MBA2027 Is The Email Newsletter Dead? + Free Ride Friday

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Hey oh. Welcome to the hunter. Welcome to $100 show Daily Business goodness every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014 and today is Free Ride Friday. On Free Ride Fridays we give away a lifetime membership to one of our programs. We're giving away easy course, our 30 day course on how to build your own online course. All you got to do is leave us an Apple podcast rating and review. When you pop in a review you enter our weekly random draw. Just listen in on Friday to see if you won and you're in the draw until you win. So make sure you tune in like today to see if your name is called. In today's episode you will learn Is the Email newsletter Dead? Email newsletters have been around for as long as the Internet has been around pretty much, and many people use email newsletters as a marketing tool to promote their products and services and what's going on in their business. But email newsletters have actually changed a lot in the last few years and I want to give you the latest how companies and businesses are leveraging newsletters to be able to add value to their customers, but also give them their best content always. I'm also going to share with you how some companies are selling their newsletter subscription and thirdly, how you can monetize your newsletter with something a little bit in between. We got a lot to cover in today's episode, so let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

We've all been there. You hold on to a coupon but forget about it and suddenly it's expired.

Expired in 2012. Dang it.

Fortunately, by switching to Geico, you could save about $900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.

It feels good to save big. It feels good to Geico.

Unfortunately, email newsletters have gotten a bad name over the years and a big reason why is the content. It's becoming overly markety, spammy and just self promoting. There's just no value in it anymore. But that's not the newsletter's fault, that's the people that write them's fault. So I'm gonna break up today's lessons into three different strategies when it comes to email newsletters that have really worked over the last few years. But all three of these require that the content rocks. That people are excited to open up your email newsletters. They can't wait for it to drop in their inbox. They actually have a little flutter in their heart when they see your name on their email app on their email client. They can't wait to click that email and read what you got. That's the kind of newsletters that work regardless of the strategy, and that only happens when they've been trained to do that, meaning that they really enjoy reading your newsletters. I've learned a lot of this from copywriting master Matthew Kimberly, who has a great email writing course called Delightful Emails. You should definitely check it out. Matthew equates this to getting a text message from the person you love the most. You haven't even read the message yet and you're excited, you're happy. And this all comes down to you being a person of value. When somebody values you, they really value what you offer, value what you write, value what you say. So this is the premise of all these strategies. Now, strategy number one is all about how can I give great value to be able to market my products, my services, my brand? And there's two email marketing strategies or newsletter strategies I recommend. One is a regular epic newsletter. Now when I say epic, I'm talking about the content inside that newsletter is not just a bunch of updates and a few links. No the content is actually really valuable. It doesn't necessarily need to be long. You can do a weekly newsletter. A lot of great writers do this, like James Clear from Atomic Habits or Tim Ferriss from the Four Hour Workweek. If you're on their newsletter, they give you a new email every week. And they're short, they're sweet. There's some really solid tips in there and they're valuable. Now I've tried daily newsletters, I've tried weekly, I've tried monthly. And depending on how you like to convey information, some people are really good long form, some people are good with medium, some people are good with really short nuggets. If you're a long form person, the monthly newsletter might be the way to go. So you can really dive in and go deep and people are willing to read it because it's only once a month. If you're more on the shorter side, weekly or even daily might be something you want to consider. And yes, there are newsletters that are daily that are very, very popular. And I'll talk a little bit more about them in a moment. So the purpose of these newsletters are not news really, they're really giving them incredible value, something that's going to help them that day, help them that week, get them better at whatever you teach them. You could see this as sort of like a mini workshop or an incredibly valuable blog post in your email. Now these are called broadcasts. So that literally means you're writing the email and you're broadcasting it to your list on a regular basis, weekly, monthly, you get it. The other version of the newsletter is called a shadow newsletter. Now I really love this type of newsletter. It's very, very smart. This is a type of newsletter, the shadow newsletter that was introduced to me by Brennan Dunn, who created some incredible online courses on email marketing. One called Drip Mastery as well as convertkit Mastery. And the concept of a shadow newsletter is basically an email automation. Now the downside of using email broadcasts for your newsletter is let's say you wrote an epic great email of high value three months ago. Anybody who is new to your list will never see that email because that broadcast is gone. Now shadow newsletter is basically like an email automation. So you send out an email once a week automatically that is pre written to anybody who joins your newsletter and you have like email 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And if your newsletter is weekly, then it would be sent once a week. If it's monthly. You get the point. The power of the shadow newsletter is that all your great content continues to be shared with new subscribers because they're basically on their own path. And this kind of makes sense because many people that are joining your email newsletter are maybe new to their journey, right? So you may want to sequence your emails in a way that provides the value that is incremental, that builds upon each other. This means that every subscriber has a different email for their weekly email or their monthly email. And your job as the content writer, instead of writing broadcasts and sending them out, you just add another email to the sequence of the shadow email automation. Again, these two strategies is to add value to your audience, is to build.

