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Simple SEO and Marketing, Business Growth, Organic Marketing, Copywriting, Online Business, Blogging, Content Creation
Ep 265// Real Life Wins. How Many Emails Should You REALLY Should be Sending?
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Well, hey there pals. So today we're gonna have a little chit chat about email marketing. Because it doesn't matter how many people you have on your list, on your email list, if you can't actually get them to open your emails and read your emails and turn email into a conversion machine for your business ain't gonna help you none, not even one little bit. So if you are a small business owner, entrepreneur, marketer, or whatever, you're doing all of the things for your own little self proclaim probably. If you are wondering, how often do you email your list? What's a good cadence? What do you send them? When you send stuff, how do you keep track of all the things? I'm going to be answering those questions in this email marketing series, but today we're going to be specifically honing in on a good cadence and how often you should email your email list. And I got stats to back it up y'. All. So buckle up buttercup. We're going to sit sit together and figure this out so that you can turn your email list that you're working so hard to grow into an actual asset for your business and not just another one of those dusty trophies sitting on your shelf. Hey there fellow entrepreneur. Welcome to simple SEO and marketing. Do you want to grow your business with sustainable traffic sources? Have you heard about the power of search engine optimization? And you want to take advantage of it to get more traffic, more eyeballs on your business. But when it comes down to it, does SEO feel complicated and hard to implement? Are you tired of wondering what in the heck to do with your website to get more traffic and more leads knocking on your door? What if I could tell you that there was a simple, proven system for using SEO, blogging and copywriting to get leads from your website and not just any leads. High hi Converting lead. Hey, I'm Faith Hannon, wife, mama, copywriter, SEO strategist and barrel racer. And for the last eight years, I've been figuring out what works and what doesn't work in the world of online marketing to get organic traffic? And now I'm here to share all the things I'm learning in the trenches of SEO, copywriting and content marketing. How does 300%, 500% or even 12,000% more traffic in a year sound? What could your business do with that kind of traffic increase? How many more people could you help? So listen in and prepare to take notes. I'm about to drop simple, actionable SEO, marketing and copywriting tips, all with a heavy dose of Jesus loving Encouragement. Let's get you more traffic and more leads so you can help more people with your God given gifts. So one of the questions that I hear a lot in my circles is whether they be on like random Facebook groups that I'm in with other entrepreneurs or my actual students and clients or, you know, colleagues, one of the questions and issues that keeps coming up is what do you do with your email marketing? And yes, there are people who have entire businesses built around helping you with your email marketing. But today in this little series, not just today, we're going to hone in on what works for email marketing practically. Okay? I'm a mom of three. I homeschool. I have a very small team that can work a very limited number of hours. And I figured out what works for email marketing not just for my business, for the, but also for clients, businesses. So if you want an email marketing system that actually nurtures, actually helps your people and helps to grow your business, then this episode is for you. So maybe it's just because I literally can make friends with the fence post. I think, like, we go to the store and I walk out with three new friends. Right? Like, talking to people is not hard for me. Right. God bless all my teachers who used to get after me for talking too much because guess what, now I make a living talking. But you know, that's neither here nor there. But I think there's a lot of, a lot of like, extra hype and extra pressure that we, we put on ourselves when it comes to sending emails to our list. And I remember when I first started my email list, oh my gosh, nine years ago now I've been in business almost nine. Yeah, nine. Sorry, had to do math in my head nine years ago. I remember just being like, so I'm not paralyzed with what to send my email list, but I just felt like what I was sending them was just not doing any good. And I was just, basically I was just sending them like, hey, here's the new blog. Read the blog. And one day I was like sitting down and I was like, lord, help me grow my email list. Help me grow my email list. And I just felt like the Lord was like, well, how are you taking care of the people that you have? And I was like, oh, dang. So ever since then, my goal in my business is to take the absolute best care of the people on my email list because I've asked you for your email address and you've given me that email address out of trust that I'm going to bring value. So My goal with my email list is to bring the most value and a side of entertainment to my email list. And so that's my goal with my email marketing. Obviously it needs to sell. Obviously we need to have launches and conversions and stuff from that to make it worth the roi. But I truly feel like if your heart behind your email list is, I want to help these people and serve these people the bestest in the westest, then coming up with content to send them and deciding the frequency in which you should set send that content is a lot easier. So how often do you email your email list? Well, the research out there, y', all is conflicting. It's conflicting. