Email Over Everything: Why Your Inbox Matters More Than Your Feed

Your Dream Business

In this episode I discuss the critical importance of prioritising email communication over social media for business owners. It addresses common reasons why business owners neglect emailing their lists and provides actionable strategies to overcome these barriers. I also outline the benefits of a consistent email strategy and offer tips on how to create engaging content for emails. The episode also includes steps to get started with regular emailing and emphasizes the long-term value of maintaining an email list for business success.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

1. Overcoming excuses: Addressing common reasons for not emailing (fear of bothering people, lack of content ideas, time constraints, small list size)
2. Creating an effective email strategy: Deciding on email frequency, format (love letter or newsletter), and content type
3. Consistency is key: The importance of regular email communication and building a relationship with your audience

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LINKS TO RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY’S EPISODE

Connect with Teresa on Website, The Club, Sign up to Teresa's email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter

Transcription

One of the biggest mistakes that I see business owners make is choosing to do social media over sending emails. As a business owner, there's a big focus on posting and being consistent on social media. And I get it. I'm not saying you shouldn't. However, the business owners that I work with that are hugely successful are the business owners who are prioritizing their email list. Yes, they are posting on social media, but that is never at the detriment of then not sending an email to their list. In today's podcast, I'm addressing some of the reasons you might not be consistent in sending emails, or you might not be sending emails at all and how we can overcome them. And then the three things that you need to make sure that you are consistently sending emails. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Your Business Podcast. I'm your host, Teresa Heath-Wareing. How are you doing this week? Okay. This week I want to give you a little bit of tough love, but bear with me. It's going to be fine. It will be said with love, but I just want to spend some time this week talking about [00:02:00] sending emails and I can hear the collective groan. I'm sure. And some people are probably like, yes, I send emails. I'm fine. And other people are like, yeah, that's on my list. I keep meaning to do it. But the reason I wanted to talk about it is it's been coming up in my world where I've been having conversations with people. About their marketing and about getting visible and letting them be seen and how they are marketing themselves and their business. And I've had a number of people say to me that they are not consistent on email. They have not been emailing their list and yet they are working really hard to be consistent on social media. And it only occurred to me just the other day that. That is crazy. The fact of why would we be consistent on social media, a platform that we don't control, a platform that does not allow everyone to see our content and is based on an algorithm, and [00:03:00] yet when people have signed up to an email list to say to us, we want to hear more from you, that we don't email them. It just seems absolute madness to me. So that's why I wanted to do today's podcast about emails and why we should be putting as much time into sending emails as we do into posting on social media. And it's funny, I keep saying recently that I feel very anti social media and that is not the case at all. I am going through some stuff myself in terms of social media and what I'm going to do because my team changed and, and now I've been doing my own, which if you have been to my Instagram, you will see there is a lack of social media. And weirdly, it hasn't had any massively effective, massive effect to me. In fact, weirdly, I'm getting more followers, which is very odd because I am not posting anywhere near as much as we used to. However, I am consistent on email and always have been. Every Monday and Thursday now, [00:04:00] you get an email if you're on my list. Monday, I tell you what's coming up on the podcast and Thursday, I give you some value in some other way. So like I said, it really blew my mind that people, you know, and you might be sat there thinking, yeah, I have been posting on social media, but I have not emailed my list. So what I want to look at first is why maybe you're not sending emails. What is stopping you from sending those emails? Because I do think there is a definite brain block when it comes to sending emails more so than posting on social media. I wrote down some reasons why I think you maybe are not sending emails. And I'm going to address each one. So if any of these resonate for you, then brilliant. Hopefully listen to what I have to say, and hopefully this will convince you otherwise. So the first thing is people will say to me, they feel uncomfortable sending emails because they don't want to bother them. Okay, so this is not you force feeding someone something. This is something that someone [00:05:00] has opted into and at any point you welcome them to unsubscribe if it's not for them anymore. So this isn't something that you are like forcing ads at them or your, and this often can come down to, okay, well, what do you think is going to bother them and the content? And we're going to get to that bit. But if you think this is going to bother them, I want to remind you that they opted in for this. You should not have, and I'm sure you didn't just add people to your email list. People have actually opted in. So you're not bothering them. You are doing the thing that they've asked you to do. The other thing that's really important when you think, Oh, I don't want to bother them. I don't want to irritate them. It's as long