No Questions Asked Your Newsletter Builds Credibility
Do you regularly email your blogs readers? Perhaps ‘setting up an email newsletter’ is on your list to do someday, but still haven’t done it. Do you have a newsletter list, but you haven’t sent an email in months?
You might think an email list is optional. Something you can do once you finish everything else on your to-do list. You even even think email is dead or at least old-fashioned. Or perhaps you feel that you’re better off building connections through social media.
The truth is, if you want to stay connected to your blog’s readers, email is still one of the best ways to stay connected. If you’re not using email, you really are missing out. However, lets get one misconception out of the way. The benefits of using an email list to connect with your readers is huge.
Why Emailing Your Readers is So Important
For some bloggers it’s hard to understand why emailing their readers is so important. To many it just makes more sense to build your traffic through good SEO practices. Or using your social media following to attract more subscribers and promote your blog content. They’re all great to build your success with, but email still is critical.
But here are six crucial reasons why email is still so important.
Why Emails are so Important To Controlling Your Traffic
If you build a big email list, you can easily drive lots of traffic to your posts. All you have to do is send an email. You don’t have to rely on Google or other search engines. If you’re relying on Google, you’re competing against lots of other blogs. What happens if Google decides to change its search algorithm and lose a lot of your traffic very quickly.
Social media doesn’t perform much better. You probably understand how few of your Facebook followers will actually see your post. To reach lots of people you need to either spend money to boost your post or run paid ads.
With email you have complete control over your messaging. Even though some of your emails will get caught in people’s spam filters, most of them will reach an inbox. If 15% of your subscribers open their emails, that can drive a lot of traffic to your blog.
You See How Emails Build Relationships and Engage Readers
Blog posts rarely achieve the personal feel the way that emails do. They also provide privacy for your message. It’s easy for your readers to reply to you, and you alone. That’s very different from a comment that everyone can see.
When you write your newsletter, add some personal information that you wouldn’t share on your blog. Emails are a great place to drop in a few words about your life and what’s happening around you. You could mention those personal details on your blog, however anything on your post could be found and read years later.
Of course, your emails engagement effectiveness is measurable and goes both ways. It’s easy to encourage your readers to email back. You may find that some readers who won’t comment on your blog, will happily engage with you by email.
You Have to Know How Email Drives Your Sales
Social media is a great place for conversations. However it’s not a good place for sales. It does help people find your blog and connect with you. But email is a great place to ask for the sale.
Brad Smith’s post on AdEspresso tells why social media sales results aren’t reliable. Social media is great though if you want people to subscribe to your email list.
The cost of developing an email list can be a bit scary when you’re starting out. But the power of email to drive sales should make it far more worthwhile.
You Need to Know Your Emails Point Readers Where to Go
Email is a brilliant way to direct readers to where you want them to go. For instance, you can:
- Link your emails to your blog posts. Not only recent ones, but also archived posts.
- Link to your Social Media accounts. Promote your social media in your newsletter.
- Link to a survey or poll. This is an opportunity to learn about your readers needs.
You Need to Know How Email Lists Allow Targeting Groups
When you publish a post on your blog, it goes out via RSS or email to everyone who’s subscribed for your updates. However when using your email lists you have an unlimited number of options.
You can edit your email list down to smaller groups. You have the ability to send different content to meet the needs of different groups. Using my email lists I can send exactly the content I want to each different group.
For instance, you might create segments for:
- People who aren’t subscribed to another list you have.
- People who joined your list at a specific point in time.
- People who joined from a specific page on your website.
- People who joined from a specific social media platform
- People who haven’t opened your emails recently.
- People who have never opened your emails.
- People who’ve looked at specific pages on your site.
- People who’ve bought a particular product or service.
Email Can Guide Your Readers on an Amazing Journey
You can design a series of emails to take readers on a journey. Do you want to teach them something new? Would you like to make their lives better? No matter what, it’s all up to you.
The journey could be something practical. Like teaching them how to play basic chords on the guitar. Or the journey could be more personal and in-depth. Something as personal as teaching meditation.
A great way to do this is using autoresponders to send a sequence of emails. Maybe, one every few days for two weeks. Many bloggers use an autoresponder when they start their relationship with a new reader. But it’s easy to create different lists that readers can opt into separately.
Because readers don’t want to miss a step on the journey, it’s a great way to get readers used to opening your emails. Here’s where you can also link to your blog posts or if appropriate to even paid products and services. You could “upsell” the reader on a related ecourse or product at the end of your series.
How Your Email List is Perfect to Send an Amazing Newsletter
If you haven’t set up a newsletter yet, or you never saw the reason you should have one. I hope this post has been helpful. If you already have a newsletter list, but haven’t sent anything in a while. I hope you now understand how worthwhile emailing your readers can be.
I know it can be easy to focus on a blog and loose sight on the value of your newsletter. Your blog is more visible and public, which makes posting there more motivating. But your newsletter may be the key to driving greater engagement and more sales.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be covering what your newsletter should include, how you can set it up, and some fixes to common problems. I know the process of creating a newsletter can be a little daunting when you’re starting out, but don’t worry – I’ll be walking you through it all.
And just a reminder: to make sure you don’t miss the rest of this newsletter series, or any other ProBlogger posts, make sure you’re on our email list, “ProBloggerPLUS”. You can subscribe for free here.