Trust, and to market what you do.

Strategy number two, which is a paid newsletter, this is a huge, huge moneymaker. There is a lot of great companies that do this. One of them is the Dispatch, which is a political newsletter. There's Lenny's newsletter, which is a business newsletter, $15 a month. Another business newsletter is a no Opinion, which is Noah, the name pinion, and that's $10 a month. These people have created an incredible audience that loves their emails, loves their content, that they're willing to pay a small fee every single month to get their emails. It's basically Netflix for newsletters. And there are so many platforms that make it easy for you to charge for your newsletter. ConvertKit allows you to do this ghost and many more. According to an article from Mailchimp, if you're seeing open rates of 50 to 60% on your email newsletter, you could probably charge for it. This is quite an advanced business strategy because you need to be able to really provide excellent value. You got to be a pretty decent writer and know how to cultivate a great newsletter. But it's definitely doable. And the production cost is far less than videos, for example, or a podcast. The third strategy with newsletters that I have picked up the last few years that is incredible is something in between. You can monetize your newsletter without actually charging a monthly fee. One popular example of this is the Morning Brewing. The Morning Brew is a daily business newsletter. They cultivate and curate lots of great business pieces, news around the world so that you read this newsletter and you're informed on what's going on in the business world, from crypto to NFTs to acquisitions to the economy, and people find it very valuable. Now, the way they monetize this newsletter is through advertisements, sponsored snippets inside their newsletter. And because they have millions of subscribers, literally millions, they're able to charge a premium for their advertising spots, for their sponsored spots inside their newsletter. Another strategy that people use to monetize their email newsletter is affiliate links or affiliate promotions. If there are other entrepreneurs, companies, products that you believe in, talk about it in your newsletter and include your affiliate link. As long as you're upfront about the fact that you are an affiliate, then the review and the content is still valuable. It shouldn't rock the boat and upset your newsletter subscribers.

We've all been there. You hold onto a coupon hoping to cash it in at the store, but then you forget about it and suddenly you've got a mountain of useless expired coupons.

Do you think this one's still good? Free milk?

Oh mate, that expired in 1993.

Dang it.

Fortunately, there are better ways to save money. Like by switching to Geico, you could save about $900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.

Ooh, how about this one? Half off floppy disks.

Now you should try a bit of spring cleaning.

It feels good to save big. It feels good to Geico.

To wrap up today's lesson, three huge strategies in the last few years that have blown up when it comes to email newsletters. Using your newsletter as a way to build trust with incredible value. Your best stuff is in your newsletter, whether it's week or monthly or daily. You can use the broadcast method or the shadow newsletter method, which is an automation strategy. Number two Paid newsletters. Many people think you need a huge list, a huge following for a paid newsletter, but you really don't. Even if you just have 50 paid email newsletter subscribers and you charge $10 a month, that's an extra $500 a month in extra revenue and you can scale up from there. And thirdly, using your newsletter to monetize, but not directly by charging for the newsletter, but through advertisements, through affiliate links, through sponsored content. Now remember, this strategy works best when you have a larger, engaged list because you got more eyeballs, more traffic, and you can demand more dollars for those sponsored links. Well, there you have it guys. No, the email newsletter is not dead. It's alive and kicking. It's evolved over the years, so make sure you evolve yours. Rethink your newsletter. Try something new this week. You might be surprised with the results. Today's episode's not over though, because it's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's Free Ride and the winner is. Matty. Matty says incredible podcast 5 stars this podcast is a must listen for anyone looking to enhance their business strategies. Omar is incredibly knowledgeable and each episode provides a wealth of valuable insights and advice. Thanks Matty appreciate that you are our free Ride Friday winner. Your mission is to email me over@omar00mba.net so I could hook you up with the lifetime membership to easy course, our 30 day course on how to build your own online course. It retails for $300, but it's yours for leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. You could do the same with Drop us a review on Apple Podcasts and you enter our weekly random draw. Listen in on Friday just like the day to see if you won. It's that easy. Thanks so much for listening to the Hundred Dollar VA show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Your newsletter, your email communication with your audience is gold. Having a direct line to people that are interested in what you have to offer the value you give is incredibly valuable. This audience can help you learn about what to build for them, how to serve them, and can be the potential customers that make your business thrive. So spend as much effort and time as you can in making your newsletters great for them. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you on Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

We've all been there. You hold on to a coupon but forget about it and suddenly it's Expired.

Expired in 2012. Dang it.

Fortunately, by switching to Geico, you could save about $900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.

It feels good to save big. It feels good to Geico.