as you tell them what they can expect and manage their expectations, then don't worry about it. Like. If it's too much, if two emails a week is too much for some people, they will unsubscribe. And I used to send three emails a week and I know, you know, some people send more than that. But if [00:06:00] it's too much, then they will unsubscribe and therefore they're not right for your email list and not right for you. However, as long as you're saying to them, this is what I'm going to do and you hold that commitment, then that's up to them to decide. So you're not going to bother them they have opted in for your email. It's even kind of more. Like you're potentially bothering someone more on social media. Now I know they followed you, but they could be scrolling through looking at dog reels, which is what my husband sends me all the time. And then suddenly they get a reel about something business. And then they might think, oh no, I don't want that. When they're opening your email, they are choosing to open and read your email. They are probably in a position where they open and read emails. So I tend to do mine sat at my desk, or obviously if I look at my phone, I know I'm opting in to do that. So This is not bothering them. This is actually giving them the thing that they've asked for, the first point. The second point, you've no idea what to send in an email, which again, like when I talk about this, if you go blows my mind, [00:07:00] because if you are doing social media content or if you are having conversations with customers, then you will know what to send in an email. All it is, is content in a different format. So if you have done a social media post where you have discussed something in your business or a problem that your customers have, then. Just do that same, but a bit slightly longer version in an email. It doesn't even have to be in a longer version. You could literally just put the same amount of text in an email and have it be a super short email if you want to. So in terms of what do you send them, you're not rewriting the rule book here. You are with however you are creating content. And if you're creating long form content like I am, and in fact, the next solo episode I'm going to do is going to be talking about why everyone should have long form content. If you're doing long form content, then I am spending, I don't know how long this episode will be, potentially 20 minutes long, telling you about something. Well, I could [00:08:00] take a snippet of this and put it in an email, which is exactly what I do on a Monday email. So if you are creating content, all it is, is putting it in a different format. So when you say, I have no idea what to send, then. That is, I think that is a case of you thinking that this has to be something new, something completely different. And in the past I would have done very different emails to my content on social media. Now, not so much. And I'm all right with that because not everyone will read every email and not everyone will see your social media posts. So if you're just duplicating, that is fine. You will get people who prefer to interact on your email and your open rate will be bigger than your algorithm on social media. The next one, it takes too much time. So the way that I do my emails, and I know that some people really struggle to write emails, and I have worked with some people in my accelerator and in my membership where I help them get over this, [00:09:00] but for some reason it takes hours to write an email. Now I have just blocked out some time in my diary for the next couple of days to work out and do some content, and I can write almost a month's worth of emails in a few hours. And I do not say that to be like, check me out. I'm amazing. But I just think it's the fact of. A, I'm batching them, so I'm doing them all together. B, once I get into a kind of stride, then great. And C, if I am planning my content, which I am anyway, then that takes up the majority of the time. Actually writing out what I'm going to say, is the easy bit. So for instance, planning this podcast, I spent a couple of hours yesterday planning this podcast and the next podcast, and it will take me less time to actually record the episode than it will actually what I plan to, you know, in my thoughts of what am I going to say? How am I going to structure it? What am I going to include in it? So, You are doing the content creation bit anyway. [00:10:00] You are doing the coming up with the ideas anyway, if you're posting on social media. The actual writing the email should not take that long. And if you are batching them and doing them together, you should be able to do four emails in an hour or two tops. So it doesn't take that much time. And I promise you any amount of time it is going to take is going to pay you back tenfold because emails are so much more powerful than social media. And then the last one I wrote down in terms of why people tell me they don't email consistently or why they're not emailing at all. My list isn't big enough. Okay. This is not about the numbers. This stuff, number things are vanity. If 10 people have signed up onto your email list, first thing I need to tell you is they don't know that they're only one of 10. Three of them are your family. They have no idea. All they know is that they've signed up to get your emails or they've opted in for something knowing that you are likely to send them emails. So they don't know how many people you have on your list. [00:11:00] So that's the first thing to scrap. Forget that you only have 10, 20, 50, 100. And again, it's all objective. Someone who would go, well, my, my list is only a thousand people. You would give potentially your right arm for a thousand people. And there's someone going, my list is only 5, 000 people. Someone else would give their right arm for 5, 000 people. So it's not about how many it's the fact that you have people on an email list, regardless, you should be emailing them. And the other thing I want to bring back to is the, the