Why You Shouldn’t Build Your Email List

Email Marketing is one of the B.E.S.T. modern marketing strategies and one that I always recommend for coaches, consultants, and service business owners.

However, having an effective email marketing strategy can be challenging.  One of the key pieces of your email marketing puzzle is your email list.  If you don’t have a list, then you won’t have anyone to send emails to, no one will read your emails, and you will never get any sales through email, so it is very important to build your email list.

However, you shouldn’t build your email list until you have an email marketing plan.  Many people make the mistakes of building a list and then they don’t have a strategic email marketing plan that will allow them to get business from their email marketing.

Here are four things you should do before you build your email list:

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1. Create SEGMENTS: 

   Most people have one main email list that they want to grow and have thousands of subscribers who will eagerly buy from them.  Although having a main list can be a good idea, most of the magic and most of your sales will happen in your segmented lists.  It’s important to segment your list based on what people are interested in.  If you have a special eBook download and someone downloads the eBook, then they are obviously interested in that particular topic, so your goal would be to send them more information about that topic.  When you segment your list based on interests, your email marketing becomes much more effective.  To learn more about segmenting your email list, be sure to check out the post, This ONE Thing Can Get You AWESOME Email Marketing Results.

2. Decide WHAT type of emails you want to send to your lists:

   1. Email Newsletter–  An online email version of a newsletter is a great strategy to use to stay “Top of Mind” with your audience.  When sent consistently with appropriate content for audience, an email newsletter can be a great marketing strategy.
      
   2. Autoresponders–  This is a great way to automate the process of sending your emails to your list.  After someone joins your email lists or downloads some content you provided, you can automatically send them a series of relevant emails over a period of time.
      
   3. Drip Campaigns–  This is very similar to Autoresponders, in that it is a series of emails, however, drip campaigns are not necessarily initiated by someone taking an action like joining a list, or downloading content.  Drip campaigns are great for sales launches.The type of email you choose to send will depend on what you want to achieve from your email marketing campaigns.  For more information on types of emails to send, be sure to check out the post How to Create a Simple and Effective Email Marketing Plan

3. Decide WHAT type of content you want to share. 

   You have to think through what you want to share with your list.  This should include the topics you want to cover in your email, the type of mediums you want to include (i.e. videos, text, audio, images, etc.), the promotions you want to include, etc.  For more ideas on what type of content to include in your email, be sure to check out the post 5 Types of Email Content that Get You Awesome Results

4. Decide HOW often you want to send your emails, and schedule it out on an editorial calendar. 

   Some email frequencies can include:

   1. Daily
   2. Weekly
   3. Bi-weekly
   4. Monthly

Whatever frequency you decide, it is important to be consistent with your email marketing effort.  Your list will know when you have not been consistent and your results will suffer if you are not consistent.  Check out the blog post, How to be Consistent with Your Email Marketing to learn some tips on staying consistent.

This is just four things you should do before you start building an email list because you don’t want to build a list and not have a plan on how you will consistently engage with your list and how your emails will lead to more business for you, so the most important thing you can do before you build an email list is to create an Email Marketing Plan.

Do you have an email marketing plan?  If so, comment below and let us know what you include in your plan.  Need help with email marketing?  Sign-up to receive the smart marketer’s email marketing checklist.

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