The Rebranded Teacher
The Rebranded Teacher
Email Marketing Recipe for New & Established Stores
Ever wondered what to send your list (nurture emails? sales?) and how often to send them different types of content? I've got a recipe for you in this subscriber-only episode!
This episode was highly requested when I asked inside of the Rebranded Teacher Academy Facebook group what you guys wanted to hear about in the private podcast, by and large, the vast majority of the answers had something to do with email how to split up your types of emails, like nurture emails versus sales emails when you're batch writing email campaigns, how to write email copy, managing multiple opt-ins for different businesses, what types of emails to send, lead magnet generation, all kinds of stuff. So let's talk about email marketing what it looks like in the early stages of business ie kind of like what it looks like with this newer TPT store and that newer business versus what it starts to look like a little bit later on. Let's start first start by talking about figuring out the ratio of nurture emails to sales emails for newer stores or for newer audiences versus for more established audiences. Okay, so when I'm saying like a newer audience or a newer store, I'm really talking about an audience that isn't quite as warm versus someone with a more established store, hopefully has a more established email list. They have more people on their email list who have a know, like and trust relationship with them the seller right so they're a little bit more warm, whereas if you have a newer store, newer audience, your list is going to be a little bit more cold. And two, I would also say this depends on where you're going to be getting your email audience from. So if you are growing your email list from people who have purchased your products, or from a blog or from other social media, your list is already going to be a lot warmer, even if you're new, than someone who joined your email list from, say, a Facebook ad, which is where I'm at what this looks like for me, with a new store, new audience and really trying to establish that audience I'm talking about, like the vast majority of people on my list. They came to me that audience I'm talking about, like the vast majority of people on my list, they came to me from Facebook ads. So they are like cold, cold, right. So they are fairly cold, which means that I would tend to do a little bit more warming up. But that doesn't mean that I'm only going to do nurture emails. I'm still going to have more sales emails than nurture emails. I'm just going to treat them a little bit differently. So let's first start by talking about, before I get into kind of a ratio here let's talk about nurture email versus sales email, and can you have an email that does both? And the answer is yes.
Speaker 0:A nurture email by nature is designed to just kind of nurture your audience, to give, provide value to them. That doesn't mean giving them freebies necessarily, although it could mean giving them free resources. Most of the time, when I'm talking about like nurture in our nurture email, I'm not really talking about giving away freebies. I don't do a lot of that More. Give them experiences like playing games with them, building relationships with them, maybe sending them some free ideas or giving them a few tips, things like that, and that would be what my nurture email would be. I love the idea of sending a nurture email that also links to a paid product. In theory, I really love that. In practice, I think it's still great what I found.
Speaker 0:For me personally, the majority of my emails that are nurture was sort of like a sale slipped in, like here are three tips and, by the way, tip number three, you can use it with this product. A lot of the times those don't really convert into sales for me, and so it ends up just being a nurture email and so one of the things that I've kind of resigned myself to over the years is to let a nurture email just be a nurture email, not necessarily all the time, like I still want to test the waters, I still want to be trying things, I still want to see if I can get a nurture email to convert into sales, like I still want to do all of that. But I've given myself permission to just say if it's a nurture email, just let it be a nurture email and don't feel like you have to link to a product. And so I've taken that off the table a lot of times with my nurture emails and I'm happy to just play a game with them or ask them a question or tell them a little story or give them some tips, some advice, whatever value I can provide to them, without asking anything in return, because I know that my audience by and large really responds well to sales emails. So I feel totally fine with letting my sale email be just be a straight up sales email, like not trying to nurture them in that sales email and not trying to provide value alongside of the product that I'm asking them to purchase, not providing additional value alongside the resource that I'm asking them to purchase, and letting my nurture emails just be nurture emails. Now, this is not to say that this is going to be the same for everybody, but for the purposes of moving forward, we're just going to say that a nurture email, I'm not trying to sell them anything, and a sales email I'm not trying to provide value beyond the product. Okay, but do you understand that a sales email is still technically nurturing your audience because you are providing value to them? You're just asking for something in return.
Speaker 0:Okay, with my brand new TPT store the one that I started back in May, and right now this is November. So with my TPT store that's about six months old, I do mostly sales emails. However, I have a pretty lengthy nurture welcome sequence. So they go through quite a bit of nurturing before they get my regular sales emails. And every now and then I will also send out some ideas, a book list. They tend to really like those Like here are five books. They don't buy them, but they do go to the blog post, they do read the blog and so I know that they're at least interested in that. They like the idea of purchasing books for their kids, even if they don't necessarily go and purchase the books. So I'll send book lists, craft ideas sometimes, but I found on the whole they still respond fairly well to sales emails. They're not trying to like, unsubscribe and leave, and so I know that it takes a while for them to get used to an idea. So I'll send that out and then I'll send purposeful freebies.
