Email Marketing That Sticks

Email campaigns are a great avenue to utilize in marketing your business, but it's only effective if the campaigns are executed upon several important pillars. They are: 

• a sense of community  
• it reads in a personal voice authentic to you 
• offers value that your audience is looking for
• consistency 

If you're not going to commit and build your email marketing strategy upon these pillars, you might as well save everyone time and just put your own email in the "to" box. 

Fostering a sense of community can be done by getting vulnerable with your audience, using your email platform's specific tags to insert people's first names into the copy, or asking questions and inviting readers to reply.

Using your unique voice throughout the email is very important. This might come at the expense of some professionalism but it's well worth it. Your voice will set you apart from your competitors and make you more memorable to those reading your emails. Phrases that you often say when speaking to your friends are an easy way to help a strong voice come through. I often say "all the things" as you'll notice if you're on my email list (to start receiving my emails, click here); not coincidentally, I also say this in person as you know if we frequently hang out. 

Offering free value should be a common theme throughout your entire marketing and content strategy. Jenna Kutcher says "If you're not serving your audience, they have no business buying from you," and I can completely hop on board with that. The key when offering up this free value though, is to identify relevant content that your audience wants and needs. This can be done by simply asking them or doing a Google/Pinterest search for phrases related to your industry that people are searching. 

Lastly, consistency. The one word of advice I'd give to any business owner when it comes to anything, really. But in relation to email marketing: you must show up on a regular basis in order to gain your followers' trust. If you email them randomly and infrequently, when you do email them with a paid offer, it'll result in unsubscribes instead of sales. And really, who wants that? I send out weekly emails, but bi-weekly or monthly are pretty typical too. 

If you want help getting started, check out my free welcome email template to start your email marketing strategy off on the right foot.