Focus on this in 2023 and You Will WIN! [Email Marketing Part 1 of 4]
Email Marketing Will Change Your Life if You Focus On It
On January 3, 2022, I posted the following tweet:
It did NOT get the traction that I wanted, and yet I think this subject is one of the most important subjects to talk about in marketing for creators because of how powerful it is and under utilized it is by comic creators.
If you focus on nothing else but this in 2023, I guarantee that in 2024 and onwards, you will be so happy with the results you’re having.
You need to focus on EMAIL MARKETING. It is still the most powerful tool for you to market and sell on the internet. SO! Let’s dive deep into this topic this month. And by the way, my day-job is email marketing and I bring in around $1 million a year selling books for my company JUST with emails.
AND before we start, just a quick plug. My series THE GIRL WITH THE MEGA FISTS Vol. 1-3 launches on Kickstarter in February. Each volume is over 200-pages and only $15. I Sign up to be notified, and I hope to see you there 🙂
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/entitycomic/the-girl-with-the-mega-fists-vol-1-3
Okay! Email marketing.
These are the topics we are going to focus on this month:
Types of Emails To Make
Which Email Services To Use
Segmenting Your List
Acquisition vs Retention
So let’s talk about the TYPES OF EMAILS YOU CAN MAKE.
“Now Tyler, why is this important? There’s only one kind of email…the one that gets sent to my inbox”
Oh my young padawan, let me teach you the way.
First things first though, you’ll need these things to start:
An email service provider that fits your needs
Potentially a website like Gumroad or Shopify
Choosing an email service provider that fits your needs is important. However, we can’t choose one if we don’t know what your needs are, or what kinds of emails you are going to be sending out in the universe.
There are many types of emails. For simplicity purposes, we’ll talk about these 4, and how they’re used. There are many names/terms these are called, but we’ll just keep things simple and call them the following:
Campaigns
Abandons
Follow-ups
Blasts (most commonly used by creators)
CAMPAIGNS:
Have you ever signed up for something online, and then for the next 1-2 weeks, EVERY DAY your email inbox was sent an email from that particular company? That’s because the moment you put your email in, you were put into a CAMPAIGN.
Campaigns are automated emails that are built out and TRIGGERED once someone signs up for it. Here’s how it would work in practice:
Step 1: Someone goes on your website and a pop-up appears that says “Sign Up Here and get a FREE Digital Sample of X-Thing!” You sign up, and now the campaign is triggered.
Step 2: The first email you get is a “Hello” email that contains the FREE digital sample that you signed up for. You close your email, and move on with your day. However, the campaign has other plans.
Step 3: The next email you get is talking about all the benefits that people have said X-Thing has given them because they purchased the full product. You read it and close your email.
Step 4: The next email you get from them is letting you know that X-Thing is available to YOU ONLY for 20% off, so don’t miss out! If you buy the product, you’ll be triggered OFF the campaign. If you didn’t…well…you’re in for a ride.
Step 5: Depending on the campaign, you might be in here for an ETERNITY until you actually purchase X-Thing. All of this is automated, and you either unsubscribe or just continue to delete emails.
My strategy when it comes to Campaigns is a 5-email campaign, and if they don’t purchase, I put them in my BLAST audience, which we will talk later about.
ABANDONS
This type of email is triggered on your website if a customer gets to the point of buying your product and then stops. You’ve probably seen these emails in your inbox that go:
Hey, you forgot something!
You still have items in your cart
These are abandoned emails. I’ve built out an Abandon Email campaign that sends customers emails after 1 hour, 24 hours, and then 72 hours. At that point, if they don’t want it, they don’t want it.
FOLLOW-UPS
This type of email is purely based on the product and your experience with it. For example, these emails are triggered AFTER someone buys a product, and go out maybe a week or 2 AFTER the purchase. Let’s pretend you bought Dragonball Z Volume 1. A week later you might get an email that says:
Hey! Did you like DBZ Vol. 1? Tell us your thoughts or leave a review.
OR! Another powerful Follow-Up email would be:
Because you bought DBZ Vol. 1, we think you’d be interested in Vol. 2.
These are very complicated email types to create, and you would need a good service like ConvertKit in order to trigger that behavior.
BLASTS
These are the most commonly used emails that creators use because they are the easiest. A blast is just a one-off email that you send out to people each week, JUST LIKE THIS ONE. All I do in this newsletter are BLASTS. Why? Because Substack, the email service provider I am using, doesn’t have any other way to send emails. The above types don’t work on Substack, however, I don’t need them for this particular newsletter.
Blasts are both easy and hard. Easy because all you have to do is type and press send, but hard because you need to create good content that has value.
Okay, this was SUPER SUPER LONG. I’m so sorry.
I hope you got some value out of this. If you did, leave me a comment or a like…or do the poll….and also sign up for my Kickstarter campaign for THE GIRL WITH THE MEGA FISTS Vol. 1-3.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/entitycomic/the-girl-with-the-mega-fists-vol-1-3
Next email we’ll talk about the service providers that you can use 🙂
Peace!
Tyler
Tbis has peaked my interest