Transcripts
1. Welcome to Automated Marketing!: Hey, I'm Liz. I'm a food illustrator and creativity advocate here in beautiful Northern New Mexico. I am so excited to teach you about automated marketing today in this class. The reason I want to teach you these tips and tricks around automated marketing is because when I started my business prints and plants, I was marketing on the go and quite frankly, I was marketing on the go up until a few months ago. What this looked like was I would post on Instagram when I felt inspired, or I would send an email only when I had something to sell. On the day-to-day, this was taking up a lot of brain space in my business because I would always know that I should post something, but I didn't know what, and I didn't know how to communicate it in an effective way. When I started incorporating automated marketing into my business, it helped me have a much more cohesive message to share my brand's mission with my audience and community. It helped to build more authenticity and trust with my community and it also helped me to free up time, and energy, and space in my business so that I wasn't always wondering, what do I post next? Knowing that it was already scheduled, it was cohesive and it had a purpose. If any of this sounds familiar, then I'm really excited to walk you through some steps that have really helped me and my business in automated marketing today. This class is for you if you're working two or three jobs and you're building your creative business on the side. It's for you if you're already busy, but you want more time to work on your creative projects, spend time with family, take breaks in your business. This class is for you if you want to craft a cohesive marketing message for your audience. This class is also for you if you want to connect with a wider audience with intention and purpose. A few of the main takeaways that you'll walk away with today are; you will learn how to automate your marketing on three different platforms, you will learn how to use what I consider the best free automation app for Instagram and Facebook. You'll learn how to free up your time in your business by scheduling your marketing content either a week or a month out. Lastly, you'll learn how automating your marketing can create a clearer message for your audience. The materials you'll need for this class are a computer to access a few different platforms that are totally free for automated marketing. The platforms we're going to cover in the class are Instagram, Facebook, Mailchimp and the Later app. If you're unfamiliar with some of these, that's totally fine. I'm going to walk you through how to use them, assuming that you already have account set up. With Facebook and Instagram, we'll be talking about how to automate for these platforms using your business account rather than your personal account. For Mailchimp, if you're new to the email subscription world, this is a great resource that's free up to 2,000 subscribers. That's why I'm sharing it today because I want to make this accessible for people maybe in the beginning stages of your business, where we're using all free resources today for automated marketing, which leads into the last tool or material, which is the Later app, which is totally free to download. I've looked at a few options for automated marketing apps, and this is my favorite. You can create a premium subscription where you would pay for more features. I still use the free version and have been really content with it. We'll go over how to use that app to schedule out your marketing. Pick any or all of these, don't feel intimidated by this last if you're just getting started, we're going to cover how to use each, but pick maybe one to start or if you're ready to dive in, then pick them all. Are you ready to get going? Let's do this.
2. Automated: What is It?: If you're unfamiliar with automated marketing, it's a great way to schedule your content ahead of time. Rather than me sitting here right now posting to Instagram, working on Skillshare content, which is distracting from working on the Skillshare content, I could've scheduled that ahead of time, so it could be posting right now as we're in this class, rather than me having to do it simultaneously. Automated marketing is a way to schedule your content in advance so that you can free up brain space and time in your business.
3. Why Automated Marketing?: Why automated marketing? I shared a little bit about my personal experience with shifting into automated marketing at the beginning of this class. But there's a whole list of reasons why automated marketing can serve you and your business. First and foremost, automated marketing can help you connect with and serve your audience in a really clear way. When you start to schedule your content, you can see the message that you're giving ahead of time. You can see how each post can build on the other and how you can craft a clear business mission that you're sharing with your community. This is so important because you can see the big picture and you can share that, rather than wondering what you're going to post during the day and whether it connects to everything else that you're sharing. You'll save a lot of time and you'll save a lot of energy, which means you can turn that energy to other aspects of your business. So rather than worrying about what am I going to post today, what am I going to say, how is this going to be clear, you'll already have it scheduled so that you can focus on other aspects of your business, whether that's creating artwork to sell on [inaudible] , whether that's creating a new creative project just for fun, whether it's working on client projects or spending time with family, getting rest, spending time with friends creating that balance. Automated marketing can clear up that brain space and that time in your schedule. Lastly, automated marketing allows you to market with purpose and intention. You're not just selling or you are only posting when you have something to sell, but you're able to give a message that is cohesive and ties to your overall brand's mission and connect and engage your audience.
