Hi there, welcome back to the Simple SEO Podcast. I want to talk about something a little different today and that is email marketing and why email marketing matters to you, especially as a solopreneur or a small business owner. So we're working so hard here to learn all about search engine optimization and how to drive traffic to our websites. Why wouldn't we want to work to capture that? traffic. So your email list and growing your email list is a really important part of our overall focus here, which is on building that sales funnel or online marketing funnel for your business. So we use our search engine optimization work. to fuel the traffic to really get that traffic coming to our websites. Once we've got that traffic coming in and people are finding us on Google or they're finding us on Pinterest or are finding our podcast, whatever it is, then they're coming to the website. And now what we want to do is to have something that captures their attention. so that they want to join our email list, because once you have someone on your email list, you are able to continue to provide them value and service them and nurture them over time in a way that you cannot from social media or other marketing channels. The challenge with social media is that most of the people who follow you do not see Any of the content that you put out, if you think about it, it's what is it? 8 percent of your followers will see a post on average and you really have to play with the algorithm in order to get visibility and you have to engage and there's just so much that goes on there. But with email marketing, if you're sending an email on a regular basis and you're following some of the best practices that I'm going to talk about in a minute, you are landing in your ideal customer, your audience's inbox each week or each day or whatever your cadence is. You're able to build that connection with them. So I want to kind of make sure everybody understands like. That's why we're doing this and why we're talking more about email marketing and why I'm talking more about your sales funnel, because we're going to work on expanding out this year. You and I are going to work and we're going to expand out. We've got our SEO going or you're learning, you've taken simple SEO content, you're getting ready to take that. Now that we've got the traffic coming in, we want to capture that traffic. So I am working on an email marketing program for you. I'm hoping to have that probably in Q3, just so you know, that is in the works because That's really important. If we're going to get people to the website, we want to make sure that we get them on our email list too. And I'm going to teach you how to do that. So that's why we're talking about it. Why I'm including more on email marketing on this podcast, because I want you to be able to learn all the different parts of putting together this sales funnel and really creating this profitable online business that you're wanting to create, or you're working on building. So what we want to talk about is the return on investment on email marketing. It is one of the highest ROI channels because again, you're able to be there consistently. You have a one way communication, actually have two way communication with your ideal customer because you can email them and they can email you back if they have a question or they're curious about something, they can hit reply. I have people hit reply and send questions back or ask me questions about things regularly. That lets you build that trust. They get to know you, they trust you, they want to work with you and that's really important. So we do see a larger ROI or return on investment on email marketing. I've seen Um, studies that have said anywhere from 36 to 42 back for every dollar you invest in email marketing. So there's a really good return there. And I truly do believe after being in marketing for almost 20 years, overseeing email campaigns for multiple companies and multiple clients, I do believe very strongly in the power of email marketing because you land back in that inbox. Staying top of mind you're there when they need a solution and that's really important So the other thing we want to talk about it's gonna build the trust and it's going to help you stay top of mind which is so important when somebody's getting ready to make a Purchase decision you want to be one of the people that they consider working with so now let's talk about some best Practices like if you don't yet have an email list because I do get these questions. Hey Rachel I don't know how to do this. I like, I hear you. I'm listening. It sounds great, but I'm not really sure what to do. So the simplest way to break this down is you're going to want to have a few pieces of tech and a few things that you're going to take care of. You're going to want to create what we call an opt in. You may also hear it referred to as a valuable freebie offer, a freebie, whatever it is, what it amounts to is it's something that you're going to offer your audience in exchange for their email address. And you're going to send that to them right away. And I did get an amazing question from a new student the other day saying, how do I send that? Like, I know you're not teaching about this, but you know, how do I send this? So you're going to want an email service. provider. So there are different companies out there that you can partner with. You can, you don't really partner with them as much as you pay them for access to their platform. MailChimp is one of the original. It's free up to like 2000 subscribers. It's It's not the easiest one to work with from my experience like working with it It's limited as to what it can do, but also it's free for when you're first starting out I know a lot of people use kit which used to be convert kit some use flow desk. There are lots of options I personally use active campaign. I've used it for years now. It is not the most Cost effective. It's not the cheapest of the options. It is a little more expensive than some of them But it also has the tagging I want and it has the ability to set up the Automations and all the things that I really want in a more advanced email marketing solution So as I'm working on putting together this email marketing course this summer, I will be looking at all of the different options and I'll be helping you select the ones that I think are the best for small business owners. So as of today, I don't have a recommendation, but I will have a recommendation for you for that once that new course is ready, because, um, I don't necessarily think that active campaign is the right choice for everybody. It may be the right choice for some. of my listeners, but not for everybody. And so I want to kind of look and see what's going to be the easiest one to work with and the best price point and all of that. So you're going to want to choose an email service provider if you don't have one yet. You're not going to send your opt in to your new subscriber via your personal email. So we're going to want to have something that we're able to automate. You're going to also need to have a landing page. That's a page on your website where you can send someone to get your product. freebie where they can request it. If you're not sure what that looks like, go to the freebies tab on my website, etchedmarketing. com forward slash freebies, and click on whichever one sounds the best to you. So there's the SEO 101 class, there's the beginner's guide to SEO, there's the podcast, SEO guide, and there's an email marketing guide. Go ahead and click on whichever one you need, whichever one's going to help you. Take a look at the page just to kind of get a feel for what information you would want to put on your landing page, how you help someone decide if this is what they're looking for. Go ahead and sign up. When you sign up for it, you're going to get, um, emails from me. And that's what you need to do also. You need to send a welcome sequence. You need to deliver the item that they've requested. So that's the very first email is to send out that email that that item that they've requested. It can be a direct download link. That's what I do at the moment is I just send a download link that they can use to download the document from Google Drive. Um, I've tried different things over the years and that really does seem like it is. the simplest and easiest for people to understand. And most people are familiar with that. Um, I've tried other setups that caused confusion for people. So I personally just went to that route because it does work best for you, for my listener. So you're going to set up your delivery and then you're going to want to do a little welcome sequence. Anywhere from seven to ten days worth of emails that kind of welcome them and introduce you and take that next step with their journey. So whatever your opt in is, you share some resources. So like for me, if you're opting in for the beginner's SEO guide, that one actually has a longer funnel. And so you opt in and you get the guide, and then you get invited to the webinar, the SEO 101 webinar. And then you get some resources. You get things like a podcast episode or a blog post that's all about like starting out with SEO and learning. And then Um, it actually goes into some objections and things that people might feel why they couldn't do SEO or what they wouldn't want to do. All of that. And it actually is built out. I'm working on building it out to 90 days based on, um, guidance from my mentor. I don't have it at 90 days yet, but that's my longest one. My other ones, my podcast one and my email marketing one are shorter. They just send you that guide. They welcome you. They give you, you know, a few resources. You want to. I was. establish yourself as the guide that can help this new person, this new subscriber, because they have a problem. They have something they're looking for, something that they need help with. And that's why they've requested your freebie in the first place. So you want to provide value and be helpful and nurture them. That's what your ongoing emails. through that welcome sequence are starting to establish that connection, then it's very, very important. Do not ghost your new follower here. Okay. Don't ever just send them one email and be like, cool. See ya. You want to make sure. that you're keeping in touch with them on a regular basis. I personally recommend one email a week. I find that that's plenty. I know some people will email more often than that when they're in your traditional email. When they're in the first week or so and they've just gotten your opt in, people do often email daily. I personally don't like doing it daily, so I go every two days. I feel like people need a little bit of a breather and I've gotten that feedback from people before. So, uh, I go two days. Most people are going to recommend that you email every day. Once you're through that initial sequence you've welcomed to them, then that's when you go into what we call just like our ongoing weekly email. And that one you want to really focus on being consistent. You want to send that email out at the same time on the same day each week, so that your audience begins to, it's kind of the same as your podcast. You want to make sure that your audience is building you into their schedule. You are part of their life. They know they listen to your podcast on Tuesdays, or they read your blog post on Wednesdays, or your email lands in their inbox on Thursdays. That's really what you want to do is to put yourself into their world and their week. And the way you do that is by being consistent. And by making sure that you're really focusing on content that helps them and provides value. You did, you never want to send something that people are like, yeah, I already knew that. Like you really want them to feel that they are getting value in exchange for their time. Because if you're sending things that are of value, when they're ready to purchase, they're more likely to purchase from you. If you are wasting their time, they're not going to give you their Um, their money because their money is hard earned and they don't want to waste it. And if your emails waste their time, they're not going to have that same confidence in whatever it is that you're selling. So it's really important that you are providing value for them. And then the other thing people often ask are like, what are the metrics, Rachel? What am I supposed to be going for? So with email marketing, when you're sending your regular weekly emails, you generally want to see about a 30 to 40%. open rate. And I know there's some questions as to whether or not we can even count open rates, if we really should look at them anymore. I still do. And I do like to see something between that 30 and 40 percent mark, because not everybody's going to open every message that you send. And I get that, but you want to make sure that people. are on average opening your emails. You also want to look at your click through rate especially if you have a link to a blog post, a podcast episode, maybe you're running a promotion and you have a webinar or something like that. You want to see a click through rate of at least one percent. You really want to pay attention to are people who open my email clicking on whatever it is that I'm sharing there, or are they responding back and replying if I'm asking them to do that? Now your initial delivery emails, those very first ones when they sign up for your freebie, those should have higher numbers from an open rate and a click through rate standpoint. If they Don't. If you've got less than 50 percent of the people who request your document opening your email, you probably have an issue with your subject line and you should probably test it and try something different. If you see that you have 1 percent of the people downloading or clicking to download your freebie, You have a problem because they've already said, yes, I want this, but they're not taking that next step of actually downloading it or actually using it. You're not going to be able to build that relationship with them. They're not going to be as likely to buy from you in the future. So you do definitely want to look at those things and kind of get a feel for it. As I work on the email marketing course, I'm going to teach you a lot more about this. It's the same as I do with simple SEO content. So that you really understand what you're working with and what your numbers are and all of that so you know if what's if what you're doing is good or bad. The other number I want to give you real quick is your landing page. So when you have your freebie, you have your landing page and people are signing up for your freebie. You want at least 50 percent of the people who come to that page. to sign up for your freebie. So if you have a landing page where 10 out of every 100 people who come to your page sign up for your freebie, your landing page is not working. So we really want to see it in that 50 percent or above, 50 to 60 is target, um, mine currently are like 60 to 80. So you really want to make sure that your landing pages are speaking to your ideal customer. Not everybody who comes to your page is going to sign up. Even if they're interested in it, they're not all going to do it. But you do want to make sure the majority of the people are. I hope you found this episode really super helpful. If you're interested in learning more about building an email list and using email marketing to help grow your business, be sure and request the beginner's guide to email list building. It's at the freebies tab, etchedmarketing. com forward slash freebies. It's, I believe the last one there. Make sure you do get that because by. Downloading that it's going to walk you through kind of how you do this, what you do, but you also will be the very first to know when the email marketing course is ready and open for enrollment. And I'm super excited to continue working on that and get that out there for you. Like I said, hopefully in the early fall, I'm going to plan on working on it over the summer of 2025. five, um, during summer break. So that's my summer break project is to work on that and get it ready for you. All right. That is it for today. I will see you back here next week and, uh, start to pencil in. I don't have the exact date to share with you just because some really exciting things have happened for me in the business in the last couple of days. And I'm trying to shake out everything with our calendar before. Before I officially share the dates, but in April, I will be teaching a live training class for the SEO course all about like the SEO mistakes that people are making that hurt your chances of showing up on Google and getting more traffic to your website and all of that. So stay tuned. I'll be sharing those dates shortly. And if I've got the dates ready to go, I will put a note in the description here so that you can get started. signed up and all of that, but it was originally going to be the week of April 7th, but it turns out I'm going to be traveling to Nashville that week for a mastermind. So I will not be able to be teaching that same week. So right now I think it's going to be the week of April 28th, but I need to confirm that once it's confirmed, I'll let you know for sure. But I'd love to have you join me in that class and learn. a little bit more about like why things don't work. And then more importantly, if you're ready, join me in simple SEO content so we can start putting this part of your funnel together so that when the email course is ready, you've already got the traffic coming into your website. You're ready to start capturing the traffic with your email list. So we're going to work on this together and get you all set up. I want you to have a really good profitable funnel for your online business. getting up and ready and set to go. All right. I'll see you back here next week. Bye for now.