If you're like most of the small business owners, the marketing emails you send take up a lot of your time. They're worth it because they drive traffic to your landing and sales pages that lead to increased income, but they can be complicated and time-consuming.
However, there are ways to automate your email marketing efforts to take the burden off you and make them more efficient and effective at the same time.
1. Get the most out of new subscriber follow ups.
Once people subscribe to your list, do they get just one email with the free offer you promised them? If so, you're missing out on a chance to let your new followers know what's unique about you and speed up how quickly they trust you, which will lead to quicker sales.
Action step: Add a longer autoresponder series with value for your readers and an offer at the end.
2. Automate your newsletters.
Utilize your blog's RSS feed to automatically send blog posts in your blog template on your behalf. Your email provider can most likely help you set this up. If you can't send automatic broadcasts, schedule several at once in advance to save you time and repeated effort.
Action step: Set up RSS automation or block time on your schedule to do a month's worth of newsletters at one time.
3. Clean up your list.
Did you know you could be paying extra for out of date email addresses on your list that aren't even getting your emails? And fixing this problem is as simple as a few clicks or a phone call.
Action step: Contact your email marketing provider about de-duplicating your list and removing bad addresses.
4. Set more than just a 'thank you' after purchases.
If your buyers are only a getting a simple 'thank you' message after they buy a product or service via your website, you're losing out on a huge opportunity. That's the time to upsell to another product that meets their next needs or one-on-one coaching because if someone is willing to buy from you once, they're more likely to be willing to do so again. You can space them out as far apart as you like, and you could even offer incentives like a loyalty discount.
Action step: Set up a sales funnel so that purchases trigger automatic emails about the next program or product.
5. Get feedback.
Use your email marketing system to regularly get feedback and even testimonials or reviews.
Action step: Set autoresponders after both purchases (to get reviews or testimonials) and inactivity on your list (to see how you can better serve those potential customers).
