starting a newsletter
We had grand plans for a regular newsletter when we started the business, but it took several years to get it fully functioning. A newsletter is a great marketing tool and if you haven’t started one, we recommend that you set it up as soon as you can. Unlike social media channels where you cannot control who sees your content, we have ownership of our list of subscribers and can use e-mail marketing to directly target our audience. We have tried a number of programs for our e-mail newsletters, and we have found that Flodesk is the best fit for our brand and business. Regardless of what program you use, here are some tips to make e-mail marketing manageable.
start small
As a small business owner, it’s stressful to add one more thing to the ever growing to-do list, so start small with your newsletter. There is no need to set the expectation of weekly e-mails, or even monthly, if your schedule doesn’t allow. Be realistic and establish a frequency that feels right for your business and give yourself grace to adjust that frequency if it doesn’t work immediately. Newsletters can be used for a number of reasons, including to roll out a new product or service, announce an event or a sale, or to showcase an award or recognition. As you get started, however, the main purpose of the newsletter is to stay top of mind, so don’t get hung up on perfection and remember that any engagement with your audience is better than nothing.
grow your list
It’s important to continue to grow your e-mail list as your business grows. There are a number of ways to encourage people to sign up, as well as methods to update your list for current customers. We started with a sign-up link on our website that includes a freebie to subscribers. The freebie doesn’t need to have a monetary value, but should be something that entices your website visitors to subscribe to your content. Another way to encourage people to sign up is through your social media channels. We have a direct link to sign up in our Instagram profile and we periodically remind our Instagram audience about our e-mail list. It’s important to inform the audience what they can expect from the newsletter, including content and frequency. Lastly, we update our e-mail list periodically to include all our current customers in our Customer Relationship Management system, Dubsado. Most CRM systems allow you to download your customers for easy upload into your e-mail management system.
create consistency
One of the easiest ways to get derailed with an e-mail newsletter is thinking that you have to recreate the wheel every time you compose a newsletter. There are days when I have absolutely nothing relevant to say, let alone a number of topics to discuss. To create consistency, I have segmented the newsletter into different topics and stick with the same format every week. We try to cover multiple areas of our business, keep our audience informed, and occasionally sell our services. The specific details change week-to-week, but the outline of our newsletter remains the same - a welcome message or staging tip, a link to a current video on Instagram or elsewhere, a link to our newest blog post, a highlight of our services, and a link to shop our favorite products. Once you have a list of topics, the sky is the limit for content. To make the process even easier, we periodically brain storm several ideas for each topic so that we’re not scrambling when it’s time to draft and send the email.
E-mail marketing is a great way to consistently get in front of your audience and with a solid plan, it doesn’t have to take up a lot of time. We wish we had started it sooner, so if you’re on the fence, we recommend that you start your list today - just remember to start small, continue to grow your list and create consistent content.