Ep18 Transcript: How to Get Started with Email Marketing – Quick Fix Friday

Andrea Vahl: Whether you’re a business, a nonprofit, or your marketing events, you’re going to need an email list to help you with your marketing. In today’s Quick Fix Friday, we’ll talk about how to get started with email marketing.

Intro: Hello Dreamers. Welcome to the Late Starters Club, giving you the inspiration mindset and tools you need to start something midlife and beyond. Remember, it’s never too late to follow your dreams.

Andrea Vahl: Email marketing is critical because you don’t want to depend on something like social media to get the word out about your business, nonprofit or service, whatever you have, because social media can change in an instant. I’m going to give you some of my top tips to get started with email marketing.

Number one is to sign up with an email service provider. You can’t just BCC everyone and expect that to work. First of all, you’re going to get in trouble with that and people do need the option to unsubscribe from your email newsletter. An email service provider does all of that for you. It takes care of your list, lets people unsubscribe and make sure your email gets delivered properly.

My favorite email service provider for getting started is MailChimp because they have 2000 subscribers for free, and then you’ll have to convert to the paid plan. Beyond that, some other great ones that I have used are AWeber. Active Campaign, Constant Contact. There’s lots of different service providers out there, and they all have their pluses and minuses, so do a little research into what you need.

Number Two, is offer something valuable. Now, if you are a nonprofit, People might sign up for your email newsletter just because they want to keep connected with you. Like Laura Stack said, she built a coalition of people who were interested in her cause, but even if you are a nonprofit, you can still offer something valuable.

And that could be something like a tip sheet for how to make the most impact for your nonprofit. Other ideas for valuable things to offer are things like coupons, a e-guide or ebook, maybe some sort of video training. Maybe it’s something as simple as a cheat sheet or checklist. It doesn’t have to be very complicated in order to offer value.

Step number three is optional, but I think a really good idea have the thing that you’re offering for free on its own page on your website. That way you can easily direct people over to that free thing to get signed up for your list. So for example, I have my top tools for late starters on a dedicated page on my website.

That is latestartersclub.com/tools. There I talk about what you’re going to get in that tool guide and people can opt in and get signed up for the podcast really easily and I recommend you go do that if you have not already. Get over there. Once people have opted in by giving you their name and email address, the email service provider will allow you to direct people to a thank you page where they can get that free thing. It’s called a redirect, and that will be automatically set up with whatever email service provider you’ve chosen. And that’s a good idea as well, because. If you are running something like Facebook ads or Google ads or YouTube ads to grow your email list, that will allow you to track how much it costs to get an email subscriber.

Step number four is to grow your email list, and you can do that by posting a link to your free thing on social media. You could personally invite people to get signed up for it. You can let them know that they’re going to also get updates about your business. Two things you cannot do in growing your list is to automatically import everyone you’ve ever talked to on email into your email list. Those people have not signed up to get your marketing messages. Another thing you can’t do is download all your contacts from LinkedIn and just upload them to your list. No, again, those people have not signed up to get these newsletters from you. I’ve seen a lot of people advising that you can do things like that, but it really is against terms because those people have not given you permission to get those types of marketing messages from you.

Say it with me. No. No, no.

Step number five is to continually email out good content. Now, I suggest posting a newsletter at least once a week if you can. And it doesn’t have to be long. It could be something about what’s happening in your business. You might create a little bit of content, you might share a little story, but that’s a way for people to stay connected with you. And know what’s going on, and to also continue to offer value so that when you do have a more marketing message, they will be receptive to receiving it because they already received a ton of value from you. There are a lot more things to email marketing, but these steps will get you started.

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I’m Andrea Vahl. I’ve been running ad campaigns for clients for 11 years, and I have generated over $4 million in trackable sales from Facebook, Instagram, and Google for my clients in the last two years. Some of the things I’ve done for my clients include things like:

• 3000 targeted new email subscribers to a list
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So if you’re looking for results like these and don’t want to run your ad campaigns yourself, go to my website, andreavahl.com and select the Facebook ad services to learn more. I’d love to have a conversation with you about how I can help you get more. Inbound leads and sales.

Outro: Hope that was helpful, and make sure you grab the free guide Top Tools for late starters on the website at latestartersclub.com and let’s turn dreaming into doing.