With all the socially modern ways to communicate these days, why would you bother with an email list?
I mean, email is so last season, right? Everyone’s going to have an opinion and agenda on this, but let’s clear this up for you right now. When Facebook wants to let you know about a new feature they have, what do they do? They send you an email! So if an uber-corporation like Facebook with unlimited access to Facebook still use email to communicate with people, I think that tells you all you need to know about just how relevant email is to connect with your clients and potential clients even today.
So just what IS an email list? That’s an easy one. It’s a list … of email addresses. OK, it’s a list of the email addresses of both your clients AND your possible potential clients that YOU’VE collected with their permission. Usually, this email list is stored on some form of software called Email Marketing Software, or EMS for short. Then you can send out regular bulk emails to your list to communicate with everyone regarding your business. So I suppose I need to ask the awkward question. Do you have an email list?
Fancy a 4,300% return on investment! That’s the ROI on email marketing according to the Direct Marketing Association. That got your attention I imagine. Not sure what ROI means? Basically it means for every $1 spent on email marketing (a.k.a. sending out emails to your email list) businesses generate an average of $4,300. Does that mean you can send out one email and make over $4k, sadly not, it’s the average. But given that the average ROI on social media is only 341%, according to HootSuite, it doesn’t take a genius to see that you should be devoting more time to your email marketing than your social media marketing if you want it to help your business grow.
Discovery and reach are the two most active ingredients in social media serum. Vital for the healthy appearance of your business online. But as I mentioned yesterday email provides 10 times better results for the same amount of effort. Why?
- Email is Personal
- Email is Intentional
- Email is Targeted
- You Own Your Email List (unlike your social page)
- Email is One-to-One (or at least looks that way)
- More People Use Email Several Times a Day
In fact, 91% of consumers check their email multiple times a day. Heck your email address is the first thing any new social media platform of online software asks you for when you register. So if they’re building an email list, chances are you should be too.
So how do you start building an email list?
Can’t I just use my booking software? Short answer is NO. That’s not what it was designed to do. Don’t get me wrong, there are LOTS of software systems out there for beauty businesses and they are great at the bookings and management side of your business. They may even have an email marketing function built-in. However, just like booking systems focuses on making your booking process amazing, email management systems focus on making your email awesome and more importantly, getting it to the people you are sending it to.
You wouldn’t use a paint roller to do your nails, would you? Technically it would do the job, but it wouldn’t get a particularly good result. It’s all about the right tool for the job! Not only does email software allow you to analyse, segment and automate the process of keeping in touch with your clients, but they put HUGE amounts of effort into making sure your email doesn’t get filtered out by spam filters and the like.
There are two main types of emails you want to send out from your business…
Transactional & Marketing
Transactional emails are individual emails to people who’ve triggered them by some action. This could be making a booking, purchasing a product, buying a gift voucher, sending a request or needing a reminder. This is what your booking software should take care of for you and it’s perfect for that.
Everything else is Marketing Emails sent to large numbers of people. That’s what’s going to grow your business so you want them to get where you want them to go. So use the right tool for the job. Mailchimp is pretty good, so is Mailerlite. For something a bit more complicated, Active Campaign is awesome and what I use for my business.
Email like a ninja!
You want your email to land in people’s inbox, get opened, get read and then for them to take whatever action you intended. So use these ninja moves to make sure that happens.
1) Write the email to one person, your ideal client. That way it will read more like a personal email and have more of a connection. Make it look like a personal email too.
2) Have only one action you want someone to take from an email. Giving people several options or multiple things to do muddles the mind and results in no action.
3) Spend more time on your subject line. Your subject line is the one thing that will get your email opened. Make it intriguing, but don’t bait and switch. Use a tool like “Headline Analyser” from @coschedule to make your subject line pop.
4) Tell people EXACTLY what they need to do next. Every email you send should have a purpose, a next step. It doesn’t always have to be ‘book a treatment’ or ‘buy a product’ but make sure it’s clear what you want your reader to do.
5) Track engagement. Your open and read rates not only matter to you. Who doesn’t want an open rate north of 50%? They matter to the email software and spam filters too. Ditch your contacts that don’t interact and watch your open rates, read rates and CTA’s skyrocket.
So now you know why you should have an email list and why it’s a business essential even if you have 17 different social media accounts on 12 different platforms. You know it’ll help you fill bookings and sell more products, essentially it’ll make you more money. You’ve got the tools and the moves you need to make it easy and make it work. So why are you still reading this?
The best time to create an email list was about 3 years ago. The second best time to create an email list is today! Hmmm . . . you look like you really WANT to start building your email list, but are still a little unsure where to start. It just so happens next month is Email month over in the Beauty Business Secrets Membership. We’re going to be diving deep on email, getting you properly set up, holding your hand through all the tech as well as writing emails with you and getting your first real campaigns sent out.
Want to join us? Go to our Membership page to sign up today and get instant access to everything you need right now.
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