Transcripts
1. Introduction: Why You Need an Email List: Let's talk about email. The words that you need an email list have been thrown at us so much that it's probably the number one thing that we do know that we need for our business to thrive, but that's about all that we hear about it. We don't actually have the information that we need that will help guide us into how we should be doing this. That's where I'm going to fill the gap in this class. You're not going to want an email setup that doesn't convert, that doesn't do what you want it to do. Before anything, I want to address why we need to grow our email list. What if your Instagram account was randomly deleted tomorrow? Or maybe Facebook structure changed and your contacts were gone, or you might have content up on another website that's generating sales on your behalf, but it leaves you with nothing. The one and only thing that you can truly own is your email list. Your subscribers jump on board with the intent to invest in you. That investment might be their attention, it might be through monetization, but most importantly and at the end of the day, it's their direct access. Convinced yet? This class is going to dive deep into how you can build an organic email list by creating unique-to-you high converting lead magnets. We will walk through the process of your very own nurture sequence, we'll explore email funnels and the psychology behind them, and you will discover the best value to add to your emails to maintain a loyal readership. You will be confident sending emails and optimal subject lines for high open rates, high click rates, and more. This class includes a full workbook that I've prepared for you that you can download under projects so that you can curate building your own email list that will be high performing for your unique offering as there is not a linear path across industries. I'm Peggy Dean, I'm an author, educator, and artist in the Pacific Northwest. I run a thriving artists community, Flock, at thepigeonletters.com. I cannot wait to help your email list grow.
2. The #1 Mistake People Make: I want to get into some best practices for growing your email lists, but before I do that, I find it even more important to address what not to do. Too often, I see email forms pop up from people's websites that have a vague message like, "Join my newsletter," with a prompt for a name and an email address. I know that I'm not alone in admitting that I instantly close out of that pop-up form or I just scroll past the form. Why? Because I don't care about getting even more emails. It's that simple. No, thanks. If I want to see your site, I'll just go to it. While we might be thinking that we're doing ourselves a pretty by adding an opt-in form that we probably spent way too long making look nice and on-brand, it's most likely not going to convert well, unless it's your mom hanging out on your website, she's proud of you. This leads me to my first point on how to correct the number one email mistake. In case you forgot already, it's that terrible opt-in form that people can't wait to get away from. Here we go. Two words, lead magnets. What is a lead magnet? You might be asking to yourself in your head or allowed to your cat. A lead magnet is an eye incentive that people see and they want it badly enough that they are willing to provide their email address in order to get it. Lead magnets might include exclusive offers only for your subscribers, maybe early access to something that you're launching, free resources behind the scenes of where your subscribers can get up close, raw, and personal with you, actionable items that help them achieve something, stuff like that. Lead magnets should check the following four boxes. They should be engaging. This means that your lead magnet should prompt action from viewers in a natural way, organically, they know what your customers needs and wants are and they offer an immediate solution. They also should provide value. Piggybacking on being engaging, free high-quality content equals tremendous value. If you're able to offer something that's relevant, your lead magnet's not going to seem like some slimy, sales-y trap. They should position your brand as authoritative. Just as you practice a power pose at some point in your life, your lead magnet gives you the opportunity to position yourself as an expert in your industry. It's a quick way to share what you do and why it will be beneficial to potential customers. They should be shareable. This one is often missed. You don't only need one magnet form, you should have multiple graphics as far as sizes go, and maybe even types. They should be able to be shared on social media, embedded in blog posts, etc. Also to note, ideal image sizes will vary depending on where your lead magnet will show up. There truly isn't a linear path, just one for emails for everybody in the creative entrepreneur world. It's important that you make sure that your offer is specific to what you do. We have a general sense now, an idea of what you need to begin with. The next segments through the class will help you identify what specifically that you can offer to your unique audience that will be highly converting for you.
3. Questions You Must Ask: Before I offered anything in my own lead magnet, I needed to evaluate what I wanted my end result to be. It's working backwards. You must do the same thing in order for this formula to work. Why? Do you want people to join your email list? For me, sure. I wanted to announce when I had new work or new products or services that I was offering. But I also didn't want to come across like, "Buy this from me. No seriously, buy it." I'm pretty sure that you don't want to come across that way either. Yes, we all know that we want our emails to accomplish sales, but we have to think in terms of the recipient. In order to create curated lead magnets for your specific offerings, ask yourself these important questions that put yourself in their shoes. How will this offer help me and add value to my life? Why would I want or need this? Does this offer solve a problem? Does this offer evoke emotions of any kind? I'm going to take you through my process that helped me identify exactly what I wanted my emails to look like. I've created a workbook for you as well to download that will take you through these prompts as we worked through them in the class. Make sure that you've got that ready to go. It's in the project section to download. Have it ready to go as you answer these questions for yourself and I encourage you to really take the time to work through your answers. If you do, you will inevitably grow. We're going to work backwards as we work up to creating curated Lead magnets. So buckle up.