kind of vanity conversation. You can still sell to 10 people on a list and one person might buy. So, and I'm not saying, and I want to just make this clear, I'm not saying I only sell in emails because I don't. But you can add value and support someone, even if it's only a few people. And yes, it might feel like I'm doing a lot of effort to just contact 10 people, but again, go and have a look at your last social media post, how many people liked it and interacted with it. And does that even mean they read it? So [00:12:00] it doesn't matter how big your list is. If you have people on an email list, you should be emailing them. And all I'm going to do is get you into the habit of being consistent. And then when your email list is bigger, which is something that we look at in our accelerator program, we look at growing your visibility and your email list fast. So whether they start with 10 people or whether they start with a hundred people, They're emailing them from day one. Okay. So those are the reasons you might not be consistent. And I hope that maybe that has helped. And you've gone, yes, Teresa, that one is one of the reasons I'm not consistent and what you've said helped. So let me talk about the three things that are going to help you Email and email consistently to your list. The first thing is step one is you need to decide when and how often you are going to email. Make a commitment. Now for me in my business and how I work, making commitments is a really useful thing. If I tell people I'm going to do [00:13:00] something, I don't like letting people down and therefore I do it. So when I say to you, I email on a Monday and a Thursday and I get to You know, if I haven't batched and I've fallen behind and I get to a Thursday and think, Oh my God, I haven't written an email. I will make sure I write that email and get it sent because I've made a commitment. And yes, do I think everyone's sat there thinking it's Thursday, Teresa hasn't sent her email. No, I don't think they're doing that. However, in my head, that helps me. So what if you were to email your list today, let's take some action. And I actually want you to come back to me and let me know if you've done this. So, If you have not, if I'm talking to you and you have not emailed your list anytime recently, and you've just had people sat on your email list after they've opted in, you've not done anything with them. I want you to email them and go, Hey, I'm sorry. I'm a little bit rubbish. Use your words. How you would. And I should have been emailing you and I haven't. So I am going to set up a commitment to email you every week, every other week, twice a [00:14:00] week, not once a month. That's way not often enough because that's 12 emails a year. What if I said to you to post 12 times on social media, you'd think I was mad in an entire year. So. You're going to say to them, this is what I'm committing to do. I'm going to email you once a week, every other week, twice a week on whatever particular day, like I said, mine are Mondays and Thursdays. And then I am going to talk about. XYZ. I'm going to give you some value. I'm going to share ideas. I'm going to tell them what you're going to be providing them in the emails. And I kind of say things like, and the occasional funny story. And I also do say, and I will sell to you. I will give you offers when I think there is something good that you might want. So that's the first thing you need to do. Send an email to your current list saying, I'm very sorry. I should have been emailing you. And I'm sorry, I neglected you and I'm going to stop being consistent and I'm going to be consistent by emailing you on a Wednesday, [00:15:00] let's just say once a week. And in that email, I will be sharing with you tips, tricks, jokes, whatever it is that you might be sharing. That's step one. Step two, decide on the content for your email. And step two, when I talk about this, I talk about one of two things, either a love letter or a newsletter. So I tend to write a love letter where I've written it to one person and it has one focus. So I will tell a story that might then lead into a link to go and click. Like for instance, so. On the Monday morning, I will talk about the podcast and that'll have one focus of go and listen to the podcast episode and it'll give you the link to go and listen to it. And then on a Thursday, I might share, I don't know, what will I share? Oh, so for instance, the next one I'm writing or the next one that goes out is about, in fact, at the point of recording this, it would have already gone out, but it's about SponsorFest and how I'm speaking at SponsorFest as Summit. So I will share that. So there's some value there that they can join a [00:16:00] free summit. So think about. Is it going to be a love letter where it has one focus, one call to action, and normally one, one click? It doesn't mean just one link in the email, it just means it's going to one place. Or are you going to do a newsletter style where you focus on various different things? So a newsletter style is, here's a blog I wrote on this, click here to go and have a look. This is something I saw really interesting, click here to go and have a look. Here's my tip of the week. It's broken up. It's kind of what you would see more traditional emails. And in the past would have been more traditional newsletter emails, but it's broken up bits of content. Now, if you're doing that type of thing, then having a list of the type of content you can include on those would be great. But on the love letter, Emails that I send, I just have a one focus rather than going, okay, I need to include a tip. I need to include a blog. I need to include what happened on Instagram. I need to include [00:17:00] someone who's doing something brilliant. I only have one focus per email. Okay. And then the third part is actual content that goes in the email. I've just got some points that I just want to address with you. The first thing is. You do not have to do War and Peace, okay? This doesn't have...