the bossbabe podcast - 78. The Real Reason Your Email List Isn’t Growing + What To Do About it

Episode Date: February 3, 2020

Want to know our secret sauce for growing our email list? It’s all about email marketing in today’s mini episode with BossBabe’s Head of Sales, Ellen Coule, and Head of Marketing, Kay Snels. We���re sharing our top strategies for increasing email subscribers, such as how to nurture your email list with value-based content, best practices for consistent content creation, attention-grabbing subject lines, and so much more. Tune in for your actionable tips on how to stand out in the inbox and get ready to watch your email list grow.  This episode is sponsored by SOUL CBD. Get 20% off on SOUL CBD products using code: BOSSBABE. https://mysoulcbd.com/

In order to get someone to sign up for your email list, you really want to give them something in exchange. The whole point with this is really to set it up automatically so that you're not having to show up every single day, but you're still able to communicate with people on the regular. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, a place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance, and learning how to balance it all. I'm Kaye Snells, head of marketing at Boss Babe, and you're our host for this week's mini episode. These mini episodes are designed with you in mind. Each episode, a member of at Boss Babe and you're a host for this week's mini episode. These mini episodes are

designed with you in mind. Each episode, a member of team Boss Babe will dive into one topic, whether that's product, sales, marketing, community, or leadership. So consider this your weekly mini training that's super actionable so you can implement it right away. In today's episode, I'm having Ellen Kuhl back onto the podcast. Ellen serves as a head of sales at Boss Babe and has such a wealth of experience in content strategy, organic sales, launches, user experience, you name it. So I'm so excited to have her back on today and tap into her experience. So today we'll chat about how to easily create consistent content to nurture your email list. So as always, screenshot yourself listening to this podcast and share it on your stories along with your biggest takeaway, tagging at bossbabe.inc and hashtag the boss babe podcast.

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gummies which taste so good, bath bombs and sleep capsules. Their products are the tincture that i mentioned gummies which taste so good bath bombs and sleep capsules their products are 100 organic zero thc and third party tested and you can get them at my soul cbd.com and whilst i can speak to my personal experiences using soul cbd our bodies are all different so please consult a doctor or other medical professional prior to deciding if cbd is right for you Also worth noting that I live in California where it is legal to purchase and use CBD so give it a little check to see if it's legal where you are. A boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success.

All right, so let's dive in. Welcome Ellen back to the podcast. Hey Kay, thanks so much for having me. I'm so happy to have you back on. And today we're going to chat about all things, email lists and how to nurture it, how to create content for that. So before we're going to chat about all things email lists and how to nurture it, how to create content for that. So before we dive into that, I would love to ask, when did you get started in this game of content creation, content strategy? We'd love to hear that. Yeah. So we're going to take it way back. So I have been a writer my whole life. I've always loved writing in different forms. And I wasn't sure if I would end up in a career that was writing related. But after college, I got into a really cool

niche eCommerce startup. I was one of the first 12 people on the team. And I grew up the ranks really quickly and got into the marketing department and had my hands in all aspects of the business. Everything from copywriting for ads, for social media, for email marketing, for the website, anything that had words on it, it came across my desk. And so I really fell in love with the art of nurturing relationships and getting people excited about products and services through word. And from there, I learned a lot about how to use email marketing and all of the different marketing campaigns that we had to also increase word of mouth marketing. So it's been a really cool journey from never expecting to be in this kind of career and now being able to use it and just

use my curiosity to learn more and more every day and be able to apply it in real time. I love that. And I feel like you've been able to have such an impact at Boss Babe and basically you're doing great. So we're so excited to have you on the podcast and chat about that a little bit today. So we're going to talk about content and we're going to talk about content specific to nurturing your email list. And so I wanted to bring it back to the Boss Babe email list. So tell me a little bit about some of the things that we do at Boss Babe to grow our email list when it comes to content? Yeah, we do so many fun things and we just love to experiment. So some of the things that we do to grow our email list are hosting webinars, creating free downloads

