Build an Email List: Email Marketing Strategies to Build and Grow Your Audience

1. Welcome to the Course!: Hey there, my name is Lauren and I'm so excited that you're here and that you chose me to help you on this journey. Here's a quick background about myself. I've started and grown at multiple online businesses from scratch and various niches. I've grown Pinterest account, YouTube accounts, email lists, you name it to over a 100 thousand subscribers and followers. I've started a podcast. I've earned a full-time income that has allowed me to quit my full-time job and have traveled the world and work from cafes from South America to Europe, to Asia, to Africa, all while working on my online business. And just so you know that I'm not some kind of internet unicorn. I used to be a tax accountant before I started exploring the online business world. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing when I first started. So it's totally okay if you're brand new to this, I will walk you through everything. Now, this course is going to be perfect for you if you want to learn how to build and grow your e-mail list while also building relationships with your audience to keep them coming back for more. In this class, you are going to learn how to build an email list of engaged subscribers. How to build a high converting forms and landing page to get those subscribers how to prioritize your opsonins to maximize your conversions. Build your first automated welcome sequence. Use surveys to learn more about your audience and their needs. How to track analytics, test and optimize to improve those conversion rates. And use rules and tags to clean out your list and improve your deliverability. And honestly, so much more. As you can see, we have a lot to cover. So let's get started. 2. Why Email is Important: Hey there, email marketing is actually often shoved to the side when many people start an online business. It's one of those things that you know, you need to consider at some point, but you'd always rather focus and other things. I get it because I hated sending emails when I started my first business. I had no writing experience and I didn't like getting emails myself. I'm definitely an inbox, you're a girl for sure. But over time, as my business had its many downs followed by periods of increased success, I learned just how important it was. And I honestly cannot stress the importance to focus on email marketing from the very beginning. Here are a few reasons why. Number one is the most relevant to a new business owner. And it's simply that it's a way to get more views on your content or your sales pages. Because driving traffic is hard. And keeping that traffic interested in what you have to say is even harder. It takes a lot of effort to drive those views to your content and your website. When you have an email list, you can capitalize on some of those views, but providing them with a way to sign up for your email list to get more of your content. Otherwise, every view is eventually lost and many people won't ever think about returning again. Another way to put it is that it's an easy way to stay on people's minds. Okay? Number Two, staying with the topic of traffic. And email list is an asset that you own. When the algorithm gods or unkind to you and your traffic disappears overnight, your email list is there to stay. Traffic platforms are often fickle and unreliable, and if something drastic happens, you still have an email list full of people that you can still send content or whatever to. And on that node, number three is an e-mail list can help you launch other projects when you start a YouTube channel or a podcast, launch a product, or even start a new business. E-mail is a great place to launch that new project and to ask for support, feedback, reviews, or sales. And the coolest part is that people will do this for you because your e-mail list will be full of the people who support you actually care about what you have to say and look forward to it. Which brings me to point number four. And what this course is really about, an email list is a great place to build relationships and really build an actual audience, not just viewers. And that's what we're going to talk about in the next lesson. Why email is great for building relationships. 3. Building Relationships with Email: Hey there, why isn't email list so great for building relationships? If you've taken any of my other courses that you'll know how much I talk about the importance of building relationships. In online business. It's everything unless you're just selling t-shirts. But if you're in the business of content, it is everything. It's why people like your content is why people come back for more. It's why they buy your products. Because people want to learn and be inspired from those that they can relate to. So the more that you can relate with your audience and connect with them in some way. The faster you are going to grow and the more success you're going to have. This is what makes you stand out in the sea. Everyone else's content. And it's why people will want to receive your e-mails. So why is email a great place to build these relationships? Well, it's really just a place where you can get a little more real with your people. You can absolutely do this in social stories or a podcast or YouTube channel, and you should, but your email list is where they sign up to learn more. It's where you can capitalize on this interests from a new subscriber. Where you can share more of your story or you can talk to them more personally about their struggles and where you can explain how you are uniquely qualified to help them with those struggles. Where you can personally respond to people and have a deeper conversation. This is where you can actually learn more about the specific people in your audience. And it's where people often make decisions to by-products, hence, the marketing aspect of email marketing. It's about so much more than just sharing new content. Now, I'll show you more throughout this course. But next I want to talk more about the preconceived notions that most people have about email marketing. 4. Preconceived Notions About Email: Hey there, I want to talk about your preconceived notions about email because this is often a very big barrier to getting started. These are often the reasons why people don't prioritize an e-mail list or justify why it can wait until later. So think for a second about what you think about e-mail marketing. In fact, I love for you to write it down. As you're going through this course, think about how your views are changing. Then at the end of the course, you can let me know what you initially thought about email and how your views have since changed. Anyway, the biggest blocker to many people getting started is this simple thought or belief that people already feel like they're onto an email list. I know I do. It's so true and I totally understand you there. As I said before, I'm definitely an inbox 0 kind of girl. And the moment an email comes through my inbox and I don't want to belong on that list or I didn't intentionally sign up for it. I'm immediately out. I hit that unsubscribe button and I'm gone. I've even gone into my employees inbox before and cleared out her email inbox because it just drove me crazy. This is exactly what I thought when I first started, I shied away completely from email. I remember actually arguing with my business partner at the time and he said he wanted to send out emails and I would say, are you sure we should send that? Nobody's actually going to want to read that. And I believed it. That brings us to our second big preconceived notion, which is, why would anyone want to read what I have to say when they already get so many emails from other more important people. Again, I get you. I felt that. But the thing is that people won't sign up for your email list if they don't want to. When some people do, some people are going to unsubscribe. That's inevitable and it's just part of running an online business. Not everyone is going to be interested in what you have to say, unfortunately. But guess what? You weren't doing it for them. You were doing it for the people that do care and the ones that do want to stay on your email list and hear what you have to say. Over time. You will get better at writing emails. You can see your unsubscribe rates and your open rates and you can work on improving these things. Remember that nothing is set in stone unless you create a limiting belief around it and let that guide your actions. So throw out all of those preconceived notions about email marketing. This is a necessity for your online business. And my hope is that throughout this course, you're not only going to start believing this, but you're going to actually get excited about it. After seeing the growth in impact email has had on my own business, I have personally come to love this part of content creation for my business and teaching it. 5. Who Are Your People?: Okay, I have a really important question to ask you. Who are you trying to reach with your content? Think about it for a second. Is it men fathers? Young fathers, single young fathers? Working on fathers. Working on fathers with a pug. Okay. No, that's a step too far. It's too narrow, but I think that you get the idea. Now let's take it a step further and to answer this question for me or for yourself rather, who is your ideal customer? Because really narrowing this down, who this person is and what they're actually feeling, that is going to be the secret sauce to your success. So think about this person. How old are they? Are they working or they money conscious and on a budget? What problems are they struggling with when it comes to the topic that you're talking about? What