Do You Have a Captive Audience?
Who controls your audience?
One of the most empowering things about having an email newsletter is the ability to keep your audience independent of a social media platform. Your email list is always available to you.
But your audience on a platform like LinkedIn, or Twitter, or TikTok, or Instagrim, or Fraudbook, or YouTube, or whatever is wholly at the mercy of what the platform decides to do. You could, from one moment to the next, lose your audience or your relevance to your audience, simply because the platform decides to change its business model or service. Or it may decide it doesn't like your attitude towards cake baking and locks you out of your account for being pro-gluten.
Access to your audience is too precious to be held in the palm of someone whose priorities aren't the same as yours. Besides, you'll hold your audience far more gently than they will.
Connection Reciprocity
Quick tip.
If you have a business newsletter, give people you meet professionally an easy way to sign up for it. Maybe in a follow-up message like this:
"Hello {Remarkable Person},
"It was terrific meeting you at {where you met them}.
"When we met, did I mention that we produce the industry's leading newsletter? (It's unlike me not to have done so; I never shut up about it.) But just in case I didn't, I hope it's OK to highlight it to you now? It's packed to the rafters with valuable information about our sector. Maybe you'd like to dip your toe in and subscribe? If you do, here's special sign-up link: {LINK}. And, of course, no biggie if it's not for you.
"Your name"
You Can't Buy Love
(But you can ask for it at the checkout)
This suggestion won't work for everyone, but it is one of the most powerful subscriber magnets we know of. It is the main subscriber driver for one of our clients.
If you have an online shop, we can recommend adding an option at check out that lets customers subscribe to your newsletter. ALERT: You'll need something a bit more potent than the anaemic, semi-hidden option that comes standard with something like Shopify. (But knowing Shopify, there's an additional app/plugin you can buy.)
Make the sign-up invitation prominent, maybe even a required field. Friendly is good too. Something like this:
***Would you like to receive our email newsletter? It's a lot of fun. Guaranteed. Cancel at any time.***
◎ Yes, please send me your monthly newsletter. I enjoy a good laugh.
◎ Absolutely NOT. Down with that sort of thing.
◎ I'm already a subscriber.
This tactic generates 70 to 90 new signups each month for the client in question.
Chase Less for More Wins
How do you convince people to subscribe to your newsletter?
One solution is to make your email dispatch very niche. For instance, the Financial Times doesn’t put out just one big newsletter. Instead it puts out 43 newsletters, each about one about specific topic.
That makes it easier for people to decide whether or not the newsletter is relevant to their current needs. They also know the information they are interested in won’t be buried under a pile of content they don’t want.
For example, you could write a dispatch about baking. That’s a huge topic. Instead, you could go progressively more niche to attact a dedicated audience:
☞ Baking
☞ Baking cakes
☞ Baking cakes that look like something else
☞ Baking cakes that look like other kinds of food
☞ Baking cakes that look like another kind of cake (possibly unnecessarily niche, but there’s only one way to find out…)
Treasure Inside
There is a surefire way of getting subscribers to open your email newsletter. It will never fail. Ever. Not once.
WARNING: it’s not easy. In fact, it’s the hardest thing imaginable.
Here it is...
Your email must be overflowing with content so valuable, your reader knows they dare not miss it.
Thing is, how do they know they daren’t miss it when they haven’t even opened it yet? They aren’t clairvoyant, after all. If they don’t know what’s inside, they can hardly be anxious about missing out.
So you have to create the expectation beforehand that treasure lies inside your email. Here are two ways you can do so:
1—Generate a sense of anticipation about what your newsletter contains from your online presence. If your online presence is one full of unmissable service and usefulness and character, people will anticipate your newsletter will be full of the same.
2—Always stuff your best material into your email dispatches. Make them as enlightening and empowering as possible. Emails that repeatedly enrich your subscribers’ lives will condition them to expect a fabulous experience whenever your newsletter arrives. It will physically pain them not to look inside. They will find it impossible to resist.
3—Bonus: you can make the newsletter sign-up process so engaging, a new subscriber can hardly wait to get the first issue of your dispatch. How? That’s a whole other story. (Coming soon.)
New Work: Visual
This is a visual we've created for one of our clients for use throughout the year. It started the year as '2022'. Each month, we include a version of it in our client's communications with their own clients. Each time, a bit more of the number is shaved off. Eventually, nothing will be left.
Here's the latest accompanying text:
"That's right, friends: one third of 2022 has gone. One third!
"How are your goals for 2022 panning out? It's important to keep track of your progress and make sure you get to the end of 2022 having accomplished what you wanted to do during the year.
"Here's another thought (quite a wake-up call too): once you get past the halfway point of 2022, it'll be time to start thinking about what you want to achieve in 2023. You might say that's mad. But it's better to start planning in July this year than in January next year."
An unabashed plug for S&T:
We create striking visuals and put them in your dispatches
Your Next Step…
Thank you for admission into your inbox. We are very grateful.
If you have any feedback on this issue of the dispatch or any other comment, you can reach us here: hello@showandtell.ie. Maybe you'd even like a newsletter of your own?
See you again at the end of May,
Roger, Anne & Paul