Lessons

Lesson Info

How Often Should You Email Your List?

So in this lesson I wanna start by tackling one of those really big questions which is, how often should you email you list? I know this is a thing that everyone wants to know. It's one of the big things that came up at the beginning of the day, is how often should you email your list? Followed pretty closely by, "What the heck am I supposed to send them?" (laughing) Which is what we're gonna get to right after we talk about this, so it's gonna be perfect. So here's the thing, your list is only valuable if you use it. I don't care if you have 10 people or 10 thousand people, if you never email them, all that is worthless. It's only valuable if you use it. So I don't know how this happened but somewhere along the way people started to think about this idea of once a month. I'm only gonna email my list once a month. Once a month is not enough, for a number of reasons. But, the biggest one is that it's too much time between emails and your audience will forget about you. So part of your e...

mail list is just reminding people that you exist. They may not be in the mood to buy at that moment, but it's going to prime them potentially for buying in the future. And when you decide that you're going to email them once a month, they're like, "Who the heck is Megan Auman? "Who the heck is this person?" Delete, unsubscribe, ignore, whatever it is they do because they don't remember you. I have a pretty good feeling that that example that I showed the Sarah Marie Design Studio who makes the fun running clothes, if I got an email from her once every month or two I'd be like, "Who the heck is Sarah Marie?" But I get an email from her all the time and I'm like, "Ooh, what's new? "Ooh, what's restocked? "Let me look." So you need more consistency to remind people. Something that only happens once a month, they forget. The other problem with thinking about doing this once a month is then we fall in to that trap of, "I have to tell them everything, "because I haven't been around that much." Right? So then we try to write these newsletters that are crazy long and full of information and don't actually get our audience to take action. So I think a really good strategy to aim for is to email your list three to four times a month. Truthfully, as your list gets bigger you could up this frequency. I don't think that you would have a problem as your list grew, with maybe even five or six times a month if it warranted it. It's a lot when you're just starting out and you're maybe emailing once a month or twice a year. I'm gonna pick on Annette, now that I found out that's what was happening over there. So I think a good place to start is three to four times a month, or roughly once a week, depending on what frequency strategy you use. Now, I know what some of you are thinking, "But when I email my list people unsubscribe." Yep. Yep, they do. It happens. It will always happen. So that is why first of all we're going to stop focusing on subscriber count, right? We are focused on our process-based goals instead. If all you care about is the number on your list then you're never gonna send an email because you're gonna think, "Oh when I send that email people unsubscribe." So we're gonna focus on process instead. The other thing that you're gonna do, and I mentioned this in list set-up, but in case you already have your list set up, turn off unsubscribe email notifications. If you're in your list, just go in here, you can go to your list settings and just take the email out. Just leave that one blank. Email unsubscribe. Just leave it blank. You don't want 'em. We don't wanna see 'em. It's fine, people are gonna unsubscribe. They weren't your customer. Or maybe they were your customer and they moved on with their life, and that's okay too. We've all had brands that we've loved and that we stopped loving, not because the brand did something wrong but because we changed or we moved to a different point in our life, or we just, quite frankly, didn't need anything any more, right? There's only so many, like, pairs of running shoes you can have in your house at one time before your husband is like, "Why are there so many "shoes on the floor?" (laughing) Actually, shoes are the one thing he buys too. So, it's an argument between both of us. There's only so much stuff you can buy. So sometimes people are gonna unsubscribe and that's okay. But when you get those notifications, right, it sends like panic. The other thing is, and quite frankly, you don't wanna hear it, if you have this turned on, people tell you reasons. I don't care. (laughing) I don't care why you left my list, I really don't, because some people are gonna say, "Well you emailed too much." Okay that's fine, not for you. People say ridiculous things. That's why I just turned them off I don't wanna know. (laughing) It's okay just let 'em go. It's fine. You are doing what you need to do to run your business and that's gonna make some people maybe unhappy and that's okay. Because ultimately people who really love your brand and want to hear from you are not gonna be mad that you're sending often. I would also just like to remind you guys, think about all of the major retailers that you might subscribe to and how often they email and what your threshold is for staying on those lists, right. I delete a lot. I'm like, "J Crew, I don't need any more emails." It's fine. Like I get the J Crew and the J Crew Factory and the J Crew sale and like the... And somehow I'm still on all those lists. I'm not saying to do that. Like, it's not the best strategy especially when your list is small. But people have a greater tolerance than you realize. So stop worrying about the unsubscribes. So there are a couple of ways to approach the three to four emails a month strategy, and you can decide which of these is best for you. So the most simple is weekly emails. And this is one that I've talked about in other classes too. You're gonna decide, hey, every Thursday morning I'm gonna email my list. It can be a great place to start. But I wanted to talk about these strategies because truthfully I'm sharing the things that I do and I would be lying if I told you that I use this weekly email strategy. It just does not work for me. So instead, if that doesn't work for you, and we'll talk about deciding which one is the right fit, you may decide that you're gonna email every other week and add in one to two emails if you're launching something that month. Or, you may wanna focus on launch build-up with occasional other content. So depending on when I'm launching or what I'm doing I might send two build-up emails in sequence till I actually send the, "Hey, it's for sale." Or, "Hey, it's the thing." Or I might send one build-up, one launch email and then one secondary launch, say it's a short term sale maybe two days, I might send a second email, "Hey, the sale's ending." So in this case I might just then plug in other content when I'm not doing a launch. That's actually the strategy that I use. I'm mostly down at number three. But again, we wanna make sure that it's right for you. So, the first question is, do you need structure to stick to your goal? If you're the kind of person who is like, "Oh, I'll just email when I launch," and you're not gonna do it and you know that about yourself. Tanya's like, "No, not me." Then give yourself the weekly goal put it on your calendar, every X day, every Thursday, every Tuesday, it doesn't really matter what day it