How I learned to stop being afraid of email marketing and love the frequency

There are three online marketing channels in 2013 (and for the foreseeable near future): blogging, social media, and email. Most people spend all their time on blogging and the other two channels languish, starving for attention.

This is a mistake.

Can you guess why?

If you said: “because without social media and email marketing you’re not going to get traffic to your blog,” give yourself a starfish (stars are so boring, starfish are way cooler, wouldn’t you agree?).

Out of the “other two” channels, people then tend to spend more time on social media than email marketing. They pay their $19 or $49 a month or whatever to a list manager service, and then they don’t send anything. Social media is free but your signal tends to easily get lost in the noise, and that’s where you choose spend the rest of your time?

Can I get a “WTF?”

It’s okay. Everyone’s in a different place. Everyone’s walking the path.

Lucky for you, I’ve already been there and I’ve already seen what it’s like to not make that mistake, anymore.

And I’m here to tell you, it’s pretty cool.

Let me share with you how I got here. Don’t worry, it’s a short trip.

It started with me noticing that some marketers emailed their list more than others. Much more than others. We know people will put lots of time and effort into things that don’t pay off, but I was sure that this was not the case. So I started paying more attention. Some marketers sent email to their list every day.

Every. Day.

In many online marketing blog posts, you will be admonished not to email your list too frequently. And of course, you’ll also be warned not to wait too long to email them. And then after seeming to promise you advice on email marketing all they can say is “see what works for you.” And you know what’s really funny? I’m going to do the exact same thing to you in this post! In fact, you can just stop reading now. Unless you want to hear the rest of my story.

Still here? Okay.

What I realized was there were email newsletters I was getting every day… and I didn’t mind. Why not? Welp, mostly because if I didn’t want what they were offering, I wouldn’t have signed up for them in the first place. I wanted what they had. And I got it. Every day. That doesn’t mean I opened every single one, or that I clicked on a link in it if I did open it.

But I always looked at their subject lines and decided based on what it said: was it relevant to me? Was it going to help me with something? Was it interesting or did it make me curious?

And that’s when it really hit me that most people don’t email their list enough. And when I say “enough” what I mean is way more than you think is probably appropriate. And before you can even say “but that won’t work for m—” TEST IT.

Admit it: you’re afraid to do it. You’re afraid to email your list more often because in your imaginary movie house of the mind, Unsubscribers from Hell is premiering.

When I relaunched Remarkablogger in the beginning of 2013, I decided to publish content every day if I could. That meant that, in order to let people know about new blog posts before the next one was published, I’d have to email my list every day (because nobody uses RSS readers). And when I realized that, I felt that twinge of fear myself.

This is what we call a moment of truth. Like in the movies where the hero is faced with a decision that will change everything. The choice is, essentially to be the hero and be brave, or to be a coward and give up. In movies the hero always makes that epic decision and we love that because we wish we could be like that.

There are things you should be afraid of: getting caught in a hostage situation, natural disasters, car wrecks, and cancer come to mind. When you look at it that way, being afraid to send your list a few extra damn emails seems pretty lame, doesn’t it?

So I laughed, and said “Screw it, let’s do it.”

I started emailing my list every day.

And do you know what happened?

I got lots of traffic! I got sales!

And yeah, a few people unsubscribed. But so far only one person said it was because of “too many emails.” A couple people said “too much email in general” which is probably code for “too much email from you.”

But you know what? I don’t care.

The reason why I don’t care is because if they don’t want what I have to give then I don’t want them on my list, anyway. Happy trails and no hard feelings.

I’m watching my email analytics like Mad-Eye Moody, to be sure (“Constant vigilance!”).

And that’s the key: you try something and you watch the results.

It made sense for me to do this as part of a total redesign and relaunch (if you want something similar for your blog, check out my Blog Reboot service). But if you’re not doing something like that, what can you do instead?

• Try sending one more email a week than you do now.
• Try doubling your frequency.
• Try sending an end of week recap of posts or news.

When people don’t go screaming and running for the hills, then you can try upping it more.

Look, you want to get conversions and sales and that’s not gonna happen unless you get people to the site, right? And email marketing happens to be pretty damn good at that. If you want a refresher course on email marketing for blogging, check out my huge article on it. I wrote that thing in 2009 and it’s still just as relevant today. And even back then I said you probably need to email your list more often than you think.

If you don’t even have an email marketing service, I use and recommend Aweber (shameless affiliate link). First month is just $1.

And of course if you want to get email from me every day, just put your name and email address into the form on this page (upper right). In addition to my newsletter, you’ll get a free ebook: The Diamond Business Blogging Framework, which contains the same blog consulting framework I use with my personal coaching & consulting clients.

Now get out there and send some awesome email to your list.

photo credit: 28 Dreams via photopin cc

photo credit: ntr23 via photopin cc