obstacles are they facing when trying to achieve their goals. For example, young couples with a puppy, maybe they are 25 to 40 years old, financially independent, perhaps with a kid or two or three. They don't have enough patients, they don't have enough time. They probably have a full-time job already. They've been taught the wrong methods or they tried puppy training school and it isn't working out for them. Their dog is too old, maybe it's a rescue dog. This is important to note that you can focus your content, your communication, and your marketing on this particular person. When you buy a product or read an article, you generally trust them more when you note was written specifically with you in mind. When you're reading an article or watching a video on how to train your dog. You're also going to be more likely to seek out the ones that are about training the same type of dog that you have, right? So whether it's hair, dieting, relationship advice, etc. You're going to want information from the people that you can relate to as much as possible. Now it's okay if you don't know all this information right away. In fact, in this class I'm going to show you a really easy way that you can start getting the answers to these questions directly from your audience. But it's helpful to try to have this in mind from the very beginning. And you're generally going to be more successful faster if you can. So either way it just think about it. I didn't know right away and I honestly took the opposite approach. I threw everything up on the wall and I saw what stock. It did work eventually, but it took me one failed blog and a lot of few months of trial and error in the red to figure that out. So keep this in mind for when you're creating some of the contents for your lead magnet and e-mail list, which is what we'll talk about soon enough. 6. Emails Should Have a Purpose: Hey there, Let's talk a bit about what kind of content you can share in your emails, just to give you a good idea of what some of the possibilities are here. People will want to hear from you, but it's up to you to provide that value to them. Or they're going to unsubscribe and leave your emails opened. They don't want to just read about what you had for breakfast or how your day is when your email should be very intentional. Now we'll dive deeper into this later on in the course. But I wanted to share a high-level overview first because it's so important that you start thinking about these things right now while we're going through the rest of the course. So it's always gonna be important to begin with the end in mind. Why do you want people to sign up for your email list? What's the end goal? Do you want more views and your content? You can share a new articles, podcasts, episodes, YouTube videos. You can share partnerships with other companies or products. Do you want to launch your own products? You can build excitement for that new product. You can share special discounts and offers. You can ask for feedback and make improvements. Just like when you're creating content, it's important that you think about this end goal before you start writing. Because it's not just about what you want when people send up your e-mail list. Why did they sign up for your email list? What are they interested in? What do they need help with? What problems are they struggling with? You need to marry these two concepts in your emails, your goals. And there's, they are both important because you can't provide free content all day long for nothing and exchange. But equally, you have to provide a lot of free and valuable content in order to educate them and really help them understand why they should learn from, you know, again, we're going to dive deeper into that later on in the course. But I wanted to touch on it here earlier is that you have these concepts in mind as we continue. You'll see that these will be recurring themes throughout the rest of this course. 7. Prioritizing Email Opt-Ins: Hey, there, I've already talked a lot about the importance of email marketing in your business. We're almost to the steppes where you're actually going to start creating some stuff. But I just wanted to say one more thing before we get onto these next few lessons about creating. If you want to grow your e-mail list quickly, It's important to prioritize your e-mail list. Remember that you want to capitalize on as many of those website views as possible and ideally convert as many of those readers or listeners or watchers in the subscribers as possible. Now this means that your email list should be your number one call to action for awhile. Especially if you don't have a product to sell or if you're at the earlier stages of growing your business. Now sometimes this makes sense, even if you do have a product to sell, but maybe it's expensive because email is still gonna be a better place to sell it. Now this will depend on your business and how you have things set up. But I'm telling you that this is a very important step for those with a content-based business that you really want to grow your e-mail list. So at the end of your YouTube videos, share your email opt-in throughout your articles. Share your email, often mentioned it in your social stories. Make sure that it is visible everywhere. And that is the number one thing that you tell people to do when they finished absorbing, reading, watching your content. Don't worry, you're gonna give them something to entice them to sign up for your e-mail list, which is going to make this whole thing a lot more effective. This is what we're going to talk about in the next lesson. 8. Creating Your Lead Magnet: Hey, there, Let's talk about lead magnets. First of all, what is a lead magnet? Well, the name itself is pretty descriptive, is something that you use to literally attract and collect leads. The world lead here is used in traditional sales sense of just turning viewers into buyers. Lead magnet assembly, a freebie that you offer in exchange for someone's email address. By this point, I'm sure you've seen them all over the place on the Internet. They come in the form of free training, free tips, free guides, three planners, worksheets, webinars, et cetera, et cetera. The list goes on and on. It's essentially free information that you're offering and packaging it up nicely to entice people to sign up for your email list. Now, because many people do feel like they belong to way too many email lists already. They don't want to just sign up for our regular old newsletter. The word newsletter just screams, I'm gonna send you the same stuff. Everybody else on the Internet ascending. Nobody wants that. But people do want free stuff because everybody looks restock, right? So here are my best tips for creating your own lead magnet. Now, number one is to start simple. As a general rule, the more value that you provide upfront, the more trust and goodwill you're going to build up with your people, the most value tends to come from more time-intensive lead magnets, like free mini courses or webinars. But unless you're very experienced in this area or you already know your audience very well. I would consider starting much simpler than that. Start with a short PDF guide, a free planner, or even a few tips. You can still dress all of these things up nicely when you design them. Because the thing is that you don't really know if someone's actually going to even be interested in what you're putting out there. Now when I started my first blog, I created ten different lead magnet to until I found a couple that actually started working. So be careful of how much time you put into something when you aren't totally sure it's what people actually want. Number two is to try to choose your topic wisely. When I first started, I created a lead magnet related to healthy recipes and people absolutely loved it. The conversion rates or through the roof for this particular opt-in. And that was awesome. But the problem was, I didn't have any good products to sell related to recipes. I end up with an e-mail list for people interested in healthy recipes. But that didn't necessarily mean that they were interested in weight-loss programs that I was selling. These people weren't as targeted for my needs. Remember that you want to attract a targeted audience, very specific to your main content or a potentially a product that you might be selling. And on that note, number three is to make sure that your lead magnet solves a problem. And to highlight that problem very clearly. Another way to think about this is just to be specific with whom you're trying to reach. Using descriptive keywords or phrases like for beginners or times was the keywords like in one month. For example, if you've a wedding checklist to offer, you wouldn't want to use the headline, get the free wedding checklist. Instead. Consider free wedding checklist to ensure an easy stress-free wedding day or it gets a complete stress-free wedding day checklist. You're highlighting the problem of stress-related to weddings. Another example, you don't want to use the headline free webinar, how to start an online business. Instead, consider free webinar, how to start an online business in one month? Or a free webinar, quit your job and start an online business from scratch. That both highlights the problem of wanting to quit your job and from scratch implies that it's great for beginners. This will help your lead magnet to really stand out against the sea of other lead magnets. And it'll make it more specific and more enticing. It's also going to help you attract the people that you are looking for. So make sure to get your lead magnet a really nice design and a cover image. I'll include my favorite resources to help you do this in the description area of this class. 