Your email marketing list is the perfect way to deliver exclusive content to your most engaged customers. Offering an email series is one way to provide high-quality content while growing your list too.
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Goal: Launch An Email Series
In our previous training, we examined the welcome series you use to provide initial content to your readers. The next way to grow your email marketing is through an exclusive content series, just for your subscribers.
I’ve used series emails to send specific email marketing/content to a small group of subscribers. For example, they could sign up to take part in a 5 step branding challenge with me. Each day {or once a week for 5 weeks, whatever works for you} they receive an email with a tip of the day that they can implement to improve their brand presence.
Pick A Topic
Just like your lead magnet and tripwire, your email series should make sense for your target audience. Consider a common problem that many of them have and how you can provide a solution. You can also look at your website data {see this free guide} and use your most popular posts to come up with additional ideas. Better yet? ASK! Post a question to your readers and have them respond by email, social media, or blog comments.
As an example, I could have easily run this Email Marketing Training Series by email instead of blog posts. It would have grown my subscriber list quickly as evergreen content that I could continually push out to new subscribers whenever they opted in. Some additional examples:
- Recipes as part of a no dining out challenge
- Budget hacks to save an extra $50 a week
- Declutter challenge by room
- Learn to _____ in _____ days/weeks
Timing Is Everything
After you have your topic, break it down in to logical steps. Make an outline for what to include in each email. You want each one to be meaty, but not overwhelming.
Once you know how many emails you’ll need to send, also consider the time between them. You want to give your subscribers just enough time to implement each step before receiving the next one.
Use the tips from my previous welcome series training to work on your subject lines and content. I recommend writing all content in advance; the last thing you want is to start a series, gain subscribers, and then never finish it.
Promote + Collect Subscribers
Finally, it’s time to roll! You should promote your email series on your blog, social media, and to existing email subscribers. Then just like you did when you first set up your list, use opt-ins boxes and/or pages to invite people to join your series. Here’s an example of a landing page that could easily be adapted to an email series opt-in. MailerLite or ConvertKit can help you set this up as well, but LeadPages has the most options by far.
Also decide if this email series will stand alone, or if you’re offering additional access. For example, many challenges like this run alongside an exclusive Facebook group. To make this work best, everyone needs to start/stop the series at the same time.
Without the Facebook group, you can make your series “evergreen” and users can subscribe at different times. Either way, your email provider will automatically send the content out at spaced intervals set by you.
Monitization
Remember how we’ve discussed give to get? This email series is a perfect example. Just like your Tripwire is an option to upsell from your lead magnet, you can also provide product links when they make sense in your email series.
Homework
- brainstorm possible pain points for your readers
- begin creating your first email series– consider keeping it short to just 5 emails for your first one
- these can take more time than the other steps in our email marketing series. Set a realistic deadline for yourself– could you launch in 30 days? 60?
What’s Next
In our final training, we’ll look at measuring success with your email marketing.