4. High Converting Lead Magnets: The most important part other than nurturing your list is how to get people that actually sign up in the first place. This is where you'll need to have high converting lead magnets. So what is a lead magnet? Boom. When you go to thepigeonletters.com, the very first thing that you'll see is a giant offer, its flashy, but it's not annoying, it's not salesy and more importantly, it tells people exactly what to expect. Let me show you exactly how I broke this down. First of all, my offer is clear. I'm offering something for free. If you can figure out something to provide for a lead magnet that's free, this is how you'll hook most people. I offer an abundance of resources, so I chose to make my offer more broad. But I will say the more specific that you can get with your offer, the better. Let's say you are an author, you could offer a free e-book like a supporting topic to your main books to guide them there. If you're an artist, you could offer a set of printable art. Basically, your offer should be so good that it would be something you otherwise sell. It should hurt to give it away, you see if your lead magnet is content that you produce regularly, it's essentially just providing a teaser for your audience. It's not a throwaway piece of content. It's something valuable that gives people a taste of what you offer. Don't you want them to know that what you offer is like quality stuff? You do. The second call-out is this image that provides a visual of what people will receive. Providing a photo helps people visualize that item, and then they can imagine it in their space. It takes the guesswork out of what they'll be receiving so that they won't hesitate as much to opt in. The third call-out, that is most obvious is that I've put a Godzilla size photo of myself in my lead magnet. Is that because I'm a narcissist? No. It's because it personalizes my offer, depending on your brand, it's helpful to include a photo of yourself around your website as much as you can because it breaks down walls, it allows people in, they can better relate to you, they can learn to know you and in turn, trust you and invest in you as a personal brand. Lastly, I've included an embedded opt-in forum rather than like a button that's going to lead someone to a page to sign up. I will say a lot of web builders, they make built-in forms that they can be a little bit funky to fiddle with. So rather than doing that or direct somebody somewhere else, I placed an opt-in form right below my lab graphic, and it works just fine. The idea is overall that they don't have to click around your site to subscribe. It's right there ready for people to insert their info, and continue about their browsing. Make this as easy as possible for people. Your lead magnet also doesn't have to stop on your homepage. It doesn't even have to live there if you don't want it to, but it should, you can sprinkle this all over your website or you can create different lead magnets for different items depending on what page that they're actually on. Let's say you're on a page of your website that you want to include a lead magnet, but it wouldn't necessarily make a lot of sense to keep embedding opt-in forums, no problem. In this example, I've included a lead magnet that leads to the link of more info on what they'll be getting, where they will find the opt-in forum. But even though I just told you that that's not ideal, it doesn't mean it can't exist in other areas of your site. So on mine, if Learn is clicked from the main menu on thepigeonletters.com, you'll see that I have a photo in the first fold of the website with an image showing the visual of what some of the freebies are. I've also included a tab on my main menu that actually says freebies. Let me show you where both of these links go. I have a dedicated page on my website that is just for my offer. Regardless of what you're offering, providing more information on what us new subscriber will be receiving is a supporting factor, and incentivizing someone to sign up. In summary, lead magnets should be eye catching incentives that people want to see badly enough that they are willing to provide their email address in order to get it.
5. What to Include in YOUR Emails: Do you have your workbook ready? Let's figure out exactly what your e-mails should be about. Ask yourself the following questions. What do I offer? As an example, you might offer fine art originals or art prints. Maybe you're an educator like myself and you offer online courses and books. Maybe you offer tangible items on Etsy. This question should be straightforward and easy to answer. So don't limit yourself to one thing, but at the same time, don't add a bunch of extras that you don't necessarily do much of. Or in other words, that you don't want to be like a sole focus in your business. Question two, what is my goal in building an e-mail list? If your answer is so people buy stuff, then sure, Okay. But bear with me while I suggest additional goals to add that you should consider in a moment. Your answer might be to reach people as a part of your own community or to offer exclusive content. It might be to provide people with a deeper look behind the scenes of what you've been up to, kind of like a diary of sorts where subscribers can get a peek behind the curtain and get more insights into more of your personal side. Maybe you want to use your email as a teaser for content that you've just released with links to direct people where you want them to end up, like your website or your shop. Another question, how can I monetize my e-mail list without being salesy? It's imperative to use e-mail as a marketing tool for sure, regardless of whether or not your primary goal is to use your email newsletter to promote your product. I recommend always asking yourself, how does this e-mail provide value? If you are not providing value in one way or another in every single email, you're not going to truly reach people so that they stick around for the long run. Let me offer some examples on how you can sandwich sales within valuable content that can make your subscribers actually want to open your e-mails. As an example, I absolutely love Sarah Schroeder's artwork. I subscribed to her newsletter just so that I can get notified when she releases new work so that I can be one of the first to be able to explore her new collection. Because by the time she mentions it on social media, many pieces have already sold probably to people who are on her e-mail list. So even though she's not offering some sort of a sale or a discount code in her e-mails, they are still providing value because people who collect her work can be notified before anybody else. Another example is my friend Tom Ross. His e-mails are full on actionable items that you can implement right away to help grow your business. He provides personal examples and truly does not hold anything back. They are long form, similar to blog posts, but they're all within his e-mails and within that he can link to anything he's promoting as well. So it's all in there providing value. In my own e-mail, I nurture my audience by providing free resources every single week. Within those emails, I'm able to drop in anything that I've been working on so I can link to that week's blog posts, etc. I get a higher open rate and a higher click rate in my e-mails because my subscribers know that I offer value in each and every e-mail, there's always something for them for free. I will dive in deeper in one of my recent freebie e-mails. So this one in particular is a time-sensitive freebie, so that prompts people to open and click quicker, since there's more of a sense of urgency. Totally unnecessary to do time-sensitive, but I do this once a month. Now, before I put the download button in, I've included an upsell offer that tied into my freebie. So the download and this e-mail was a pack of lettering practice sheets featuring animals with repeating letters. So a few months before this, I released my newest book, Animal Line-drawing. This gave me the opportunity to stay relevant with my sale so that I wasn't sending out like the sleazy sales e-mail. I also took that opportunity to include a testimonial of the book. Then scrolling down, you will see that my freebie is featured, but not before I added a call to action to purchase my book. Yep, with a big bold button and everything. Oh snap another upsell just below that. No shame, why? Because I'm providing valuable content with yet another free offer for people to sign up for a Skillshare with two months free. Lastly, more value with a direct link to my blog to catch up on the latest tutorial. In conclusion, yeah, my e-mail is a freebie. Yay, freebie Friday. But it's much more than that. It's reminding people that I have books that they might be interested. I have courses that they might be interested in and blog tutorials to check out. Come to the website. I also want to note that I strategically placed my blog post recaps at the bottoms of my e-mails, and the reason for this is so that the very last actionable item in my e-mails is for people to end up on my website. All of that being said, I'll come over to these examples as just some of the ways that you can cater to your audience by offering them value. If you're selling something, try sandwiching it within something like exclusive offers only for your e-mail subscribers or early access, free resources, behind the scenes like raw and personal, up close get to know you, actionable items, etc. So it's incredibly important to continue to nurture your audience. So be sure to always provide value. They are supporting you and your growth.
