The importance of building your mailing list - Email Marketing & Email Automation

If you're not focused on building your email marketing list in 2020, then you are really missing a trick. In this episode of the Agency Accelerator podcast, I am talking all things email marketing and email automation. Accelerate your agency's profitable growth with tools, tips and value added interviews with your host agency owner and coach, Rob DaCosta hey gang. Like a lot of busy agency owners, I'm sure you want to make sure that when you have time allocated in your diary for business development and marketing, you want to make sure that you are doing the best things, the activities that are going to get you the best bang for your buck. And a lot of agency owners ask themselves the questions, is email marketing one of those things that I should include in my marketing mix? Is it a good fit for me? Now this is a good question. And with every marketing activity you do, you want to make sure that you are getting the best return on investment you possibly can. And I can't emphasize enough that email marketing is one of the best ways of getting really cost effective return on investment. Now, According to Campaign Monitor's annual report from 2016, email marketing provided a $44 return on investment for every $1 spent. So let's just think about that. That is a 4400% ROI. And what other marketing activities can generate that kind of return? And one of the great things about it is that you don't need to spend much money, if any money to be honest, to get started. So can't say enough. Again, if email marketing isn't in your marketing mix for 2020 and a focus on this building than it really should be. Now, I'm not alone in this thinking. All the great online entrepreneurs such as Amy Porterfield and co spend a great deal of their time evangelizing about the value of building an email marketing list. So in this podcast I want to outline everything you need to know about email marketing, what it is, some of the tools that you can use, how email automation works, and how it can really save time to help you nurture those cold contacts to become warm prospects and then loyal customers. So let's just visualize the sales funnel for a moment. Hopefully you're all familiar with that. It's a funnel shape because we've got lots of cold contacts going in the top and then we've got warm prospects in the middle and loyal customers dropping out the bottom. Now, email marketing really supports you in the sort of just below the top of the sales funnel. So these are people that have joined your mailing list because they're interested in you in some way, you've met them at an event or you've they've downloaded an ebook or something. And now you can use email marketing to nurture them, to push them further down the sales funnel, up until the point where they request a call with you or they request a meeting with you. So an email marketing can automate that whole process. So that's why it's so valuable. So let's just talk about email automation for a moment and think about the workflow of a customer journey. So you've met someone at a networking event, or someone has gone on your website and they've downloaded a free ebook, for example, and you now have their name and email address that goes into your email marketing marketing automation system. And from that point onwards, you can automate the communication process. So that means you can create a sequence of emails that you send over a set period of time. And depending on what the behavior of the person who's in your email automation system is, you can send them different contents. And that's what email automation is all about, creating automations that say, if they've done this, then do that, and creating sequences of emails that say on day one, when they've downloaded that ebook, send them the here's your ebook email, then two days later send them an email saying, have you read the ebook? And then two days after that saying, here's five points that you want to take away. And maybe a few days after that you say, if you haven't had a chance to read the ebook, here's a short video I made for you. And then the email sequence might end up by you offering them a free strategy call or suggesting that they meet you or whatever is suitable for your business. But you can see how an email sequence can nurture someone through the sales funnel right up until the point where they start engaging with you. Now, one of the reasons why this is so important is because I'm always telling my audience that your time investment needs to be inversely proportional to your sales funnel. So if you think of the sales funnel wide at the top, narrow at the bottom, if you drew a triangle next to that. So at the top of the sales funnel is the point of the triangle, and the further they go down the sales funnel, the wider the triangle becomes. So the more time you can. And email automation can really help you move people through the sales funnel. Now, not only that, of course, but list building is about creating a bigger audience so that you have more people to put in the top of the sales funnel and that you can Nurture them so that when they are ready to buy, they remembered you. And now let's just take kind of a pause there and think about this. I'm sure you've heard me say this before, but if I had 100 potential target customers, that is, these are people that match my ideal customer. They're my customer avatar. How many of those people at this very point in time are ready to buy from me? Probably only one of them, if I'm lucky. So that's one person out of 100. So what am I doing with the other 99 to make sure that they remember me when they're ready to buy? And this is where email marketing will support you. And just to mention another thing that I talk about a lot, which is about keeping the sand timer refilled. So every time you communicate with a potential customer, for example, in this case with an email, you're refilling the sand timer. And if you can communicate with them again before the sand timer runs out, then they remember you. So now when they're ready to buy, when they become that one out of 100 that's ready to buy, they have remembered you. However, if you only communicate periodically with your target audience, then there's a really good chance the sand timer will have run out and they will have forgotten about you. And then one day you'll bump into them and they'll say, oh, we just got our new website done. And you say to them, you know, remember we do website design. You didn't get in contact with us. And they go, oh, yeah, I forgot completely about you guys. So you need to make sure that you communicate regularly enough with your audience to keep the sand time afield. And one of the great ways of doing that is using email automation. Right? So hopefully you're convinced about the value of email automation and