9. Types of Opt-ins and Placement: Okay, Now that you've created your lead magnet, it's time to share it with an opt-in. We call the email form an opt-in because you're providing a place for people to choose to opt into e-mail list. Now there are a number of different ways that you can do this. As a general rule of thumb, the more prominent your opt-in is, the more sign-ups that you're going to get. So if you stick a pop-up in someone's face and make the little exit box super hard to find, you're probably going to get more sign-ups or higher conversion rates. But you're also going to **** a lot of people off. So not a great example of putting your best foot forward, right? So here are the different types of options that we're going to cover in more detail in the next few lessons. Number one is forms. So these are pretty basic, but they're very effective in great for written content. Number two is landing pages. These are dedicated pages with no other content except your lead magnet information and an email form. These are very effective for written content, but also to direct people from a YouTube channel, social stories, podcasts, episodes, et cetera. There are a lot more versatile. Number three is scroll mats. These are somewhat similar to pop-ups and that they scroll over the screen, but they're less invasive. And you can set them so that if the user scrolls, they go away. So they don't have to play the whole find that tiny little box with the x to make it go away. I've used these in the past myself with great success. Then lastly, number four, you do have pop-ups. I'm personally not a fan of pop-ups because they're very invasive and just annoying and not necessary. I'm not really going to talk about them much in this class anymore in much more detail. Because as I said, I'm just not really a fan. There are much better ways to get to opt in to have much higher conversion rates that aren't using pop-ups in where you place these optimize your content also matters a lot. The best places to place your opt-in to our number one before your content or very close to the beginning of your content. This is where the absolute most people will see it. Number two is somewhere throughout your content. I don't always do this. Not super related to the content at hand. But if it is related and someone has already read or watched or listened to some of your content, they're gonna be a lot more likely to sign up if they're enjoying it. Then number three is placed and often at the end of your content, they've just finished this content. And this is a really great call to action for the next steps. If they want to learn more. Now, you don't have to do your opt-in and all three of these places. But ideally you choose at least two out of three and make sure that one of those two is at the beginning or close to the beginning of your content, just so more people see it. Now, I'll talk more about this in the next few lessons when we talk about the different types of options in greater detail. 10. Email Marketing Services: Okay, Now that you've created your lead magnet, it's time to think about how you're going to advertise it. You obviously need a form or some other way for people to sign up for it, and then also a way to actually deliver it to people. In addition to that, you also need a place where you can store people's email addresses and a way for them to unsubscribe if they choose. Now there are legal matters to consider here, like data protection, privacy, GDPR. And it's for all these reasons that you can't really run a business just from Gmail. The goal here is to grow your e-mail list thousands and tens of thousands of people. I've reached over a 100 thousand subscribers with one of my email list. And that's a lot to manage and you really need a full e-mail marketing service to do this. But thankfully, there are free options here. So there really isn't any reason not to get started with one. E-mail marketing services are your one-stop shop to create your forms and your landing pages. They include software to do this. Collect and store names and e-mail addresses. Create segments if you have people interested in different topics, send onetime email broadcasts, and also create sequences of automated emails that are sent out to your subscribers every day. Create rules and automations that all of this is set up ahead of time and run super passively. And we're going to talk about all of these in a lot more detail throughout this course. Don't worry. But for now I just wanted to explain how email marketing services work and why you need one. The next few lessons, you're going to need to use your e-mail marketing service. So just make sure that you sign up for one right now. Type the class description and my resources for my favorite recommendations for email marketing services and the one that I personally use. In the next lesson, we'll start creating your form for your e-mail marketing service. 11. Opt-in Forms: Okay, let's talk about forms, the most basic type of opt-in. These are generally the easiest to create and set up because they require the least amount of design and customization. Forms are for your website, your articles, and they can even be placed in landing pages. It's just simply the form that someone uses to add their name and their email address. Although some forms do come with customizations to add photos, background images, et cetera. Forms really the best place to get started after creating your lead magnet, because they're the easiest. And the best part is you don't actually have to start out with a big fancy lead magnet. You can simply advertise some free tips or other information on your form. And your form should always look really nice, but also generally be relatively simple and present the free information very clearly. Makes sure that the Sign Up button is a contrasting color and to change the button text to something other than subscribe. Try something like get my free guide or get my free training or tips, et cetera. Now when you're finished creating your form, you're going to want to write your quick welcome email or thank-you e-mail and include your freebie in that email. I'll talk more about that in the next lesson. First, let's talk about some of the best places to include these forums. Number one is that you always include them at the end of your articles. You can usually set these up with plugins or other HTML code to display automatically at the end of every post that you don't have to put them in every time and you can easily change this in the future. Number two is another good place to add these forms is on the footer of your website. This is optional, but it's a great place to make sure that your form appears on every page. Then number three is to consider adding them to the beginning of your content. I don't ever put forms above my articles because it just doesn't look very good. But I do put them about a quarter of the way down the page somewhere after a longer introduction, just to make sure that they still have a lot of visibility. Okay, that's it for forms. They're really very basic but still very effective. Check the class description for more info and resources on creating your first form. Also makes sure to check the class project details. Because your class project is to create your forum or your landing page and then share it with me. I'm happy to give you my feedback on it. 12. Write Your Welcome Email: Hey there, Let's write your welcome email. This is gonna be the very first thing that someone reads after signing up for your email list. So it's pretty important. Ideally, we keep people on your e-mail list with great content and don't give them any reason to unsubscribe. My version of a great welcome email will accomplish three things. Number one is that you provide them with a freebie that they sign up for. That is of course the most important thing because it's the reason that they signed up. You don't want to make this overly complicated or make them jump through the hoops. Mixture provided link to your freebie or just upload it directly to the email. Number two is to say welcome and also say thank you for signing up. Share a few sentences about yourself. It should be short and sweet because you'll have other follow-up e-mails to share more, but it's also a really great place to introduce herself. Then lastly, I like to use the first email as an opportunity to open up the conversation. At the end of my welcome e-mail, I like to ask one simple but very important question. What are you struggling with the most when it comes to insert related problem or topic here? For example, what are you struggling the most with when it comes to training your German Shepherd? I'd love to hear more about how I can help you on this journey. Hit Reply and let me know. This one question was a huge game changer for me with my health blog. When I asked what the number one struggle was that my people face when it came to losing weight. Because not only did I receive answers to that question, but I received a very detailed responses from my audience. I learned that they were mostly women, that they had tried multiple diets a year, that they generally had children, and also a lot of time constraints. And honestly, so much more. This helped me to learn more about who my audience was and what they needed the most help with. Now I use this information to improve my communications, my marketing, and my products. I will include an email template in the resources area of this class. So you can also check out my sample welcome email in that template. 