4. Platforms for Automation: Today we're going to talk about four different platforms you can use for automation. Now, this is assuming that you have accounts already set up with these platforms. Now, these platforms include Instagram, Facebook, Mailchimp, and last but not least Later. This is an app that's completely free. You can sign up using your Instagram account and you can sign up on a desktop computer. The desktop is the best way I found to schedule out your content. It's really clear to see it on a bigger screen. It's clear to understand when your posts are going to happen. You can also use their app so that you can schedule things on your phone. I've just personally found that the desktop is much more efficient to do it with the bigger picture. Now, Later, the app, it is free. I still use the free version. You can pay for more feature. With the free version, you get up to 30 posts, which is really wonderful, and you can upgrade your plan to get more posts. Now on the free plan, you get to post just still pictures. You can't post video or stories. But I believe with the other plans that are paid, you can start to post more engaging content, that is video or that is stories. This is a great place to start though if you're looking for a free resource. The reason I love the Later app is that as opposed to other scheduling apps, Later automatically pushes through your posts, which you can see scheduled in the calendar right here, where my mouse is. Later automatically pushes those scheduled posts through to your Instagram account. We'll also talk about how to push them through your Facebook account. But rather than it sending you an automated text at the time that you need to post where you would then need to open Instagram and post it manually, Later does that for you, which is why I love it. You can just set it and forget it, work on other things and know that your posts are going to go through. Today, you can see that I have one scheduled. It says auto. It's going to automatically post for three o'clock in the afternoon. Later is a wonderful resource. Now, it might feel really intimidating seeing all four of these, wondering how in the world am I going to write content for four different platforms every week or every month? Let me give you a little pro tip. Re-purpose your content. Your followers, your audience, your engaged community, they're going to be potentially following you on different platforms, but they might not see every post on each platform. When you post something to Instagram, you can also share that to Facebook. Maybe you'll change up the language or the photo, but use the same general idea. With Mailchimp when you're sending out an email, you can use something that you posted during the week and elaborate on it, make it a longer message, but still use the same theme. So that you're not creating new fresh content for every platform, because honestly, people are busy. They're not going to be following you on every single platform, and if they are, hey, power to them and power to your business because they want to hear what you have to say. But when you start to post similar content across all platforms, this can really reduce the amount of work that you have to put in and reach people in multiple ways. In this Later app, you can see this calendar for one week listed. You can see that these posts are at different times. In the next lesson we're going to talk about when to post and how often to post.
5. How Often Should I Post & When?: A major question when we're talking about automated marketing is how often do I post and when do I post? Let's start with how often because it can feel really overwhelming depending on your schedule. How often really depends on what you feel you can manage in the moment. It's great to show up every week in e-mail marketing, but if right now you can only show up consistently once a month, then do that, whatever you can be consistent and commit to that and it can always change. Just let your audience know, especially in e-mail marketing, how often you're going to be showing up for them. Shoot them an e-mail if it's once a month, say hey, I'm going to pop in your inbox once a month, first Monday of each month to say hey, to check in how you're doing and to give you inspiration. If that changes down the road where you're going to start popping in every week, let your audience know so that they're aware of the shift as well. When it comes to social media such as Facebook and Instagram, that's also your call. Do you want to post three times a week, do you want to post seven days a week, what can you commit to right now because it can always change. But a little pro tip because when I was starting as I mentioned with Instagram and Facebook in e-mail marketing, I was just showing up when I felt inspired or I was forcing a post because I felt like I had to post that day. I was sending an e-mail only when there was something to sell, and that was creating a lot of people who unsubscribed less engagement because people didn't feel like they were there for the message and the mission of the business and the journey, it just felt like they were being sold to. Instead, really focus on how you can post consistently to create community, to create trust, to create authenticity and engagement so that you and your audience are in this together. You're in this journey of your business together, they're cheering you on, you're inspiring them and it's a really good, healthy mutual relationship. A pro tip to approach that is called jab, jab, jab right hook. This is a reference back to boxing where the right hook is the surprise at the end. You jab, jab, jab then you right hook instead of just going right in and right hooking. What this relates to is each jab is offering service, it's offering inspiration, it's offering a free resource, it's offering a tip or an idea, and that right hook is when you ask for your audience to give you something back, whether that's selling a product or asking them to purchase a product, whether that's asking them to help you