how it can really be used to nurture your prospects. So now we need to talk about what systems to use. Now, if you're starting out from the beginning, you could start with an Excel spreadsheet, but obviously that doesn't offer you any of the automation benefits. And once you get to sort of 100 or so, you're going to quickly find that really challenging. And to be honest, some of the great online tools for email automation are free up to a certain size anyway. So there are a lot of different choices. And they range from free, and once you get to, say, 1,000, you start paying and then up to sort of £150 per month. So you really need to find a system that, that works for you now, when you're starting out, the temptation is to pick the cheapest option because you want to test the water and see how receptive your customers are to email marketing. And of course this makes a lot of sense and is definitely a good start. Some of the systems that are free to start with are tools like Mailerlite and mailchimp. Now you'll find all the links in the show notes to these and these are both free, up to 1,000 or 2,000 subscribers. And and that might be all you need because one really important point is you need to make sure that you are keeping your list clean. If you're not getting 25% plus open rates and maybe one and a half to 2% click through rates, then you need to think about cleaning your list. And another great tool that I recommend which will help you with your email sequences is Drip Scripts, but I'll tell you more about that later. That's another free tool. Now once you get to round about a thousand subscribers, you'll want to look at some of the paid marketing options. And this brings a whole new suite of providers into play, including ConvertKit, which is a tool I use ActiveCampaign, which is a tool I've used in the past, Drip and many more. Again, all the links to these guys are in the show notes. Now more importantly than price will be functionality that you particularly need because the pricing is much of a muchness between all of them. So you really need to find a tool that is functionally does what you need it to do. Piece of advice here is to find a tool that fits your needs. Don't get one that's all singing and all dancing and does everything and you end up paying a lot for it and are using 20% of the functionality. Or worse still, you stop using it because it's so complicated to figure out how to make it work. I started out using ActiveCampaign, which is a great tool, but I realized there was so much functionality in there that I didn't use and it was quite complicated to use because of all this rich functionality. So I switched from ActiveCampaign to ConvertKit. And yes, ConvertKit is cheaper, but it does everything that I need it to do and therefore I'm using all of the functionality and getting good value for money. I think it's worth me saying at this point that I am not an affiliate for any of the products that I'm talking about in any of my podcasts. So they are genuinely neutral reviews and they are based on my own personal experience. So let's think about that buyer's journey again and let's just talk about how you can be using your website as the entry point into your sales funnel. What is your website all about? So many people create websites because they think they need to have one. They're basically brochureware so that prospects can find out more information about the client. But actually you're missing a trick. If you're working really hard to drive traffic to your website. People spend a minute or two reading and then they just leave. Then you're kind of lemming, just jumping off a cliff. What you really need to be doing is driving traffic to your website. Provide useful information on the website at a top level, that's the top of the funnel. But then encourage them to give you their email addresses so that they can get more information from you. So this is like the next layer down in the sales funnel. This is what I call education based marketing. And it's why on my website for example, you'll find tons of ebooks that people can download which give more information. They do. Teach them something, they impart some value, and in return for that, they're going to give me their email address. And guess what? When they give me their email address, they're joining into my email automation system. Now I know at this point some of you are probably saying, I hate receiving emails, it feels like spam and I just don't want another email coming into my inbox. Well, let me tell you this, if you don't want to be considered spam, you have to make sure two things. First of of all, you have defined your ideal target customer, your customer avatar, so that you know exactly what they're interested in, what their pain points are. And then you need to make sure that the email content you send people is adding value and is addressing some of those pain points. And if you do that, then people won't consider your emails spam and they will look forward to receiving them and read them with interest. So having said all of that, that means you need to pick an email automation system that connects to your website. So basically you're going to create a landing page or you're going to create a pop up form, or you're going to have a form at the bottom of your blog, for example, where people can download something associated to that content. And you want to make sure that when they've typed in their name and their email address that it automatically connects into your email automation system. So when you're looking for a system, make sure that it's connects to whatever your website is built on. So if it's WordPress, most of the email systems I've mentioned will easily integrate with them and this should not be a painful process. I use ConvertKit and my website's built using a tool called Thrive Architect and basically with a couple of clicks I can connect the two things together and map a name from my website into a name in my email automation. An email address that someone puts into my website into the email address in the automation. Now also you want to be able to tag them. So for example, if you download an ebook on value selling from my website, I want to tag you as value selling ebook download. And then when it goes into my email automation system, the automation says, ah, if someone's tagged value selling ebook download then put them into this sequence of emails and again that should be a fairly straightforward process. Okay, so now we have got the email marketing system in place and we are gearing ourselves up to start generating leads. We need to think about how do we go about building that list. Now it's really important to make sure that your email marketing is permission based because you know, in Europe we've got gdpr, in the US we they have can spam and we don't want to be seen as spamming people. So you have