and different things that are very value-based. So in order to get someone to sign up for your email list, you really want to give them something in exchange. If you have a product-based business, maybe it's a discount or a sample or something like that. And if you have a service-based business, it can be really easy to give kind of like teaser content. So these are mini chunks of content that help a person realize that A, they're interested in you, your business, your content, and B, that they want more. So we love to create things that give people a first step or first few steps into a process that we want to walk them through. And it's a great way to get them on the email list and then show them a little bit more about what we have to offer. I love that. And I think that's very,

very actionable. So basically, if someone is thinking of building their email list, and they had to start from scratch, what would be your main tip? listeners who are in the service-based industry. And so I would recommend for that first teaser content or the thing that gets people on your list to be in the industry, we call this a lead magnet. It has to be something that is super, super attractive to your lead. So you want to reel it back to what is the first thing that people need in order to understand that they need your services or your product. So for Boss Babe, we want people for our Instagrowth Accelerator who really want to grow and monetize their Instagram. That is our ideal client. And so in order to get people on our email list, we offer free Instagram trainings, mini tips, and that gives people something really actionable and valuable to start with. So they can see what kind of content we offer, how it might look if they were to work with us. And then from there, they get really excited because they start to see some wins based on the value-based content that we give them. So by the end of that free training or lead magnet, they're very hungry to work with us and they want to know what is the best next step. And so we can get into that a little bit more,

but that's where we get into funnels. And really that's my favorite part. I love that. And I would like you to dive a little deeper there. So imagine someone applies these tactics, and they have their first 10 subscribers, the 10 email subscribers, or maybe 100, or maybe if they're lucky 1000, right? So imagine you have those first 10, 100 or 1000, what would be your plan of attack? I think a lot of people feel like, wait, I have nothing to say. What should I even be talking about? So what would be your advice there to really create content consistently? Yeah, we see this all the time. People are really excited to get clients or to get people on their email list. But then once they get there,

a lot of people feel like unsure what they can talk about. And will this land? Will this be exciting to people? So I would say once you get people on your list, there's two main things that you want to be thinking about. One are the people who have just subscribed with no lead magnet in mind. Those people, for example, they just join your email list. They're not expecting anything in exchange, but they are giving you their contact information. That's super cool. Once they get on your list, you always want to make sure that you're sending them some kind of a welcome email, introducing them to you, your brand, what you do, maybe giving them some important links. So for

example, if you have a blog or your Instagram, or if you have any lead magnets, you can put that all in the welcome email as a really cool way to nurture that relationship right from the start. You can also set up automations from there so that let's say two days later, you email them again, and maybe you give them a little tip or something of value. And then a few days later, you do the same thing. This is something you can automate so that you're not even having to show up like each day. It just runs in the background and anyone who joins your email list is going to get that sequence automatically regardless of when they join. The other thing to think about is people who join because they opted into your lead magnet.

And so for that email series, you'll also want to automate it. It should start off with the email delivering whatever they opted in for, and then some kind of nurture sequence so that you're following up. I recommend following up with them about 24 hours later and then maybe 48 hours later to ask them, hey, did you have a chance to go through this thing that I sent you? Do you have any questions? Is there anything I can help you with? And that lets people know that you really care about their experience using your lead magnet or whatever you've offered them of value. If you were to give them a discount, let's say you're a product-based business and they opted in for a discount, it might look a little bit different. So that first email might be delivering

the exclusive coupon code. And then maybe 24 hours or 48 hours later, you have an automated email saying, hey, did you get a chance to use that coupon code? If not, here are some of our favorite products or our most popular items for you to check out. So the whole point with this is really to set it up automatically so that you're not having to show up every single day, but you're still able to communicate with people on the regular. So true. And I think that will help a lot of people to show up consistently because being able to schedule it and being able to have these automations in place really does the work for you. That way, you don't have to spend energy every single day to write these emails. You can just batch the

information and we're all about batching at Boss Babe. So I love that. Okay. So someone has signed up to your email and you have been able to send them the first few bits of content. Now, what is your advice for standing out in the inbox? And I want to talk a little bit about emojis and all these things. So when emojis first came out, they were very underutilized in the inbox and basically not a lot of people were using them. So now emojis are just all over, right? So what is your advice to stand out in a subject line in someone's inbox? Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less

complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place, so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to Kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial.

