Have you ever felt that rush of anxiety when you’re running late, desperately searching for your keys and phone, while it seems like everyone wants to talk to you at once?
It’s pretty similar to the sensation I experienced after once signing up for a business bundle.
Picture this: I was in the Boston train station, scrolling through Instagram while waiting for my train to New York City. That’s when I stumbled upon a business bundle promotion shared by someone I followed. The bundle seemed incredibly valuable, and I couldn’t resist signing up.
But what followed was an avalanche of emails from various businesses, turning my excitement into overwhelm. As I open my inbox, I can feel my brain start to shut down by the sheer amount of information that greets me inside.
As a ConvertKit Consultant & Email Automation Strategist, I’m no stranger to email marketing. But this experience made me realize that even as business owners, we can overlook critical aspects of email marketing beyond the initial setup.
That’s why I created the Email Automation Pillar framework, a five-part approach that humanizes the tech and automation aspects of email marketing, always keeping in mind that there are real people on the other end.
Arranging Your Subscribers
Imagine you’re participating in a bundle (or a virtual summit). You offer a product as a way to grow your email list and want to identify the people who signed up for it and accessed it.
The first thing you need to do is Organize your subscriber, the first of the five Email Automation Pillars.
This step involves using tags or custom fields, or whatever your email marketing platform calls them to organize your subscribers effectively.
By organizing your subscribers, you can:
- Prevent sending redundant emails to people who already have your product.
- Filter out subscribers who joined your list through the bundle (or summit), saving them from being inundated with bundle-related content.
- Tailor your email sending frequency based on how subscribers came to your list. For instance, delay emails for subscribers who signed up for multiple products to avoid overwhelming them.
It’s essential to strike a balance here – don’t over-tag or overcomplicate your system. Create a naming convention that makes sense to you, ensuring efficient management of your subscribers so that you can better segment them.
Testing & Tweaking Your Opt-in Flow
Once everything is set up, it’s tempting to consider your work done and hit send. However, to ensure your automation works as intended, it’s crucial to put yourself in the shoes of a subscriber to see what the Opt-in flow looks like.
Test the entire journey as if you were signing up for your product or offer, and go into your email marketing platform to track your subscriber journey there. Pay attention to:
- The number of emails and their timing.
- The application of tags and identifying information to subscribers.
If you notice that you receive multiple emails in a short span or that tags aren’t being applied correctly, it’s time to make adjustments. Remember, automation doesn’t mean losing the personal touch; it means delivering the right information at the right time.
By implementing these often-neglected steps in your email marketing strategy, you’ll not only create a more organized system that saves you time when the next opportunity comes up, but also enhance the customer journey for your subscribers. So, whether you’re participating in a bundle, speaking at a summit, or seizing any other opportunity, you’ll have a robust system in place to provide the best experience for your audience – because there are real people on the other side of those emails.
