Welcome to the Third lesson of the
Email Marketing Crash Course.
It’s time for your Third lesson in the Email Marketing Crash Course. I hope you found lesson one helpful. In today’s lesson, we’re going to talk about targeting, motivation and setting up your content schedule.
As important as it is to know what your goals are, it’s even more important to know who your email list will be targeting so that you can set up an effective marketing campaign.
Clearly defining your target audience makes all the difference when it comes to email marketing because it doesn’t matter how great your content and offers are if there is no one to see it.
So, who is your ideal audience?
The best place to start is by thinking about what your product or service can do for people.
— What are the benefits for your prospect?
— What pain of theirs will you be solving?
— What keeps them awake at night that your product will solve?
For example, if your business is building websites you’ll want to focus on business owners who want an online presence but are not tech-savvy, not people who like to play tennis or go fly fishing.
Once you know who you’re trying to reach, think about what they like to do and where they like to go online. Do they use Facebook and Twitter, or do they prefer Instagram? All these things can be found out by conducting a little market research.
If you don’t know where to start take a peek at what your competitors are up to. There is nothing wrong with “copy-cat” tactics as long as you don’t use the exact words, graphics, etc. Just use these posting of other marketers to get new ideas for your own campaign.
Here are some things to look for:
— Where are they posting content? (Blog, YouTube, etc.)
— What type of content are they posting? (text, images, video)
— Where are they advertising? (Facebook, Google, YouTube)
Once you know who they are and how they produce content you can use those ideas to create a unique campaign of your own that will entice new prospects to join your email list.
This method of building your email list is often referred to as an opt-in offer or lead magnet. You can envision it as the top of your email marketing funnel. It can be anything that you can offer to consumers in exchange for their email address.
Here are a few examples to help give you some ideas:
— A free download (report, ebook, video)
— A 5 Day Crash Course (what a great idea!)
— A special offer like a discount or coupon
— Expert guidance or training
— Exclusive news and content they can’t find elsewhere
Creating a good opt-in offer will take time and testing, but once you get it set up it will continue to bring in new leads for your business automatically for as long as your offer is relevant to your audience.
Once you get one good lead magnet working to bring in new prospects, start thinking of your next lead magnet. It might be a different slant on the first one to give it a new look and feel. It can also target another pain point of your prospect to get a completely different piece of your target audience.
When you have created your first lead magnet, you can create a content schedule that consistently provides value to your subscribers and helps you reach your goals.
I strongly recommend you consider using Private Label Resell (PLR) products to help you in creating your first few lead magnets. Resell Rights Weekly put together by Mark Austin is a superb resource that is updated almost daily with new resources.
PLR materials can be used as-is but I always recommend adding and changing the PLR to match your style. Also, you may be able to add to the content with more info to make it more valuable.
You will want your schedule to be consistent in the days and times each campaign email will be sent so that your subscribers will know exactly what to expect and look forward to.
For example, my emails go out at 10am Monday through Saturday (maybe plus/minus 10 or 15 minutes just to give it some variation.)
I’ve tried other times but this time period seems to be the best for my readers based on open rates over the week.
When you consistently email your subscribers messages that contain relevant and useful information about your business, they will build a better understanding of how your product or service can benefit them.
They will also get to know like and trust you, which means they will be more likely to buy from you. (read three times… hint = Important)
You also want your schedule to be easy to manage, especially if you’re going to be writing the content and managing your list yourself. Your email service (like Aweber) will let you program your emails ahead of time so you can load them up days (or weeks) ahead of transmission time.
Here is an example of a consistent 3-day email schedule:
Monday – News and information about upcoming products, sales or events.
Wednesday – A little tip that will help them solve a problem along with an offer, coupon or discount.
Friday – A follow up with a gentle reminder that the sale or coupon will expire soon.
Of course, this is just an example, but you get the idea. Many successful email marketers mail their lists every day. However, you don’t want to start doing that right away. You have to build a relationship with them first and then if it makes sense for your market you can increase the frequency of your emails.
That’s it for today’s lesson. In your next lesson, we will be talking about brainstorming a list of email topics and setting up an autoresponder series to market for you.
Until then,
Have a fantastic Day!
Fred “The Submarine Guy” Raley
Fred@SubmarineGuy.com
Average People, Doing Simple Tasks, Making Extraordinary Income
p.s. Need Leads? See my Leads Blog Post
p.p.s. Recommended Resources: Resources Blog Post
P.S. I want to thank you again for joining me for this Email Marketing Crash Course. If you have questions or need assistance, please feel free to contact me. I will be happy to help!
You can reach me here: http://www.SubmarineGuy.com