That's Kajabi.com slash Boss Babe. That's such a great question. I think that when it comes to emojis, you definitely don't want to be overusing them, but you really do want to have fun experimenting with them. There are so many different emojis that can help bring attention to your subject line. For example, if you go ahead and look in your inbox right now, you'll see a ton of subject lines that are text only. How can you make those stand out against another text only subject line? It's a little bit difficult. Maybe you can put in some characters or capitalization, but it's still going to just look a little bit plain. So we love to add

in emojis. And then we have found the emojis that really represent our brand. And we use those time and time again, so that when people start to see those emojis over time, they associate it with our brand. And you can do the same for your brand as well. So for example, if you have a plant-based business, maybe the emojis that you gravitate towards are some of the plants, the green little trees and stuff. Or if you're talking about food, there are some really great fruit and veggie emojis that can help catch people's eye by bringing some color into the inbox. So I definitely recommend playing with those. And it's all about experimentation. Some email providers will allow you to A-B test a subject line so you can see in

real time the difference in people's reactions if you were to do the same subject line with and without emojis or if you have the same subject line with emojis but you choose different emojis and you can see how people respond to those. I would say you really do want to be in that mode of experimentation, especially when you're A-B testing. Don't ever feel like, oh, you know, this was a failure. So that means I did a bad job. It's really an experiment

and it's something that it's fun to play around with. So everything is definitely a learning lesson. Once you get an A-B test that shows a clear winner, you can test that again in a different situation. So let's say you found that people respond to the crown emoji for your business over the strawberry emoji, for example. In your next email blast, you might try that again and find that there's a little bit difference in the reaction. Or say you try that winning crown emoji, and the other version has like a star emoji or an arrow or something. And so once you find a winner, you might find that once you compare it in the next email,

that winner from one campaign is not the winner in the next campaign. So it's really just this cool learning experience. I do recommend tracking this. Now, if you're brand new to business, you may not want to add another spreadsheet and another thing to track. And that's totally okay. That definitely more applies to bigger businesses. The bigger sample size or email list that you have, the better and more clear results you'll get. But for people who are just getting into the game, my advice would be play around with it, have fun, see what happens. And you can always get feedback directly from your email subscribers as well by asking for it. Love it. Especially really like all the fruit and vegetable emoji examples. So this brought me to a question.

Ellen, is an avocado a fruit or a vegetable? It's a trick question. I believe it's a fruit. That is correct. I've had this conversation with my boyfriend. I love that. I just wanted to mention like that's my favorite emoji. If I see that, I click on it right away. But so I just wanted to throw a quick trick question in there for you. The more you know, that brings up something as well. So one thing to know with using emojis in your subject line is that different mobile or

desktop devices and different browsers may not register every single emoji. So it is really important, the bigger the audience you have, that you are seeing how these subject lines and emails show up in different browsers. There's different tools you can use to see that. But there are certain emojis that are not on different platforms. So you want to stay away from the lesser used emojis sometimes because it may show up as like a little square instead of that actual emoji. So funny. That's one of the questions I had written down for you to make sure that we mentioned that because there are so many that break. So I think it's very important to test it ahead of time. And this goes not just for email, it goes across all social

channels. So I really love that you brought up that example. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about frequency. How often is too often in your opinion? So that really depends on your audience and the type of content that you're sending. So if you're sending super valuable content, there's not really a maximum frequency. You probably wouldn't want to email people more than once per day. But if it's super valuable, people will be really hungry to open those. I have someone that I subscribe to who sends an email every single morning, and I really look forward to it.

