Authors/Artists: You Need an Email List | Step by Step Guide to Get You Started
I've offered signed books to my email list and sold out of them in one email. On slow sales days, I've been able to send one email to my list and get dozens of sales That's the power of email marketing, and I wish that I had started it so much sooner in my creative journey because of how impactful it's been for both my business as an author as well as my business as a marketing teacher here at Marketing by Shelby.
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I'm doing a miniseries on email marketing. Today, we're talking about the fundamentals of email marketing what you need to know if you’re new to it or starting to dip your toes in. Next week, I'll be sharing four tips for writing great emails that get opened, so you don't want to miss that one.
Really quick before we dive in—I've been working on something very fun. In just 9 quick questions, this free quiz will help you learn your creative marketing superpower. I'll give you a custom marketing strategy and action plan as well as a custom playlist of recommended video lessons for you, and it just takes a few minutes!
What Is Email Marketing and How Do We Start?
Email marketing is a way to communicate to those who have opted in and said yes to getting emails from you in their inbox.
IMPORTANT NOTE: I'm going to talk a little bit about the legal stuff later, but people have to opt in to receiving your marketing emails. You can’t just add people to your list without their consent. Those laws are in place to protect all of us from getting spammed and random emails that we didn't sign up for. So it's very important that you make sure people can actually opt in as well as easily opt out and unsubscribe from your emails.
People who opt in to hear from you in their inbox (which is a place that most of us check multiple times per day) are expecting communications from the brands and the businesses they signed up for.
To start doing that, we need to pick an email marketing platform to use. There are so many out there that it can be a little overwhelming, but I do recommend that you do some research. Think about what the future might look like for you, and choose a strategy and a platform based on that. For example, some email marketing platforms have more features and more advanced settings like automation, which is something that's very important to me. It really helps me grow my business without needing to constantly email manually, and it allows me to send people free things whenever they sign up for my email list (for example, the results and freebies for the quiz I mentioned earlier).
Here’s my favorite email marketing tool! I’ve been using the same platform for years and love it.
Signups
The next thing we need to do is create a way for people to actually sign up. Typically, this will look like making a form that you can embed onto your website, or send people the link and they can then add their name and sign up again with that opt-in checkbox.
One of the best ways to do this is to offer some sort of freebie or lead magnet. It's a great way to grow your email list while providing your readers with value no matter what type of creative you are. We really want to attract our target audience that is perfect for our products here and not just offer a random bonus that might apply to anyone, because then we don't have a curated list of people who will open our emails and engage with them, which is crucial.
Schedule
The next important thing is selecting a cadence that you can actually stick to and telling your subscribers about it so whenever they sign up, they get an indication of when they can expect to receive emails from you. This is really helpful in getting targeted subscribers because now they might think, “Okay if this person's sending daily emails, maybe this isn't for me” or “Yes, I'm super excited about those daily emails so I'm going to sign up!”
Two More Legalities
First, people have to be able to unsubscribe with the click of a button. Always make sure if you're sending a marketing email that there's an unsubscribe button at the bottom.
Next, in some countries, it’s law to have an address at the bottom of your email for your business. There are ways to get around not using your personal address, though.
If you'd like more details, you can check out my YouTube video or podcast linked under the image at the top of this post.
And to get on the wait list for my email course—which is going to dive into writing amazing emails, give you templates for emails, and provide a step-by-step to creating your email marketing strategy so that you can make sales from your emails—go to https://www.marketingbyshelby.com/email and you'll be the first to know about that new course when it launches.
I will see you in the next one. Bye!