Email Marketing: Best Practices for Success

Is email marketing still relevant in 2024? Absolutely—and it’s more powerful than ever! In this episode, we’re diving into everything you need to know about email marketing best practices. From how often you should email your list to the mindset shifts that will help you hit "send" without hesitation, we’re covering it all.

Learn why email isn’t just a communication tool but a vital business strategy, and discover how to create consistent, engaging, and effective emails that nurture your audience and drive sales. Whether you’re just starting or looking to up your email game, this episode will give you the tips and confidence you need to succeed.

It’s time to stop worrying about "too many emails" and start owning your email strategy like a pro. Tune in now and get ready to take your marketing to the next level!

My tool of choice is MailerLite (affiliate link)

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Transcript

Hey, welcome back to the new School of Marketing podcast. Today, I want to talk to you about one of the most powerful tools, literally one of the most powerful marketing tools around, and that's email marketing.

And whether you love it, you're a little bit skeptical, or maybe just kind of don't like it, or maybe you're just confused about how to use it effectively. I'm going to talk you through how to use email marketing for your business.

We're going to answer some big questions, like how many emails should you send? What's considered too many emails?

Why your mindset around email marketing might actually be holding you back. So if you've been hesitating to hit send or build those automations, stick, stick around. Because I hope that this episode is going to change the way you think about email marketing.

All right, first things first.

How many emails should you actually be sending?

And really, the answer, as with most marketing strategies, is it depends.

But let's talk about good starting point.

If you're running a typical weekly newsletter, one email per week is a solid baseline.

But if you're doing a launch or a promotion, you might send anywhere between five to seven emails during the week or even more, because you need to keep reminding people about things.

And during a live event, like a webinar or a challenge, you know, something that people sign up for that they really want to participate in.

You really want to send daily reminders or even multiple emails in a day, especially on the day of the webinar you like, you know, we're starting in one hour, we're starting in 15 minutes.

You really want to tell people about this because they have taken that action to sign up. They want to hear from you, they want to be part of it. If you only send them one email when they sign up and then you don't remind them, they are going to forget.

So you need to remind them. So really with email, it's all about context and it's about providing value.

The key, though, is to establish some consistency.

If your subscribers expect to hear from you once a week, then don't disappear for months and then suddenly flood their inboxes. I've had that happen with people and they're like, who is this?

Because I forget that I signed up for something. And really, consistency builds trust. Okay, let's also address the elephant in the room.

How do you know if you're emailing too much? And here's the truth.

What feels like too much to you might be just right for your audience.

And what feels just right to you might be too much for some people in your audience.

I want you to remember, though, that unsubscribes aren't necessarily a bad thing.

They can actually help you refine your audience and to keep your email list healthy.

People who stay, who don't, who don't unsubscribe, they are your engaged audience. They are the ones who care about what you offer. So don't be afraid of unsubscribes.

But if you're getting a lot of complaints or you're getting a lot of spam reports, that's a signal to reevaluate.

You need to look at the quality of your content, not just the quantity.

So are you actually sending value or are you sending fluff just to keep consistent?

And when I say complaints or like spam reports, I don't mean that one person is telling you that you send way too many emails.

You need to look at a percentage, like a percentage of complaints, a percentage of spam reports, a percentage of unsubscribes. And then you need to determine if it's like a large portion of your audience or if it's almost insignificant, because everyone gets the occasional complaint, everyone gets the occasional spam report, and everyone gets unsubscribes.

It's just. It's the nature of the beast. And you won't ever please everyone.

You need to remember that you're running a business. You're not running a fan club.

And when I say everyone gets emails like that every so often. I received one recently, and it literally said, you are sending way too many emails. And, you know, for some people, maybe I am sending way too many emails, but it's the first email I've had in years that said that.

So I'm just going to take it and go, okay, well, that was not the right person to be on my list.

Or. And look, I had set up some new funnels, so maybe that person was in all the funnels and just got all the emails. And, you know, that that's on me.

I should have put in some, like, exclusions and things like that. But we're all running a business.

We build our lists to sell to people, and the occasional complaint and the occasional spam complaint and the occasional unsubscribes. That's totally okay. I can totally live with that.

So here's where many business owners get stuck. They are literally afraid of annoying people with their emails. And I've been helping, mentoring quite a few local businesses, helping them set up their automations.

And they literally go, no, no, no, I don't want to email them.

Like, they just feel like it's too much.

So let me ask you this. Do you believe in your product or your service?

And if the answer is yes, then your emails aren't an annoyance, they are an opportunity.

Think of your emails as a service, not a sales pitch.

You're literally offering solutions. You're sharing value and you're helping your audience solve their problems or giving them something that they desire.