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the research. Okay. And then I'm going to tell you what I think you should do based on my experience in my business and what we have seen work again and again and again with client after client after client. Now, when you're doing. Let me, let me back up with this. This kind of caveat is when you're doing research on what's the best email frequency, Like, I just, it's not, it's. Some of the research is, it's just not fair, right? Like, it's not a. You, you don't get a complete picture, right? If you're just doing some research, which I did, me and Chatty got to work on some deep research. And a lot of the studies that it pulled were from it massive, massive studies that looked at multiple brands, some of which were, you know, in the uk, some of which were in the US but it's pulling this, this data from all of these brands, right? And it's looking at frequency and ROI and spend per customer and unsubscribe rate, and all of those things are very important. But what Chatty doesn't know and what the research doesn't show is what kind of quality those emails were. Right? Like, we have all gotten blasted with sales emails from, let's say, a shoe company or a clothing company. You're like, you're getting like Jane.com for instance, is one that I get probably daily emails from. Right. I'm getting, you know, seven emails a week from jane.com about this, these boutique clothes, right? Seven emails a week. Do I open most of them? Not really. Okay, but am I unsubscribing also? Not really. Okay. So the data is skewed there compared to maybe a brand that I love and read every word that they write. So when you're looking at the research, you can, you can look at that through the lens of this cannot determine the quality. The research cannot determine the quality of the email that these people are sending. Okay? So long story short, the big, big, huge research, you know, email marketing research studies that Chatty might pull for you or that you might find a lot of them don't apply to small businesses and small business owners who have a well developed brand. Okay? Number two, I'm not going to base my whole life around that because a lot of the stats that they pull, you could work around with a darn good copywriter on your team. Hint, hint. But bottom line, the info from a lot of the bigger studies out there that I've seen, it's really conflicting because basically it says if you don't email daily, then sales per customer goes down. But if you do email daily, you have a high churn rate and people unsubscribe. And so I'm like, thanks, thanks for that, I appreciate that so much. So helpful. Not HubSpot, on the other hand, has some really great studies. I really enjoy learning from HubSpot. Okay? And here's, here's what I have boiled down for you. And then I'm going to give you some hot takes and some strategies to implement for your email strategy. Okay? Number one, most businesses send out two to four emails per month at least. Okay? Most businesses, small businesses have found that about four emails per month are a very common sweet spot. Also send. Sending more than one email per day significantly increases unsubscribes. Okay, so let me translate that for you. You don't have to have daily emails to win. Bless the Lord. You don't have to write emails for five days a week or seven days a week. Okay? HubSpot data does show consistently though that higher frequency emails equals more clicks, but the higher frequency emails equals lower open rate per email and more unsubscribes. Okay? So your goal, you gotta be in the sweet spot there between enough clicks and not too many unsubscribes. Okay? But here's the thing that a lot of people miss. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs who are scared to over email their list, this is where they mess up. When you email too little, you have lower engagement rates. Over time, people forget you exist, right? Like they may have signed up for your free me freebie 3 months ago. Loved it. And then they haven't heard from you since. And then you email them and they're like, who in the heck is this? This is spam, Barbara. Get out of here. Okay, Emailing frequently, at least once A week just helps your people remember who you are and how you help them. Okay? And when you don't email. Email enough. When you don't email often enough, your leads go cold because people forget why they signed up in the first place. Okay? And here's. Here's the real. The real thing that I think a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with. They