13. Landing Pages: Hey, there, Let's talk about landing pages. Landing pages or my personal favorite form of e-mail often because they're very effective and also because they're just so versatile. They are what you're going to use the most across different platforms and all kinds of content, not just articles. When you're creating YouTube videos or podcasts, episodes, or social stories, you can't really just send someone to a form. They click a link and ideally they go to a dedicated landing page, a page that only contains information about your freebie. Now the best landing pages don't even have menus on them because the whole point is for it to be an entirely distraction free place to feature your offer. Now some landing pages are short and some are rather long. I personally prefer to keep mine pretty short and to make sure that the most important information is above the fold, this means that you don't have to scroll down to see what the offer is or find the sign-up form. It's just right there where you can see it. If you want to include any other information about your freebie or who you are, that's fine, but make sure to include it below the fold after the most important information like the forums. And with everything else I teach really, we want to just keep this pretty simple and to the point. So make sure to include either an image of your lead magnet, especially if it looks really nice, or a nice background or other related image. A very clear headline and sub-headline. Make sure to include that what you're offering is free. Include a form to enter their name and e-mail address, and a button with contrast and color and the appropriate texts like we described in the last lesson on forums. And that's it. You can connect the form in this landing page to your welcome email that you've already written. And the cool thing is that you can create multiple types of actins and connect them all to the same welcome email sequence so that all of it is automated and everyone receives the same message and goes to the same place. Or if you are creating a page with a different offer to test something else out, you can also create a new and different welcome email and send people there. But you should always have at least a form and a landing page. In the very least, you can get a link to send people to send directly to your landing page. Make sure to include that link in your menu. I like to include a link in my money. This is free training or something else to entice people to click on it. You can also include this length throughout your article or content and make sure to talk about it. In your social story is your YouTube videos or podcasts episodes prioritize it, makes sure that people see it often to improve your conversion rates. 14. Scroll Mats: Next, continuing our discussion of the different types of options. Let's talk about scroll mats. So what is a scroll, Matt? I also didn't know what these were until I really got into e-mail marketing and trying to optimize my conversions, which we'll talk about in the next lesson. Scroll Matt is really just like a banner that displays the top of your website. When the page is loaded, it essentially scrolls down to display over the content, making it to the primary and only thing that you really see when you land on the page. I've also seen them called the ignorable welcome message. This makes them kind of similar to pop ups, but they're really a bit less invasive because there's usually two ways to get them to go away. Three, actually, if you count signing up this one, but you can also click the visible down arrow, or you can simply scroll down to read the content. The scrolling down is more intuitive because you've seen it scroll in above the content. These were really a game changer in my first business and resulted in the highest conversions whenever the first thing anyone who saw when clicking over to my content, I think any kind of banner or header that displays your freebie above your content is really a great way to have the maximum visibility. It's now some themes allow you to create these banners and then in that case, you wouldn't need a scroll mat, but the scroll mine is the best option in the least invasive if you don't have this banner option. Now I will say that scroll mass is usually a paid feature. You can't usually get free software that allows for this. There aren't too many companies that offer them, and I haven't seen a whole lot of great free options unfortunately. But that being said, make sure you check the class description for list of recommendations. This is where you'll also find any updates as well. I'll always update these recommendations and resources whenever they change or whenever I find better ones. Okay, now that we've covered the main types of opt-in, in the next lesson, we'll talk about how to optimize these four conversions. 15. Testing and Optimizing: Hey, there, So far we've created our lead magnet and our form and our landing page for the sleep magnet. We've also written our first welcome email. From here. It's time to start thinking about what other emails you're going to send. But before we get into that, I want to talk about the importance of testing and optimizing. Because you're working with a lead magnets and often isn't necessarily totally finished, perhaps for the moment because you need to give it some time to see how they perform. But once you start getting those views coming in, you can see how well your options are performing. You can check out your conversion rates, which really just means how many people you are converting from a view to an actual subscriber. For example, if you have 100 people view your landing page and 25 of those people sign up for your email list, your conversion rate is 25%. Your conversion rate is dependent on a few factors, and this can include your free offer and how interested the user is, the placement or location of your opt-in, and the overall design of your form or your landing page and how it displays for the user. It's important to know these factors because these factors are all in your control. If your conversion rates are really low, you can change any of these above factors and try to improve your conversion rates. So let's start with number one, your offer. If at first you don't succeed, try again. Sometimes you create a lead magnet that just falls flat or that people just aren't interested in. I've certainly created a few that bombed before I found a few that really performed very well. Now I only knew this through testing and checking my conversion rates. But sometimes it's not. The offer. Sometimes is that you don't have your opt-in is visible enough or you're comparing the wrong numbers. For example, a good conversion rate for landing page is around 50%. A good conversion rate for a form after article content or even in the footer of your website is only around 2%. That's because far fewer people get around to actually viewing or paying any attention to these forums. Not a landing page that you send paid ad traffic to will also likely have a much lower conversion rate than a landing page that people click on organically from your website. That's because the level of interests from your audience is different. And if you're sending cold traffic to a page, it's always going to have a lower conversion rate. That's because those people don't yet know you. So it's important to have the right benchmark to compare these conversion rates. And it's also important to not just forget about your lead magnets or just assume that they're working. You need to actually dive into the analytics at least once a week, if not more often, and check your numbers. Try testing out a different opt-in. Now you have to have enough traffic and views to really be able to tell what's working and what's not. That's another thing. But I just wanted to give you a high-level overview of some of these analytics and things that you should pay attention to as you're growing in optimizing. 16. Email Writing Tips: Okay, let's get back into what this course is really about, writing emails. Before we start writing more emails, I wanted to give you some tips on writing your emails. Now, everyone is different here. Some people are gonna wanna write really long emails. Some people like myself, prefer to keep them pretty short and sweet. I'm going to tell you what is personally worked out very well for me in my businesses. So first let's talk about e-mail length. Now, unfortunately, I can't really give you a recommended number of characters here because it does differ. And I also don't want you going through and counting your words. But when it comes to e-mail, you should really say what you want to say and then direct people to where they need to go, do what you can, connect with them in fewer words. Writing emails isn't usually about writing really long stories. It's about writing enough to really get people's gears turning and thinking about what you have to say. It's about writing enough to pique their curiosity, but not giving them every single detail. More of the what to do rather than the how to do it. If you're seeing an e-mail to ask someone to check out other content. Maybe it's a new blog, article, a new video, a new podcast episode, or a new product. Remember that you should do enough to pique their curiosity, but to also make them want to click. Now if it's informational only content meant to build trust and relationships, you do want to make sure that you're giving enough of that information. I know I'm sounding a bit vaguer wishy-washy here. This does come with practice. I'm definitely guilty of going off on tangents myself, but email really isn't the place for that, even if it's relevant. Okay, number two, let's talk about writing style. Similar to my recommendations for articles, it's always a good idea to break up written content into shorter paragraphs of one to two sentences. Use bolded text to make some sentences or phrases stand out more. The e-mail should really be very easy for users to read through quickly because many people check their e-mail while they're out and about and doing other things. Then number three is a voice and personality. If you're a one man or one woman team or you own your own business. I think it's always the best. But to write from your own perspective, use I and me and get personal and real with people. They want the real you and real content. Share your struggles, thoughts, opinions, and experiences. If you want some more help in this area, you can also check out my course on content writing. It's all about reliability and how to connect with your audience. Number four is banners and images and all that other design stuff. I personally prefer to have more text-based e-mails. I think the cutoff is more personal and they're also usually better for deliverability. I do share the occasional image when it's relevant. I've tried banners in my emails in the past, but I think it gives off a bit of a newsletter vibe, which just isn't really what we want. We want a more personal field because it's helps with that relate ability and connection. Again, as I said before, don't stress about perfecting this. Your writing style is going to change over time as you get more practice and you communicate more often with your audience, the more you learn about them, the easier it is to talk to them personally. And your e-mails, despite being sent into tens of thousands of people. 