9. Mastering Email Engagement Strategies

Melissa seideman: You are listening to Not Another Email Company, the podcast for entrepreneurs who are done guessing and ready to build an email strategy that actually works. I'm your host, Melissa, and every single week we're talking about real strategy, real results, and emails that actually make people money. Let's get into it. So today's episode is really unique. It's a QA episode where people submit questions to me. So I asked my email list about what questions do they have with email marketing, and they submitted them ahead of time. So I'd love to get into it. So the first question is. Someone asked. What are some ways you encourage participation from your emails and from your audience in their your emails? So you could do a giveaway, you can do some sort of engagement where you give them a gift card to Starbucks, let's say, and they go get coffee. You can ask them to reply to an email, you can ask them to do a poll, you can do all kinds of incentives to get them to participate in your emails. Simply just replying and starting off with a welcome sequence that's nurturing, engaging, and supportive. supportive will get them to reply over time. So it doesn't, it's, it does take time to get replies, but you can't just leave a little reply at the bottom of your email and assume they're gonna reply. You need to put conversation into your emails to make sure it's conversational and that they're gonna want to reply automatically. I get replies every single week and I absolutely love it. It's one of my favorite things to do. Is check my email the day after I send an email and get all these replies and have a conversation back. Whenever someone replies to my emails, I always reply in the same length that they replied to me with. So if they sent me a sentence, I reply in a sentence. If they reply in a paragraph, I write a paragraph. Sometimes they write paragraphs and then I reply every single time. But you should reply every single time to your audience if they took the time to reply to your emails. It shows that you're a human, it shows that your content is valuable, and it shows that you value them as a subscriber so always reply to the emails. So next question is, what is your top tip for keeping your audience engaged with your emails? So that was the same thing that I just did. I've been using a tip program called ListGadget from Liz Wilcox and another her partner. They list Gadget is a really great way to get feedback and participation. And I find my email list is really loving the competition part of the emails, so you can put competition into clicking a link, creating a poll, creating a survey, doing questions or open-ended feedback. It's a really great way to do that, and that's what I've been doing recently. If you're just starting out, could you create a welcome sequence of like 20 emails long? I've never seen anyone talk about this. Could this be an effective strategy? Why or why not? That way, half the year is done as soon as they sign up. Yeah, so this is a really effective strategy. if you can have evergreen emails, emails that go out at any time of the year without being sequential and having to be timely. So You could have a welcome sequence that are 20 emails long and space them out so you have half the year done for you. without a doubt, you could do that. I do it with my email list. Every Tuesday's email on my list is an email that's repurposed into a sequence or funnel that goes out once a week every Tuesday. So that funnel is for me, it's like four to five years long every year, every month I add to the funnel. so people keep getting a Tuesday automated email. And then Thursdays is the email that I send that I write every single week about the topics that. I'm discussing or things that I'm working on or things that I'm thinking. So it's totally doable. You could definitely do this and it would take the work out of it. The only thing is sometimes things come up and you could always send a one-off email that's not on the regular day. that's one way to get around that, which I love. So if you want to do that, definitely go with it and try it. If it works for your audience, then it's a great strategy to do. If it's gonna help you with consistent emails, go with it. I think it will make a huge difference. Next question. Is there an optional number of optimal number of images to include in eBlast? Why or why not? I recommend with the rule of three having no more than three images in email. That includes a logo and an image at the bottom if you have an image at the bottom. Three images is the ideal amount of images because if you do too many images, it can lead your emails to spam. It can also report them as spam and end up in the spam folder, which you don't want to happen. So I always recommend no more than three images in email and be very cautious of how many images you are putting because it can make it mobile not mobile friendly always check your email on mobile when you send an email or schedule an email you should always send yourself a copy of it check it on your phone check it on your desktop to make sure it's optimal for viewing the email on mobile and also on a desktop I have a welcome sequence now. What someone submitted. So this