A person giving you their email address is a sign of trust. They trust you with their information in order for you to send them information about your business. If your subscribers open their inboxes and believe that your email campaigns have not met their expectations, they will unsubscribe from you and it’s really hard to get them and their trust back.
Tell Your Subscribers What They Are Getting
People don’t like to give their information for things that they don’t understand or like. I have refused to join a business’s email list because they didn’t explain to me exactly what they will be sending me. They just told me to join their list but not with a compelling ‘why’. You need to give your potential subscribers a reason to join your list. You need to ask yourself, “What are we giving them and why should they be interested?” Here are a few tactics businesses should try:
● If you own a restaurant or store: Explain that you will be sending them coupons, reward points, and other deals on your products or services that they can take advantage of when they visit your business.
● If you own a consultation firm or agency: Explain that you will be sending them advice on how to fix their common problems and how to contact you if they want further help.
● If you own an organization or nonprofit: Explain that you will be sending in-depth reports and further information about the issues that you are addressing.
Create Great Content That Serves Them
One of the reasons that people unsubscribe from an email list is because they don’t like their content. A lot of businesses have a promotion-centric strategy to creating campaigns. They write emails promoting their business and asking readers to do something without taking time to nurture relationships. They need to implement a reader-centric strategy that focuses on creating content that serves readers instead of trying to directly promote to them.
For example, Roberto Blake, a talented and humble graphic designer explained on his YouTube channel how he was able to grow a large email list: He had a content strategy! Just like he had for his video channel and blog. By developing a content strategy that served the interests of his readers, he was able to keep his subscribers and have a 40% open rate!
Create an Email Campaign Schedule and Database
Because email marketing is so essential to business growth you must create a strategy and schedule for it just like how you would do it for your blog and social media. Plan these things in advance for each campaign:
● Objectives
● Content
● Dates
● Sequence
You should also keep a database or library of your past campaigns over the past years based on dates and the outcomes of each campaign. For example, it’s December 2016 and holiday season. You sell products or services and you want your customers to take advantage of the season’s deals. It’s a great time to create an effective email campaign. You go to your email campaign database to find the campaigns from 2015 and how well it did. You are seeing what worked, what didn’t work, and how you can do better.
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