Email Marketing For Beginners | How to get started with email marketing so you can make more money

one of the most overlooked pieces of strategy and pieces of business building that i think there is in the world one of the things that not enough people teach about not enough people talk about and not enough people use is email marketing if you are wanting to grow your business if you want to make sales on autopilot if you want to be able to make money in a pinch or a crunch then you need to be diving deep into your email marketing strategy so today i'm going to talk about email marketing from a beginner's level

we're going to talk about what it is why you need it why it's important how to do it all the things [Music] what's up buttercups you're new here my name is jessica stansberry and i run a media company called hey jessica where we create content just like this that you're watching to help you start build and grow the business of your dreams to support the life of your dreams so if that sounds like something you don't want to miss make sure you hit subscribe below so you don't miss any other videos from me on this

channel all right so email marketing what the freak is it that's where we're gonna start okay so email marketing and this is nobody's official definition this is just from dictionary day jessica and email marketing is basically a way to cultivate people who want who should ideal clients who should want what you have to sell and then using email as a way to market your products or services and sell them now a few things you need to know an email list is probably the most important thing you need in your business be on instagram followers be

on youtube subscribers facebook followers beyond all of it an email list is probably the most important thing you need here's why the people on your email list have opted in to be there they have taken more of a step than just hitting follow on instagram they've taken more of a step than just liking your page on facebook they have taken a step to say i'm gonna give this person my email address and i know just as much as you know that people protect their email addresses these days because we don't want a bunch of spam

right so the people on your list are one more invested but two they are more filtered as people that want what you're selling because hopefully the way they got on your email list is by you know purchasing or um signing up for some kind of free thing even that would only be helpful to someone who wants what you're selling so example and i'm going to do a whole video on how to build your email list in the future but just an example here let's say you want to attract people who want to homeschool that's very

fresh on my mind because i'm trying to figure out what i'm doing with my children because north carolina can't make up their freaking mind but let's say you want to attract people who want to homeschool and you know that you have a program you want to sell to them maybe you put out a freebie on pinterest or even run ads to it or put it out on social media that is like you know the beginner's guide to homeschooling it's an entire pdf and it's going to tell them everything they need to know to get started

make the decision and figure out how to homeschool their children okay and it's free they can then give you their email address and now they're on your email list and now down in the line or you know even in a couple of emails to come after they get on your list you can pitch them your homeschooling course or another way to get them on the list is to go ahead and sell them something maybe you sell them a packet of things to get started with their homeschooling journey and it's seven dollars or it's 12 or

it's 15 or 27 or something they come into your email list already a customer so when you have something else to offer homeschool moms you have a whole group of people whereas if you post on instagram on the regular and yes you're talking to homeschool moms you could still have random people following you on instagram your email list is a way for them to kind of qualify themselves as people who would want your thing does that make sense so not only is it full of people who are more invested it's also full of more of

the right people and probably the most important thing is that it is a list of people who want part in your business and want to hear from you that you own you do not own your instagram followers you do not own your blog traffic you do not own your youtube subscribers if youtube deemed that your channel was unfit it could take it down and and how do you have to get back in touch with those people you don't if you weren't building an email list anyway if you did something to tick instagram or facebook off

your account can be down and they don't have to tell your followers where you are now right so your email list is literally the only way that you can own people who are interested in hearing from you because if you want to download your email list and print it off and put it in your pocket you can and you could like individually email those people later or put them in another software or whatever you own the people on your email list you own the names on your email list versus you know not really having a

dog in the fight on social media so it's really important because you can take people from all your social medias from youtube from instagram from wherever and you can cultivate them into a list of people that you can email if you need to to sell to them to nurture them to talk to them whatever across all platforms so i feel like that might have been a little complicated but essentially overarching your email list is should be the hub for where the people who want to know more from you want to buy from you whatever are

whether they came in from instagram from a freebie from an ad from pinterest from youtube whatever that should be the place that you're always trying to get your people and just a quick little asterisk there it's also probably one of the only platforms that you can measure conversion rates from so absolutely you may say you may be able to say well you know for every thousand followers i get on instagram i can sell 400 worth of products or whatever you can definitely do that math but with an email list there are industry standards and there

are ways to kind of figure out like hey if i send an email every single month i know i'm going to make this much money if i grow my email list by this amount of people i know i'm going to have this many more people sign up for my webinar or whatever so it's more quantifiable and more calculatable to your sales and conversions and all of that okay so now that you kind of get it let's talk about first the tech second the strategy all right you have to have a software to host your email

list a lot of times especially when i'm talking to people who aren't familiar at all with email list building they think that they need like a spreadsheet with email lists or email addresses in it and then they will like email those people from like gmail that is not what you're gonna do not even remotely you are going to have a software that when you want to promote a freebie that's going to grow your list or you want to sell something that's going to grow your list it will automatically capture those email addresses and put them

in a bank of people within the software so when you want to send an email you can do it from within the software when you want to talk to only the people who signed up with this freebie and not the people who signed up with this freebie you can filter them out within the software so first and foremost you need to pick a software nowadays a lot of software start out free and that's really awesome there are definitely some that don't there are definitely some that are complicated some are easy etcetera etcetera what i would

suggest to you is that you use convertkit now let me tell you a quick little story about my journey with convertkit i used all kinds of other programs in the past i have switched off of convertkit and went to other programs but i've always landed back on convertkit and that is because i really enjoy their program their software their employees their team like i enjoy all of it and i think it's easy to use i think it's great for beginners i also think it's really great for people who want to create content and then use