with a survey. The right hook is an ask of your audience and every jab is a serve because after all business, it's all about service. It's about serving your community, it's about inspiring, it's about yes, making you money but you want to build a relationship with the people. Money and sales they come through trust because really business is about service, it's about building trust and helping your people in a way that feels good to both of you. When you look at this, you could think of this as okay, if I'm doing a weekly e-mail, one e-mail per week, then for three weeks straight, I'm just going to serve up content. Maybe that's a free blog post, maybe that's a free wallpaper download that I've drawn, maybe that's just inspiration of other artists who are inspiring me right now that I think will inspire my audience. Then the fourth week, I'll ask them for something. I'll say, hey, and I have this new subscription, do you want to join me in it, or hey, now I have this e-book, do you want to download it for $10? The right hook is after those three weeks of service. Now let's hop over to Instagram and say that you're posting five times a week; Monday through Friday. Let's say Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, those are all serve serve serve, Thursday is your right hook, it's your ask, Friday you're back into serving. You want to give so much service, you want to love on your people so, so much before you're asking for anything so that you're really creating trust, you're creating authenticity, and you're building this passion not only from your end but from your communities and around your brand and your business. Now the question of when to post, let's go back to this later calendar. You can see that this is not all nine o'clock in the morning, this is a nine o'clock post here on Monday, this is three o'clock on Tuesday afternoon, three o'clock on Wednesday afternoon, Thursday afternoon 12:00 PM, Friday afternoon at 12:00 PM, these aren't random. These are based on the analytics in Instagram if you have a business account. If you have a business account, you can go to your profile, and on your profile page, you can go to the menu bar on the top right and select insights. Your insights will show you your feeds posts under content, so you'll see engagement, how many people saw your posts. But then if you pop over to audience, which is the right tab, under your insights, you'll see how many followers you have. Then if you scroll down, you'll see where they're located, the primary audience that you're serving, you'll also see the age range of your audience, you'll see how many are men, how many are women, and then you'll see your followers. This is really important because this is where you can see a graph showing you when your followers are most frequently checking Instagram, so by hour and by day. When you look at that graph, when I'm looking at mine right now on Monday, I see that 12:00 PM has the highest bar, that's when the most people are checking. Tuesdays, 3:00 PM has the highest bar, so that's when the most people are checking. Wednesdays it's at 3:00 PM, Thursdays it's noon or three, Fridays it's noon or three. You can go off of this of when to schedule, that's what I did with this week, this example, and you can just see what starts to work. You can take this into account but also take into account, who is your community, who is your audience, when will they be checking? Are they checking on their lunch break? Are they checking on their morning walk? Are they checking in the evening when they get home? If your ideal customer, your ideal community is looking at Instagram, when do you think they'd be engaging? Because that can also inform when you post. Now this is trial and error, you can try out different things. This week example is based on those insights. Another week might be me guessing when those people might be on Instagram most and you can see which works better for you. Just to give an example of how often to post this is the schedule that I do. I do five times a week on Instagram and Facebook, so I do Monday through Friday, and then I do one e-mail per week, and I do that every Monday morning at 9:00 AM. The way I presented that because I did shift it to my subscribers, because it was really so sporadic and I said now I'm going to start showing up in your e-mail inbox once a week to serve up inspiration and content around creativity, and so that e-mail each week comes at 9:00 AM, and I shared that shift, it was like we're going to have coffee together to start the week. It was really personable. I'm going to start showing up once a week just like we're hanging out over coffee. That's been a really good shift. It's increased the engagement, it's increased the authenticity and trust, and it's really amazing to hear people respond because when you show up consistently, your audience will show up for you and you can start a new conversation around the topics that you're serving them and the content that they're asking you to create. But at the end of the day, you got to find what works for you because you know your schedule the best. So what can you commit to right now? Is it one newsletter a month, one e-mail per week, whatever works best for you start there and you can always change it.
6. How to Set Up the Later App: Let's chat about how to set up your account with Later. Again, this app is totally free unless you want to do the add-ons, but the free resource is amazing. Let's start there. The best way to do this is to create your account with Instagram and there's no credit card required to start. You can sync up your Instagram business account with Later so that everything posts through automatically. Now, you want to just go to www.later.com, it'll take you to this page. Go to "Create Account with Instagram". This is a different account that I have so I'm going to say "Switch Accounts", and then I would enter in my Instagram username, the password, and "Log in". Then it will set up Later and it will connect to that Instagram account. Easy as pie.
