If You Feel Sick About Sending That Last Email, That’s About Right

Not to get all meta on you, but this email I'm sending you is the second in a two-part series on sending emails. Missed Part 1? Check that out here: Four Truths About Sending Emails (so you can send with more ease and regularity).

You might already know this, but there's a lot of nuance to email marketing. A lot of tech and nuance. 

Here are 5 more things to know about sending emails that will help you up your game, your mindset, or both. 

Sales emails are only one type of email to send.

The fear about sending too many emails and bugging people often stems from the assumption that all email marketing is sending sales(ish) emails to directly promote something with a call-to-action like buy/book/register.

In actuality there are at least 6 other types of emails that should be part of your email efforts:

  1. direct personal outreach and follow-ups from within your inbox (yup, I count 1:1 emails sent straight from your personal email address in the name of biz development as email marketing)

  2. round-ups where you share previously published content or cover a variety of things going on in your business

  3. personal reflections, stories, and insights to offer your point of view

  4. announcements like a podcast you did, an article you published, or a save-the-date for an upcoming event

  5. how-to's where you teach your reader something

  6. case studies, shout-outs, or client spotlights

If you're only sending out sales-type emails and feeling weird about it, yeah, I would too. There are so many ways you can provide value, entertain, and nurture your subscribers. 

That said…

Definitely send those sales emails and always at least one more than you feel like! 

This happens more frequently than it should: someone's launching something big or important to them and I see just a couple of emails about over a goodly span of a few weeks.

Maybe they're doing most of their promo in FB or LinkedIn so they're not thinking much about email? I don't know. But I'm always waiting for another email about the thing because I barely heard about it!

One colleague was running a huge promo she'd done a lot of prep for. Yet I swear she sent all of 3 emails about her program during the entire 6-week launch period. 

Many times I've gotten promo emails about something I'm interested in, but I don't buy right away.

(I tend to think on things for a bit, except when it comes my weakness, shoes, because everyone knows "shoes make the outfit," and I don't even care if most of the time people only see me as a head-and-shoulders on Zoom! This girl's gotta have great kicks.)

Then I find out later the deadline came and went and I didn't get any email reminders about it. ⁉️ lost sale

Likely you already know if you're going to make sales, they'll typically come right at the beginning and again right at the very end.

Don't forget about your very end! 

Send at least two emails on the day of your deadline.

If you're feeling sick to your stomach about hitting send on that last email, that's probably the right amount. 🤮 + 👍

Give your subscriber an option to opt out vs. unsubscribe.

When you're running a big promo campaign it's natural to be concerned about losing a lot of folks to unsubscribes or want to better segment your list. The best way to hit both birds is to include a promo opt-out in each of your campaign emails. 

There are a few ways to do this and it's fairly simple to set up. Here's one method: 

Utilize all parts of the email.

There's more to the structure of an email than the subject line and body copy.

Consider also the preview text, pre-text, the postscript, and the footer.

These other sections can be excellent places to highlight key messages, include reminders, or add some color commentary. 

Your TLDR folks will especially thank you!

The definitive answer to how much email to send and when.

I know you're wondering about how often to send email and when during the week to send it because everyone wonders about this.

Let’s start with when to send out emails because that’s easy—send your emails whenever you want. It really doesn’t matter. People are reading emails at all hours of the day in every location imaginable. 

Now, about how often to send… again up to you.

But here's what to understand: frequency is not the same as regularity.

Frequency is how often you're sending emails.

Regularity is how consistently you send them.

If once a month is your jam, stick to it. Or bi-weekly or once a week or once a quarter.

Whatever your frequency, send with regularity.

My frequency is weekly except when I’m promoting something in which case I’ll send more, sometimes quite a lot more, throughout the week.

I consistently send out a proper email newsletter weekly unless I explicitly say I'm not like over the winter holidays.

Many people will not care how often you send. I mean if they do, they can unsubscribe, and if they do, who cares? (See Part 1 of Sending Emails.)

Some will care how consistently you send.

Both frequency and regularity will matter most to YOU because you'll start to see a direct correlation between frequency and money. Sending with regularity builds a habit of commitment to your own word which in turns builds self-trust and grows your skin thick about being visible and vulnerable to rejection. 

Email—as I think you already know!—can be a powerful way to establish rapport, build trust, and of course make money (directly and indirectly). 

What I might love best about email is that it's permission-based so it's already an environment where people have said yes to you. 

As a result, email is more intimate and feels safer than social media such that people feel like they can be more themselves to their email subscribers than they can on social media where bozos abound. 

There’s a lot more I could go into about email: deliverability, segmentation, personalization, automation, writing energy, list building… 

(Definitely check out the companion piece to this article about sending emails “4 Truths About Sending Emails.”)

But let's get the basics down first because that's often what people are missing and filling in those blanks can make a world of difference. 


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