If I Had Just $1 for Marketing, It'd Be Email. Here's Why (and 5 Steps to Nail It Today!)
Stop mistaking platforms – Substack isn't email marketing
If I had to choose just one way to do marketing, it would be email marketing.
If I had just $1 to spend on your marketing, I’d spend it on email marketing.
Why?
It’s easy to start (for free).
It has the biggest return on investment (ROI).
It can be automated to save time.
You build a personal relationship that can turn a subscriber into a client.
If you need THE best money-making machine for your (or any) business, it’s definitely email marketing.
It’s a shame that many hesitate to start because they’re overwhelmed with too many options:
What platform to choose?
How to collect subscribers?
What to write?
Who will be writing them?
It’s overwhelming.
It seems time-consuming and expensive.
But it doesn’t have to be.
I’ve been using email marketing since 2010 — I was a parenting blogger in my home country, Serbia and learned a lot from my email marketing mistakes.
During the last 15 years, I’ve learned a few things about Active Campaign, MailChimp, and Convert Kit — I can recommend the right email platform for you.
They all have positives and negatives, but the bottom line is:
Email marketing has the best ROI (return of investment). But you need to invest either:
- Time and knowledge or
- Money
to achieve sustainable growth and a return on your investment and profit,
What to do if you still haven’t started collecting your subscribers and sending a newsletter?
First, you’re not late.
Take time to plan and prepare.
Take a piece of paper and write down:
>> Step 1:
List your assets (resources, time, frequency you can manage, knowledge you need to run everything smoothly). You need to know ahead how often you can send emails, how much time you’d need to create each issue, and what topics will be your primary focus.
If you know you don’t have time to write a regular newsletter, you can create an evergreen newsletter with two sequences - welcome and sales sequence. Ask me how, and I’ll teach you.
>> Step 2:
Set up SMART marketing goals for your newsletter — they need to be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-bound: read the explanation and example here.
>> Step 3:
Choose the right email platform for you.
To be clear, I love and use Substack, but it’s more blogging than an email marketing platform. If you don’t have the option to send sequences, use templates, segment and automate your emails, that’s not an email marketing platform.
Choosing the right platform for you is not easy - to help you, I made this complimentary, simple newsletter platform comparison table in Notion. Save it (duplicate in your Notion), as I’ll be updating it with more details. (if you don’t have Notion, you can sign up here).
>> Step 4:
Set up your sign-up forms, and landing pages and start basic segmentation. Don’t overcomplicate; go step by step. Create a simple lead magnet that will help you with collecting new emails.
>> Step 5:
Write a welcome sequence: a series of 5–6 emails that need to tell your story, build trust, and naturally present your offer. Set up basic segmentation and tagging around it.
>> Step 6: BONUS
List your content pillars and all ideas around them so you cover the most important topics. If you do it in a smart way, you can easily cover the entire year of newsletter content.
Use an idea bank to populate all ideas. Don’t have an Idea Bank? I created one for you - it’s free.
So, you have two roads:
DIY — learn and apply what you have learned.
Hire someone to help you. I have “Done for you Service” to help you get started.
Start with learning the basics:
Choosing the right email marketing platform for you.
Setting up your email platform, landing pages, and forms.
Crafting your welcome sequence.
Doing basic segmentation and automation.
I can help you with this: Register today for my FREE 5-day email course and learn how to start email marketing easily and on a budget.
Why take my email course? (besides the fact it’s free)
Content marketing strategist specialised in turning words into more profit for you.
My discipline and love for writing brought me immense joy as a journalist, blogger, content marketing strategist and author.
I’ve been living from writing since 2000.
I wrote more than 6 Million words online in English and Serbian.
I reached more than 150.000 people with my emails.
Most important, I learned how to write good stories. If you ask my husband to describe my writing, he’d say:
“She once wrote a story about toilet paper that made people cry”.