7. How to Automate: Instagram : Let's talk about how to use Later to schedule your Instagram marketing. I've been using Later for awhile, which is why this whole library is full of photos that I've uploaded. Yours might be completely blank right now. We are on the calendar page, so you can see this week that's filled out already like we've looked at, and then up here, you can see that we're on Instagram because you can see the little icon right here. This one's Facebook, this one's Pinterest, this one's Twitter. Theoretically, you could schedule this content across all four of these. Today, we're just going to focus on Instagram and Facebook, and right now we're just focusing on Instagram. Here is the calendar, here's the media library. So if you click that, you'll be taken to when you uploaded everything. Last month, I uploaded all of these, you can load more. You can go to Analytics, search by hash tag, all those things, but we're just going top focus on this tab right here, the calendar. Now, a few more things, right now we're looking at the week view. We can go to the month view as well. Now, you see this could not view past schedule, the free plan only displays two weeks of past posts. If you want more than that, you do have to upgrade. I've never had an issue with it yet, so I keep it just as is the free plan, but you can see the posts and when I posted everything, so 4:00, 3:00, 9:00, 9:00, 9:00, you can see the posts and what happened. The areas where it's blank, right here and right here, those I actually ended up doing manually because I think I was using multiple pictures. So if you're using multiple pictures in a post or a video, then you have to do a manual upload. But for the most part, everything is automated. Now, what's really special is that you can click ''Preview'' and you can see how all of your scheduled content and future content is going to look on your feed. This is a shift I've been making because if we scroll back a bit and you can see previous posts in this mode, it was all over the place. I always try to do like a personal story with a photo so people know the person behind the brand, and then I use artwork and then I show a client projects I'm working on. But more recently, I've been trying to create a more cohesive, essentially digital portfolio using color schemes, using artwork, really shifting that mode, and this preview section has helped immensely to see how everything fits together. So these top 3, these haven't been posted yet, but I can see how they'll look in the feed once they're posted. But let's go back to week because that's where we will schedule everything. Since this week is already scheduled, I'm going to hop ahead to next week. I usually like to schedule on Fridays for the next week. Sometimes honestly, it happens on the weekend, things are crazy right now. But I like to set aside an hour max to schedule that content for the week ahead. Now, I'm going to be creating another class about what exactly to post, but I'll give you a little insight into that because it can feel overwhelming, especially if you're doing every day or five days a week. If we're doing five days a week, think about what theme or umbrella could be for each day. For example, on Mondays, I do something called the creative kitchen, which I created 52 prompts for this year to create new recipes in the kitchen, and these are prompts like a dish that I have to learn how to make from someone else or a dish that is traditional to my heritage. Then once I create that, each week then I draw it. This Monday is reserved for creative kitchen. I might share a recipe with it, I might share a story with it, but that's to get people inspired around food and art since I do food illustration. Tuesdays is usually highlighting a product, but it's more connected to nesting and being at home and creating a really lovely living atmosphere using everyday artwork and design. I might be promoting a product or I might just be highlighting a favorite aspect of my home or how to make your home more welcoming. Wednesdays, I love to do a quote. I love to do an inspirational quote, usually on some background that I've designed. Thursdays, I like to talk about creativity, so I like to encourage people in their own creative practice, but creativity is the overarching theme. Then Fridays, I usually talk about nature or a natural element, but I might also return back to creativity or home and use an umbrella again in a different way. I might use a personal story on Fridays, Friday is kind of a rotation depending on what it is. By this point, on a Friday or a Thursday, I'll do one of these as that right hook that we talked about, I'll do one of these as the call to action. These are usually service or showing off a future product or like hinting at something, but these are what they call the action lengths, if that makes sense. We have jab, jab, jab, right hook, or right hook. If this was right hook, ideally we'd move back into a job to balance that out. Let's hop ahead to this week. Let's say you have themes for each of these days and we have some photos here. But to upload a photo, basically, I have a photo here of a mug that I'm actually drinking out of right now. This mug, I can drag this photo in, drag and drop directly into that library. Then, it'll load, boom, now it's in the library. You can