get somebody on their email list, they send them the welcome email. Like, here's your freebie. I am Joy, and I'm here to be your bestie online. Okay? We've all gotten that. I've probably sent that. They get that email. And then crickets, they don't hear from you again. Maybe you send a short little welcome sequence. Maybe you're like, high five, gold star in that area. But then you don't email them again for like, three months until you have a sale. And then all of a sudden, they have 14 emails in their inbox within a period of, like, three days. And they're like, who is this crazy person? And they just unsubscribe right away without even taking the time to read through your offer. That may be a really good fit. And here's how this plays out in real, like, real feelings. Have you ever gotten a Facebook message from a friend that you had in high school, A high school friend, and you haven't talked to them or seen them or heard from them or nothing for 15 years, and all of a sudden you have a Facebook message from them and they're like, hey, girl, how are you? And instantly, you know they're selling something. That's how your emails feel. And no shade. We've all been that friend with our MLM starts. We've all been that friend. Okay, Totally did that a couple times in my early, early, early entrepreneur days. Okay, please forgive me if you're one of the people that I did that to and you're listening to this podcast. But the point is, when you don't ever offer value to your email list, when you don't email them consistently so that you stay at least, like, in their brain. Not even front of mind, but in their brain. If you don't ever email your email list between opt in and sales, then you are like that annoying friend from high school who pops into their DMS is like, hey, girl, I have the perfect thing for your skin. You don't want to do that. We don't want to do that. None of us want to do that. Okay. Okay. So overall synopsis of the HubSpot studies on email that I think are very relevant because it's the HubSpot is geared towards online marketers running their own business like they talking to people like us more than some of the other studies. So here's what HubSpot says overall and I agree with it. Is it weekly emails? Strong baseline. Weekly. A weekly email is non negotiable in my world. Okay. Two times a week often performs better if the content is valuable. Okay, so now let's chat through Faith's recommendations. Okay? Because I feel like coming at this from a person who's been there, done that for a while, crocodile. And I've done this and made it work for other clients, not just me. I've seen the stuff, I've seen the data and this is what actually works. Now baseline is one email per week. That is what I would recommend for any marketer out there. Okay? Now if you are in a launch buildup or some sort of like a growth phase, then two emails a week or three is really even okay. And honest to goodness, when my poop's in a group and I have like my content done ahead of time, I've got my life planned out and I know you know my schedule better than I do in this season of life, then I honestly like a three email cadence. And then when you're launching a higher frequency of emails is okay. Temporarily, if you are in launch mode and you're like, hey, I've got a five day launch or a seven day launch, I expect you to be sending an email every single day and then a few emails the last couple days, that is okay. But here's the rule. Here's the rule. Every piece of content you send out must be standalone. Valuable. It must be. I actually have a whole podcast episode on that episode 136 is all about the number one test. All content must pass. And my businesses and clients, businesses that we work for, the number one test that all content must pass before it hits published. Okay? And the test is, is, is it valuable? Would you be mad if you spent five minutes consuming that? Okay, the episode is still good. Go listen back to that. But now what we're going to do is I'm going to walk you through a few questions to help you figure out your own email marketing cadence. Ready, jot these down, get your notes, app open, whatever you gonna do. Okay? Number one, how many pieces of week can you friend realistically create with standalone value? 1 per week minimum. That's the rulesies in my world. Okay, but how many pieces of content can you realistically create with standalone value? Now if you are somebody who has a lot of words like I do. Sometimes that may be two, it may be three. Right? But if you're just getting started, or maybe not just getting started, but your. Your goal is to be more consistent with your email marketing. I wouldn't start with three a week. I would start with one a week and maybe write 15, but space them out and get ahead. Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself here. But number two, I want you to think about what brands do you consistently love hearing from and why? Okay. And I'll give you some examples from my life, because I actually hate reading emails. Utterly loathe and hate reading emails. Like Mark, like you. If you saw my personal email inbox, you would understand. Not my business one. I'm good about the business one. Hate the personal one. But. But there are a few brands that I adore their emails, and I open them every time. Number one is Jen from Tonic Site Shop. Y', all, I'm not an affiliate. I should be because I love their emails so stinking much. One, they're hilarious. Jen is hilarious. And two, they always provide a great little marketing tip or some value that I'm like, hey, I can take that and use that. Phenomenal emails. Okay, open everyone. Another one is John Acuff. So John is a writer. I've read several of his books. He has a lot of personal development, goal setting types, content, and his emails are always entertaining to read and provide value. So I open them, okay, And I read them, and I stay connected with his brand. And when he publishes a new book, I highly consider buying it, and I probably will because his emails are so engaging. Okay, now number three, what brands of emails, what brands do you immediately delete their emails and unsubscribe from them and why? I want you to make mental note of that or at least or write it on your notes or whatever. But I want you to think through this, because when you're crafting your own email marketing cadence, it's important to think through what works for you as a consumer. Okay, number four, where can you streamline? I was on a call just today with a gal, and she said that her writing her email, a weekly newsletter email, it took her an hour. And I'm like, oh, bless the Lord. I do not have an hour to write an email every day or every week. Like, I can write out probably five emails in one hour. But the key, friends, is batching, batching, batching, batching. So when you sit down to write emails, you better write like three or four or five okay, get them all written out and then you can upload them later. You can hand that off to somebody on your team. But the actual crafting of the emails, the writing of the things, should not take you an hour each. Please and thank you. Okay, number five tip and how to craft your own email marketing cadence is this. You can use AI, but heavily edited. Heavily edited. Okay. Nobody wants an email written by a robot. We don't. We don't. We want emails written by a person for us. A person. Okay, now, inside of my audio to SEO blog workflow that you can grab in the show notes inside of that, it takes your podcast transcript, turns it into an SEO friendly blog. What inside of that workflow, I've actually created it to spit out emails as well. But they are starters for you. They are not the finished product. Okay? And the more you train your AI, the better they will get. But even I, who've been using stuff, I've been using my chatty for a while. My chatty is highly trained. Highly trained even I still have to edit my emails. Now, fun fact, my husband often proofreads my emails for me and if he hasn't proofread it, then you have. You can probably tell. You can probably tell. The emails that he didn't proofread are the ones with big glaring errors because I didn't get them done in time to send them to him to proofread. And then he opens them later and he's like, you didn't send this to me, did you? And I'm like, no. Anyway, but my little fun little game that I have with my husband that I don't know if he knows we're playing this game, but we're playing this game is I send him emails to proofread and then he has to guess if it was written by AI or me. And like I said, I do still heavily edit emails that I have AI help me with. But y', all, I've gotten it down to such a science. And my chat, my chat GPT is so good and so well trained. The custom GPT is so well trained that often he has to think hard to guess or he guesses wrong because I've gotten it so streamlined. So next episode one, we're going to be breaking down the exact realistic email marketing cadence that I recommend for, for you as an entrepreneur or small business owner, and the different stages of growth, how I plan that out, how we do that, and like days of the week, like nitty gritty business stuff for your email marketing cadence. So make sure that you are subscribed. Share this episode with a friend or five who also needs help with their email marketing and shoot me a message over to infoaith hannon.com if you're like Faith, I need more help or more questions answered around my email marketing because I would love to help you. I think it's a fun topic. All right y', all, we'll chat soon. Bye. Thank you so much for listening in today. Hopefully this episode gave you some really tangible tips for better SEO and marketing to get more leads and more sales from your if it did, can I ask you a quick favor? Would you please share this episode with a friend and then just take 10 seconds and go leave a written review on Apple Podcasts. That is the very best way to help more Jesus loving entrepreneurs scale their businesses so that they can help more people with their gifts and make an even bigger impact for the Kingdom of God. And guess what? We now have a Facebook community where we can learn, hang out and laugh. Go join the Facebook group now. It's linked in the show notes and all the other things, courses, coaching and copywriting can be found at my website faithhannon.com until next time. God bless and I'll talk to you soon.