6. Open Rates & Click Rates: The terms click rates and open rate aren't widely used unless you've already dug into learning things about email marketing. These are simple terms that represent your email engagement. Let's start with open rates. They represent the percentage of subscribers that open your email. It's pretty simple and straight forward. Depending on what you do, you might get a huge open rate on a subject line like New Class launch and maybe a low open rate on something more personal like, "I don't know what I was thinking." Whereas some creative entrepreneurs would see the opposite results based off the type of content that they specifically offer. It's worth noting that people get to know the content that you provide over time. If your subject line comes across too salesy or off brand for you, it could be skipped by. On the contrary, if you're known for your product and specifically for your product, if your subject line comes across too personal people might not be interested because they might actually be watching for your product lunch. I encourage you to experiment with your subject lines because they can truly make or break your open rates. In addition to the knowledge about open rates, email spam filters, they're getting smarter. It's super important that your subject lines increase deliverability in addition to catching more eyes and that they offer better contents to your subscribers. Mail has an article that suggests appropriate open rates according to individual industries that you can compare your open rates with to see how you compare on average. I believe that it said if you're an artist, they've analyzed open rates to be about 25, might have been 26 percent. So if you have like 1500 people on your email list and 26 percent of them open your emails, you're then reaching 390 people. Click rates, what are those exactly? When you sign up for your email provider service platform, things like ConvertKit, Mailchimp, Flodesk, et cetera, they have actually built-in stats where you can review these numbers like click rates and see how your emails are performing. This is helpful information in determining what works and what doesn't work. Click through rates represent the percentage of your subscribers that actually click on the links that are inside of your email after opening. This isn't, again, necessarily like a one method works best way to approach your audience since they're very unique to you and subscribed to your content for a very specific reason. That said, you have the opportunity to experiment with different approaches. I really recommend trying all of them, truly all of them, and pay attention to their performance. That's how you're going to be able to help narrow it down. I'll give you some tricks. Short email subjects are easier to digest. Avoid all caps. They look salesy and desperate. If you want to emphasize one or two words in bold, or not bold in caps, that's fine, but do you really want to open my email if I'm screaming from you right off the bat? Avoid using too many exclamation points. It's the same thing, also spam filters don't like that. Also try to avoid the words free, freebie giveaway. Studies with email and the way that the spam filters are working, they have a higher chance of being filtered into those junk folders. Prompt action, when we are mindlessly going through our email and scrolling through social feeds, when we see action words we're more urged to do the thing. It's science. Will be going over a ton of examples in the next video.
7. Winning Subject Lines: The biggest connection that we can make is reaching people on an emotional level. Think about things that sell. We buy things to equip ourselves with preparation, why? Because we have an engrained fear from our human nature to be prepared. It's why so many entrepreneurial courses use a good amount of their time analyzing why you should sell to solve problems, otherwise, our products and services are optional, but if we market our business to what people need versus what they want, our ROI will be much higher. I'm going to go over some questions to ask yourself as if you were the recipient of the email that it's going to continue helps to sort out your thoughts on what to send. Such as, what would I do if I received this email? It's like the lead magnet situation, so what I care about this offering or what's in the email, if I was the receiver of this email, does it add to the unwanted overflow of emails that I get every day,? If I was the receiver of the email will opening it add value to my day? Not everybody responds to the same emotional triggers though, so for that reason, each phrase, graphic, and email subjects that we use should tap into different triggers in order to reach the most people. Let's go over some categories where your emails will really serve a purpose. You could reveal some useful information, so you might have some interesting things to share that will be beneficial to your readers rather than composing an awesome email and then sending it with a bland subject plan like new blog post or today's thoughts. Think about digging deeper and thinking about how that email will actually make somebody feel. Remember, we're working on reaching people on an emotional level, so if your subject line was something like, bet you didn't know this secret for blank, or this doesn't have to be as hard as you're making it. The receiver will probably be much more enticed to open your email. Maybe your goal in an email that you're about to send is to connect with your audience. Again, away with the bland subject lines, always put yourself in the receiver's place. Another email, another flooded inbox, so some ideas with some subject lines or a connection would be, how did I not know this before? Or have you lost interest in blank? Or here's a sneak peak on what I've been working on. Let's be real, we love those BuzzFeed articles that start with headlines like 29 products you wish you had last summer or top eight ways to fold underwear. It could be literally anything numerical and we want to read it. We just do, also science, I don't know, or walking into an organized, easy to digest list rather than like a novel of text that never seems to get to the point, you guys know what I'm talking about. For that reason, choosing a quantifying email subject line is also a win. Something as simple as like three tips for blank that's curated to your niche, it stimulates curiosity. Even better than offering valuable email content is getting people to actually take action by sending emails that prompt interaction. Subject lines like, can you do me a favor? Or use this printable to help you blank. There's a bunch of options to roll with in this category that will certainly get your readers to pop up. You've been waiting for the sales part, I know gross, nobody likes it. But don't think of that in that gross slimy way, think of it as an opportunity to share your offer because like with excitement, you're excited about the thing, so maybe your offer is like the only blank you'll ever need, or maybe it's like a bundle you say, or maybe you're offering a two day sale. You could sprinkle some sales humor in there with a subject line like, this is a bribe. These things work, you don't have to overthink them. Do you ever offer free content? As previously mentioned, you want to avoid using the word free or freebie so that spam filters don't pick it up, but instead you can mix connection with your readers with a subject line like as a thank you I'm giving you blank, or you could try mixing something interactive with freebie with a subject line like what complimentary blank do you want, and that's prompting interaction. Let's say you want to push some urgency in your email. Fun fact, many people buy when there's some pressure on. Going live in one hour or there's only two left or I don't want you to miss out. Just reading these here it makes us feel like we want to take action. I mean, not all of us but a lot of us. Nothing beats word of mouth. Whether it's a testimonial of what you're offering or your own opinion about a product or service, subject lines like, I can't believe this actually worked, or here's why niche product and service or service is getting so much hype. That stuff demands our attention. We want to know more about it. We just do. I have a cheat sheet guide that contains 275 email subject lines that will get your emails opened by your subscribers. The pack contains a ton of subject lines in the categories that we've just covered, you can snag it at this link and just get ready to watch your open rates increase. You're welcome.
