Why an Email Newsletter NEEDS To Be Part of Your Marketing Strategy

TL;DR:

I never really paid much attention to email until this happened…

I was responsible for increasing sign ups for a client’s online course platform. We ran ads and worked out agreements with influencers, but nothing worked. We were getting traffic, but the traffic wasn’t converting into sales.

After diving deep and understanding where our customers were coming from, we found that the majority of them signed up after attending an in person event or class. They already had built trust with the organization and wanted to go deeper.

So I went back to the drawing board. How can we develop relationships with people all around the world virtually? Enter: email.

I launched an email newsletter where I would take little snippets that were insightful from the classes on the platform we were selling and shared that with our email list twice a week.

Instantly we saw a spike to our website, weekly traffic increased by 144% and paid sign ups increased 50%. Our email list also started growing organically every week, all this without any paid ad spend or influencer marketing to grow the email list.

What surprised me most was that not only did we get more weekly subscribers, we also saw a spike in daily active users of the platform from our existing customers.

Emails were driving new customers and driving our existing customers to use the product more! Now I’ve completely shifted my tune on email newsletters, I believe they are the best platform to focus on for customer retention and increasing lifetime customer value.

If you don’t already have an email list that you’re regularly engaging, you need to start now.

As markets become more saturated, consumers become more selective with the businesses they choose to solve their problems. It’s no secret that people do business with people they know, like, and trust. The more competition you have in a market, the more trust you have to build with the consumers before they’ll go with your product/service.

The Market Dynamics

There are different statistics out there, lets not get caught up in the exact percentage, that all say that the vast majority of any given market is NOT ready to make a purchase. This means that most people in your market aren’t aware of the problem your solving or aren’t actively looking to solve the problem - they just don’t care enough to take action. So how do you get people from unaware to handing over their money for your product/service? It starts with understanding the customer journey.

The Customer Journey

There are a number of different models for thinking through the customer journey, but if you look at the basic principle, its about understanding how to get someone that doesn’t know who you are through the different stages of getting to know your brand to the point where they buy. Some stop there, others continue this on and break down how to then turn customers into brand ambassadors who promote your brand for you. We’re going to look at the AIDA model here.

As a business, if we’re not thinking through how we’re getting our audience from one phase of this funnel to the next, we’re leaving money on the table. If you’re only doing one or two of the parts of the funnel, sure you may still have business, but a lot of your potential customers are probably going to your competition when they’re ready to buy.

The great thing about a newsletter, is that it can play the role of I, D, and A.

What Email Newsletters Are NOT

Let’s be clear here that email newsletters are NOT good for discover - in most cases. Social media, SEO, paid ads, are all going to be much better options to get awareness. What you want to do is use those discovery platforms to funnel into the newsletter. Instead of running ads trying to convert people cold, offer a lead magnet that requires an email opt in. This way you’ll get their email address and you can add them into your regular mailing list.

By signing up for a lead magnet, they’ve raised their hand and said I’m interested in the problem you’re solving. I want to learn more. Give me more information. Don’t feel bad for emailing these people, they’ve already moved from A to I in the AIDA chart by entering their emails.

How To Do Email Newsletters Properly

When we say email newsletter, we’re not saying to just send an email blast every week saying to buy our products. That’s the quickest way to get marked as spam and kill your email deliverability rates.

What you want to do is provide value to your audience consistently and subtly remind them of the products/services you provide.

One person that does this extremely well is Justin Welsh. If you read his weekly newsletter, the Saturday Solopreneur, he actually provides tips, unique insights, or mental frameworks for how to make money running your own online business. At the bottom of every issue he also pitches 3 of his own products/services. With every send of the email he gets sales, and he’s not being pushy or salesy. He’s just consistently providing value and staying top of mind.

Over time you keep consuming Justin’s content and you start to think, “man, this guy really knows what he’s talking about, he can probably help me with these things. Let me buy his course.”

That’s how you should be thinking about your email newsletter. The people on your email list have told you their interested in the topic that your lead magnet is about, use your newsletter to keep educating them about that subject. Your goal should be to be the first person they think of when they think of the problem you’re solving.

For Justin Welsh, his name is synonymous with building an audience on linkedin and soloprenuership. If I’m looking to build my linkedin audience, I’m not even going to shop around, there’s only one option for me: Justin. Since he’s consistently provided value to me week in and week out in the form of a newsletter and his social media content, he’s built a ton of goodwill and trust with me.

Play the Long Game

Building trust and goodwill is not a short term game. It takes time for people to trust someone enough to spend money on a product or service with them. Don’t rush the process, different people are at different stages of the customer journey. Last year I made a $2,000 course purchase after getting an email with information about it. Guess how long I had been on the email list before I bought my first product? 7 years. That’s right, I stayed on the email list and I would open emails from them here and there and it took 7 years, but finally when I was ready to buy they were there to make sure the sale didn’t go to a competitor. They stayed top of mind and kept engaging me for 7 years. Most businesses don’t have the patience to play this long game, and that’s why they end up losing in a cycle of always trying to make a quick buck.