17. A/B Perspective: So this is actually a bonus lesson straight from my content writing class. I highly recommend going through that class too, if you haven't already. Obviously writing emails as a form of content writing. So it's really relevant to what you're learning here. I want to share my biggest marketing secrets with you right now. It's something that I discovered, my journey towards connecting better with my audience, marketing butter and selling better. Let's talk about this concept of what I call the a B perspective. Now I'm going to illustrate this With example of how it applies to weight-loss because that's the niche I have experienced in your clients and your readers are at a point a, they haven't fix their problems yet. They are still struggling and not succeeding with losing weight. They often don't know why they can't succeed or don't understand the full picture. They're overweight. You are at a point B, you fix your problems. You've lost the weight and you've succeeded. You also most likely know why you've succeeded and you do understand the full picture because you're no longer overweight. So you can share your before and after photos of yourself now. And some people are going to find this very inspirational and is often necessary for credibility. But it's gonna do little more than give them some brief inspiration that will probably wear off pretty quickly. It's not super relatable because there's still overweight. They can imagine what that might feel like when they reach that goal. But they don't truly feel anything about it because they're not there yet. So what are they feeling? Well, chances are, you know, because you've also been in their shoes in the past. What did you feel when you were overweight and nothing was working? This is the point, a perspective. So if you can share those personal thoughts, opinions, feelings, stories, struggles, and experiences in the point, a perspective as it applies to them. That is what is going to hook them. You're connecting to how they feel right now and showing them the path out. So try to put yourself out there and this point, a perspective as much as possible. And honestly this applies to so many other aspects of your business communications. Including your articles, other content, your emails, your products, your sales pages, and really every other place where marketing applies, relate ability is everything. 18. Email Deliverability: Hey, let's talk about e-mail deliverability for a few minutes. It sucks to write great emails only to have them not get delivered or end up in the promotions tab. Now, emails deliverability and can be a bit of a technical topic because there are a lot of factors that affect deliverability. Some of these factors are also going to be out of your control. For example, Gmail filters, emails to spam promotions to your inbox based on the e-mail content, but also based on how other people are interacting with your email content. So if a lot of people aren't opening your emails, you're gonna have a higher chance of winding up in the spam folder. We'll talk more about cleaning out your email list to improve deliverability later on in this course. But for now, let's talk about some of the main factors that you can keep an eye on to improve your deliverability. Here are three main things that you can do to improve your open rates. Number one is to require a double opt-in for your e-mail list. This means that when someone signs up for your email list, they have to go to their inbox to confirm their subscription first before they can see any of the content. Now this usually means lower subscribers, but it also ensures that you are more engaged e-mail list. I personally never use double opt-in and my own businesses because as a general rule, you want to make it as easy as possible for people to sign up for your email list and receive the information. A double opt-in is an additional and somewhat unnecessary barrier to this. But I do also make sure that I clean out my cool subscribers from a list of regularly, which is something that we'll also talk about later on the course. Number two is to maintain good open rates. You should aim for an email open rate of about 30%. It might seem low, but that's actually considered a pretty good rate. Now, you'll see some emails like your welcome email with a much higher open rate. That's to be expected because people do want that free lead magnet. You'll also generally see lower open rates if you run sales or promotions. Because many people just won't be interested. It's normal for your email open rates to fluctuate, but you should generally aim for around 30%. Now there isn't a whole lot that you can do to improve your open rates, except to make sure that you write good headlines. Many email marketing software come with AB testing that let you test out alternative headlines in your e-mails. So you can actually see which ones provide higher open rates. That now this is a really great thing to do when you're just getting started and you aren't as experienced with writing great headlines. Lastly, number three is to improve your deliverability, to have good click-through rates when people open your emails and click on links that you provided. This shows that the user is very engaged with your content. To improve your click-through rate or CTR, it makes sure that you don't give away too much information in the email itself. Give the user enough information to pique their curiosity, but also enough incentive to click through to see the rest of your information or the full story in your content. Whether that be an article, a YouTube video, a podcast episode or whatever. Here are a few other things that you can do to improve your deliverability and keep your unsubscribe rates low. Number one is right, simpler text-based emails, images, and other fancy designs can slow load times and impact user engagement and deliverability. Avoid trigger words that can cause your content to get flagged for spam. These are words like free, make money, cash bonus, credit card offer apply now, honestly there are a lot of them. Even weight loss can be a trigger word. But this also doesn't always have an impact. I had entire business on weight-loss and sent millions of emails over the course of the years and didn't have any problems with deliverability. So using these words are other trigger words won't necessarily land due in the spam folder, but it's good to be aware of them. I try to keep overly salesy words out of my email subject lines for this reason. Then lastly, to limit unsubscribed that you really just have to make sure that you're sending the right content to as many relevant people as possible. I'll talk more about this later on the course and the lessons on rules and tags and cleaning out your list. For now, let's move on to writing your emails. 19. Sending Broadcasts: Hey, there, Let's talk about broadcasts and the types of e-mails that you can send in broadcast. Broadcasts are just as they sound. A onetime e-mail that you can send off as a broadcast to your audience. You can write it and send it immediately, or you can schedule it at a date in the future. These types of emails are best for sending out new content. So anytime that you publish a new article, release a YouTube video, shared podcasts, episode, or any other type of new content. When you share new content, remember to write a brief introduction and tell them a little bit about how and why this piece of content is important and relevant to them. As I mentioned before, make sure to include enough to pique their curiosity here. But you also don't want to give them the full story. That's what your new content and score and you want to make sure that you give them a reason to click. Broadcasts are also way of sharing any kind of other news or offers. So you can also share things like partnerships with brands or products. News about your own product or project releases in any other type of collaborative or relevant content to your audience. When I'm regularly publishing new content, I personally try to send at least one broadcasts each week to my audience. This helps to increase the reach of your content and also just to stay in people's minds that they remember you and what you're selling. Also some broadcasts when I want to alert my audience about discounts all my products, It's a really, really great way to drive sales. Now the cool thing about email marketing services too, is that you can segment your audience and choose exactly who receives these broadcasts. So if people have already purchased a product, you can actually exclude them from other emails and offers. Now, we'll talk about that later on in this course when we talk about creating rules. Next, we're going to talk about another type of email sequence. 