to have people to first of all opt in to your mailing list and second of all make it really easy for them to unsubscribe which all of these email automation systems I'm talking about in this podcast will automatically manage the unsubscribe part and stop you sending emails to people that have unsubscribed. Now this means that I wouldn't particularly recommend buying in lists. You can buy lists from reputable places such as Experian, but before you add those people into your email automation system, you have to have them opt into your list. In fact, a lot of the email systems I've mentioned won't allow you to import large lists unless you can explain exactly where they came from. It's much better to focus on visitors and customers who are interested in your business, want to hear more from you and who are engaged with what you've got to say. This will lead to much higher open rates and click through rates and ultimately more interaction with the content you send out. As I said earlier, you should be aiming for 25% open rates from your emails and between 1 and 3% click through rates. That is if there's a link in your email they've clicked on that, it's taking them to a piece of content or a page on your website. So let's think about some of the ways that you can get people to sign up to your list. As I've been talking about throughout, as I've been saying throughout this podcast, you need to use an education based marketing strategy to move people from the top of the funnel to the middle of the funnel. So that means giving something of value away. This could be an ebook, a cheat sheet, top tips. It could be a short, small video training or any other number of things. But it's where you demonstrate to your audience that you really are credible, you know what you're talking about, and you give them something of value in exchange for their email address. You can also use email marketing to keep in touch with customers, present and past. You know that they already know, like and trust you. And email marketing is a great way of staying in touch with them and cross fertilizing so they have a full understanding of all the services that you can offer them. Often clients will buy one thing from us and they will know us solely for that one thing. So if we can use email marketing to help them understand that actually you do other things and that is a great way of upselling and cross selling. And then third tip, which is a really easy one and I'm surprised more people don't do this, is add a sign up link into all of your email signatures. This is so simple that you can do it in a matter of seconds. And when they click on that link, it can take them to a page on on your website which says sign up to my mailing list and receive free value added content. This is exactly what I do. So if you want to see how that works, check out an email that you might have received from me and look at the signature at the bottom right now. So someone signed up to your list, but what on earth do you send them? It's really important to get the very first email you send right, because first impressions count. And so one of the things that I want to give away in this podcast is a swipe file of a series of emails that you could send as a welcome sequence when people sign up to your list. So Simply go to dacostacoaching.co.uk download 5 and you can grab a copy of that swipe file for free and just change it a little and start using in your agency today. So what you need to include in the welcome email. Okay, so here's my top six tips. First of all, say thank you. This is a really easy thing to do shows a bit of personality and shows your appreciation for them taking the time out to read your content. It also adds a human element to your communications. Number two is give them an incentive. So obviously if they've signed up to receive a free ebook, a free guide or checklist or whatever, then make sure you give them easy access to this. So what I would suggest is that you put a link in the email that says here is a copy of your ebook. Then you upload your ebook to the email system so that when they click on that link they just it automatically get taken to that PDF. The third thing I would say is set expectations for any future emails. So let them know about the frequency of emails. If you're planning to send out weekly emails, then let them know about this. And one of the things that I often do is put that in a P.S. so I say something like P.S. look out for next week's email. Which will tell you all about the five things you need to implement. When looking at value pricing, the next tip would be to tell them a little bit more about you. You don't need to go into tons of detail, but again this is an opportunity to add kind of a human element and some personality to your email. So give them a bit of background and use this part of the email to build credibility with yourself. The next thing you need to do is ask them to whitelist your email address. So what I mean by that is make sure that your email isn't going into their spam folder. So ask them to add your email to their contact address book and that way your email's in future won't go into their spam folder. And my last point in your introductory email is to provide further contact details. So let your new subscriber know how they can contact you as well as providing links to your social media accounts. Remember, one in a hundred contacts will be ready to buy from you. So if this person happens to be that one, then make it easy for them to contact you and also to follow you on other social media platforms. So far we've talked about the importance of building your mailing list, how email automation systems can really help expedite that and kind of where you should try to capture people's email addresses and then what you could send them in that very first email. Now if you want to get strategic about this, you need to have a content plan and I would really encourage you to create a content calendar for the next three months. As a minimum, I've actually got a content calendar that runs right up to the end of this year. And that covers all the blogs I'm going write, all the podcasts I'm going to record, the new content I'm going to create, and also the emails that I need to send to accompany the promotion of those particular tools. So if you want to get strategic, create a content schedule so that you know what you're going to talk about. One of the reasons why people stop doing this is they say, oh, I know I need to send out an email this week, but I don't just, I don't know what to write, so they stop doing it. So if you have a content calendar, a schedule in place that tells you what you're going to write, then when you come to write that, you will just literally sit down and write the email, rather than thinking, what am I going to write about today? The next question you may have is how frequently