8. Working in Segments: Getting deeper into email content, you're not restricted to only one type of deliverable. Your emails don't only have to be new collection launches or deep dives into the inner workings of the creative mind, yours, or like freebie drops. They can be all of the above without having to worry about, your subscribers not liking content that you're putting out. You can achieve this by working in segments. Segments are essentially email lists within your email list. Have you ever clicked to opt out of a company's email list and then were brought to a page that seems like a laundry list of choices to stay subscribed to? Don't worry, that's not what we're doing, but it's essentially the same idea. For example, I have an email segment that is exclusively for procreate users. I know that not everybody on my list does digital art or even owns an iPad or uses procreate, and frankly, it might be annoying to receive content that isn't useful to them, especially if it doesn't even apply. Rather than living in fear of losing them and sending it to my whole list and hoping they don't unsubscribe, I can simply give them the option of opting out of emails related to procreate, so that they can still receive emails that are relevant to them. Using these segments will significantly increase your open rates and significantly decrease your unsubscribe rate. You're welcome. Setting of segments will vary greatly from email provider to email provider, but I've used a handful of them and all of them have a pretty easy setup and they all have really thorough tutorials along the way to help you establish your lists. But I'm going to get into this more when I do a whole walk-through of how mine is setup, just so you can have a visual. But yes, keep this in mind, think about the segments that you actually want to be including. It doesn't have to be a huge long list of things, but I think I have six-ish. That way you're only sending emails that are relevant to your people.
9. My Favorite Email Provider + FULL Walk Through: I first want to mention that the larger your email list grows, the higher price you pay. I actually nearly broke this $200 per month mark using ConvertKit before I made the switch. For that reason, I'm super excited to dive into Flodesk with you guys. At the time that I'm recording this, this platform still in better, so they have yet to roll out a lot of features that I know that they're working on and we'll eventually get to, but I'm going to show you the goodness that they already have, which is a lot. What I will say right off that, is that I have 20,000 email subscribers and they pay $19 a month. I'm going to repeat that, 20,000 subscribers for $19 a month. No, it's not a trial price, so let me break down Flodesk's pricing real quick. It is $38 a month unless you use an affiliate code, which makes it $19 a month. If a handful of you use the link that I am shamelessly sharing right now; I will make a commission off of it. But you will get Flodesk free for a month and then there is no commitment, but if you continue, it will be $19 a month forever. That's exactly what I did and it doesn't matter how many subscribers you have. I used someone's affiliate code and now I have $19 a month forever. How do they do this? I don't know, but take my money because you're giving me so much money back. Like at my current subscriber rate, that's saving me from literally two grand a year. Let's jump into the overview so that we can see what this looks like on the back-end. Into Flodesk, if you have an existing account, this is what it's going to look like. You are going to see all of your emails. You have the option to toggle over to what's scheduled, what you've sent, your drafts, and then you can archive anything, and then they'll be in your archives so they won't clutter up anything else. Now, let's say you don't have this set up yet, how are you going to create a new email? You can just create new, and that is going to look like this. It has a template library, you can scroll through and see what they've got here, but the awesome part about Flodesk is that they have a "What's your goal?" It's like you might want to up your email game, you might have some news to share, you might be welcoming a new subscriber, you might be selling something, you can start from scratch, so let's just look at making money. Here's where you can say, "Here's a sale," and then you can just look, and obviously you can use these templates for something else, and they don't have to be for sales or they don't have to be for inspire, but it gives you the option to make things as easy as possible. You'll also find the elements in these templates, and the editor themselves, so you don't have to worry so much about making sure that you have it right from the get-go. You'll also find this beautiful lettering font that is a little more playful and a little more organic looking as it's handwritten, and that has probably been showing up in your email if you follow anybody, that is in the creative world because a lot of us have moved over to Flodesk. I want to show you what one of these templates is going to look like. I'm going to say, "Hi there, friend." I will just go to this one. You can view details before you choose to use it, and then you can scroll down and see what that's going to look like on a desktop or on a mobile device. It is mobile friendly as well, so let's say, customize. Here is where you can make everything customizable to you. You'll see that my logo and you'll be able to create the settings in Flodesk, but your logo will show up here. You can click it and then you can delete it if you don't want it there. I personally delete them all. I think that the clutter up my emails and I want my emails to be a little bit more personalized. You can change the font, you can change these dividers, so basically what I did is I took a template here. It automatically has your Instagram Feed in here. You can change basically anything. Buttons, everything's customizable over here. You can change the style, you can change the fill color, text color, etc. Add images, but what I really want to show you is when you press the plus symbol if anywhere that you click in sections, press the plus symbol and it gives you all of these options. The layouts that I told you about are basically those predetermined templates similar to the one that's right above the section is where I can put two pictures side-by-side. Layouts, if I click that, then you'll see it pops up, on the right-hand side, I have all of these options were I can answer whatever I want. Let's say I love this one and let's go with it. You can change this font. If I click this plus button again, you'll see I can insert my logo and image, your Instagram Feed, just basic text, buttons, social links, your footer, everything like that. The other thing that I like is in the very bottom footer, you're required to have an unsubscribe. When I click on "Unsubscribe," I can go to message right here, and it's great because they have all of these options to change your unsubscribes, so Chill is like, "Unsubscribe here, no hard feelings," whereas Direct is, "Don't want these emails anymore, unsubscribe." Basically, you can go through and see what it is that you want to do and it fits your personality or your brand a little bit more, and then you can also change the padding. It's very customizable is what I'm trying to say. Next, let's say I love this email, I can say, "From name," I can change each one individually, I can just keep it as is because it will auto-fill that for you, your subject line, you can change it, you can add emojis to it, preview tags. Your subject line is there, and then you have preview texts that you usually see in emails and then choose recipients. You can create segments in Flodesks. You can do this with any email provider. You can but if somebody unsubscribes from a certain segment, let's say this was all about Procreate and not everybody cares about Procreate. I have a Procreate list right here, and it has 