that content to sell things i think is a really really really great software so if i was going to pick i would pick convertkit i will link them below as well and they actually now have like free accounts you can start free if you have under a certain amount of subscribers etc so it's a really great way to go now you can absolutely use things like constant contact mailchimp activecampaign but i would caution you here um i i wouldn't use mailchimp if it were me and and i could go into a whole slew of reasons

there but i actually have a video on convertkit versus mailchimp so i will link that below and have it pop across too so you can go watch that later but i wouldn't use mailchimp activecampaign and constant contact are definitely more complicated than convertkit they also have less of an open rate than convertkit which is really really important if you're paying to have people on an email list if you are taking the time to email them you better hope that they open the emails so if i were starting fresh if i were starting brand new i

would start with convertkit so yeah that is that's my spill there but there's tons of different software so if you want to do research on that i would absolutely research like email marketing softwares and make sure that they're right for your industry because some of the softwares are built specific to specific industries okay so now that you have figured out the technology let's talk about the strategy behind email marketing let me give you the example that most people are going to have to their come to their brain when they think about getting an email marketing

campaign if you have ever got an email from like old navy or some other clothing company and it's just a bunch of pictures and it's like sale on jeans and like this t-shirt and these things and that thing then that is an email marketing campaign but that does not work that strategy that type of email marketing does not work for small business owners you cannot send a bunch of photo bombed promos to your email list and expect them to stay around and not unsubscribe now if you are a product-based business you can definitely get away

with this more than if your service or information based or whatever but it's still something you want to tiptoe around you don't want to constantly be abusing your email list with sales and ways that they can buy from you because they signed up because you gave them a helpful resource to get there they signed up because they thought you could help them so if all you're doing is inundating them and bombarding them with sales they're going to unsubscribe and then you don't have them anymore and there you go your email list is the place that

you need to take advantage of to nurture your people you want to use your email list you want to use the emails from you as a way for them to get to know you on a deeper level before you try and push sales on them i always say with pretty well anything in life with any type of marketing that you want to keep it 80 20. you want to give them helpful free substantial nurturing information and content 80 of the time and you want to sell to them 20 of the time you don't want to

be selling 80 and giving helpful things 20 because they will just dip out and leave i've used this example a thousand times and i'm not the only one but basically basically you should treat the people on your email list as if you are dating them it would be really weird if someone introduced you and gave you know somebody gave you their phone number so you could call them and date them and the first call you made to them was asking them to marry you that would be super strange and probably not something people want to

do that's what it's like when someone gives you their email address and all you do is sell to them you want to take them through a process of getting to know you like you and trust you before you sell them so it's the equivalent of okay here's my phone number call me sometime and you calling and asking that person out on a date and then after that date asking them on another date and then after that date asking them on another and taking it slow and then finally moving in together and then finally getting engaged

and then finally getting married right so it's one of those things where this email marketing is not a fast track to sales but once you have the system set up it is a fast track to nurturing your people getting them to know you like you and trust you and then being able to sell to them 20 of the time so if you were my client and you said i'm starting an email list i don't know what to do with it what should i do i would tell you this i would say one you need to

write emails like you're writing them to a friend they don't need to be corporate emails they don't need to be loaded with photos and that's another one of the reasons i really enjoy convertkit because they don't really have their software set up to load it full of photos and make it look like one of those big promo emails because they know that that decreases open rates and delivery rates so they are built to send emails like you're sending an email to a friend so i would tell my client i would say first of all you

need to send an email like you're talking to a friend you need to let people get to know you you need to help them you need to send them an email once a week you in those emails you want to give them helpful information that's going to help them on their journey wherever that is so if they are people who are learning to homeschool then send them information and ways that you can help them do that if they are people who are lovers of home decor send them an email teaching them something every week or

telling them you know a strategy for home decor or whatever if they are fashion lovers send them emails where you have like sourced some awesome fashion resources or whatever if you have an email list full of people who are ceos of companies and you offer strategy then send them emails every week where you're giving them information that will help them in their ceo journey for free you don't want this to be a sales tactic it is a sales talk tactic but you don't want it to be the only like meet behind the email list right

so again if you were my client that's what i would tell you i would say send an email once a week make it really helpful and then once you've built a relationship with people then sell to them so this might look like once they get on your email list they came in through a freebie they get a sequence of emails spaced out for a week or a couple of days or whatever that let them get to know you and then at the end you pitch them your services or your product or whatever this might also

look like building your email list and really only sending out promo emails every few months or every six weeks or so it can look different for every business but you want to take that time to date those people on your email list so email marketing should not be emails full of photos that are just promoting your stuff and you don't care about the person on the other end and all you're ever doing is selling it should be a way to nurture people to get to know you better to get to know your company better so

that when you're ready to sell to them they are ready to buy okay so that's really as far as like getting started and really knowing what you need to know for email marketing as a beginner that's really it you need to know what software you want to use and you need to know how to strategically get people on the list but also what to do with them once they get there i am going to do a whole video on how to build your email list next week so in one of next week's videos there's going

to be a whole like process on you know i've just started my email list i have my software i get the strategy i need to know how to get people on the list it's going to be all about that so definitely stick around for that and if you have any specific email marketing questions for sure leave them in the comments below because that's where i'm gonna come back to and say okay i need to answer that i need to answer that i need to make sure this is in another video etc and don't forget i've

put links below for everything i talked about today videos that i referenced convertkit anything else i talked about is below in the description and until next time don't forget to hit subscribe so you don't miss any other tips and tricks with me each week bye y'all