Let’s discuss “Four Must-Know Tips for Creating Emails That Support Your Goals” The ability to position yourself as an authority in your niche is one of the keys to email marketing success.
You want your newsletter to establish itself as THE authority on a particular specialized subject. Your open rate and sales conversions will increase as more of your subscribers start to rely on you and regard you as an authority. To put it another way, your list will become significantly more profitable!
The question is, how can you become recognized as an authority so that you can begin receiving these advantages? Consider these suggestions.
As you already discovered in prior articles, you shouldn’t even think about writing one word of an email until you define the goal of that email. Common goals include:
- Generating a sale.
- Getting people to download a freemium.
- Building your brand.
- Establishing your authority/expertise.
- Promoting a partner’s business.
- Getting event registrations.
- Building anticipation for an upcoming sale.
- Encouraging people to share your content.
- Inviting people to call you (for a free quote, for example).
Now for this lesson, we’re going to take a closer look at how to create content that supports your goals.
Table of Contents
Four Must-Know Tips for Creating Emails That Support Your Goals
Remember, you need to pick just ONE primary goal per email, especially if there is going to be a call to action because you don’t want to overwhelm readers with multiple calls to action. Sometimes you may accomplish two goals, however. For example, your primary goal may be to pre-sell a product, and the secondary goal is to establish your expertise (which doesn’t require a call to action).
So again, pick your primary goal, and then check out these tips…
Keep Your Branding in Mind
Even if your primary goal isn’t to build your branding, you should nonetheless still have your branding in mind. In other words, where applicable, be sure your content reflects your branding.
For example, if your branding centers around distilling complex processes to their most important parts, then most emails you send should do the same thing. In other words, don’t send out a long tutorial that covers every possible step in a process. Instead, let readers know the essential steps they need to take right now to get things going (and which ones they can take later).
Another example: let’s suppose your branding focuses on providing information for busy people in your niche. In that case, it doesn’t make sense to send out 5000-word emails, because that’s not helpful to busy people. Instead, send out short-form content, such as quick tips. (You can link to longer tutorials for those who want more information.)
Still one more example: let’s suppose your branding is focused on providing great value at low prices. If you start promoting a bunch of high-ticket offers, even if they’re affiliate offers, that doesn’t accurately reflect your branding.
Bottom line: before you hit the send or publish button, always be sure your email content reflects your branding (where applicable).
Next…
Work on Establishing Expertise
Just as with branding, you should strive to create content that establishes you as an expert, even if that isn’t your main goal. So, for example, even if your goal is to get people to purchase a product, your email should showcase your authority and expertise.
To that end, keep these points in mind:
- Promote high-quality offers only. Forget about promoting something just because it looks like it will drop a nice commission in your pocket. Instead, seek to promote products that you’d happily recommend to your best friend because they are the best solution. Doing so will build your reputation for honesty as well as help establish you as an expert (because you only recommend what works).
- Tout your credentials. You don’t want to write paragraphs about your credentials in every email you send. However, you can certainly sprinkle in your credentials into every email.
For example, if you want people to know you’ve been in your niche for quite some time, you can slip it into a sentence this way: “Back when I first started working as a copywriter 23 years ago…”
Another example: “When I won [relevant award]….
Another example: “Here’s one of the best cases studies I’ve done, and I’ve done a lot of them over the last [number] years…”
Next…
Build Trust and Familiarity
People like to do business with those they know, like and trust, which is why it’s so important for you to become known as a trusted advisor to your subscribers. As trust grows, so too will your sales and profits. Thus building this sort of relationship tends to support all your email goals.
So, with those benefits in mind, check out these tips:
- Email regularly. You can’t develop a relationship or top-of-mind awareness if you’re only touching base once or twice a month. People will forget you if you email infrequently. That’s why you should seek to email your subscribers at least once per week.
- Encourage interaction. One downside of an email list is that it’s a one-way monologue, which makes it harder to build relationships. If you have a blog community or social media platform, link to these from within your emails and ask your audience to connect and join the discussion.
Next…
Look at the Big Picture
While each individual email you send should be created around a primary goal, you also want to consider the big picture. Namely, what is the primary goal of your list as a whole? Once you determine your primary goal, then you want to check that the individual emails you send to support this primary goal.
For example, perhaps your primary goal is to make X amount of money by primarily selling your own offers. If you find yourself promoting a lot of affiliate offers, then you need to refocus your emails to better achieve your overall goal.
Another example: Let’s suppose your goal is to make X amount of money, but you’re finding that you’re having a hard time converting subscribers into buyers. That’s a clue to you that you may need to send out more relationship-building content, such as how-to emails that solve specific problems. (Be sure to send out something unique, so that subscribers have a reason to keep opening your emails.)
Your Turn
Your assignment for this lesson is to answer the following questions:
- What is the overall goal of your mailing list? Be sure to describe something measurable and realistic.
- What sort of content can you send to support this overall goal? E.G., product reviews, tutorials, tips, emailing preselling affiliate offers, etc.
- What is the goal of each of these individual emails? E.G., sell a product, establish expertise, etc.
- Do these individual emails work to build trust, establish your expertise and reflect your branding (all of which are important to supporting your goals over the long term)?
Conclusion
And there you have it – Four Must-Know Tips for Creating Emails That Support Your Goals, that show you how to grow your list, develop good relationships with your subscribers, and get more profits from every email you send.
As you can see, in many cases this isn’t something you do once and then never think about again. Instead, you’ll want to keep these lessons in mind every time you create a new lead magnet, every time you select an offer to send to your list, and every time you draft an email.
The more of these tips you put to work, the better results you’ll see with all your list-building efforts!
