Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to grow your service-based business. Are you ignoring it?
For many of us, we believe that “no one” opens emails so why should we send them.
But email marketing has one of the best ROI potentials for any digital marketing method out there. In fact, email marketing has the potential to drive an impressive $36 for every dollar you spend.
When you’re ignoring emails in your business, you’re leaving money on the table.
So how can you as a service-based business unlock the earning potential of email marketing in your own business?
Let’s dive in.
The Power of Email Marketing
Emails Reach Your Warmest Audience
Want to know why you shouldn’t be ignoring email marketing?
Someone who signs up for your email list are your warmest leads.
Think about it – your email inbox is kind of an intimate place. You can delete an email sure, but you’re going to see every single one that comes in.
When signing up for a list, you’re also giving over some personal information – your direct email – and inviting them into your space on a regular basis.
So when your ideal client gives you their email address, they’re basically putting their hand up and saying they want to learn more about working with you.
Emails Are Cost Effective
Another reason you can get such an impressive ROI with email marketing?
You can get started for little to no cost!
There are email service providers like Mailchimp and Convertkit that offer free tiers for you to start building your email list.
This allows you to follow regulations with sending emails while keeping your costs super low.
You don’t need to have a super-designed email either. In fact, more complex designs can be hard for email inboxes to understand and display.
The emails I send to my list every week are largely just text with a GIF and maybe some emojis thrown in for personality.
Especially for a service-based business, with your emails it’s the text that matters most. This is the perfect place to nurture and connect with your audience and build trust and rapport.
You Can Personalize for the Best Results
Now you may be wondering – do I have to send the same message to everyone on my list?
Absolutely not!
One of my favorite things about email marketing is that you can personalize it to what your customers are actually interested in.
Think of it this way – say you have a group of people on your list that are more interested in the DIY route. You might send emails about your online course, how to make decisions around your expertise, and share some simple how-to tips.
Your other part of your audience might be those who just want you to do the work. In this case, you can use a tag or other method to segment them out and send emails about your services, testimonials and reviews from your current customers, and more mindset related content.
While you can absolutely send the same content to two sides of your email list, the power really comes in the ability to personalize the experience and help deliver solutions they’re interested in.
How to Use Email Marketing to Grow Your Revenue
I get it, you’re absolutely convinced that email marketing is a tool that you’ve been neglecting in your business.
Now, how can you use it to scale your revenue and even get new leads?
Let’s start at the beginning.
You Need an Email Service Provider
If you want to send emails to more than one person, especially on a regular basis, you need to sign up for an email service provider.
No, you cannot just go type up an email and send it to a list and put everyone in the BCC section. That’s a quick way to get marked as SPAM and blocked from sending emails at all.
Email service providers – like ConvertKit – allow you to follow FCC regulations and the CAN-SPAM act and give you important tools and metrics for your email marketing.
Just a heads up that CAN-SPAM requires that your physical address be available in every email you send. If you work out of your home, you can use a UPS box instead so that you’re not giving that super-personal information away.
As I mentioned before, you can start with free accounts (depending on your list size) with several of the email tools out there, so there’s really no barrier to entry. My current favorite is ConvertKit because it allows me to send emails pretty easily and set up multiple lead magnets.
Get People to Sign Up
Once you have a way to send emails (legally), you’ll need to get people on your list.
Before you despair and think “no one is going to just hand me their email,” you’re both right and wrong.
Very few people are going to sign up for a “newsletter” from a for-profit company. Do I want to be continually sold to?
But, they will trade their email for a freebie that’s valuable to them.
Called a lead magnet, I talked about how to create one back in episode 45, but the key here is to create something that will provide a quick win.
You also want it to be valuable enough that they’ll give you their email (knowing you’re going to contact them later), but not so valuable that you should be charging for it.
Yes, that’s a delicate balance, I know. The best place to start is with a guide or checklist – just a simple PDF. Don’t overcomplicate it, because again, it should provide a quick and easy win for your lead to build that trust with them.
For the actual technical “how do I set this up,” portion, you’ll want to refer to the help section of whatever email service provider you chose. Almost all of them will give you some kind of form that you can embed into your site and the ability to deliver the file through a confirmation email to make it super simple.
Nurture Your Audience, Consistently
Now that you have an email list and people on it, the crazy thing is you have to actually send them emails!
I know, I know, seems simple enough, but you’d be shocked how many people I talk to who never send emails to their list.
One client I worked with last year had 1300 people on their list. They wanted to launch a new service and you’d think that they would have had a good response because of the number of people they had on their list.
But we launched to crickets.
Why?
Because they hadn’t been fully honest with me about how old and ignored this list was. It finally came out that they hadn’t emailed the list consistently for years.
You know what happens when you get a random email from a business years later? You unsubscribe or ignore it because you can’t even remember who they are.
Instead, you want to keep that warm audience warm by sending emails consistently. While once a month is fine, you really want to send an email every week if you can.
This doesn’t have to be something you’ve created from scratch either.
What to Send to Your List
If you’re already creating some other kind of weekly content, you can share that with your list. Link them back to your podcast, your video series, or your blog.
It’s a great way to drive traffic to these pieces of content and it helps get them in front of the people that are going to care the most.
If you haven’t started creating weekly content yet, then you can actually take something you shared on Instagram in a previous week, tweak it a bit, and send it to your list.
Remember, not everyone is going to see what you share on Instagram and not everyone on your list will follow you on social media.
Make that content work for you!
Get 3600% ROI with Email Marketing
If you haven’t put any effort into email marketing in your business, you’re leaving money on the table.
Will an email list immediately bring a ton of new revenue to your business?
Maybe not immediately, but it will become one of your most valuable assets in your business.
And the best part? Unlike social media’s changing algorithms, you own your email list so you have the potential to reach everyone on it instead of just 1-2%.
If email marketing is just one of those things that terrifies you but you want to get the most out of it – never fear. We’re here to help!
We have a special program that handles your email marketing and weekly content along with creating you a website that drives conversions.
Ready to start 2024 off right? Head to captcoder.com/process to learn more.