Speaker 0:So, for example, this month it's Thanksgiving and I'm really, really wanting my audience to buy in to these one page a day worksheets. Or, if they're in the classroom, it would be morning work, where it's just like one page for pre-K or kindergarten and it covers the most basic basics, you know, counting, letter recognition, cvc words, sight words, things like that. Right, I'm wanting that to become a part of the regular routine. So one of the things that I'm going to be doing is I'm not creating this year a full month of Thanksgiving morning worksheets. I have fall and I've decided that I'll wait to do the full month of Thanksgiving until next year so that I can focus on knocking out winter and Christmas and those worksheets. So what I'm doing is I'm going to send them a week of Thanksgiving worksheets so that they can hopefully try these and then, once they start to use them and they see success with them, whether in their classroom or with their child, they'll be more inclined to purchase, say, the Christmas or the winter worksheets or the Valentine's Day. They'll be more inclined to continue to purchase these after attempting, or after integrating the Thanksgiving worksheets into their daily routine. So that's my hope. So I'm going to give them a very intentional freebie.
Speaker 0:That's still nurturing, but it's nurturing strategically. So basically I would probably send like one nurture email for every four sales emails to that newer store. Having said that, in the very beginning I was sending more nurture emails and it was like a one-to-one ratio, like one nurture email, one sales email, one nurture email, one sales email. And then finally I just kind of switched over to four to one. I send about one email a week. So I would say on average they're getting about one nurture email a month and four sales emails a month. For my more established, my warmer audience typically will send about six sales emails for every one nurture email. But I also typically, during a good period of time when I'm on top of it, I average two emails a week. So I'm sending about nine emails a month. So I'm usually sending one to two nurture emails a month and a lot of times my sales emails are something that I would consider to be nurturing, like if you purchase anything from my store, I'm going to give you this free gift with purchase.
Speaker 0:I do try to make sure that my nurture emails are really, really good. So, for example, in October I gave an entire week's worth of lesson plans for Halloween. I provided free warmups for the week of Halloween and I linked to multiple free resources, created a couple of free worksheets. I also linked to paid products, but there was so much free content in there for the week of Halloween that it wasn't just your standard like nurture email. Here are some tips. It was like literally an entire week worth of lesson plans.
Speaker 0:So I do try to make my nurture emails very meaty and a little bit more and or a little bit more interactive and engaging. So we'll play a game together. They're a little bit more labor intensive than just kind of writing an email with like three tips in it. It takes a lot more effort on my part to write the nurture emails, but that's kind of what my ratio looks like and that does work really well for me overall. Sometimes I'll go through a spill where I know that I've got a big sale coming up, so that ratio will change and I'll send more nurture emails.
Speaker 0:Then I will sales emails. Like during the summer I don't do a lot of sales emails, apart from some of the big events that we have. I'm not really directing any traffic at all to TPT or to my online store. I'm really just nurturing and selling them on the two offers that I have during the summer for limited times, and that's really all I'm doing during the summer. The rest is sales. Around the holidays I do tend to do a little bit more nurturing, but I also kind of amp up the sales emails. So I'll send like two sales emails in a week and then it's not totally uncommon for me to send three, four emails a week, just depending on what's going on. So, like Black Friday, cyber Monday, I'll definitely be sending more than two emails a week. It'll be multiple emails with multiple different types of offers. I also consider those to be sort of nurturing in some ways, because I'm looking to provide them with the best deals possible, and these are deals that are more than what they could just get on TPT, and so I consider that to more than what they could just get on TPT, and so I consider that to somewhat be a nurture email. But that's my ratio For my newer store it's four sales to one nurture, and for my more established store it's six sales to one nurture in general. Now I'm going to give you a recipe that's going to work for the vast majority of people and if you kind of stick to this, I think you're going to find a lot of success with email marketing. And so I'm going to kind of break it down for you Every single month, I would send at least six emails, at least six emails.
Speaker 0:So that means once or twice a month. You're going to send two emails in a week and that's okay. So I would send at least six emails. From those six emails I would do five of them be just straight up sales emails and try to space them out so that it's like one a week, if possible. And then one of those is going to be a nurture email, in the sense that you are giving them tips, you're giving them advice and you're just nurturing them and you're just helping them solve problems or providing them with information and materials without asking for anything in return.
Speaker 0:That sixth email, I would try to do something creative. I would consider that my creative email and it's very flexible. Your creative email could technically be a sales email. It could technically be a nurture email. It could technically be a nurture email. But you want to think of doing something that's a little bit outside of the box, whether that's sending them to your store for a scavenger hunt to find a free resource in your store, or maybe it's playing some sort of puzzle game with them or providing them with some trivia questions that has to do with either your store or your niche, whatever it is. Try to think outside of the box and beyond your typical. Here are some tips or here's a resource that I want you to purchase. And think of something creative to send them that they would open up and it would put a smile on their face. If you think of that sixth email as I'm not really here to help, I'm here to make them happy Then you're going to kind of be able to step outside of the four walls of your niche and step outside of that teacher hat and that salesman hat and you're going to be able to provide them with an experience that's going to build a relationship with them, your competitors. So, four emails that are sales emails, one email that is a nurture email that provides tips, information or resources for free, without asking anything in return, and then a sixth email that is going to provide a creative experience that they're going to open and they're just going to be happy seeing it. Okay, so that's a recipe that I think anyone can follow, no matter what stage of business that they're in, and be able to see success with.
