Module 8 - Measure Your List Building Progress
Now that you've put in the effort to start to build your email list, you want to know how all this hard work is paying off. You particularly want to know how successful you are at creating and nurturing your relationships with potential clients and customers.
One way to track progress when you build your email list from scratch is in the numbers. But there are other ways to see how your content is being received. We'll look at those in this module.
Step 1: Take Stock
Time to check how you're doing with the task of list-building. The first step is to check the numbers against your goals from Module 1. Are you meeting your goal(s) with your email list? If not, what has gotten in the way?
Second, you need to reflect on how you're feeling. Are you feeling excited about the list growth? Are you wondering what to do next? Think about the answers to the following questions.
During this process:
⦁ What have I learned about email marketing?
⦁ What has surprised me?
⦁ What has disappointed me?
⦁ What else have I learned about my subscribers?
⦁ How do I feel about the list building process?
Step 2: Know Your Metrics and Get to Know Your Customers
To start, you'll need to analyze where your traffic is coming from. You can do this through key metrics that should be provided by your email marketing platform.
Important metrics to know:
Open rate. Your open rate is the percentage of subscribers who open your email. If this number is low, it could indicate that people are deleting your email upon receipt. An easy way to fix this is to make sure your subject line reflects the content that you're sending. A more involved fix is to make sure you've been extra clear about what subscribers should expect from you and also to make sure that your content is of incredible value.
Click-through. This refers to when subscribers click a link in your email. This could be a link to a blog post, a video, or a product you've decided to spotlight. Click-through rate is a crucial metric because getting subscribers to click is your main goal. If people aren't clicking through, it's likely that you need to rewrite your copy so that it's targeted and specific.
Unsubscribe performance. This is how many people are unsubscribing from your list. If this number is high, it's imperative that you figure out when people are unsubscribing. If they're leaving after a specific email from your autoresponder, then you need to rewrite it. If they're leaving after they download your free offer, either your free offer isn't what they expected or you aren't following up with continued value.
Historical trends. Use these trends to see how your emails are performing over time. You can compare how an email sent at the same time a year ago performed.
Mobile vs. Desktop. This tells you whether subscribers are viewing your content on their mobile device or desktop computer. If you notice that a high percentage of users are viewing via mobile, it's a good idea to double check that your emails are optimized for mobile.
If you're not getting enough information from your metrics, you can design a survey to find out more from the people on your list. You can use Survey Monkey or Google Forms to create surveys for free.
Conclusion
In order to have a thriving email list, you must pay attention to the metrics that show you how your list is performing.
Don't take the feedback you receive personally but do take it into account. Reply to any questions you get asked to further the relationship with your subscribers.
Your email list is a work in progress, so it's okay if you learn and make adjustments as you go. In the next module, we'll cover planning future content.
Action Steps:
⦁ Assess your progress by answering the questions outlined in the Action Guide.
⦁ Measure your metrics. Check what your metrics are once your welcome sequence has gone out.
Conclusion and Next Steps
Once you've reflected on your progress, you'll want to make plans for going further to increase your business and providing even more value to your clients.
In this concluding module, you'll review what you learned and plan out your next steps for list building and content development.
Step 1: Review the Course
Take some time to go through this course again. Flag anything you haven't completed and set deadlines for when you'll finish it.
Step 2: Set New Goals for Your Email List Building
As you start to accomplish the first goal you set for building your email list, it's helpful to set new goals aimed at growing your list even further.
Defining new goals will help you know what type of content to send to your subscribers and it will also make it easier to measure the success of your email marketing.
Step 3: Revisit Your Customer Journey
As we said in Module 3, when you are intentional with your customer journey, you are more likely to see positive results, with increased sales and improved relationships with your ideal customers.
Thinking about the customer journey you outlined in Module 3, take into account the work you've done on this course since and ask yourself these questions:
⦁ Is this customer journey still relevant?
⦁ Do I need to tweak it?
⦁ What steps can I add to it?
If you need to make changes, plan out how you'll take your client through the steps of the new journey.
Step 4: Determine Your First Paid Offer
The end goal is to convert your email subscribers into paying customers. In this step, you need to think about what you want your customers to buy from you. This could be a simple online course (based on your lead magnet), or a one-on-one session with you, or even a discounted product.