should I be sending these emails? When I've spoken to agency owners in the past who've told me that email marketing doesn't work for them, and I've dug a little bit deeper, I found out they've been really sporadic about sending them out. They may send one email a month or even one email a quarter, and then they wonder why it isn't working for them. Remember, if the sand time has run out, that prospect has forgotten about you and will go somewhere else to purchase your service. And also, if your subscribers only hear from you very infrequently, then they will probably forget that they've subscribed to your list and see it as spam and therefore delete your email anyway. So actually sending it out too infrequently has the opposite effect of what some of you may worry about, which is, if I send things out too frequently, will my subscriber just think I'm spamming them? No, probably the opposite way around. As long as you're sending value added content. That's the crucial key here. So what sort of frequency would work for your agency? Well, obviously everyone's going to be slightly different here, but I would suggest as a minimum, you send an email once every two weeks and ideally send emails weekly. And remember that if you are sending value added content, your subscribers will not mind receiving that email from you and indeed will look forward to receiving the next piece of content because they know it's going to add some value to their business. The next question a lot of clients ask me is, should I be sending a newsletter or something else? Well, personally, I am not a big fan of sending newsletters, partly because I think we are so inundated with them. And the second reason is because I think multiple messages don't resonate with our audience because they may only be interested in one part of your newsletter, but they may never actually get to that point in the newsletter because they've seen stuff that's not relevant and they've deleted it. So I think single message emails are much more effective than multiple message newsletters. Now, just to give a bit of science to this thinking, a few years ago I used to send a newsletter every month. So what I used to do is blog every week and then take all of my blogs and turn that into a newsletter, which I sent out to my audience. And when I was trying to see ways of getting higher engagement with my audience, I trialled for a while, sending half my audience a monthly newsletter and the other half of my audience a weekly email promoting that particular blog topic. So again, the weekly email was a single topic. And when I compared the two side by side, the single message emails got way more resonance and higher open rates and click through rates than the newsletter did. So, personally, I'm not a fan of newsletters, but for your industry that may be different. We've talked predominantly about using email marketing to nurture people at the top of your sales funnel and move them to the middle of the sales funnel, up to the point where they ask to book a phone call or a meeting with you. And of course, that is a brilliant way of doing it because you can automate this and save yourself a ton of time. And you guys know that I am all about automation and time saving and productivity. But don't forget, you can also use your email marketing automation to nurture and communicate with customers. So for example, you might have just delivered a new website to a customer and you might use an email sequence just to point out a few things that they should be doing with their website to ask them for feedback on how they're getting on, to give them a few tips on how to upload content to the website, and so on and so on. So you can think about ways of using email marketing to add more value to existing clients. Now this is particularly true if you're selling something online and it's a kind of commoditized product. It's very easy to say, hey guys, have you started using the product yet? Here's a quick start guide. Hey guys, here's one particular feature that I really want to draw your attention to in the new piece of software that you bought from me. And you can create a whole sequence of emails to ensure that your customers actually use your product or your course or whatever it is you're selling. And then ultimately you can ask them to leave a review for you as well. So email marketing supports you at the top of the sales funnel to nurture new prospects and turn them into clients, but it also helps you nurture clients at the bottom of the sales funnel to turn into raving fans and loyal repeat customers. So let's just recap what I've covered in this podcast because I feel like I've covered a lot of ground in a short period of time. I start off by talking about the importance of you building your own email marketing list and how it is one of the most cost effective ways of getting new contacts, dropping in the top of your sales funnel and nurturing them through the sales funnel to the point where you start engaging directly with them. We then discussed the various email marketing automation systems that you can use and how they can speed up the process by automating many of the email sequences that move contacts through your sales funnel. I talked about the importance of getting the welcome email right, how first impressions count, and then we discussed how frequently you should be sending out emails to your target audience. And finally we talked about the importance of planning forward and creating a content plan so that you can take a strategic view of your email marketing. I finally discussed how email marketing supports you at the top of the sales funnel, that's getting new leads into your funnel and nurturing them down the funnel. And also at the bottom of the sales funnel where you can nurture customers to ensure that they stay loyal with you and you can upsell additional services and keep them as a repeat client. Don't forget, attached to this podcast is your free swipe file which includes some example email sequences for when you first get a new subscriber into your email sales funnel. So go grab a copy of that and please, if you've enjoyed this program, please make sure you subscribe. And also I'd love it if you would leave a review as that is really going to help this podcast grow. In the next episode of this podcast, I am really excited to be interviewing David Miles, who's the owner of the PPC machine and he's going to be talking a little bit more about email marketing and how he is putting into practice a lot of what we've talked about in today's podcast and how it's really working for his agency to nurture people through the sales funnel, get them to download some freebies, get them to make some small purchases and then upsell his consultancy services. So make sure you listen out for that podcast so you can see how the PPC machine is making email marketing work for them.