18,000 my subscribers on it, so it doesn't have all of them. But I can include that so that it only goes to those people add segment, and then I can see that I've selected that right there. Now, I can also add another segment. Let's say it's online courses or something like that. I can plug that in here as well. Let's say someone is on Procreate and online classes, it's not going to send them this email twice, it's just making sure that everybody in one of these segments, gets this email and then you say "Continue" and you can say now in an hour, in a day or customize when it sent and the other part about this is let's say I want to send it next Wednesday, the time you can say "Best time for morning" or "Best time for evening," and then it just automatically puts it in there for you to make things nice and easy. Then I would say schedule, but let's say I got out of there, it autosaves, so it's right here ready for me to return to it when I'm ready to. The other part that I do is you can see that all of these emails look the same, and I've also stretched my padding because I want the text to reach even further because I have found that something that's more text and less image-heavy has been proving that it just reaches people better. For example, this one, I have texts, but then I have some of those templates in here, but it's not really taking away to what I'm saying, so that's how I use the templates in Flodesk. They're still beautiful. I also have a couple that have that pretty handwritten text at the top if I can find any. Here's one that just says, "Good News" down here, and that's where I can insert something like that, have some fun flare, but still keep it direct, and of course you can set these up however you want to. I just feel like this looks a little more like a marketing situation, whereas this looks a little more personal. That said, you'll see that these say, "This Week's Freebie," and to make this as easy as possible, because you'll have to format all of your emails every time. Instead of doing that, I just duplicate. I click these three dots and say duplicate, and then it'll come up with exactly what footer I want, it'll come up with my saved texts and I don't have to really worry about customization there. When it comes to forms, you can have forms that are embedded into sites, so I have these on my web page or you can have standalone pages. Like this link right here, I think it's just like a pin or something that brings people to this page, but if I look at it, so people will land on a page that just looks like this. It's its own website, it has its own special link, this is the affiliate partner program either way, and that's where I can have opt ins from a web page. The other ones are embed codes, you'll find this on my website. This is the one that I just shared. Get bigger. I'm using an Apple mouse, so sometimes it doesn't like me. Like that, and that's something I can just embed in a page already. It's not a stand-alone page, so they have that option when you say "Create New," it'll be either inline, which is the embedded code, the full page, or a pop-up. I'm not a big fan of pop-ups, I just don't like them, I close out of them immediately when they come up, I know a lot of other people do too, so I just don't use them, at least at this time. This is Flodesk, it's super simple, I can go to my subscribers. I'm not going to, because it's going to show everyone's name and email and how it would be wrong, but then I have segments here where these are. This is where you create the segments, so you can say "Add Segment," it could be newsletter, or etc. Some of these things are just like side notes to myself or this was a one-time event, and those are people coming in. Whereas like my other ones that are going to move over to my main segments that I use frequently have the higher numbers, so that's what that looks like, that's a quick overview. Basically, Flodesk is super easy to use and creates beautiful emails that you can return to and duplicate and make things easy peasy, no problem. I highly recommend this platform for the value and the eye candy that it offers.
10. Nurture Sequences & Funnels: E-mail doesn't stop at your lead magnet. You must also nurture your audience after you get them on board. I want to talk about the ideal e-mail funnel. This will give you the actual action steps to help you nurture your subscribers. This is a tried and true formula that has been tweaked and built upon over time, particularly from experts in campaign monitoring and e-mail marketing platforms, that's a mouthful, but I've made a few tweaks, because I know that from experience some methods are outdated and humans crave relatability and connection. I want to provide you with an outline that will do exactly that. The first step that is missing from many funnels is what I consider the planning stage. This is a crucial step to your build because you need to know your audience and what they need, and how to solve their problems in order to even begin your funnel. If you're following along, however, congratulations, you know that you've already begun the process just by being a part of this course and participating in the workbook. You can never do enough research on your target market. There's always new information to gather and opportunities to add value in your reach to them. That also means that you'll come back to this stage time and time again, essentially launching new funnels and lead magnets all the time. This is a good thing. If the first three lead magnet somebody saw didn't work, maybe the next one is just what they need to convert. I'll go through now the more, I guess official, but on official stages. The awareness stage is where you must position yourself as an expert in your industry while simultaneously offering a resource that is worth providing your e-mail address for. As we just talked about you know this to be the lead magnet. You want to attract as many subscribers as possible and you want to be everywhere that your audience is. Consideration occurs right after somebody signs up for your list. So they've gotten your initial offering, now what are you going to do to keep them on your list? Why shouldn't they press "Unsubscribe" the moment that your next e-mail comes in? If you look at examples of what you'll hear a lot of people in my position saying, to put it bluntly, it's a bunch of regurgitated garbage. It'll set you up to do exactly what their e-mail campaigns already do, so here's a tip. If you're signing up to snag somebody's free templates are customizable e-mail, swipes or something like that, pay close attention to the formats and formula of the following e-mails that you get from that person. Chances are they're going to push immediately into something like, "Oh, did you like that free resource? Here are two other must-have items that guarantee results, and they'll for money." That should tell you right then and there that maybe they aren't the best person to learn from. They're not teaching anything at all. They're not, they're not nurturing their audience. Instead, they're doing like a glorified bait and switch. Right away you need to provide value. You need to nurture the person who just signed over access to their inbox. That's prime real estate, it shouldn't be taken advantage of by immediate spammy content. Even if the content offer is good, you got to build trust. I guarantee that you know the types of e-mails that I'm referring to and that you hit unsubscribe just as fast as you opened it. You don't want to be that person. One freebie e-mail that heads right into a buy this, is not a good example of the quality content that you know that you offer. Instead, put yourself in a position to further address pain points that your subscriber might be encountering or create like a beautiful retreat within your e-mail by offering even more value to them. Your new subscribers interests and consideration will trigger the next step in the funnel, which is engagement. This is a key time to focus on what you offer