also go to the media library and drag and drop into here. I find it's really easy just all in this calendar space to just drag it into the library here. Now, I have this. Let's say on Tuesday because I'm going to be talking about the home, I'm going to be talking about how I love to make coffee every morning as I start my work process, getting settled in at my desk. So because I'm talking about coffee, I'm going to drag this to, let's say that three o'clock slot, I think that was the analytics that we saw. Once I drag it to that time slot, you see this pop-up. This is where you get to write the content so you can write your caption here. Let's say I'm writing something, we'll do it really brief for this example. But every morning, I love to get up, make a cup of coffee while the world is still quiet and sit down to do daily journal practice. This daily routine helps me get grounded and centered before I dive into my workday. What's your favorite part of the morning? Or something, some kind of engaging question. Then, I might tag this as a product that they can buy or I might say if I am going to do a right hook here, if this was only got Thursday or Friday, I might separate this and say, this is one of my favorite mugs to use every morning, snag your own in the Prints & Plants shock, and then I would say link in bio. Then down here, I would start to put in some hashtags. I might put in morningroutine, figuring out which hashtags would be a whole another lesson. But right here, let's just put a few; creativepractice, foodillustration, bluecorn, cutecoffeemug. Yeah, those. Now, if I have something like for the umbrella hashtags, so if I have a set of hashtags that fit under that creativity umbrella, and I wrote them all out right here, I could select these, I could copy them, and I could save them in a note either on Google Docs or on my iPhone that I could then just copy over every time. So I'm not typing them every time, that would increase efficiency. But I can also go to saved captions. I can go to this plus sign, enter in a new title, let's say home, and I would change up these hashtags a little bit for that theme. But just for example, the caption would be these and I would save caption. Now you can see here, so I have farm hashtags because I talk about food and farming, I have creativity hashtags, and then I could just come in here, click food, insert this caption and boom, it's inserted. That can save you so much time and then it's all in one place so that you're not digging in Google Docs or your notes or anything, it's just right there. So that's really helpful. But for right now, I'm going to eliminate those and then down here, you can see okay, this is scheduled for August 27th at 03:00 PM, it's auto. You could do send notification, but auto pushes it through, which you can see right there. So I'm going to click ''Save'', and that's that. Now, on that Tuesday when I'm working in the afternoon, I don't have to worry about pushing this through. It is scheduled, it's ready. You can see over here I have all this library, so let's pretend we just uploaded all these photos. I'm working on this pattern, so I'm going to upload this into, I think it was three o'clock here as well, I can't totally remember, I would check that in analytics, and I would say something about pattern design and this is inspired by plants. So for now, I'm just going to say plants and pattern, but it would be more engaging than that. So there's that and then let's go put that in here. Put in a caption and hashtags, and then I'll do one about creativity that's here. Again, showing the person behind the business can create a lot of trust and authenticity. So I'll put that there. This is a good example because right now, it says too tall to post to Instagram. So this was a photo I took with my iPhone, but it's too tall. So you can go up here to edit. It'll take you into this editor and then you can see the social platform crop sizes. So you have everything from Twitter posts, Pinterest post, Instagram, portrait, square crop. So I'm going to do an Instagram portrait and it cuts off a little bit, I'm just going to drag that up there. Click ''Update Image'', done, and now it'll post, it'll save for me. So I'll save it. Then Monday, I don't have my creative drawing yet, so let's just put in these geometric mountains, "Save". Now, let's go to preview. You can see Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, it's all lined up. So you can see how it flows with last week, you can see how it flows together, how the overall feed looks. I'll go back through and delete these because I'm not actually going to post them. But this is how you would schedule out that week. Now, you could schedule out the upcoming week every week or you could schedule a whole month's worth of posts. But you can see that as looking at this week as a whole, you could create a much more consistent message like this one could build off the message of this previous day or you can relate the story that's personal to something that you posted earlier, but you can see how you can create a consistent message over time instead of just posting when you're inspired in the moment and snapping a picture really quick. Photographs can be really intentional, they can create a cohesive story. This is a great way to build that cohesion and consistency.