20. Automated Sequences: Okay, Let's talk about e-mail sequences. Sequences are an automated series of emails, so subscriber receives after opting in. Now the best part about these is that they're completely automated. So you write these emails and advance and then have the content dropout over days or even weeks or months. Generally, you want to send the first email out immediately after they subscribe. It's usually that welcome email. We'll talk about a few different types of sequences in this class, including the welcome sequence, the sales sequence, and the post-purchase sequence. All of these accomplished different objectives, also often referred to as funnels. So in a typical sales funnel, someone ops into your email list, you send them a few days of value focused content and then you reveal an offer. But when you're first getting started, then welcome sequence is going to be the most important. The goal of the welcome sequence is just to introduce yourself, learn more about them, and start building a relationship with them. Then at some point when you have a product of cell, you can turn your welcome sequence into a sequence by adding an offer at the end. Now it's pretty common to see discounts and other limited time offers and sales funnels because it creates scarcity and gives people a reason to buy now and to buy from you, of course. Then after someone has purchased a product, you can also create what I call a post-purchase sequence or post-purchase funnel. This is a great place to say thank you for getting the product. Provide them with any other helpful resources that they might need. Provide them with a survey for feedback on the product, or even offer another simple mental or complimentary product at some point. Now, I've used all three types of these sequences and my businesses with a lot of success. In the next lesson, I'm going to go over some sample emails that you can use to create your own welcome sequence. 21. Welcome Sequence: Okay, let's write your first welcome sequence. In this lesson, I'm going to go over the goals of your welcome sequence and then actually walk you through the sample email template that I provided. These sample emails were written based on strategies that have worked exceptionally well in my businesses. They are written with the theme of training and German Shepherd this way so you can get the full picture of how the e-mail should flow and what they should accomplish. But do feel free to customize these however you want and make them your own. So first let's talk about the goals that we're trying to achieve with our welcome sequence. Number one, you should introduce yourself and what you're all about. So why are you qualified to share this information? Number two, you want to educate them about the problem that they are struggling with. Ideally, this is very related to the lead magnet that they signed up for. Number three, you want to tell them something that they didn't no, surprise them. So this can be as simple as explaining something in a way that they just haven't quite heard it like that before. Then number four, you want to tell them how to overcome this problem. Now the key is not to give away too much here, but really tell them what to do. And again, not the how to do it. That is what your other content or even a product or four. So those are the goals. Now I want to show you what this actually looks like in practice. Let's go over the welcome sequence template. Makes sure that you go to the Resources area of this class to get this download. As I mentioned before, please feel free to change and customize these as you see fit for your business. The first e-mail day is 0. I call it because you're sending this e-mail immediately. It's going to be your welcome email where you're going to deliver the freebie. Now, in this e-mail I say, Hey there, my name is Lauren and I'm so excited that you're here. I first started this business because I was frustrated. So there's my first introduction here to this point, a perspective. I had this beautiful new German Shepherd puppy and it didn't just want to train them on the basics. I wanted to really train them how to be an amazing companion and protector. But try as I might, it just wasn't working out for us. I watched YouTube videos, I read books, I even paid for inexpensive trainers help. But I just couldn't seem to get to that last 20% that I was looking for. Now, I have introduced this so far just to try to connect with my readers, to let them know that I tried everything and still wasn't able to achieve what I wanted because that's likely the place that they're in right now as well. You know, when your dog is tops immediately on command when he walks next to you perfectly without a leash. But throughout all of this trial and error, I started to figure some things out. I'm really excited to share these with you in the next couple of days. For now, make sure to grab your free guide to. Now this is your place that you're going to link your freebie. And then do one more thing for me. Answer this question. What's the number one thing you're struggling with when it comes to training your German Shepherd, hit Reply and let me know I'm here to help. So that of course is me asking that number one question that we talked about. And then I like to end my emails with just a simple cheers. Okay. E-mail number two, we're going to send on day one, which is technically the next day after they often. Now, I've titled this email the serious problem with traditional training. So in this e-mail, you're going to educate them about the problems that they're struggling with. Do you know what the real problem is? What even the experts seemed to have wrong these days. With traditional dog training, the trainers expect you to train like a trainer. But you aren't a trainer. You are a regular person with non dog training job and a life. So right here, I'm trying to relate to them and also trying to surprise them with maybe why traditional drug training hasn't been working out for them. Even those of us fortunate enough to work from home don't have time to micro manage our puppies behavior all day long. Ain't nobody got time for that. Now, of course, you have to make time for your new puppy. It's like having a kid. But let's be realistic. You need to find something that is going to work in a manageable amount of time, like the 8020 rule, you find that 20% of the effort that gives you 80% of the results, not God forbid the other way around. No one wants to spend 80% of their time for 20% of the results, which is what it feels like we're getting most of the time. Here's the thing. It doesn't have to be this hard. I'll show you how tomorrow when I bust the three biggest myths about training your German Shepherd. So here I have tried to let them know that I have figured out a way to simplify this dog training, get more of the results for less of the effort and have teased the next email at the bottom of this one. So this is just again to really turn a peak that curiosity like we talked about. The next e-mail is day number two. You're going to send us the very next day. You're sending all of these on subsequent days after each other. This email is titled the three biggest myths about behavior reinforcement. So here you want to give them maybe two to four biggest myths just to try to give them that aha moment where you provide something that they may be quite haven't thought of before and you don't have to totally reinvent the wheel here. It's just about getting them to think and a little bit different of a way. And this is why they will start to. Become more invested in what you have to say and hearing it from you because it's something that they maybe haven't quite heard of before. Hey, there. Today I want to share with you the three biggest myths I've come across in my experiences training my German Shepherds. There's a wealth of information how to train your German shepherd dog, and there's also a lot of conflicting advice. It can be confusing when you start switching things up in your puppy, it can confuse him or her to. This can cause an additional setback which no one wants. Number one. And positive reinforcement works better than negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is all the rage these days with both puppies and kids. We live in a society where it's becoming frowned upon to tell people or puppies know, it's hard not to let my blood boil. My friend's dog jumps on me and they refused to correct the behavior. Negative reinforcement is absolutely okay and can be very effective when used appropriately. Number two, GSD is are inherently protective of their owners and will come into this with age. This is not true at all. Like how you hear that German Shepherds have a tendency towards aggression. This behavior is trained and if you want your German shepherd dog to be protective of you or your family, you must train him specifically for this. The good news is it's not as hard as you think. So you can see here that I'm really just giving them an overview of these points, a very high level overview, but I'm not going into any detail. This is an example of telling them what to do, but not the how to do it. Number three, it takes months for proper behavior reinforcement to stick. I alluded to this one yesterday because I honestly think it's one of the biggest myths out