Introduction
Nearly the first thing you hear as a digital entrepreneur is the importance of building an email list. You think. Ok. I can ask people for their emails. No problem.
What no one tells you is that simply getting someone on your email list in ActiveCampaign, Mailerlite, or Convertkit is not enough. You have to do something with all of those emails and a LOT of something.
When the realization hits home that we have to send emails, we are often faced with indecision, questions, and overwhelm.
Clients often ask me, “What do you send in the emails?”, “What is the whole purpose”, and “How often am I supposed to email the people who have trusted me with their email address?”
You can stay in this cycle of stuckness or you can decide to make a change and embrace your email list as a meaningful and important part of your business and business success.
Today I’ll share with you three mindset shifts that are critical to happier customers who are willing to invest in your product or service. Without this shift your email list will continue to languish and simply generate a bill that you pay each month to an email service provider.
The Art of Engagement
Successful entrepreneurship relies on a healthy, engaged email list. When we ignore our email lists, we create confusion and doubt. People that originally said yes to being giving us their email address start to wonder if they should unsubscribe or if we are even still in business.
The key to entrepreneurship is building relationships and with the volatility of social media we can’t rely on Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, or LinkedIn to give us a place to build long-term relationships.
Instead we have to create those relationships elsewhere and the primary place to do that is in our email. But there is so much that comes up when contemplating sending emails to our list.
Let’s dig into three key mindset shifts that have to happen for our email list to flourish and ultimately bring sales to our business. The third shift might leave you pushing back so in today’s Sixty-Second Solution I’ll share the key to moving past that block so that you can take action sooner.
Idea 1: More is Better than Less
We know that we have to send emails, but that generates a lot of questions and resistance. And one of the first questions that pops up when talking with clients about sending emails is how much is too much?
The simple answer is to send more emails than feels comfortable. Most of us would feel most comfortable with a one a month email or maybe once a week at most.
What if I told you that unsubscribes go down and engagement goes up when you send daily emails?
If this feels spammy to you, remember that the key is to provide meaningful information, help, tips, and motivation in your emails. Let your subscribers know what to expect from you, and then deliver on those promises.
I am on several email lists where the business owner emails every day. I don’t open all of them, but I will tell you that I’m more engaged with those businesses than I am with the businesses that send an email once a month or even just once a week. In fact, if I look at the businesses that I spend the most money with, either through tools, coaching, or other investments they are the ones that email more frequently.
Sending more emails than feels comfortable also has an added benefit of creating a self-cleaning list. People that aren’t really invested in what you have to offer are more likely to unsubscribe. This means that you aren’t paying for subscribers who aren’t interested in what you have to offer. They can always come back in the future.
So the first mindset shift when working with your email list is that it is ok to send more emails than feels comfortable. It is also ok to ease into sending more emails. Start with your normal, let’s say it is once a week – double that to twice a week. If you are emailing twice a week, try 3 times a week.
Idea 2: Focus on Story-Telling
Sending more emails isn’t enough to create an engaged and profitable email list. We can send 7 emails a week and have a completely unengaged list. Our emails really have to be focused on story-telling. It is the story-telling that builds relationships with potential clients and customers so that they can trust us.
Each day I sit down to write my email subscribers an email. This takes me less than 10 minutes because I focus on a story that connects life to business. In fact, one email that I have in the back of my head is about the instructions on a brownie box last week. The ingredients said that adding chocolate chips was optional. Now, in my book that is never optional, but it made me realize that there are pieces of our business that are technically classified as optional but really make a difference when we commit to them. For example, sending multiple emails a week to engage with our subscribers or creating content each and every week of some kind.
Now when I put that email into words, it won’t take more than a minute or two to read, but it will provide my subscribers something to think about as they tackle their day.
So many times we think that emails have to be this big production that looks beautiful, has headers, gifs, photos, new training, and more but that simply isn’t the case. Tell a story and connect it back to your niche.
This same thing also helps us to create better course lessons as well! At the end of each day I think back over what has happened for ideas that I can tie into an email, a post, or other piece of content. Then I jot that down in a spreadsheet so that I don’t forget it.
With stories, our subscribers begin to feel more connected to us and it is always easier to invest money in a product or service from someone we know than someone we don’t.
Think about going down the ice cream aisle at the store, there are 50 options. You’ve heard of 3 and know a little about their company. The chances of you buying one of those 3 brands is pretty high. Because you know their story. We want our subscribers to know our story, our values, what we believe in, what we stand for, and how we tackle the problem that they are experiencing. This is what brings in revenue.
