know that you can actually make money off of your email list?
This is how you can do it, without saying “buy my product now!” at the end of every email.
Option 1: Use the email as a content funnel
This is one of the most common strategies that companies use in order to both boost the reach of their content and to build a relationship with their readers through several posts online.
It starts with an email, but in the email, you’ll see a handful of different icons that you can click on that will send you different aspects of the business. There will be icons for social media handles, icons for the company blog, and icons for the company’s website.
From here, the reader will be able to decide where they want to go next. Think of it as a little bit of a business version of a “choose-your-own-adventure” game.
There are many reasons to connect every aspect of your business’s digital home (like SEO, for example), and the business email is no different.
See, business emails as you might have thought of them in the past, are, well, a way of the past. Business emails of the future are blog posts, websites, and social media posts all put together into a sort of friendly piece of digital content that appears right in your customer’s inbox whenever you choose to send it.
By gaining your customer’s email address, you have direct communication with them.
If Facebook, Google, WordPress, and every other online platform disappeared tomorrow, you’d still be able to pitch to them because you have their email address.
Option 2: Use the email for promotional purposes
The option above is a bit more of an indirect marketing approach, meaning it will yield you long-term results over a long period of time.
That isn’t for everyone, and that’s why we have other options for you.
Every email needs one thing: an incentive to be opened.
If there’s no reason to open your email, no one will open it. If there’s no reason to buy your product, no one will buy it. Marketing is the same way. Incentives are key.
That’s why you should create your incentives when it comes to opening your emails and just place them in the subject line of a particular email. This can appear in a variety of ways, but we’re going to look at a few of the most common ways that businesses do this.
“Schedule a free call with us!”
Time is money in business, and a lot of times, giving away even a short bit of your expertise for free can go a long way in building a lasting customer base.
“Click this link to get ___% off of our services!”
Some people just aren’t fans of giving away stuff for free. For these people, the discount is the next best option. Offering your customers a deal will not only incentivize them to open your emails and view your content – it will also make them feel “exclusive” when you offer the deal via email only.
Option 3: Email automation.
“Email automation” is basically just fancy marketer speak for emails that are sent upon specific actions by the viewer.
This could be an email course, a series of promotional pieces of content, or any other series of emails that are sent to a group of people.
Heck, even the traditional weekly newsletter is a form of automation. It’s sent automatically at a certain time.
All you really need to develop an automated marketing strategy of any kind is some writing skills, some time, and marketing automation software. If you’re lacking in any of those areas, agencies like us are here to help – send us a message to learn more.
By creating automated email content, you build a 1 on 1 relationship with a customer, without even talking to them. This essentially takes you past the “hey, what do you do?” part of any business meeting, and makes that meaning a possible sale.
Once the client is in the door and interested in your product, then you can focus on what you do best: delivering great results for your customers.
Closing thoughts
In email marketing, it’s not enough to just send emails and offer products and services. Email marketing is just like any other kind of marketing: it’s hard work.
If you are most interested in using the email list to build relationships, using the “emails as blog posts” strategy and creating a business funnel through an email is an incredible strategy. If someone likes one of your posts, odds are they’ll like more of them. The email is a great way to help them find all of your best work.
On the flip side, if you have a brand and want more CTAs (calls to action), email marketing can still be the best thing for you to use. In this case, you should come at it with a more direct approach based on incentives and an understanding of psychology. If you’re new to this aspect of marketing – we’re here to help.
The final way we discussed email marketing is marketing automation, which is really a concept that anyone involved in email marketing should understand. If you’re trying to sell something, consistency is key, no matter if it’s a product, a service, or a brand.