And if you don't email them, someone else will and they'll take your customers from you. If someone is on your email list, that means that they are literally saying, yes, email me.

So you email them.

So don't let your mindset blocks hold you back. Like I said, you're running a business, not a fan club. And email marketing is a really critical part of your marketing.

It's a critical part of your business.

So let's get into the nitty gritty of email marketing best practices.

First up, let's talk about subject lines. They are the first thing that your audience sees, so you want to make them compelling. None of that newsletter number three kind of thing.

Trust me, I've seen it. It is nothing more boring than say, oh my God, I've received a newsletter.

So use great subject lines. And great subject lines are clear, concise because you know you've only got a certain amount of space, especially on mobile. Can't go on and on.

And they are curiosity driven.

Like you want to get people to think, oh, I wonder what that's about. So I think you know, for example, five simple steps to double your sales. I'm like, oh, simple steps.

I can do this.

Or are you making this common mistake? You literally want to want people to go, ooh, I wonder what this is about? And then click it and read it. Okay, next is segmentation.

Not all subscribers are the same, so try not to treat them like they are.

You can actually use tags or segments or whatever your email marketing system uses to send tailored messages to specific groups.

For example, you can send beginner tips to new subscribers and advanced strategies to seasoned clients. Now, I do want to say segmentation is like a more advanced kind of strategy.

If you're just starting out and you're like, oh, I don't know what to do, so I'm not going to do anything at all, then don't worry about segmentation. Like literally skip it.

Don't worry about segmentation. I sometimes don't worry about segmentation because it is that extra kind of step.

So if email marketing or if segmentation is going to hold you back from doing email marketing, forget about this. Just don't worry about it.

Also, don't forget your call to action. So every single email should have a purpose.

Whether that is to get people to read a blog post, whether that is to get them to sign up for a webinar, whether it is to buy a product, make your call to action, your CTA clear and don't, you know, bury it into a sea of text.

Make it really, really clear what you want people to do. And a lot of email marketing platforms have templates and a lot of them have like buttons in there. So you can literally use the button to say, now do this thing.

And then lastly, you need to test and optimize.

So pay attention to your open rates, pay attention to your click rates, and even sometimes the time of the day that you send your emails, because all of those insights can help you refine the strategy over time.

So most of the time your first email, especially if you're giving away a freebie, most of the time your first email will be the one that gets the highest open rate and there will be a natural drop off like after that.

But you want to keep an eye on it because if it drops off a lot, you kind of need to work on things whether that is like getting better at your at your subject lines or just getting better at your content kind of thing.

Another thing I want to add that I recently saw is putting too much in your email. And this particular person actually had an email marketing subscription that charged them for every single email they sent.

And because they had a quite a large list, it would charge them like hundreds of dollars every time they sent an email. So they try to not email too much and cram everything in like one email.

I definitely discourage you from doing that. I would rather have you send more emails with less information than cram everything in the one email. And also if you have an email marketing system that charges you by the email, please leave.

I will pop my favorite email marketing provider in the show notes. It's Mailerlite. Just to let you know, I use it myself. It's awesome. It's very affordable. It does Automations it does all sorts of things.

But yes, if you get charged by the email, leave because you know you don't need that. Just don't cram too much in it. Because also if you cram too much in it, especially with certain email like readers, for example, in my Google emails, at some point it gets cut off and then you have to click read more.

And so you're basically expecting people to spend their time clicking buttons to then open another, load another page where they can read the rest of the email. And to be honest, my brain is fried after I read like a super long email.

Nobody's interested in that. So keep it short. I'd rather have you send more emails than cram everything in there. Of course, if it's one topic and all the information goes with that one topic, then one email.

But not like, oh, and this and that and that topic and that topic and that topic.

So that's another little tip. Okay, I can get really randy about this because I'm so, so passionate about email marketing. It is literally my favorite marketing tool. Yes, sounds weird, right?

Because I'm a Facebook ads person.

But email marketing is the bit that converts. That's where the magic happens. So there you have it. Email marketing demystified in a short episode because there's always so much more.

So we talked about how many emails to send. We talked about why unsubscribes aren't the end of the world and how shifting your mindset can make the difference. I also shared some practical tips to hopefully level up your email game.

And remember, email marketing is not just a nice to have. It's literally a business necessity. And the more you embrace it, the more it will work for you.

All right, thank you so so much for joining me on this episode of the new School of Marketing podcast. I hope you find it helpful. I'm so excited to share these marketing tips with you every single week.

I hope you love them too.

As we've come to the end of the year, I want to already start saying and there will be some more episodes, but I want to start saying have an amazing Christmas time, have a great holiday season.

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