and why you're going to give people a more enriching experience in whatever way that relates to your industry then they'd get otherwise. This might be product reviews, industry education, I can't speak, and other useful items that continue to create connection. These items could even be in the form of what you offer on your lead magnets, the e-mails that you put out should and they will most likely prompt interaction and they're usually time triggered or action triggered. Within this process, having e-mail triggers will be super beneficial and this will allow you to send e-mails that are relevant every time. People will be able to opt out of e-mails that they don't have interest in or that don't apply to them. For example, well, I could send an e-mail out to every person on my list. As mentioned before, it benefits me to have more of a segmented lists or segmented lists, as I mentioned as an art educator using Procreate as that example, it's that software program on the iPad. I can send that to people who are only interested in Procreate. If it reaches somebody who happens to still be on that list, it makes it really easy for them just opt out of that particular topic while remaining on my list and receiving my other content. On the flip side, you can do the same thing without having them opt in to a segment. But I personally prefer to start with people being subscribed to each segment because oftentimes there is pertinent information that they wouldn't have otherwise received. If they didn't know they could or should opt in to certain lists. That's just how I do it. But I get also very specific with my list since I teach on so many topics. A painter might have no interest in brush lettering. I have a segmented list for my subscribers that are only interested in lettering, allowing them the freedom to pick and choose what they care about getting during onboarding, we'll let them know that you're not interested in spamming them, that you're not going to be providing e-mails that they won't care about, which inevitably keeps them on your list and avoids up big, ugly "Unsubscribe" button at the bottom of e-mails. Something as simple as like, "Oh, are you not interested in receiving e-mails about x? No problem. Click this link to unsubscribe from this topic and you'll get all of my other goodies." On the backend, you'll be able to set up those e-mail triggers so that when one of your subscribers clicks that link, it will remove them from that segment automatically. Now, while familiarity is a stage that I'm throwing in here, it's actually one that can begin organically in the consideration and engagement stages. While this is a funnel with several steps, The involved steps are essentially broken into three main parts, which are the hook, the middle, and the sale. I just feel like it's not that simple because the formula is a little boring. For one but two, it's obviously salesy, that's gross. Then once your sale, why is the sale the last thing on that funnel, it shouldn't be that way. You don't want to feel gross. You don't. Familiarity though, will allow you to organically place key highlights about your services and products in your e-mails in a softer way that never alludes to making a sale, not yet anyway. It's simply educating people of the benefits while providing value. You always want to focus more on how your offerings will benefit subscribers rather than like simple descriptions we've all experienced how annoying it can be to sign up for a newsletter just to get irrelevant content without context first. For that reason, my very first e-mail that goes out after somebody receives their offer from my lead magnet is a more personalized e-mail, thanking my new subscriber for signing up and outlining exactly what they can expect from me moving forward. This way, they are equipped with expectations, which in other words, could just be me basically saying, nope, I'm not going to spam you because [inaudible] gross, your engagement will inevitably lead to sales eventually. But from there I send out for more e-mails that are part of a sequence. You can set up a nurture sequence within your e-mail provider. They are triggered according to your specifications. The easiest nurture sequence is when someone signs up for your newsletter. Maybe not the easiest, but the initial, you can assign a trigger so that when somebody signs up their attitudes sequence and then that sequence drips e-mails over a certain amount of time. My personal e-mail sequence is set up so that my welcome e-mail goes out a day after they sign up, which gives them time to dissect the freebie e-mail that they received the day before. Some nurture sequences are only extended like a matter of like 5-7 days. Mine is a bit longer because I know that I already sent out a minimum of one e-mail a week, and the last thing that I want to do is send two or three or four during a nurture sequence. I'll walk you through my sequence here in a moment for a better example. But depending on your e-mail service, you can control e-mail frequency so that like maybe you're sending something out normally, but it'll make it so that you send it on days that other e-mails are going out. It just depends on who you're using. It's also worth noting that multiple e-mails in a nurture sequence might not be ideal for your brand. If you do opt for the longer nurture sequence, it could include like welcome and setting expectations, maybe a lead magnet follow-up, asking people or just following up with what they initially came into, was this helpful or wow, can I answer any questions? They can send value that much your general paid offerings with opportunities to up sell, but just be careful about those. Don't overdo it. Let's walk through my personal nurture sequence so you can have more of a visual workflows is where the money happens. This stuff is when you want to come in here and trigger things. Let's look at this one. Basically what I have is I am giving people this 40 page eBooks. They're going to subscribe to a form that I set up. Then immediately after they are going to receive an e-mail that you are able to fully edit, and I have the guide right here, so everything's ready to go. Then after that I have a time delay of a day and then they're subscribed to the following segments. Newsletter is one of them. Notice nothing else is happening and I'll show you why. If I go to Newsletter, which is a separate workflow that I've created. This is what this looks like. This is my main Newsletter sign-up, and this is going to be my freebie magnet that's on the front page of my site. As you saw the other one, it's like okay, subscribe and then add to newsletter was one of them. This magnet is, as soon as they opt in they're going to be subscribed to the newsletter. Then immediately they're going to receive an e-mail with access to my freebies. After that, once the e-mail is sent, they are going to be added to all of my lists, all of my segments. Then I'm going to have a time delay of one day. I do this because they already are receiving a free the e-mail from me. I don't want to bombard them with e-mails in the same day. Then I have my nurture sequence. After a day I'm sending an e-mail called, how can you help? I have everything that I want to say to somebody like basically what to expect for me, then I wait two days because I don't want to send something right after here I am again in your inbox. This is just a valuable item that's going to help people just like kind of an actionable e-mail. Just something to show up in their inbox, and then I wait five days and then I give them four prompts to boost their creativity this week, I wait five days again. It's more of a personal e-mail and that's it. Then they're going to be kind of more connected to me at this point in the course of two-ish weeks or so. Sometimes nurture sequences are a lot shorter but this is the way that I do it because I have found the best results this way and I've played around with it and I'm not saying my way's the best way, but it is a way.