8. How to Automate: Facebook: Now that we have things scheduled for Instagram through Later, let's talk about how to schedule for Facebook. I'm going to walk you through two different methods to schedule for Facebook. The first is again, using Later, the app. Again, we're on the desktop here. Up here on the calendar page, I'm going to go to this little Facebook icon, click it, and you see that the calendar is blank. I can start to fill out new content if I want to, or I can re-purpose content from the Instagram posts. Let's start here with this mug. What I'm going to start by doing is clicking this picture once and then selecting all, copying that content, clicking "Save" again. Now I'm going to go into Facebook. It's not showing up because what's showing up here are the unused photos. I'm just going to click this x and now it pops up. I'm going to schedule that for three o'clock and I'm going to paste that caption in here. Now, I might change some of the content if I want to switch it up a little bit, I might keep it the exact same because again, audience reaches your business from multiple platforms. But the important thing to note when you're copying over from Instagram is something like this. When you have link-in bio, if that goes over to Facebook, your people have nowhere to go because there's no bio, there's no direct link. For this, I would just copy in the direct link to my shop so that they could access that link right there from Facebook instead of just being left hanging, not having anywhere to go. Then I would make sure everything looked good, make sure the size was right and I would save it. I would go through with each post and do that. I would drag the proper image over and copy that caption over. There we go. You can see that it's scheduled now and I would do that for each of those days. Now, the other method, which is a little more cumbersome but is an option for scheduling on Facebook on your business page, so here we have the Prints and Plants business page. I would come down here to write a post, just like I was writing any post. I would say, let's make it really brief, but I love coffee in the mornings with my favorite blue corn mug now available in the Prints and Plants shop. Then I would add a photo or a video, upload, blue mug, open. Then you can see the tags there. Now, right here is where it gets important because if I press "Share Now", it's going to share right now. But I could schedule it. So that I could schedule, let's say I want to schedule it for next Tuesday like the other post at three o'clock. Then I would select "Schedule" and then it would be ready to be posted next week and scheduled, so I wouldn't have to think about it. But you can see how Later can actually be really much more streamlined and simplified because you're connecting it to the message that you're giving to your Instagram audience. There's that connection there, and you're pushing it through to Facebook all within this platform. Again, this automatically posts just like it does to the Instagram page. It's really useful and then you're not doubling your efforts by going to your page and recreating the post. I'm going to click "Cancel" because I'm not actually going to do that, and there we have it. That's how you schedule for Facebook from two different platforms and you can pick or choose, but they're both really useful so that you don't have to think about it in the moment. They're already scheduled and ready to go.
9. How to Automate: Email: All right. So now let's chat about how to automate your e-mail marketing. Again, in this example, in this class today we're using Mailchimp because it is a wonderful resource. It's free up to 2,000 subscribers. So if you're just starting out your business, is going to be a really wonderful platform. This year, I've really focused on growing my e-mail list, creating different opt-ins, and shifting how I engage with my list, because honestly when I started, it was just this hodgepodge of who is signing up. Then it was a hodgepodge of when I would send anything out. Like I said, it was only when I had something to sell, which is like ick. Instead, now I show up in people's inboxes every week with creative inspiration, creative ideas, new offerings, but really following that jab, jab, hook model. What's been so amazing is the community coming back, as I mentioned, it starts this conversation. People enjoy the information and are so grateful to be part of this community and that's really what you want to cultivate in a business. So that's the shift I've made this year and a lot of that has been due to automated marketing. I mentioned with Instagram and Facebook when I'm scheduling through Later, I do it a week ahead of time because it's five posts, so I do it the week before I scheduled that out. With with e-mail, what's really great when I can make it happen is to schedule a whole month because I do once a week every Monday. So if I can use the last week of, let's say June to schedule every week of July, then I can create a really cohesive message and each week can build upon the previous week, and I can really see the overall content that I'm providing to my audience and when I'm asking for something and when I'm serving. So that's really useful, and then also it's just done so that it's not happening, again, sporadically. It's not like a last thing on the to-do list. It's just really has its own time and it's scheduled. That's called batch scheduling. If you want to learn more about that, I'm planning to make another course, and if you're interested in that, let me know so I make it. What's really great about batch scheduling, is that you can really see the content as a whole and then you can just knock it off your list and be done. How to schedule and automate your marketing using Mailchimp. Right now, I signed in and we are in my campaigns