Most small-business owners know the value of an email list. Email can be a great way to communicate with your audience on an ongoing basis.
But this is where a lot of entrepreneurs get stuck: Once you start an email list, how do you know what to send them?
No one wants to be spammy—we don’t want to send advertisement after advertisement. If we only email our clients when we’re selling something, they’ll never want to open our emails.
But when you deliver value in your emails, you build a relationship with your audience—you build trust. Sending weekly emails with quick deliverables keeps you and your company top of mind for your prospects and helps move them along their customer journey until they are ready to buy.
Here’s how to generate three months of email content in a single afternoon—without hiring a copywriter.
List out some of the questions your prospects and customers are asking. These questions don’t need to be broad—they should be questions you could answer in just a few minutes.
For example, if I’m selling custom window treatments, my customers might ask questions like:
If I’m a fitness coach, my customers might ask:
Take a moment right now to brainstorm 5-10 questions you hear from customers and potential clients.
List out the most common objections raised by your potential customers. Cost objections come up in every industry, but there are also probably other objections specific to your product or service.
Once you have a healthy list of objections, jot down what information the prospect needs in order to overcome that objection.
A window treatment prospect might think their old blinds and drapes are fine. The information they need is how faulty window treatments can lead to floor discoloration and damage from the sun.
If someone is considering a fitness coach, they might have tried a weight loss program before without success. The information they need is why fad diets don’t work, or how the right program will be focused on their specific needs in order to help them reach their goals.
Just like you did in Step 1, take a moment to jot down 5-10 common objections relevant to your industry.
You can probably see where I’m going with this.
You’ve likely generated more than 12 ideas, but you only have to choose 12—one for each week of the three-month time frame. (If one of those months is five weeks, of course, you may need to choose 13 topics.)
Select the topics you believe your audience would be most excited to learn about. This might be your most frequently asked questions, or topics that are especially interesting.
If you know your ideal customer well, it should be pretty easy to narrow down your topics. But if you have doubts, reach out to one or two great current clients and ask them which topics they’d be most interested in.
Hold onto any extra topic ideas—you can use these to jumpstart your content next quarter.
Once you’ve selected your topics, record a short video answering each question or providing information around each objection.
Why videos?
First of all, videos are easy for anyone to create.
There are many free or low-cost video recording software options. One app that many people already have is Zoom: you can start a meeting, hit record, talk for a few minutes, and save your video without any complicated tech. If you hit “stop recording” at the end of each video response, Zoom will generate separate video files without any extra editing on your part.
And for a lot of us, making a video can also be faster than writing out email copy. With video, you can rely more on the inflection of your voice, rather than having to carefully edit the text to sound like “you.” Seeing your face encourages prospective clients to trust you and can nurture a friendly, personable relationship.
But perhaps most importantly, prospects are more likely to actually open emails that include video.
One analysis found that merely including the word “video” in a subject line can increase an email’s open rate by 6%. Another found that videos can increase click-through rates—how many readers clicked on a link after opening an email—by a whopping 65%.
These videos don’t need to be long. In fact, keeping the video under five minutes can help ensure the value is quick and digestible for your viewers. Even if you need to re-record a couple of the videos, this whole process shouldn’t take more than an hour or two.
Step 5: Send one video a week to your email list
Congratulations, you’ve created all of next quarter’s email content in a single afternoon!
Now all that’s left is sending the videos to your email list. Most CRM software has an option for scheduling your videos ahead of time. You can do this yourself or give this task to a VA.
In the subject line, preview the topic of the video—and be sure to include the word “video” to get that open-rate boost.
Here are a couple of subject lines from our examples:
The goal of all this is to offer bite-sized content that your subscribers can easily digest.
Offering short videos teaches your list that when they (1) open your emails and (2) click on your links, they get immediate value. As a result, when you do have something to sell them, they’re already primed to open the email and click on what it is you have to offer.
This is just one method of client nurture. If you want to learn more, visit www.profitminds.net and download a copy of my e-book, Mind your Profits.
