Welcome to Vol.23 of Email Advice in Your Inbox!

As always, a massive welcome, friend!

This week we're running it back to the basics.


We covered this in detail in our 10th Volume, but today we're revisiting 4 critical components you'll want to check in your email strategy.

You can also find our regular resources, knowledge and insights, so let's get to it and gain some new email knowledge.


 

Here's what you'll learn this week
 

• 4 steps to kicking off email success
   

• This week's top email resources
   

• Email expert practical tip of the week
   

• Smart email senders we're learning from
   

• The fun stuff: Vocabulary unbeknownst to many
   

Taking off on another email journey 🚀

Starting a newsletter or a new email program is a daunting process.

You'll know the feeling if you've prepared a campaign for many readers at once.
 

What should comfort you, to begin, is that any email sender you've ever received an email from has also been there before.
 

If you're a seasoned veteran, you'll know that this can still be daunting, because there's always something that could go awry.

The best way to ease the anxiety and increase your chances of success is to stick to the basics.

Today we'll look at four critical steps to ensure are completed for ongoing email success.

Are you missing any of these steps in your new email strategy? 🤔

You often hear of different ways to set goals and objectives.
 

There's the SMART goal-setting framework, goal pyramids, the OKR method and a ton to choose from.

Regardless of your preferred method for setting goals, one thing is clear: You need a solid objective in your email strategy.

Where to begin with this?

Here are a few key objectives you can set based on the type of email campaigns you'll be sending:

• Increasing sales
• Driving website traffic
• Building brand awareness
• Nurturing leads
• Winning back readers or customers
• Creating referrals

And the list goes on.

If you're intentional in every action you take in your email program, you'll create opportunities for incremental successes, leading to the eventual long-term success of your email strategy.

This is one of the biggest challenges for any email sender (and may also be one of the main reasons you signed up to join our community).
 

We shared our Ultimate Database Growth Playbook and covered this in detail in this previous Volume too, but what's the point of sending emails if you don't have an audience to share them with?

There are so many ways to grow an email audience, but this would wind up being an insanely long email if we covered even a few.

Let's chat about some quick principles to follow when growing your audience:

1. Always have an incentive: Sending pretty emails isn't enough. Ensure your chosen strategy entices new subscribers with real added value.
    
2. Make it easy to join: When designing your database growth strategy, refrain from making it difficult or time-consuming. Do you really need someone's surname when asking for sign-up details?
    
3. Look for entry points everywhere: Wherever you engage with your potential audience, find ways to feed them into your list. If you don't ask, you won't receive. Make sure your audience everywhere has an opportunity to sign up.

Growing an audience doesn't need to be difficult. Your strategy simply needs to ensure that you're consistent in your efforts to do so.

Every piece of email advice that we give emphasises that your audience's needs ALWAYS come first.
 

So, how do you cater to the needs of the various members of your audience?

It begins with segmentation.

We covered this in a previous Volume, which you can read here, but you have two ways to broadly segment your list:
 

1. Known data: This data includes everything you learn about your audience when they first enter your email list.
   
   These known data points often include what you've asked for initially, such as where your subscribers are situated, which channel they signed up from, what incentive they signed up for and other factors such as which types of emails they've signed up to receive.
   
   Based on this, you have an idea of what type of content to share and how to funnel them into taking the action you'd like them to take.
   
    
2. Learned data: Once you begin sending emails, there are tons of ways to use the emails you send to learn about your audience.
   
   I'm not only talking about asking them to update their preferences or tell you more about them (which are both effective strategies) but also the way they interact with the emails you're sending.
   
   Use what they're clicking on in your emails, what they're buying when you promote your offer, how they respond over time and even which types of emails are being opened and clicked (or not).
    

When you consider the data you have and apply this to your email strategy, you'll show your audience that you care about who they are and what you're sending, building loyal fans over time, not just members of your audience.

This may seem obvious, but the continued success of your email strategy will always be linked to the value your emails carry over time.
 

How to do this? We shared tips on creating an effective email way back in Volume 2,  but you can use these 3 key points as a checklist:
 

1. Write clear, compelling copy: Our friend Matt Thomas wrote about this for us, but if your copy is well structured, you're already halfway to email success.
    
2. Make it visually enticing: People buy with their eyes. Unless your strategy is to use plain-text emails, include relevant images, animated GIFS, video content and consistent colours in every email you send.
    
3. Make it personal: I don't mean just adding someone's name to your emails. Tell stories and personal anecdotes, and share your failures too! Your audience will relate to your content which leads to an emotional connection and inevitable email success.

It's not about the next email your readers receive, it's about the next ten. If you keep them hooked and engaged, your email strategy will lead to business growth and a happier, more engaged audience.

Email resources of the week

Cool articles and resources to help you become a better email sender

Email Expert Practical Tip of the Week

This week, we decided to shake things up and share a tip of our own!
 

We were privileged to be interviewed and featured in Ciler Demiralp's Newsletter Circle this week.

Here's something of a personal philosophy we have regarding our email strategy. You can't control it all 💌


(PS! Check out the full interview here)

Smart email senders we're learning from

We believe that learning from some of the greatest in the industry is one of the best ways to improve.

Here are three emails we found that followed sound email principles or used innovative strategies to nail their email goals.

Take a look at this week's best 👌
 

Some more (email) fun to make your day better

We catch ourselves using a plethora of cumbersome words in our writing (at times).

It's not because we're particularly well-versed in ye old English; we're just trying to be fancy 😋

Because of that, we particularly enjoyed this little gem by @yeeeerika (via subjectline.com on LinkedIn.)
 

What's your fancy email go-to word?

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Before we go! Remember, we help businesses and content creators, just like you, win at email. How? Here are three ways we can help:

Get the guide! We've spent 200+ hours compiling over 250 pages covering everything you need to launch and win at email. Find out more here. 

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Contribute your knowledge! We're looking to feature experts in future Volumes. Have an idea to share? Let us know here.

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