Speaker 0:Let's talk about opt-ins, lead generation, all of that good stuff, because we ultimately want to be growing our email list and, while, yes, I love a good collab event for growing your email list, one of the main things that I'm loving these days, you guys, is just running a Facebook ad. I'm just going to tell you, if you have extra money in your business, one of the first things that I would invest in if you already established an email marketing meaning that you're not brand new to it you actually have, like, an email marketing platform. You're actively sending out newsletters. All that good stuff is I would just invest that money in Facebook ads, even if it's collecting $50 a month for three or four months, and then putting that directly into a Facebook ad campaign. That is exactly what I would do, and I would focus on having one great lead magnet.
Speaker 0:I know a lot of people will tell you to have multiple lead magnets and I think that that's really great, but, to be honest with you, you really don't need any more than one. You just need one great lead magnet to grow your list. And once you have that great lead magnet, you can really watch your welcome sequence or sales funnel that you have that follows up after optimally. You are getting the clicks that you want, you're getting the revenue that you want before adding on any other lead magnets Because to me it's a lot to keep up with to have multiple lead magnets if they're ultimately all going to the same place. So get them on your list. Use that same lead magnet for Facebook ads, use that same lead magnet for organic traffic. Have one lead magnet and do it really, really well. And then, once you're satisfied with how that lead magnet is performing and you know why it's performing well, then you can move on to adding additional lead magnets and opt-ins and I would 1000% run Facebook ads. I feel like that's the best bang for your buck right now for growing your list in terms of low time investment and in terms of low competition, like you're not having to share that email list with 4, 5, 10, 20 other people from being part of a collab event. So definitely utilize Facebook ads and that should be one of the first things that you look to invest in.
Speaker 0:As your business becomes more established. In terms of having multiple businesses or maybe multiple niches and creating opt-ins and managing more than one audience, that does get difficult. It really does Like the more you split your time, the more you split your time and the less you're going to have time to invest in one thing, and I think ideally, in an ideal world, you would be able to outsource part of one business before starting another, so that your attention is much less split between two or more businesses. But I do have different opt-ins for different businesses and I just run each one of them the same way. Each one of them has a Facebook ad. I've not done collab events for the new email list, with the exception of a collaborative sale and I did get leads from that. But other than that, like I haven't done any type of lead generation collab event and I don't intend to do one anytime soon, just because they're so time consuming and it is such a new store and it's not a big moneymaker for me yet.
Speaker 0:I would say just keep things really, really simple. If you have multiple businesses, don't try to have multiple email opt-ins and keep everything streamlined and have a process for batching emails for both businesses and make sure you have your audience tagged and separated so that you're not sending the same type of email to kindergarten teachers that you're sending to, say, tpt sellers or to science teachers, right? So make sure it's tagged and separated and have a really solid game plan for marketing to both of them and keeping up with both email lists. So, to recap real quick, I've given a recipe for types of emails that you can send out to make sure you're covering nurturing sales and relationship building with your audience in your email list. We've talked about the importance of really having one solid, powerful email opt-in and focusing on that. And then finally, if you have multiple businesses, just make sure everything is organized.
Speaker 0:I cannot overstress the importance of having things organized, and this is definitely coming from a place of been there, done that, messed that up, Because for sure, I have messed that up and I've finally gotten to a point where I've just had to start to outsource a lot more of the email marketing, just so that I know that it's getting done and I'm not getting to the beginning of the week or getting into the middle of the week and being like, oh no, I haven't sent out an email. Am I going to even be able to make this happen this week? Or maybe I only am able to send out one email instead of two, when I know I really need to be sending two. So just having a really strong plan so that nothing is creeping up on you. I hope you found this helpful.
Speaker 0:A little update on my busy homeschooler audience helpful. A little update on my busy homeschooler audience. We're at about 3,200 email subscribers and I'm feeling pretty decent. Every time I send out an email, I get a sale or two. It's not anything major, but it does let me know that I really need to be emailing out more regularly and I'm really excited for that. In the next private podcast episode, I'm going to talk a little bit more about how I split my time between different projects, between different businesses, in order to optimize productivity, and within that, I'm going to talk about something else that someone requested and that is outsourcing. So how to split my time and outsource the rest to make sure that everything gets taken care of, or the important things get taken care of and that I'm being efficient with my time as much as possible. All right, you guys, I'm going to see you in the next episode.