As a business owner, you may be wondering to yourself, “Why bother with sending emails when I can keep in touch with my audience through social media? My business has thousands of followers and fans on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.”
While it’s commendable that you have a loyal following on social media, there are three important reasons why email should still be a central part of your online marketing campaign, even if you do market your business on social media.
1. You own the data. What happens if you get booted off Facebook? It does happen, for no good reason. What if the entire social network you have been relying on suddenly crashes or goes under? If you have built up your own email list, this would not be as catastrophic for your business as it might be for other companies, because you, rather than a third party site, own the data. By all means, build up a large following on social media networks but use social media as an incentive to get followers to convert to your mailing list as quickly as possible.
2. It is a more appropriate sales channel. Not everybody likes to be sold to on social networks. You need to use them with caution. You do this by keeping your information engaging and relevant. It shouldn’t be just used to send “Buy my product” messages. Most of us are much more used to email as a sales channel, and if we have given permission to be included on a mailing list, we expect to be sold to at least some of the time.
3. Not everybody uses a social media site. And even those who do might not login every day to see your post. However, most people pick up their emails each day. An email sits in your prospect’s inbox until they take some sort of action, whether that it is to open or delete it. It is much harder to ignore than a tweet, which may rapidly disappear down your customer’s timeline, never to be seen again.
Here Is the Reality of Email Marketing and What it Means For YOUR business
When you have a good customer mailing list, you can make money with the simple push of a button. The bigger your list, the more money your company will make every time you push that button.
Statistics show that every subscriber on your mailing list is worth $1 per subscriber per month, every month. So the average monthly income from 1000 subscribers is $1000. With a 2000 person list, your business could be making $2000 per month….with 3000 you could make $3000 per month, and so on.
It’s really that simple of a concept.
So with that in mind, let’s imagine that you write an email today and earn from it on autopilot for years to come.
Is that just a dream? It’s not. It can quickly become a reality for you and your business.
In fact, you can write dozens of emails in your spare time, load them up into an autoresponder account, sit back, and watch your company profits increase.
If you use autoresponders effectively, this is exactly what can happen for your business.
Email marketing is great because you can build a list, send an email, and earn money. But the fact that you can load up autoresponders that will get sent and earn for you without you lifting a finger after the fact is incredible.
It’s time to learn how to use autoresponders effectively. Learn how to do this and you can completely transform your email marketing and business.
What Are Autoresponder Emails?
Autoresponder emails are simply marketing emails that go out on a schedule. There are autoresponder companies, like Mailchimp, Aweber and GetResponse, that allow you to manage your lists, store your emails, and schedule them.
The benefit of autoresponder emails is that there are bound to be times when you don’t want the same email to go out to everyone on your list at the same time.
You want someone who joins your list today to get the first email in a sequence. You want someone who joins your list next week to get the same first email in a sequence.
Autoresponders are really convenient. People can get your emails in the order you want your followers to receive them. This also allows you to do a lot of your email marketing hands-off. You don’t have to manually do everything. You can schedule autoresponder emails to go out and set up a list-building funnel that works for you day and night.
The emails might be informative, promote your products, or promote the products of others.
How an Autoresponder Account Works
Take some time to log into your autoresponder account so you can get a feel for how it works. Read through the help pages.
You’ll set up a list and add in all of your information. Then, you can load up a sequence of autoresponder emails and determine the intervals between when the emails go out. You might load up 7 emails and schedule one to go out every 3 days, or whatever works for you.
Types of Autoresponder Emails
I’ve mentioned that there are different types of autoresponder emails you can focus on. The most important thing to know is that you can make these whatever you need and want them to be. Pay attention to what other successful email marketers tend to load up into their autoresponder sequences. Think about what your audience needs from your emails.
Relationship building is very important. You want people to feel like they come away with a lot of value when they read your emails. You’ll also want to make sales, of course.
Load up a welcome email as your first email. This is the autoresponder email people will get right after signing up.
Then, you might include an informative email. Next, you might include an email that includes some information and a soft sell.
The next email might have a harder, more direct sales message.
You can keep going with the sequence. Some emails focus on giving great information, some on building relationships, and some focus on making sales; others are a mixture of all the above.
How Often To Schedule Autoresponder Emails to Go Out
There’s no simple answer as to how frequently you should schedule autoresponder emails to go out. You might want them to be sent more frequently in the beginning when you’re first getting on people’s radar. Then, you might want to taper the autoresponder emails off after that, sending one or two a week.
You also need to consider how often you plan to send broadcast emails. You don’t want to flood people’s email inboxes with emails that you send as a broadcast and those that go out according to your autoresponder schedule.
If you’re stuck at all in deciding what to do, send 7 emails to go out every other day and then schedule the remaining emails to go out twice a week. Load up enough emails to last you for a year or so. Change out links and update the emails when needed. Consider writing autoresponder emails that are more evergreen so they’ll always be relevant.
What to Promote In Autoresponder Emails
One of your toughest decisions might be what to promote in your emails. Consider creating mini-sequences for each of your products. You can write a series of three emails to promote each product. The first more informative, the second with a soft sell, and the third with a more direct call to action.
You might also want to promote products as an affiliate within your emails. Consider what your audience will likely respond to. You might look through past broadcast emails you’ve sent and see what sold best to your audience. You can then modify those broadcast emails and put them in your autoresponder sequence.
Never promote something just to promote it. Promote something because you know a subset of your audience will really benefit from it.
Sequences of Three
You might have noticed that we have talked about sequences of three. These work well. Sometimes, people need a warm up before they’ll buy something.
You can stir their emotions and make them see that they really need a solution in the first email. Then, you can continue to stir those emotions and make a soft sell for a product that will solve that problem in the second email. The third email can be a more direct sell of the product with a call to action.
This puts the product in front of people multiple times. You can get higher conversion rates with this strategy. Test different sequences and different ways of presenting these sequences to see what will work best for your audience.
Tweaking Your Autoresponders Over Time
One of the best things about creating autoresponders is that they are pretty much ‘set and forget.’ You can load up your sequence and just leave it, letting it delight and engage your audience and make sales for you.
But you might find that you want or need to tweak some emails over time. New information might come to light. You might come out with new products you want to highlight or you might improve past products. Certain products you might have promoted as an affiliate may become out of date.
Every once in a while, go through your autoresponder sequence and see what you can tweak and change. For the most part, things can stay the same, which is a huge breath of fresh air so you can focus on other things in your business.
Write Emails and Profit
Write emails and profit… it’s not just a dream. That’s what will happen when you focus on writing great autoresponder emails and use them effectively. Write emails, load them up, schedule them, and profit. This is one thing you can do for your business that doesn’t take a lot of effort if you work on it a little at a time, but it can pay off in major ways.
Consider Getting Some Help With Your Email Marketing
Finally, you may want to consider getting some help with your email marketing. An outsourced professional like our company can help you create email templates, write copy and manage your lists that constantly convert your mailing list subscribers into buyers.
Contact us today to find out how we can help. http://www.marketingbypermission.com
Jon Muranko is an entrepreneur and online marketing expert. Connect with Jon on Linkedin. https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonmuranko
