[inaudible] . Welcome
Speaker 2back to the Jasmine star show. I am so excited about this episode because when I first started my business in 2007 people told me to build my email list, but I didn't really understand why, so I just put a sign up for my newsletter button on my blog. I would occasionally send newsletters about what I was up to, but I wasn't sending them with intention or strategy. So let's back up a tiny bit. I want to paint the scene to when the first time I actually heard about the word newsletter specifically in relation to a business. I was sitting across the table from an industry peer. He was a photographer and I was a photographer and he was talking about how photographers in the future we're going to market their business via email. And I was like, okay, via email. Got it. But I should have said like God , it is with a question Mark because I just didn't understand why somebody would want to read a newsletter from a photographer and I just really didn't know what I would write about or what would I say. But I trusted him and so I just followed his advice. So let's take a pause here and just let you know even if I ask you to do something, but you really don't get it. First things first, give yourself the space and grace to figure out the why and how it would work for you. Because it wasn't until 2016 y'all, that is almost a decade later. Now during this time I was still building out my newsletter. It's still randomly sending newsletters, but it wasn't here again without a plan or a strategy. And then all of a sudden 2016 rolls around and I started to seriously build my email list and I quickly realized that it was the strongest form of communication and the best way to build trust. And I was building trust by regularly popping into people's inboxes. Now if you have signed up for my newsletter, Hey, you know, I love sending you a love note every Tuesday. It's how I do booboo. Okay? So I should probably take a second and let you know that clearly if you've listened to the podcast, you know I love Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn and YouTube and Twitter, like all things right? I will be the first to say though, I do not recommend putting all of your marketing eggs in the social media basket because we don't own our followers, right? Like if Instagram or Facebook decides to disappear tomorrow, there's nothing we can do about it. So I am a huge fan of diversifying my marketing efforts in. I encourage you to do the same, but I'm not going to say go on and do this. Let me just lay a framework to see if this is an alignment to your business. In order to grow our businesses in the long term , we need a way to connect with our community on a deeper place, specifically in a place we own and friends, we own our email list. So let's get into the nitty gritty here. Let's ask ourselves a question. Why should I have an email list of question number one? Well, according to a 2017 study by John Valenti, one email list subscriber is about between 25 cents to a dollar per month in income generation. Now, just thinking about that, what would you do with another couple hundred or even a couple of thousands of dollars per month in revenue? Like let's just say you have 500 people on an email subscriber list and Jon Valenti study says that you can get up to a dollar. Just having 500 people on an email list is an extra $500 per month. Sure, it works to get there, but my gosh, it also works for you. This is definitely true in my business too. Every week my newsletter list is the number one way I connect with people, people who have been following my journey, prospective customers, podcast listeners. I literally am using my newsletter list not to sell, but to drive connections and to allow people to get to know me better because when people get to know me better, there's a higher likelihood of them investing. Maybe not in something. Now, maybe something in the future. Now that we know how powerful newsletters can be in your marketing strategy, how do we get people to sign up? Here's the thing, people don't want to randomly sign up for someone's list. Our email inboxes are already credited enough, right? Okay, so in order to gain subscribers, you have to give them something for free, AKA a freebie. Okay, so question number two, what is a freebie and how do I implement it? Everybody is something of value that you give your audience in exchange for their email address. It's often referred to in the digital marketing world as a lead magnet. Now, if you're thinking, why would anyone want to sign up to hear for me, I got you hunted child sweet thing, hang tight. I am going to give you my free guide, 10 freebie ideas to start building your email list today. You can grab that by simply heading to Jasmine, star.com forward slash freebie ideas to ensure that you create a freebie that your audience actually wants. Then you get to cultivate an email list that you're proud of and build the business of your dreams. Again, that's Jasmine, star.com forward slash freebie ideas. Trust me on this one. You're going to want it. Now, before I get into question number three, can we just call this out for what it is like , did you just see what I did? I said, Hey guys, I want to give you something for free. A free resource on how to create freebies, so like let's strip this away, right? Like I'm saying, Hey guys, sign up for my freebie around freebies. I'm actually encouraging you to go through this process so you can experience what it's like and then see how you can implement it. Any your business friends, this is like a scene out of inception. Is this like super meta , like a free before freebie maybe, but I am always the kind of person who wants to experience something as a consumer before I actually implement it in my business. Just follow the pattern. Friends, follow the pattern. Now let's get into question number three. After creating your freebie, what do you do with it? Okay, so once you create your freebie, you're going to need to create a landing page and an email marketing system. You can use MailChimp float S convert K infusion soft . Now this is where somebody is going to enter their name and their email address. Now I am not sponsored, I am not endorsing any one of these services, but I'm just encouraging you to do a little homework because a lot of times you can start building your newsletter list for free before they actually charge you for their service. And a little bit of homework goes a long way. So once you signed up for your email service provider, you're going to create an email that will automatically be triggered to deliver the freebie. Once your audience submits their name and email. Again, if you were to sign up for my freebies, Jasmine star.com board slash freebie ideas, what you're going to do is you're gonna put your name and your email address in the minute that you do that, you're going to be automatically sent an email that gives you the thing I want to deliver on. Now setting up this automation, it's going to vary depending on what platform you use, but most email marketing systems have helped articles for you to learn how to do this. Don't worry, I'm telling you I am not techie whatsoever and if I can do it, you could totally do it. They have these really awesome tutorials that you can walk through step by step to ensure that you're getting it done easily and effectively. So now we get to the point of this short conversation of, okay, I'm going to try to build my newsletter list and then you're going to figure out what your freebie is and now what we're going to do is advertise it like how do you actually get people on your email list? Well, after you have a landing page and an email to deliver your freebie and you have tested it yourself, now you can start advertising. You