there. Many people get overwhelmed in the beginning when they're puppy is young and coolest about just about everything. It's easy to spend a few weeks for in a train and then just let go. This 20% that we also desperately want, but just can't seem to get there. We put in 20% of the effort for 80% of the results. But what about when the other 20% really matters to you? That's what we'll talk about tomorrow. Stay tuned. Ps, how is your draining journey going? What's the 20% that you wish your pup was trained on? Hit Reply and let me know whose question here at the bottom is just another way to ask a question and engage with them just to see what else they are struggling with and what they really want, right? If you can figure out what the 20% that they want is, what are they looking to solve? It's just another way to get more information on them and to just get ideas for different content that you might want to provide to them, or even products you might want to sell down the road. Okay, number three, how I trained the last 20%. This is gonna be more of like how you started figuring these things out. Again, more of that what to do, but not exactly how to do it. The 20%, the Holy Grail, what you witnessed on some dogs in the streets and think, wow, I wish my pup behaves that well. Then you tell yourself that surely they spent $5 thousand on dog training, obviously. But what if you could be that person? That's my goal and why I'm here. Now here's the biggest secret, lean-in closely. Now here you want to share the high-level steps on how to solve this problem. Explain the what to do, but not exactly how to do it. This is what your other content or your product is four. So this place is where you really just want to give them the very high level overview of how you started to figure things out. So whatever your niche is in, whether it's weight-loss, whether it's dieting, hair advice, whatever. How did you start to figure some things out? You can even tell them a little bit of what you did to start to figure things out, but just not the exact step-by-step. That's it. Okay. There's a bit more to it than that, but it's a lot simpler than most people think. It's more about taking the right steps at the right time and knowing what to pay attention for. I can show you exactly how to do this. I want to help you and your pup gets that last 20%. Life's too short for anything less and you'll both be happier for it. I'm so glad you're here and I can't wait to take this journey with you. Okay, that finishes up our sequence. So you can see here that these are just a few short emails, but there's so much more potential here as well. Now, if you want to turn this into an even longer sequence, then my suggestion here would be to maybe give them a daybreak. That way you're not seeing them in most every single day for too long. But then after that, follow it up with another couple of popular pieces of content. Then from there, you can also turn your welcome sequence into a sale sequence. Now, again, feel free to customize all of these as you see fit and just based on what is right for you in your business right now. 22. Surveying Your Audience: Hey there, Let's talk about how to serve at your audience and the different scenarios in which this can be really helpful for you. First of all, as a business owner, you have to pretty much guess at what your audience wants. Sure, the more you get to know your audience and pay attention to how they're responding to content, the easier this will become for sure. But all of this is ultimately based on feedback. Sometimes this feedback can be pretty hard to come by, especially in the beginning. If you have a ton of traffic, this is definitely gonna be a lot easier because you'll naturally get comments and emails when you have high numbers like that. But you'll still get more feedback when you ask for it. And sometimes you have to ask for it. But the power of the ask. Now, we've already gone over one of these which is really important, a very important scenario, which is super helpful. The first question that you asked in your first welcome email, what's the number one problem that you're struggling with when it comes to or what are you struggling with the most when it comes to insert your topic? This is one of the best ways to get feedback on what problems your audience is struggling with and why they can't solve those problems, then you can create more content or even products around this problem or these problems. That's really here, number one starting point. And this isn't really a survey, right? It's just an open-ended question. Now you could certainly send out a survey like this, asking this question. If you already have an email list or large audience, this might be the way to go if you haven't asked this question yet. Otherwise though, I prefer to ask this as an open-ended question in that first email, I think that you get more natural answers this way in a survey desk will provide a small additional hoop did that, that person has to jump through. My favorite usage of surveys. That is for feedback about paid products, like an online course program, e-book, et cetera. Now there are two main ways that I use surveys here. Number one is this survey before you create a product. So this helps you make sure that you're creating the right product based on actual needs. You can do this before you create your first several products, but also after you create a second or even third product to see what people would like to see next. The best part about this is that you're more likely to increase your sales if you deliver on exactly what people have asked for. Then number two is to send out a survey after someone has purchased a product and has had time to have experienced with it. This is a great way to get an idea of how well your product has performed and what improvements, if any, you might need to make. So if people say it was great, but I wish I had this in it, then you can simply add that missing information to increase your sales and make your customers happier. Surveys are a really great tool to use to get feedback from your audience and deliver the best content possible to them. So remember to keep your questions short and easy to answer to increase responses. I usually use multiple choice questions based on responses I think they might select, but always include a twist that says other, please explain. Now when it comes to asking people to take the survey, remember that their time is very valuable. I like to advertise my surveys in my e-mails with a line-like, take this short two-minute survey so that people know that this is a very small asked of their time. Remember to say thank you for your time and let them know that you really appreciate the feedback and it will help you to deliver the best content possible to them. Many survey software companies provide a free version like Survey Monkey or type form. You're usually a bit limited and what kinds of questions you can ask and how many responses that you can receive. But these are still usually very sufficient enough for basic questions that I've outlined throughout this lesson. Okay, next, let's move on to rules, tags, and automations. 23. Rules, Tags, and Automations: Okay, let's talk about rules, tags, and automations. This is a cool part about email marketing and using e-mail marketing services to grow your list. Because they come with some super cool features. These features help you to keep your e-mail list organized, keep your delivery bully higher and make sure that you worsening the right e-mails to the right people. So let's talk about tags first. You can set tags on your email subscribers when someone clicks a link or subscribes to a certain form or landing page. This could be an internal marker for you to identify someone as interested in something because of an action that they took. My favorite way to use tags to create a tag for buyers. So when someone purchases a product, they automatically get tagged as a buyer, then I am able to exclude buyers from certain e-mails, especially promotional e-mails about the products that they have already purchased. I also have tags it up for new subscribers who are currently in a funnel. So if someone has just signed up for my welcome sequence and they're already receiving an e-mail automatically every day as part of that sequence, I can actually exclude them from other broadcasts that I'm sending so that they don't receive two emails. And one day I call this the Do Not Disturb tag. You can create tags for a ton of different purposes and they can help you segment people in your list based on their interests, what you most are currently receiving and when they sign up for your email list and more. Now we use rules to create these tags. But you can also use rules for other purposes as well. So you can create a rule to automatically subscribe or unsubscribe someone to a new sequence. For example, if someone finishes your welcome sequence and you want to automatically put them in a new sequence. After that, you could set up a rule to do this. If someone is in a sale sequence with promotional e-mails and then purchases that product, you can create a rule that will automatically unsubscribe them to that sales sequence so they don't see any more of those sales emails. You can also create a rule to subscribe to a post-purchase email funnel that might include a survey after someone purchases a product. Rules and tags are a really cool way to automate all of these actions within your email list. And this is going to help you to manage your email list better and to take care of it without having to pay very close attention to it. So this is why many email marketing services costs money or why you have to pay more as you get more subscribers. There are a lot of really great features that are absolutely worth paying for. So make sure that you take care of your email list, the right rules and tags and automations to make sure that your e-mail list is organized and your subscribers are always getting the most relevant emails. This is super, super important because you want to make sure that, for instance, when people buy a product, they don't then get an e-mail for that same product, but it's been discounted and they paid a different amount, right? These are the things that you can avoid by having these rules and tags in place. Alright, in the next lesson we'll talk about the importance of cleaning out your e-mail list irregularly. 