STOP Blasting Emails | Convert Subscribers in 3 Minutes

Let's get to the questions. The first one came in from Dennis. Uh, what is the most successful path to take a customer from signing up for your email list to converting them to a paying customer? Is there a certain path or process you take that makes the entire transition simple and painless for the customer?

Wow, that is a great question. And the answer to that is, um, unfortunately no. There's never one single path that works for everyone. To help you flesh out that path or figure out what that path may be, it takes a lot of testing. It takes a lot of tracking of what campaigns you're using or what channels you're using. So I can tell you from my personal experience, you know, working here at AWeber is there's never gonna be a single path we consider, you know, our A-top number one way of going. What we do is we take different approaches to different campaigns, to different target audiences, to different channels. And what we do at that point is we'll start seeing what the success is based on our acquisition or our churn or retention. So I'd love to say that, yes, this is the path that works best for everybody, but unfortunately, I can never tell that to you. So it takes a lot of testing. It takes a lot of information.

Dennis, thank you for that strong lead opening question there. I feel like so many entrepreneurs are told they need a list, right? Everybody says you need to get an email list. And it's often one of the biggest regrets for a lot of online marketers is that they wish they had started sooner with having a list. But then you have the list, so what do you do with it, right? Like, how do you— I think a lot of entrepreneurs just make the mistake of, I'm just gonna blast out promotions all day long.

And yeah, I mean, it's best way— best way to do is actually segment that list, right? So you want to be smarter about the content that you're sending out, the offers. It's not going to relate back to everybody else. So when you're collecting that list, and this is for anyone who's starting with email marketing or looking to start an email list, is, um, we have certain features and functions within our product that you can categorize them, right? So you could look at maybe they like a certain cupcake if you're into pastries, or there's certain movies they love to talk about if you're doing some kind of review. Um, that's the best way of segmenting out your list at first and just understanding what their specific interest is and moving from there. Yeah.

And I think just of a general email marketing strategy is providing content and building a relationship first. You don't walk up to somebody who you just met and ask them to marry you, right?

I hope not.

You develop a relationship, right? You go on dates, you get to know them, and that's what you need to do with your customers too. The people on your email list, they may come because they saw some free download you had, or they read a post on your blog, or they liked something about you, but maybe not ready to buy yet. This is your chance to develop an ongoing relationship with them. One of the great things about AWeber is the autoresponder sequence, so you can automatically send emails every week or every 3 days or whatever time interval you want to build a relationship with them and offer them lots of value before you start selling anything. So you could test it, obviously, right? That's the point of using data and analytics.

Test all the things and test all the things, Evan. That's what it is.

Yeah. So if I was looking at a successful path to take a customer, the question was, from signing up to your email list to converting them to a paying customer, I'd look at an autoresponder sequence that was full of value, that established you as the expert, that you know what you're talking about, that you're credible. And then after that sequence is through, you can have a sales pitch, a call to action, once they know you, like you, trust you.