Idea 3: Make Offers More than Feels Comfortable
Our third and final mindset shift for engaging with email subscribers is to make more offers than feels comfortable.
As entrepreneurs, we are told to lead with value over and over and over again. The fact is that, yes, we need to offer value, but if we want our subscribers to take the next step with us, they have to know that a next step exists and what it is.
Have you ever told yourself, well if I wow them, they will just ask what my offer is?
Yea, me too.
The reality is that our subscribers don’t have a vested interest in the success of our business. We have to be intentional about sharing our offer.
Especially in the course creation world, we talk a lot about big launches and doing them 3 or 4 times a year. That means that for the bulk of the year no one is buying anything. We have to learn to make offers consistently, not just during a course launch. The best way to do this is something that I love and that is the super signature. The super signature gives us a way to share what next steps a subscriber can take without that offer taking over the entire email.
A super signature is a great way to boost engagement and get your offers in front of subscribers with each email that you send. It can include free and paid offers and cater to subscribers at different points in their journey.
For example, I typically include a link to a recent podcast episode both on my website and on YouTube, a lower cost product like my Effortless Lead Magnet Email Sequence template, an invitation to set up a strategy call, and an application to receive private 1:1 coaching with me.
We can swap the components of the super signature out based on what is happening in our business, if we are promoting someone else’s launch as an affiliate, or want to test out a new resource.
The key is that when we make offers, our revenue can grow faster and easier. It is similar to the ice cream shop that sells more ice cream when they are open and the door unlocked than when they are open with the front door locked and barred to customers. Let’s commit to being the ice cream shop with the door propped open.
The mindset shift here is to look for ways to make more offers. Now, I know that even with these ideas that I’m sharing, making more offers can feel icky and give you a little bit of heartburn so in today’s Sixty-Second Solution I’ll share 3 things you can do to get over the hump and make offers.
Action Item: Build Your Email Strategy
Are you ready to commit to emailing your subscribers more frequently so that you can grow your relationships with potential and current customers and clients? I hope the answer is yes. If it is yes, then this week, take time to write your list an email. It doesn’t have to be lengthy, in fact it can be as simple as, “What are you working on this week inside your business?” That is ten words. In fact, you can copy and paste them directly from the transcript, format them, add a signature, and hit send.
What do you say?
Create a Strategy for Engagement
This week we have been talking about the dangers of ignoring your email list and the result of limiting your business revenue.
As you’ve heard, on the Digital Course Creator Podcast I’m openly sharing the lessons I’ve learned, the tools and tactics that I’ve used so that you can become a Six-Figure Digital Course Creator.
Over the past decade what I’ve realized is that so many of the six-figure tactics out there focus on marketing that doesn’t feel aligned with most course creators.
We need a way to increase revenue while staying aligned with our core values and mission as entrepreneurs and that, like anything in life, requires strategy in a number of categories. We have to dig deeper and you can get that from a lot of different resources: books, podcasts, webinars, and even courses.
Even with all of these resources, it is still easy to struggle to reach enrollment and financial goals and that is because what we want for our business is going to be 10% what we learn, read, or study, and 90% or more mindset.
As a Psychology Professor and Coach, I share as much as I can about mindset here on the show, in fact, today’s episode was focused primarily on mindset shifts with practical ideas to implement. But to truly thrive we all need individualized attention, accountability, and support.
So if you are ready to say yes to a thriving, financially solid business, I’d love to have a conversation with you.
I hold at least two slots open on my calendar each week to help course creators take action, dig into their purpose, and create a strategic plan for growth so that they can get unstuck! These are free, no obligation calls.
If you are ready to make the next 12 months THE year that you go from being uncertain about your course creation business to a Six-Figure Course Creator, grab a strategy call slot at coursecalls.com. You can also find that link in the show notes, but again, it’s coursecalls.com
Sixty-Second Solution
Have you ever known that you should do something but for some reason you just can’t make yourself do it? For example, we know that we should exercise, drink more water, eat a variety of fruits and veggies, and get plenty of sleep each night…yet when given the choice we might curl up on the couch with a brownie sundae and binge watch the latest Netflix season.
We know that this can’t be an every night thing, but still we find ourselves avoiding the actions that will keep us healthier.
The same is true when we think about making offers inside our business. If you find yourself struggling and choosing to hide your offers or only release them every so often when your bank account is low, try these three mindset shifts today. Remind yourself that:
- Your clients and customers need you to make an offer so that they can end their pain.
- When we don’t make an offer we are deciding that someone doesn’t need help.
- If we don’t make offers, we can’t make our offers better.
So get out there and make more offers starting today!