24. Cleaning Your List: Hey, there, Let's do some spring cleaning. You'd be surprised at how many people sign up for your email list. Never opened your emails, but also don't bother on subscribing. It kinda blows my mind because I'm one of those people that again hits that unsubscribe button immediately when people send me emails that aren't super relevant to me, inbox 0. But between those other people who do exist. And also the random people that give fake email addresses or the email addresses that they don't use your access very often. And all those people that just simply lose interest over time, it's important to clean out your e-mail list every so often. This is also called pruning your cold subscribers. A cold subscriber. It's just someone who hasn't opened or engaged with their e-mails recently. Every e-mail marketing service to find this a bit differently. But it's generally someone who hasn't engaged within 30 days or even up to 90. If someone does occasionally opened an email with e-mail marketing services, the price for the service generally depends on how many subscribers you have. There's really no use in having extra subscribers on your list who aren't reading your emails anyway. Additionally, having a bunch of people on your email list that don't engage with your e-mails can also lead to lower deliverability rate. Now, the good news is that email marketing services usually identify these cold subscribers for you. Every so often, at least once or twice a year, you should an email to these cold subscribers to check and see if they're actually still around. So I usually write something like this. Hey there, I see that you haven't opened any of my e-mails in awhile. I wanted to make sure that I'm only sending emails to people who still get value from them. Are you still getting value from my emails? If not, no action is required. I'll go ahead and remove E from my email list. But if you are and you're thinking, wait, I do love your e-mails. Then just click this link below to stay on my email list. Then you want to make sure that you add a link that says Don't delete me. I usually create a page on my website that links to popular articles to use for this, don't delete me link that people who are still interested in can visit. Now the instructions very for removing code subscribers from every e-mail marketing service, but usually need to just go in at a tagged all cold subscribers and then create a rule that removes this tag when someone clicks that don't delete me link. I also usually re-send this email again to anyone who didn't open it and then wait a few days just to make sure that people have had the chance to see it and click it. If they are still interested in, then you're left with only the uninterested, cold subscribers that still have that tag. You can simply delete all those subscribers with that tag we're meeting. Now this can be a bit scary. Sometimes I've had to delete as much as 20 thousand subscribers in one go before for real. Now this was where my total email subscribers were up over a 100 thousand. And it sucks to let go that many email subscribers as one at once. But you have to remember that these people aren't reading your emails anyway, it's a necessary part of keeping your email list of full of engaged and interested people and keeping those deliverability rate is high. 25. Tracking Your Progress: Alright, we've arrived at the lesson that I have in every single one of my courses. If you've taken any of the others, you know how much I stressed about paying attention to the analytics and data behind what you're doing in your business. It's super important and it will help you eliminate waste of time. The worst thing that you can do after setting all of this up is to sit back and assume it's worth working perfectly, just because I told you it would. Everyone's audience and businesses and niches are so different. And you will need to tweak the strategies outlined this course to adapt them to your personal situation. This is how I scale my businesses quickly. When something wasn't working, I changed it. When something was working. I drew comparisons to see why it might be working. Then I did more of the stuff that worked. Once you get the hang of what works and what doesn't, you can generally ease up on a lot of this deep dive and analytics. Now I don't pay attention to my open rates anymore because I don't have to. They'd been between 30, 35% for years now. That's just because I have the hang of things now. Now, it does take a while to get here, like months or even more sometimes of deep diving into those analytics to really refine your processes and your strategies to build a system that you can count on to work. So let's talk about really how to do that. Now, the first place that you want to start looking at your analytics is your opt-in conversion rates. We already talked a little bit about this earlier on in the class, but makes sure that your lead magnets are popular and they're getting enough subscribers. So test out two or more different lead magnets just to see how they compare against each other. Try different designs on your landing pages. And the next place to really pay attention to analytics for is your email marketing dashboard. Now, this should give you a good idea of how many subscribers you're getting over time and where those signups are actually coming from. This can also help you see how subscriber sign-ups are impacted on a weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. For example, you can see trends like higher sign-ups on the weekends and certain times of the year. This can help you keep from panicking when subscribers drop because it may be a yearly trend or seasonal trends. The next place to pay attention to is your open rates and your click rates. Test out different headlines like we talked about before. Check which emails and your sequences are getting the most opens and clicks and see where people might be dropping off or losing interests. Don't underestimate the importance of this. If you have 15 thousand people on your e-mail list, having an open rate of three per cent higher means that 450 more people are opening your emails. For every single email that you write, this adds up massively. More opens means more clicks and more views on your content or products. Now be careful obsessing over this data on a day-to-day basis. Because if you're only getting a subscriber or two every day, you really don't have enough data to see any behavior patterns yet. You need a few more subscribers on a daily basis and also consistent basis to draw major conclusions. Even if data and analytics aren't your strong suit. Remember that paying attention here can really make big impacts on your overall success, which I know is important to you. Pay attention to the data. 26. Key Takeaways: Alright, we've covered so much. I hope that I've been able to give you a ton of insight on how e-mail marketing works, but also how to use the strategies in this course to really make this work for you. I know that e-mail can be a drag. We'd like to focus on the more fun things at creating content and watching their numbers grow. But email marketing is one of the best ways to reach success faster and to make your numbers grow faster. It's the connecting piece between you and your content and your audience. And your sales is what really builds an audience of people who are interested in you and what you're teaching. Rather than somewhat interested passive waters or readers. It's been a huge game changer in my business and it's become a topic that I'm honestly really, really passionate about. And on that note, I just want to quickly go over some of the most important takeaways from this class. Number one is to start your e-mail list from day one. It's an important asset and the best way to capitalize on every view that you get. Number two is that good email marketing is less about knowing sales or marketing speak and more about connecting personally with your audience. Number three is to prioritize your email list and the placement of your opt-in to maximize exposure and subscribers. Number four, remember that every email should have a purpose. Think about your goals for your e-mails. Think about your audience's goals when they read your e-mails. Number five at USA, welcome sequence to start automating your emails and building trust and relationships with your audience. Number six, take care of your list with the rules, tags, and removing cold subscribers when necessary. Keep your list and gauge to improve your deliverability rate. Number seven and pay attention to the data and analytics and continue to test and optimize to increase your conversion rates, your open rates and your click-through rates. Alright, you all, I just want to say thank you so much for being here and choosing me to help you on this journey. If you like this course, please consider taking just a moment to leave me a review. I really appreciate it from one small business owner to the next. Makes sure to check out my other courses on all things online business. And I'll see you in the next one.