is a great one. I love this. So now what is you need to send consistent emails. So decide what consistent emails mean for you. If it's sending one email a week, send one email a week. If it's saying it's two emails a week, send two emails a week. If it's if it's one every two weeks, do it that way. I have some clients who send one email a month and that makes difference for their business, then do that. What I if I have a welcome sequence, now you need to just send consistent emails. Consistent emails build rapport, rapport. it builds nurturing. Nurturing over time means they're gonna buy from you and connect with you and it makes a huge difference to your email list. How would you get next question is how do I get From open emails to sales. I have a pretty good open rate, but a lot, not a lot of clicks from sales or emails. Yeah, you gotta listen to the episode of the rule of three. I talked about where to put the links and how it makes a difference in opening the emails. You also gotta make sure your funnel's good. So if your product is not good, you could send an email for days, but if the product is not converting or it's not timely or it's not helpful to the person, they're not gonna wanna buy from your product or service. So make sure the product is the ideal customer. Is getting that email and that product to make sure that sales are converting over. you can have a great open rate, but if you're not getting a lot of clicks or sales, you need to evaluate that. You can always do an audit with me. if you're interested in getting an audit from me. I go through the whole back end of your system, audit the entire email marketing platform, your emails, your scheduling, your sends, your opens, your clicks, everything. And I will give you a practical video with a walkthrough tips on how to optimize your email marketing platform. If you're interested in an audit, you can go to my website or go to the show notes and click the audit link and type in email audit to get 25% off your audit from listening to this podcast episode. Next question: Best strategies to grow your list or convert to sales. I did a whole podcast episode on this on growing your list. You can go with Facebook ads, you can partner, you can do a freebie swap, you can do a webinar collaboration where you do a webinar or a workshop, grow your list that way. There's a lot of different ways to grow your list and be successful with it. And hopefully you've listened to other episodes to get some strategies or ideas. Is there a specific day or time you suggest to send emails to your audience? Every audience is different. So I have a client who is a therapy client and we send her emails on Friday nights. And when she came to me and told me that she wants to send on Friday nights, I questioned it. I was like, why? Why are people gonna open emails on Friday nights? And she goes, Yeah, because my audience in therapy wants needs the most support on a weekend. Weekends are when the week went crazy and they need more support or they need more help, and they realize the weekends are when they need to get back in check. With their therapy. So she found that Friday nights works for her audience. I have another seller who's a digital seller who thinks Sunday mornings is the best time to do it. I have another client who does Tuesday mornings, Thursday mornings. Go with the day that works best for your audience and don't be afraid to test the day. So do a couple months of one day and one time and see what works best for your audience. And if it doesn't work, then try a different day and see what works best and then compare the results, the day and time to send emails. I'd like first thing in the morning, if I ever do a sales email. I always send at the beginning of the month. Makes a huge difference when people have more money at the beginning of the month than at the end of the month when they don't have the money. So that's when I do that. I also send emails when there's a sale at midnight. So you're first in the inbox in the morning when there's a sale. So if you ever do that. How often do you share free content with your audience? This is a good question, too. I share free content every single week. I'm giving tips and tricks of how to help clients or customers. I share free content in forms of blog posts, podcasts, freebies, incentives, teach tips to run their business, tips to your problem to solve problems in their business, whatever you sell. so free content doesn't always need to be free. You can give a little bit of content and then say, This might help you if you buy this product or Service or whatever you're trying to sell. So connect the problem with the solution. It makes a huge difference with email marketing. So that's a wrap on today's episode. I hope you enjoyed this QA session with the non-another email company. If this gave you something to think about, something to test, or just remind you that email's worth showing up for, share it with a business owner who needs to hear it. You can find me at non-anotheremilcompany.com and I will see you next week. If you have any questions, join my email list. I would love to see you there. So you can join in the show notes. If you have any questions, reach out. Thanks so much for tuning in. Bye.