11. What is YOUR Offer?: Now it's time to figure out what you will be offering. In your workbook write down the parent category of your offerings. The best part of working this way is that you'll be able to come up with multiple offerings within each parent category, which in turn provides you with so much content that you don't even need to think anymore. It'll all be there on that tiny list ready to take action. If you didn't have three categories before, take a moment and see how you can create them within your offerings. Don't think that this needs to stop at three either. You might have a ton of moving parts in your business. Think about how you can find ways to cater offerings to all of those. For now though to avoid overwhelm, just choose your top three. Once you've completed this exercise in full, you can always return to add other categories and then real quick, while searching Google for ideas for freebies can be a real help, I'm going to challenge you to avoid jumping into this rabbit hole right off the back because the results you'll find it will be a lot more vague. But most importantly they won't be curated to your particular brand or offering, and you want your offers to be unique to you and not just like blanket content that people can get from anywhere. That being said, after listing your top categories of the services or items or goods that you offer, list 10 ideas that you can offer as lead magnets. Don't overthink this, we're just brainstorming. I'm going to walk you through an example, getting specific. Let's say you are a travel blogger and you want to monetize your blog with affiliate links and sponsors. This isn't effective without an audience, so sure you might not have a physical product or you might not have courses or lessons or whatever for people. But what you do have other than reviews of hotels or hot spots in Venice or Costa Rica or wherever, this is where you can get creative. In comes your worksheets. Categories might include: tips for what to bring along with you while you're traveling. Maybe tips for smart travel, exclusive discounts. That could be something where you've partnered with another company and it's something that you can offer. Diving in a little deeper into those categories, what can you offer. Think about how you can break this down for your own industry. Maybe you can offer free principles or a guide on your favorite supplies, templates, etc. I promise that if you take time to sit down and do this exercise, you will get results. Before continuing, fill in your answers and then meet me back here. Did you do it? If you didn't do it, press "Pause" and do it. Seriously do the thing. But if you have. After you've spent time coming up with some ideas, I want to add to that by offering you a list of wins to offer your subscribers. I'm turning into Google right now, but I wanted you to do the exercise first. Let's dive in. Options to think about, eBooks. Knowledge is power and offering short, valuable eBooks could be like a 10 page PDF with snippets of information. That could be something that people would really value and could be a potentials for up-sells. Printable, you could send out printable art pieces, coloring pages, calendars, worksheets, and checklists. People love homework. It provides actionable steps for people which is not only motivating but gives them a reason to invest in what you're providing which inevitably keeps you valuable in their mind as they work through your offering, they're spending time with you. eCourses and webinars. If you're an educator, many courses, webinars they're great because who doesn't love the free opportunity to learn something. Tutorials, same thing on that note, do you know a trick on how to do something, do you know a great hack. Sharing is caring. Master resource list. If you have go to suppliers or materials, brands, companies suggestions, etc. Not only will this benefit your customer but it'll also squash the ever constant question you get of like, what's your favorite blank to use for blank? Or what x should I buy for, blah, blah, blah. Because now you can guide your customers and audience to your free downloadable resources list. Not to mention, you're gaining them as a subscriber at the same time. Templates, not everybody is design savvy. If it works for your brand, provide like fun and beautiful customizable templates that people can simply drop their information and photos or whatever into and use as their own. Challenges, these are gold, give people a five day or 10 day challenge road map that they're investing and you're offering every day while making personal progress in whatever the thing is. Social media graphics, you don't have to be a designer, like a graphic designer on this one either. You could just jump on the canvas and do some drag and drop action and then, you've got something to offer there. Exclusive content, providing content to subscribers only makes them feel valued for being there, it's a win-win. Exclusive flash promotions. You can always opt for monetary offerings as well by providing a way for your subscribers to save money by being a part of your newsletter. Affiliate offerings. Maybe you don't have a product or don't want to come up with a product to provide no problem. You can provide special promo codes for a product that another brand or company offers that will also earn you a few $ in the process. You'll need to find companies to our brands to partner with so that you can get that unique code to offer your audience but just be sure that whatever it is it's relevant to what you do. Pro tips, start with the end in mind. What would somebody who wants your end product also want for free? Another quick example is like an author who is offering a free e-book that would then lead up to the sale of their books. They want your book, they just don't know it yes. If you can get that hook, then you have them. It picks their interest and gives them just a little leg in, it works as its own sales without being salesy.