Ask yourself these questions:
⦁ What will my paid offer be?
⦁ How will I launch it?
⦁ What are my goals for it? Think about your revenue targets and the challenges you want to help your customers with
⦁ How will it help me nurture my relationship with my clients?
Step 5: Plan Future Content
Don't lose the momentum you created in planning your first email sequence. Make sure you have a plan for your future content. Remember: all content you develop must be relevant to your audience.
By planning your content, you:
⦁ Stay in touch with your subscribers
⦁ Nurture your relationship with them
⦁ Build your brand
⦁ Showcase your expertise.
Here are some ideas for content you can use in future emails:
⦁ Q&A. Take the most popular questions you receive and answer them.
⦁ Mini case studies. Write a case study to establish proof that what you're offering is valuable and of good quality.
⦁ Storytelling. Use storytelling to share how you developed your products and services, and why you do what you do.
⦁ Resources you've just discovered. Share what tools or resources are beneficial to you.
⦁ Websites you recommend. Give a list of websites that you find extremely helpful or that you think highly of.
⦁ A blog post you like. Spread the love and share a blog post that you found interesting or helpful.
⦁ An email challenge. Include an email challenge to help your subscribers grow their skill set.
⦁ Give insight into your strategy sessions. Explain why you give free strategy sessions and then offer a limited number based on criteria you decide.
⦁ Run a competition for a prize. People love to win! Give them incentive to join your competition by offering a prize.
⦁ An 'offer' email. Reward subscribers with a free service or virtual product, or give them a discount or coupon towards your product or service.
Conclusion
Your email list is a critical tool to grow your business. The goals of your email list will evolve as your business changes.
Keep thinking of ways to move your business forward. Plan concrete steps on how you will leverage your email list to do this.
Action Steps:
⦁ Review this course.
⦁ Write out your new list building goals.
⦁ Review the customer journey.
⦁ Outline your plan for your first (or next) paid offer.
⦁ Create a list of content ideas for future emails.
⦁ Detail other actions you need to take.
Now that you've put in the effort to start to build your email list, you want to know how all this hard work is paying off. You particularly want to know how successful you are at creating and nurturing your relationships with potential clients and customers.
One way to track progress when you build your email list from scratch is in the numbers. But there are other ways to see how your content is being received. We'll look at those in this module.
Step 1: Take Stock
Time to check how you're doing with the task of list-building. The first step is to check the numbers against your goals from Module 1. Are you meeting your goal(s) with your email list? If not, what has gotten in the way?
Second, you need to reflect on how you're feeling. Are you feeling excited about the list growth? Are you wondering what to do next? Think about the answers to the following questions.
During this process:
⦁ What have I learned about email marketing?
⦁ What has surprised me?
⦁ What has disappointed me?
⦁ What else have I learned about my subscribers?
⦁ How do I feel about the list building process?
Step 2: Know Your Metrics and Get to Know Your Customers
To start, you'll need to analyze where your traffic is coming from. You can do this through key metrics that should be provided by your email marketing platform.
Important metrics to know:
Open rate. Your open rate is the percentage of subscribers who open your email. If this number is low, it could indicate that people are deleting your email upon receipt. An easy way to fix this is to make sure your subject line reflects the content that you're sending. A more involved fix is to make sure you've been extra clear about what subscribers should expect from you and also to make sure that your content is of incredible value.
Click-through. This refers to when subscribers click a link in your email. This could be a link to a blog post, a video, or a product you've decided to spotlight. Click-through rate is a crucial metric because getting subscribers to click is your main goal. If people aren't clicking through, it's likely that you need to rewrite your copy so that it's targeted and specific.
Unsubscribe performance. This is how many people are unsubscribing from your list. If this number is high, it's imperative that you figure out when people are unsubscribing. If they're leaving after a specific email from your autoresponder, then you need to rewrite it. If they're leaving after they download your free offer, either your free offer isn't what they expected or you aren't following up with continued value.
Historical trends. Use these trends to see how your emails are performing over time. You can compare how an email sent at the same time a year ago performed.