section. You can see here there's a list of the campaigns I've sent every week, open rates, all that good stuff, but right here I'm going to click, "Create Campaign." I'm going to select e-mail. Let's call this, Blue Mug. Let's keep using that same theme. Now, who am I sending this to? Add recipients. Choose an audience, so Prints and Plants is my main list, so that's the audience I want to choose. Now, there's a whole other lesson and topic about how to add tags, so if I wanted to select only the people who were saying that they were interested in product, but not really like creative workshops and stuff, then I could select that tag in here. We won't get into that right now. This is just for all subscribers in the audience. I am going to select personalize the two fields because when people sign up for my mailing list, they give their first name and I like to have that personalized aspect in each e-mail. So I select the first name, merge tag, "Save." It's from Liz at Prints and Plants which I set up so people know who it's coming from. Subject line, let's say, how do you like your coffee? Then my favorite aspect of each morning is a hot cup of coffee and some journaling, dot, dot, dot, and then "Save." I would probably change that a little bit, but just for example, right now. Now, design e-mail. So in here, you can select a template, you can sell products, make an announcement, or you can build your own down here. Or what's really wonderful is once I created my first weekly e-mail, I saved that as its own template. So once you've done that, and I'll show you how to do that in just a moment, you can go here to Saved templates, and I have my weekly template, so I would just open that, and then it would load. You can see over here while we're waiting that there are all these other aspects that you can just drag over and drag in. So I could drag a text box, I could drag an image. This is the content from one of the earlier e-mails, so I just come in and delete that, But what's nice is that the font stay the same, the outline stays the same, so it's not recreating that template every time. Then I have my signature in there so I don't have to put in the image every time. So that's really nice about a template. I'm going to save and close this so that we can go back, and I can show you how to save a template. Let's pick sell products. Since I've already selected my template, it's saying it's going to switch it over. That's fine because this is an example, so we'll change the template. Okay, let's just drag some stuff over. For example, drag contents, so that's the text, "Save and Close." Let's drag an image below it. "Save and close." Then let's say let's need a button if they're going to buy something. So let's "Save and Close" that up here in the header. I could include an image or I could drag another image up in there. I could put like an header image in there that I create like a logo. But just to show you, let's say this is our template, it's spilled out. Let's click, "Save and Close," and then right here, Save as Templates. So I'm just going to click that. I'm going to say Skillshare example, "Save." Your template has been saved and is under saved templates where we just were whenever you create a new campaign. I'm going to return to campaign. Now I'm going to go back to templates so that we can use the one that I was showing you. Then I would just come in here, I would type up, I would delete this content because it's the old content. Down to talk soon, and I would say again, re-purposing content. So what's great from Instagram to Mailchimp is this is where you can start to be a little more intimate. You can give away some more details. You can tell a bigger story. You don't want to make it anything too long, but you can make it a little bit more like you're having a conversation with a friend. So hey, let's say their name is Maggie is what's going to show up. Hey, Maggie. Or let's say, do you have a morning routine or do you find it tough to get out of bed and get to work? Then I would offer something. So I'd say one thing I've found that helps my creative practice and business is making a delicious cup of coffee each morning, and journaling for 15 minutes. Then I would go on to say, I've found that this has helped me feel more grounded, and rested, and rejuvenated to face the day with more ideas and energy. Then I would say, my favorite mug to use, again, this would not be the first e-mail I send. This is an example of a right hook. So this is an example of like, Hey, I have this new product. Can you imagine it in your life? This is how I love to use it, why don't you love to use it too? I think this routine can really help your own creativity in your practice. So my favorite mug to use is the new Prints and Plants blue corn mug, which is now available in the shop. Wouldn't it be cool if you had one too and it'd be like we were having coffee together in the mornings? I'd love that. Then I'd say, hop over to the shop to snag your own. Then I'd say, see you next week. Talk soon. Liz. That's all over here. Then bye now, but I would not say bye now because that's like not going with the language that's happening. This is getting a little more into content, but while we're in here, let's dive in. So bye now I'd say, snag my mug. Or I might say, let's have coffee together. Or I might turn it into a question like, coffee together? Or I might say shop mugs, something that's not like super direct because this is more about how to build that relationship around the product rather than just like a hard cell of the product. But let's keep it [inaudible] mugs, so it's still clear. "Save and Close." Now, you can go up here to preview and test, which I always like to do. Or you can send a test email to yourself, which is great to test links, to test the language, to test the format, both