12. Surveying Your Audience: Surveying people right off the bat will get you the most feedback. This will allow you to learn your subscribers' problems in the exact language that they use to describe it and in turn, use those pain points as a basis to come up with new content. It might feel like surveying your audience makes you less of an expert, so you find the need to skip this part, but I challenge you to keep an open mind about this. Your readers will not view you as any less, in fact, it'll actually make it so that you're seen as being invested in providing them the best possible value and solutions for them. It doesn't matter if your list is 10 people or 10,000 people. The feedback that you receive will allow you to reach people more organically since you'll be hearing it from them rather than from your own head. I'm sure you are full of wonderful ideas, but it's also easy to miss important details when we're not where our target customer is at anymore. You want to provide them with what they need the most. Surveying your audience will help you learn what brought people to your content in the first place, which is huge to have that knowledge, it will help you connect with your audience, learn their pain points and their struggles, and know what type of content to continue to produce. Setting up a survey can be easy and free. There are a ton of survey sites out there that will lure you in with their pretty graphics and integrations, but I will say, you're not cutting corners. But Google is a powerful machine that can do all of that for you. I've used services, other services, but I've always come right back to Google Forms. I continue using Google Forms, so I'm going to show you what it looks like on my end real quick. I'll show you one of these ones I already have, what that looks like as far as the back end, and then just show you how easy it is to throw one of these together super quickly. This one you do see some long answer text, but this was actually for my membership and I am very, very hands-on and so I read each and every one of these. But when you are surveying a larger, and you're just looking for general feedback, multiple-choice is the way to go. So if you're looking for what people want to see from you, you can enter everything that you might think. I have all of these, sourcing inspiration and motivation, networking, licensing, all this stuff, and then same thing down here to repeat because I know that everybody probably has two. So it's not like they're restricted. Then I do have some long answer here, but basically, multiple-choice is your best friend. It looks like I'm on summary, yeah, summary. If you scroll down to the areas that are the multiple-choice, you're going to have these awesome pie charts which make life so much easier. Like you can see, there's an overwhelming response to one of these pie areas, whereas over here it's a lot more balanced which isn't exactly helpful, but sometimes you can get a lot more specific with these answers and what actually comes from them, which is really helpful. Then you can see exactly what people are wanting. You can always go for long-form, but you can see that that's a lot more work to read through those than a pie chart at a glance, but it just depends on what you actually want to put into your survey. You can get as detailed or as not detailed as you want to. I'm going to just show you, you just go to click "Add". Don't worry, this isn't a full walk-through. I'm just going to show you what this looks like. You can title your forms, so new form or let's say email survey, and then you can put a little description here, "Hey, thanks for filling out my survey." Then here is you just click the question area, ask your question, question or question. Then it's automatically multiple choice but you can go to checkboxes where they can do multiple selections, short answer, long answer, drop-down menu, so that instead of having checklist or multiple choice where it's all right there, they can do a dropdown, and then option 1, 2, 3, 4. Then what will happen is all of those will be just a drop-down menu. Let's do a linear scale. It's that thing where it's like one to five and they click on where. It's really handy so you can gauge interests, multiple-choice grid, checkbox grid, and basically go as much or as little info as you want. You can duplicate, see how that just popped up after I generated it. That was the linear scale one. But yeah, you can duplicate or you can just add a new question and just make this as long as you want to. You can make them required questions like if you need to gather a name or an email address or something, you can click on "Required" or toggle that off, and then they don't have to fill out that question. Then the other part, let me drag this down actually, the other part here is you can customize the themes so you can change the theme color or upload your own, choose an image for a header if you want to. Then one of the things I really like about this is that you can create a spreadsheet based off of the responses, so everything, all your questions, will be generated into a spreadsheet. You can also get email notifications when people have responded. You can select the response destination. The spreadsheet can auto-generate as the responses are coming in, change font. There's not a ton of options, but it is nice and it's free. This is a great way to survey your people and I super recommend doing it. That's just a quick rundown on Forms. I recommend going in and playing with that so that you can have that to your advantage because honestly, people just love the opportunity to be involved in their investment in you. The most important part of surveying your audience is asking the right questions. If you're going to the trouble to survey people, the questions need to be strategically formulated so that they will help them. Finding out where your audience is, how established they are in niche blank, what they need the most, along with bonuses that they like will not only help you building out future content, but it may also help prompt you to pivot a little bit after learning that most of your audience might be further along or not as far along as you initially thought. I have two main reasons that I like to stick to checkboxes and multiple-choice questions. The first is so that I can see results at a glance by viewing the charts that auto-populate from responses received. This is incredibly helpful when analyzing results. The second reason is so that I don't have a ton of open-ended answers that would take so much time to review. I do keep some space in my surveys for a maximum of one or two of these but many of the questions that you can ask are generally answered about the same way with different words. So you might want to be more efficient with your time. I also want to mention that while checkboxes can certainly be helpful in determining subscribers interests, it doesn't prioritize them. I'm speaking from experience on all of these tips and I'm mentioning that you certainly don't have to take my advice, but after trial and error, error being that I didn't get as specific as I needed to get, I learned that it's better to formulate in multiple-choice options. As an example, let's say your question involves learning what your subscribers are most interested in learning. Sure, I'm an educator, so I'll do that, using my own example that applies to my own creative business. While I could create checkboxes to discover what people are interested in learning, like let's say lettering, botanical line-drawing, urban sketching, watercolor, gouache, abstract art, etc, what if people check most of those boxes? That doesn't help me, especially if I want to come up with new relevant content. Instead, I could split that question up into two or three questions and ask, if you could only choose one of the following art techniques, what are you most excited about practicing? Then in that same list, the second question would be the same but prompting them to answer what their second choice would be. If this general question is split up like this, I am giving people the opportunity to share their top choices, which will help me a lot more than seeing if people are generally interested in everything that I already offer, leaving me in the same spot as before I surveyed them, if that makes sense. I do think that it's worth having one single long-form question in your survey though, just to give people a chance to share additional feedback, tips, and requests. It's a prime space for you to notice a new pattern or a theme that recurs across multiple responses that you may not have thought of originally. I'm not going to lie, people don't love the idea of jumping into another survey. We've talked about during this class, our inboxes flood with crap all day long and everybody wants once a few moments of your time. That's why incentivizing your subscribers to take a survey, just the same way that you did when you got them to sign up for your email list, will help them jump on board with actually clicking over to do your survey. You could offer a valuable item in exchange for their time and they will appreciate that you're investing in what they have to say and that you are generous enough to acknowledge their time by offering something that they will in turn enjoy. You could offer them more value that matches your subscribers' interests, connection with your audience with more insight into what you do, it could also be a product offering. As much interaction as you have with your subscribers the better. This will ensure that you build a loyal following that knows that you truly care.
13. Next Steps: Now it's time to fully complete your workbook and determine your unique top email offer ideas. If you're ready to embark on building your email list now, follow the steps that I've laid out from the class and share an image of your lead magnet. They're the most fun to see and I'd love to provide feedback if you request it in the project section. Thank you again for tuning in and I hope that you have pages and pages of notes. The formulas that we talked about, they work magic for your email list. At the end of the day, remember to ask yourself, always, how am I providing value? You'll be all set. I can't wait to hear and see how you do and also be sure to subscribe to my email list as well, because at this point, you know I have some goodies in there. Thank you, guys and I'll see you next time.
Peggy Dean, Top Teacher | The Pigeon Letters
