Why Emailing Your List Consistently Is Important
Emailing your list on a regular basis sets the expectation of how often your subscribers will hear from you and what kind of information they will receive.
It also gives you authority when you are regularly providing value to them, as I’m sure they expect since they allowed you into their inbox in the first place.
It also helps you get into a good habit of creating and believe it or not, can keep the creative juices flowing!
So why on earth would you not want to keep to a regular schedule?
Reasons Why You Might Resist Emailing Regularly
Here are a few of the most common reasons I have heard over the years and may have even used a few of them myself once or twice.
- don't want to email too often and don't know how often is acceptable
- not enough time available in my busy schedule
- not knowing what to write about
I'll address each of these in this article.
Here’s How I See Consistency In Email Marketing...
Develop a Strategy
An email marketing strategy should define Who,Why, What, and When. Keep it as simple as possible, but there are certain things you should know. You've probably already done some of this work so you can either restate it or refer to it's location for reference.
Your strategy will change as you learn what's working and what's not. Set regular dates to check in on your progress and modify your strategy.
Plan Ahead to Be Organized & to Save Time
Being prepared helps to ward off procrastination!
Start with a schedule to be able to set deadlines for yourself. A schedule of preferred days to send and set writing/production days.
Keep an ideas list so you keep things flowing when you aren't sure what to email about.
Create an editorial calendar so you know what to write about and when. Include what you are promoting, the campaign type (promotional, content share, strategies, etc), segment of your list you will be sending to, potential subject line, send date, and time to send.
Keep a running list of your most popular content, including posts, videos, podcasts, etc with links. This can help to inspire you, increase traffic to older evergreen content and save you time!
Also list your best offerings and keep them with your editorial calendar so you don’t forget to promote them. Yes, sometimes we forget to promote successful products and services!
Build a swipe file of promotional blurbs for each of your products or services that you can pull from quickly for your email campaigns.
Track past campaign success and re-purpose the best ones. Change the subject line and remove any dated references. Perhaps change the main image or graphic a bit. Give them a rest for a period of time before re-sending.
If you know your writing is best done at a certain time of day or specific days of the week, set aside those days and times on your calendar and stick to it as much as possible.
Producing in batches can help you get more done in a pre-determined amount of time. You can have batch brainstorming and outlining sessions once a week or once a month. Prefill as much as you can in an outline so all you have to do is go in and write the email copy on your scheduled writing day.
This also applies to writing, if you are able to write productivity for a few hours. Learn what you can accomplish on average, set that amount of time aside and commit yourself to getting it done inside of that time frame.
Make use of subject line swipes or online generators to ensure as many opened emails as possible, and save you a bit time.
Email Marketing Systems in 4 Steps
All the best strategies will only overwhelm you without having systems in place and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to support you in implementing them.
Don’t be fooled into thinking that this is just for big companies with lots of employees. Every size business can benefit from them and new business won’t be able to grow and scale without them.
Not only are they helpful to keep you on track, they prepare your business to hire team members in way that allows them to jump right into the work using the methods you've already established with your documentation.
Document Your Processes
Business Processes are well-defined and repeatable units of work that may include both human tasks and automation.
Units of work would include tasks like writing email copy, creating an email campaign, creating visuals, producing a video, set up of a new free opt-in, sharing an opt-in on social media, etc.
I'm using a business systems framework I found at SuccessWise.com to set mine up and here's how it goes...
Step 1.
Map Out The Process
Map out the highest level steps it takes you to complete one unit of work (e.g. creating an email campaign). Who will be responsible for this work, what will they do, and when will they do it, especially if it will trigger or be triggered by the work of another team member.
Resource: SmartSheet.com
Step 2.
Document The Steps
Now it's time to get into the detailed, lower level, repeatable steps.
You're going to document every step and tell exactly how it needs to be it done. Don't leave out a step because you already know how. It's not just for you! You want to go on vacation or eventually scale your business, don't you?
Create checklists in a project management tool. A checklist can be done for different types of campaigns so you know you aren't missing anything. I use Trello for this.
Create any required visuals as examples or video tutorials.
Be sure to link to checklists or other resources (or indicate where they can be found) so you or other team members aren't spending their time tracking things down.
Your process flows and detailed instructions should become part of your branded SOPs or Operations Manual, which will be available to the entire team.
Step 3.
Implement It
Now it's time to test the processes yourself several times to ensure nothing is missing, incorrect, or could be better defined. Make those edits as you use it so it isn't one more thing on your to-do list that you may never get around to.
If you already have a team in place then let those that are assigned these tasks use them and make edits.
Step 4.
Adjust As Needed
You can set up regular meetings with your team to get feedback on existing processes to see how things are going for them. Information that is out of date or incorrect needs to be updated.
You could also encourage them to make minor edits if they see something is missing or doesn't make sense.. as they are working.
IMPORTANT: Schedule a time every quarter or so to create a backup of your systems. Better safe than sorry! Of course you'll want to document that process as well.
Why Documenting Your Workflows & Processes Is Important
Firstly, it's a huge time saver when used on a daily basis and it helps you to improve on your workflows.
It also makes hiring new team members so much easier if they know what to do and cuts down on training time required.
It's also a valuable assets for potential investors to see that you are serious about how you run your business as well as if you want the option to sell the business at some point.
The following are some recommendations of some of the systems I recommend.
Where To Start
If you haven't done any of this work yet, it may seem like a lot. It is! If you believe that Email Marketing is going to be a big benefit to your business and your customers, it's worth the effort.
All of the activities in this article will make the flow of emailing your list consistently go much more smoothly and save you time! Even if you implement just one or two of them you will begin to be more consistent in emailing your subscriber list.
Bottom line, it’s up to you to commit to being consistent and showing up to make it a priority.
If I had to choose just one thing to get started with it would be creating an Email Marketing strategy. Don't over complicate it! Use the list above and define the items in simple terms so you have a guide to work from. We're talking 1-3 pages max.
Once that's in place, then the next step would be mapping out processes, then the editorial calendar, and then start documenting the detailed steps while producing your emails.
Eventually the documentation will be mostly done and it’s just maintenance from there.
That's it!
As a gift, I put this into a list for you to help you get started. You can download that here, no op-tin required.
If you need help setting up any of the systems or sending your emails, that’s what I love to do! Feel free to reach out to me.