Mobile vs. Desktop. This tells you whether subscribers are viewing your content on their mobile device or desktop computer. If you notice that a high percentage of users are viewing via mobile, it's a good idea to double check that your emails are optimized for mobile.
If you're not getting enough information from your metrics, you can design a survey to find out more from the people on your list. You can use Survey Monkey or Google Forms to create surveys for free.
Conclusion
In order to have a thriving email list, you must pay attention to the metrics that show you how your list is performing.
Don't take the feedback you receive personally but do take it into account. Reply to any questions you get asked to further the relationship with your subscribers.
Your email list is a work in progress, so it's okay if you learn and make adjustments as you go. In the next module, we'll cover planning future content.
Action Steps:
⦁ Assess your progress by answering the questions outlined in the Action Guide.
⦁ Measure your metrics. Check what your metrics are once your welcome sequence has gone out.
Conclusion and Next Steps
Once you've reflected on your progress, you'll want to make plans for going further to increase your business and providing even more value to your clients.
In this concluding module, you'll review what you learned and plan out your next steps for list building and content development.
Step 1: Review the Course
Take some time to go through this course again. Flag anything you haven't completed and set deadlines for when you'll finish it.
Step 2: Set New Goals for Your Email List Building
As you start to accomplish the first goal you set for building your email list, it's helpful to set new goals aimed at growing your list even further.
Defining new goals will help you know what type of content to send to your subscribers and it will also make it easier to measure the success of your email marketing.
Step 3: Revisit Your Customer Journey
As we said in Module 3, when you are intentional with your customer journey, you are more likely to see positive results, with increased sales and improved relationships with your ideal customers.
Thinking about the customer journey you outlined in Module 3, take into account the work you've done on this course since and ask yourself these questions:
⦁ Is this customer journey still relevant?
⦁ Do I need to tweak it?
⦁ What steps can I add to it?
If you need to make changes, plan out how you'll take your client through the steps of the new journey.
Step 4: Determine Your First Paid Offer
The end goal is to convert your email subscribers into paying customers. In this step, you need to think about what you want your customers to buy from you. This could be a simple online course (based on your lead magnet), or a one-on-one session with you, or even a discounted product.
Ask yourself these questions:
⦁ What will my paid offer be?
⦁ How will I launch it?
⦁ What are my goals for it? Think about your revenue targets and the challenges you want to help your customers with
⦁ How will it help me nurture my relationship with my clients?
Step 5: Plan Future Content
Don't lose the momentum you created in planning your first email sequence. Make sure you have a plan for your future content. Remember: all content you develop must be relevant to your audience.
By planning your content, you:
⦁ Stay in touch with your subscribers
⦁ Nurture your relationship with them
⦁ Build your brand
⦁ Showcase your expertise.
Here are some ideas for content you can use in future emails:
⦁ Q&A. Take the most popular questions you receive and answer them.
⦁ Mini case studies. Write a case study to establish proof that what you're offering is valuable and of good quality.
⦁ Storytelling. Use storytelling to share how you developed your products and services, and why you do what you do.
⦁ Resources you've just discovered. Share what tools or resources are beneficial to you.
⦁ Websites you recommend. Give a list of websites that you find extremely helpful or that you think highly of.
⦁ A blog post you like. Spread the love and share a blog post that you found interesting or helpful.
⦁ An email challenge. Include an email challenge to help your subscribers grow their skill set.
⦁ Give insight into your strategy sessions. Explain why you give free strategy sessions and then offer a limited number based on criteria you decide.
⦁ Run a competition for a prize. People love to win! Give them incentive to join your competition by offering a prize.
⦁ An 'offer' email. Reward subscribers with a free service or virtual product, or give them a discount or coupon towards your product or service.
Conclusion
Your email list is a critical tool to grow your business. The goals of your email list will evolve as your business changes.
Keep thinking of ways to move your business forward. Plan concrete steps on how you will leverage your email list to do this.
Action Steps:
⦁ Review this course.
⦁ Write out your new list building goals.
⦁ Review the customer journey.
⦁ Outline your plan for your first (or next) paid offer.
⦁ Create a list of content ideas for future emails.
⦁ Detail other actions you need to take.