on the web and your phone, but you can also just enter preview mode and test links here. Now we don't have a link with that button, so it's not going to go anywhere, but you can see how it's going to show up in the e-mail for your recipient. Once this loads, you can see the template and how it's been filled out like we just did. Make sure everything's working, make sure everything's good to go. Using this mug right now, so sometimes this does take a minute or more to load, but you get the idea this is where you could make sure it looked okay on desktop, on mobile, in the inbox to make sure it all looks good because sometimes the pictures can get funky. So just make sure everything looks up to your standards and then you can click this X, to go back here. Now we'll get into how to schedule it. So "Save and Close." Again, this is my right hook. I'm asking them to buy something, so I could share this campaign on Facebook as well. If I'm doing a more general posts, then sometimes I'll do that. I like my e-mail list to feel like they're in on something, like we're in a community together. So I don't always publicize this to everybody else. With this one I'm not going to, so I could click "Finish later "which will save this as a draft. I could send it right now, which I'm not going to do. I'm going to click schedule. Now, like I said, I like to do Monday mornings at 09.00 AM to start people's week off with a lot of creative inspiration and energy. Next Monday's the 26th, let's say this is the e-mail for that time 9:00 AM, Mountain Time, you can edit that "Schedule Campaign." Rock on. Blue Mag has been scheduled. It's going to be sent then. So that's how you do that, and if I were batch scheduling, then I would do three more, and all of those would be the jabs instead of that right hook. So I would be serving, serving, serving. So we'll do three more e-mails just like we did with that template, and I would save them each for those weeks at a time. Then everything would be scheduled for the month for the e-mail marketing as well. So that is how you schedule on Mailchimp, for your e-mail marketing.
10. Time to Share Your Automation!: Now that you've learned all these fun tips and tricks and skills, it is time to do your own. To try it out yourself, and to do your class project, which is to share a screenshot of your content planned for the week. Or if you want to share a screenshot of a planned e-mail, that's great too. To do a screenshot on a Mac, you do Shift-Command, hold both of those and then four. When I do that, you get these all across and then I can drag across later for my content showing the week and then release that mouse button and it snaps, it saves to my desktop, and I can upload that as a JPEG to the class project section. Then if you want to share with that a little explanation, I believe you have those themed umbrellas for each day. You can share what those are, you can share any hiccups or complications or questions. I'm happy to answer all of those. I would love to see what you're planning. If you want, you can also go to this preview section and Shift-Command-4 here. Take a snapshot of what it's going to look like on your feed so that we can all cheer you on, give suggestions, give feedback and that you can share what you've learnt. I'm so excited to see your class project. I'm so excited to see the content and how you're going to be connecting with your audience and freeing that space and time in your schedule so that you can attend to other things in your business and your life.
11. Final Thoughts & Thank You!: Thank you so much for joining me today for automated marketing. I hope that you're walking away with new tips and tricks that you can apply to your business and your creative practice. You've learned how to automate your marketing on different platforms including Facebook and Instagram using the later app, as well as Mailchimp how to automate your e-mails to your community. I really hope you found this class helpful and that you're able to incorporate these tricks into your business and creative practice, free up that mind space and hey, spend more time with family, spend more time with friends and other aspects of your business, and don't forget to incorporate rest and relaxation too. It's all about balance. I hope you've enjoyed this class and I'm in the process of creating new Skillshare classes and I'm creating them for you. I want to make sure that I'm serving you to the best of my ability with tips and tricks and actionable steps that feel good and are applicable in your practice. So I'm curious what you want to learn. Do you want to learn about batch scheduling? Do you want to learn about what to say in marketing, how to connect with your audience in a way that's authentic in building relationships? Or do you want to learn how to use nature's inspiration in your artwork? How drawing can be a tool to get grounded, find peace and be centered in your life. What do you want to learn, and if nothing on that list, what do you want to learn? Just tell me because I am so curious what you're after, what information you're trying to dig up, and I love connecting with this community, so reach out at any time. Here's the best way to reach out to me, you can shoot me an e-mail at printsandplantspress@gmail.com, you can follow me on Instagram, shoot me a DM on Instagram at prints and plants, or you can follow along, you can subscribe to the prints and plants e-mail list so that you're in on the know with creative tips, tricks and inspiration and you can follow along with how I like to serve up to my audience and use that as a model for your own business. I look forward to being in touch with you and I'm so glad you joined me today. I hope you have an awesome day. Go get your coffee and get automating. Talk soon.
Liz Brindley, Illustrator & Creative Biz Coach