But then there are other people who email me once a week, and it's not value-based content. And to me, that's just too frequent to receive those emails. So it has made me want to unsubscribe. So I would, again, go back to experimentation and then also be thinking about how can I show up and provide value? It doesn't always have to be a tip or trick or a freebie. It can just be for us. Sometimes it's just a message of empowerment and it makes people want to read your email. The more they open an email and find value, the more likely they are going to want to open that

next email or whitelist your email so that it comes straight through to their primary tab and doesn't end up in their spam box. So for people who are just starting out, I would say stick with a frequency that feels comfortable and doable and sustainable for you. Maybe that's once a week. For other people, it might be once every two weeks. You can always increase, but you don't really want to start off strong and then start to peter out over time. It'd be better to keep that consistency. Same with Instagram stories, same with blogging or any other medium. You want to choose something that feels really sustainable and doable for you. That's great. And I think that brings us a little bit to the whole conversation around, okay, social channels are great, but email is queen. So I want to talk a little bit to the whole conversation around, okay, social channels are great,

but email is queen. So I want to talk a little bit about that. A lot of people listening might have started their Instagram. They noticed, oh my God, Instagram is taking off. Everyone is finding so many clients or selling so many products through Instagram. But a lot of people might not have gotten started on email. So if someone's listening to this and wants to have a quick takeaway, like where would you say they start? account on something like MailChimp or something that's very easy to use, very user-friendly for both you and for the people receiving the email. MailChimp is a really great one. I think they still offer free accounts up to like a thousand subscribers. So that's a really good one. It's what I started out with. And so from there, you can create different email lists. You might just start with one main list and create a very simple way for people to opt in.

I don't use MailChimp anymore, but when I used to use it, they allow you to create a simple landing page. And that's super cool because once you have a landing page, you can give out that link in your Instagram bio or put it on your website. You can also embed that contact form into your website so that people who land on your website can easily sign up to receive your emails. From there, again, you'll want to start out with having some kind of automated welcome email so that as soon as somebody subscribes, they receive some form of communication from you, welcoming

them to your brand, letting them know all the things that they really need to know up front, such as those important links or important dates. I would definitely keep that first welcome email as something that is evergreen. So for example, you don't want to put any information in there that you're going to have to go in and edit later, unless you want to set that reminder to yourself to make sure that you update it on time. Otherwise, keep that email just really nice, welcoming and let them know what else they can expect from you. For example, you might say, Hey, welcome, here are links to my Instagram. Here's where you can find my best blog posts. And you can expect to hear from me a few times a week. And that lets them know what to expect

from you and what to do next. If you have any free lead magnets for people, you can also let them know in that welcome email. Or you could even give them that freebie right up front or give them that discount code or a tip or something of value that will make them feel really excited that they signed up for your email list. Because again, we're really competing for attention in the inbox. I think that was such a good recap. And I think a lot of people got tons of value out of that. So I want to thank you once again for coming on to the podcast today. It's always such a good time. So if you enjoyed this episode, feel free to tag us. Our Instagram handles are our names. So it's at Ellen Kuhl

and at Kay Snells. And let us know how much you enjoyed this episode, what your takeaways were. We would love to know that. So thank you so much for coming on to the podcast today, Ellen. Thanks. And don't forget to subscribe at bossbabe.com slash all the news. That way you can take a sneak peek into what we do. Love that plug, Ellen. Bye. Bye. If you loved this episode, please subscribe, download a few more, and please leave us a review. I really want to hear what you enjoyed, what your main takeaways were, and I also want to know what you want to hear us talk about next. To say thanks for leaving us a review, we'll send you a copy of The Boss Babe 25. The Boss Babe 25 is the 25 essential resources you need for personal and professional growth. It covers everything from our favorite rituals, books, and hacks.

If you want a copy, just leave us a review, screenshot it, and send to podcast at bossbib.com. We will then email you a copy ASAP. And since we love Instagram, you can go to the hashtag thebossbibpodcast and find our latest post and leave a question in the comments. We love reading through the comments and we'll make sure to answer it on our next podcast.