is, I'm emailing my list. If you need that structure, do it. Because again, action is the most important thing in this. I want you guys to take action. The other thing to think about is like how often do you release new products? If you don't release new products very often a launch strategy is a pretty terrible idea because you're not gonna be doing that many launches. And that's even something to think about with your social media call to action. If you're trying to only drive people to social media on a launch, and you don't launch very often, you're gonna have to add a little bit more consistency in there. So think about how often you release new products. So you're weekly strategy might look something like I will send an email to my list every Thursday. Bi-weekly plus launch strategy might look something like I will send an email to my list every other Thursday plus one or two more emails a month when I release something new or have a special sale. Or you could do something like I will send one to two preview emails before I launch new products or hold a big sale and when I'm not launching, then I'll fill in the gaps with extra content. So if I know there's a month where I'm not launching anything then I'll go through and say, "Okay, I need to send out three to four emails this month. "What can I put in there?" There's nothing right or wrong about either one of those strategies. It's what works best for you and your business. But, you wanna pick a strategy and add it to your process-based goals, right. This is actually your number one process-based goal is going to be list frequency. We want to do that. So I want you guys to commit. Right now, be brave and you guys watching online you can commit as well. So you can share, you can also go ahead and post to social media. How often are you going to email your list? Which strategy is right for you? And, if you're not sure, when we go down the line we can talk about it. Annette, what are you gonna do? I think I'm gonna do the every other week and then with more if there's a launch coming up. Perfect. I'm gonna do weekly and then a launch build-up also. Okay. [Female Audience Member] Every other week and launch. Perfect. [Lady In Purple Shirt] Every other week and launch. Like it. Weekly with a little extra when I launch. Perfect. [Lady In White Shirt] Weekly. Great, I love it. So now you guys are all committed, right? Are we seeing anything from our..? Yeah, well we have a question on this topic from Karen Jordan who says, "Does the three to four times per month also include blog posts that go out to the mail subscribers or simply direct emails?" 'Cause currently her email list is getting blogs that she's posting so she doesn't want to overdo it. Yeah, so that is a really good question. And it's something that I'm actually gonna address more in the blogging class. And without knowing exactly what she's blogging about it's hard to specifically say. But, one of the things I would suggest is actually taking a look at whether you really want to automatically send your blog posts out and instead shift the focus towards your email. Because here's the thing to keep in mind your blog posts and your email marketing serve different purposes. And so when we look at what you should be emailing about it's all about the call to action to drive people to your shop. And if you're blogging in a way that doesn't include a lot of product call to action then sending those blog posts to your list are a waste of your time and they're a waste of your lists time. So what I would say is instead I would flip that. Instead of sending out all your blog posts to your list I would commit to sending out maybe it's the weekly email, I don't know what your blog frequency is, but maybe it's the weekly email, maybe it's bi-weekly plus launch, and if there's a week where you're not launching or releasing anything and you're stuck then repurpose the blog content for your list. For product-based businesses I find this is a much better strategy than always emailing the blog posts out. Was there another question too about, and maybe it didn't get down to you. Well, let's see. I do want to have a follow-up there because she did say, "How do you recommend transitioning "to those direct emails?" So if people are used to getting the blog posts do you send them an email saying, "Sorry, I'm gonna try and limit the number "that you're getting each month?" Or is there a transition plan. So that's a really good question and I would say it a little bit depends on how big your list is and how long you've been emailing the blog posts. And this one may be a case of splitting the list. So you may say, "Hey guys, if you want to get the blog posts "by email every week you should be on this list. "But otherwise I'm just gonna send them out "a little more sparingly and you can be on this list." So that's one way to do it. The other thing that you could do is sort of do like a PS strategy so that people can still find the blog content but they realize they're gonna see something different. So you might say something like, you might do your more product-based email with your call to action and then in the PS be like, "Hey, did you also see this week's blog post? "Go here to check it out." So they're still getting the blog content but it becomes less and less of the focus. So that's how I would handle that. Yeah, and we did have one more that came in earlier from Anisa who said, "I specifically say that you're signing up "for the monthly newsletter that goes out "on the first of the month. "If I start sending more emails, can I do this "if they've only given consent "to have that one monthly email?" So that's a really good question and the first thing you're gonna do is totally change your opt-ins so that it never says that again. Right? We're not gonna make that promise any more so you're gonna get rid of that. Here's the thing. They gave you permission to be on an email list and even though you said that, chances are they probably forgot that that's what it said when they signed up, right? I don't remember why I signed up for a list, like I don't remember that it said, "I'm only gonna email you once a month." Or, "I'm only gonna email you every Tuesday." I don't remember that. So chances are they're not gonna remember that. Just start emailing them. You may get a few more unsubscribes but I think in the long run they're not even gonna remember, and it's not worth worrying about. But definitely take that off of all your opt-ins, all your auto-responders. Get rid of that once a month thing. Don't make that promise any more. And also, so I'm gonna throw something else out there too, which is, the first of the month is a bad day to send emails. People pay a lot of bills on the first of the month, they're not buying stuff, right? They either just paid their bills or they're paying their bills. So, definitely, that's not a day you wanna be focused on sending your emails out. Another question, I noticed on yours, a lot of them, the opt-ins say, "No spam ever, we promise." Or, they give a little thing about they're not gonna spam you. Is that a good thing or does it not matter any more? I mean, I think it's nice to add but if you don't have room for it, I don't think it's essential. I think most people at this point understand that you're not gonna be a jerk with their email address. And if you are, they're gonna unsubscribe you. So if there's room, I like to put it. But if there's not room I don't really stress about it. Okay.