can add a link to your landing page in your social media bios. You can create social posts about it. You could post about it on your website, or you can even try creating Facebook or Google ads if you're feeling really ambitious. Every time someone enters their email address into a landing page, they automatically receive their freebie and follow up. You have a new subscriber. Now, what do you say before we actually get into the logistics of what you say? I kind of want to peel this back because I don't want to say anything. I don't do myself, so I want you to keep me accountable. If you go to my social platforms, I'm talking about LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook. If you go to my website, [inaudible] dot com you don't get one, you get four opportunities to get a freebie to get a resource. I'm doing this because I understand that far before you and I will ever connect truly on social that you need to get something from me in order to build trust. Now, could you trust me without getting a freebie? Yeah, sure, of course. But if you got a freebie, does it help? There's a good chance that you're listening that I have spoken on this podcast about a productivity guide. I've spoken about an Instagram story checklist. I have spoken about Instagram story solutions. I have spoken about branding guides. I have created a ton of resources because I want to make sure that I have a free resource to serve you well and you get to know me. And then over time we build trust. So when I talk about advertising it, I want you to keep me accountable, could check out my resources. I want you to, on my website, I want to go to social. And occasionally every so often you will also see me running ads on Instagram or Facebook to a freebie. Why? Because this build trust and if I build that list and I'm serving you well, then we're both winning along the way. So now let's get into what you do. After you have an email list, I want you to start nurturing your email list by sending them email newsletters. Remember, before, before you try to sell to your subscribers, you have to provide value to them. Let's talk about the best email marketing practices for small businesses. Number one, keep it consistent and don't care how often you're sending a newsletter, but whatever it is, pick a number and stick to it. The best way to build trust with your audience is predictability and consistency. Let your audience grow to expect when you will email them and they are far more likely to trust you to converse, to communicate, to endorse, and then maybe to become a customer. No . If you'll notice what I'm doing every Tuesday, you're going to get an email from me. Number two, keep it different. I want you to look at what other people are doing in your industry and then try something different because that is going to be the thing that gets people to engage. When you make your newsletter not all about you and all about your business, but you make it about them, your audience will love you and they're going to want to continue to open it to see like, Hey, what's this surprise inside and how is it going to make my life, my day or my business or something I care about better? Number three, keep it valuable. Ask yourself, what does my audience want to hear and then send that. The most important email marketing practice I can share is to offer value and yes, that means to not always be selling something. Businesses that only sell to their email list have a much higher unsubscribe rate than ones that take time to educate, entertain, and empower their subscribers, right? If you've ever received an email from my newsletter list, it's really, I like to think of it as a hug, a loving kick in the pants and like getting my knuckles rubbing on your head like a nugget . Like, Hey, you got this. Keep pushing on. Like that's what I try to send every single week. I want conversations with you. You know what I'm saying? I want you to open the email, take a deep breath and uh , that's what I needed to read today. Lastly, keep it thoughtful. A common myth about email marketing is that you can't send long emails, but I would challenge that and I would say that there's no such thing as an email that's too long or too short. I only think there's the running the risk of being too boring and I don't think that you can be boring if you, one , you really care about what you're writing about. And two , you really care about who's reading it. I am a believer that your emails should have a beginning, middle and end, and then it doesn't matter how long they are because they're thoughtful and they're intentional. As we come to the end of this episode, I want to tell you a story. To be honest, back in the day after somebody suggested that I started a newsletter, I thought it was odd. Like I kinda like put it off for a few weeks. But then I was like, okay, I love to write and I love connecting with people. So I'm like, what's the worst that can happen? Let's do this. So then I kind of started sending tips and tricks. I had pop in their inbox and it asked like, how are you doing? Or I'd give them a little motivation for the day and then something magical happened. Newsletters allow me to create personal connection with people like back in 2007 2008 he doesn't tend to those as well. I kind of thought newsletters would become like a memory, but they did it kind of like that. LL cool J song, don't call it a comeback. I never left a anybody. Is there anybody out there who gets that? I have to tell you that newsletters became my secret weapon to grow my business by showing up in people's inboxes weekly. They felt like they could trust me when he emailed about new projects I was working on. My subscribers wanted to be part of it. Why we were pen pals. It was crazy. So friend, if you use these tips and best practices, I shared with you to craft your email marketing strategy, you are going to be a lot better off than I was in 2007 in. Seriously, grab those 10 freebie ideas on Jasmine, star.com forward slash freebie ideas because not only will you get a really awesome guide and not only will you actually get to experience the process to see what you could build in your business, but then you'll be pen pals with me and maybe just maybe you'll get some more ideas for your own newsletter list too. One last thing before I go, I started this podcast because I craved deeper connections, not just with people but with you. So thank you. Like right now. Thank you for listening and for those who leave a review. Thank you. I read every single one and I want to give a special shout out to Abby and Brandon who left a recent review. They said, Jasmine gives it to you straight. She's a kick in the pants that you need and makes you feel like you can truly do anything. Well, Abby and Brandon, thank you so much. I'm out here kicking pants every day and eat . Cruz said, thank you Jasmine. I'm so happy to have found you in your content. I'm a recent social curator and in just four days of absorbing your abundant information, I am hooked in already on my way to show up eat crews . I want you to show up until you blow up. Go on. And Nicole Mylene , she writes, Jasmine's blend of heart, rebel, hope and brave business strategy will inspire fresh dreams and blaze a path towards their creation. Don't miss an episode. Nicole Cruz , Abby and Brandon. I saw your comments and I read them and they made my day. So this is me creeping across the podcast. Fear to say thank you. I just want to say how much I appreciate the reviews because it ensures that our message of perseverance, hope, and hustle gets out into the world. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Jasmine star show. Thank you so much for listening and I hope to catch you in your inbox very soon.
Speaker 1[inaudible] .