Welcome to Day 12 of the Crafting Your Content Marketing Strategy Challenge!
Once you move someone to your email list, it’s important for you to gain their trust. This is often called the “know, like, trust” factor and is essential for building your business. In fact, trust-building is the first goal of content marketing via email. Without trust, your audience will be afraid to spend money with you for a variety of reasons.
So often, people are tricked and scammed online, so your job is to teach your subscribers who you are as a brand and a business owner, while getting to know them more so that mutual like and trust and respect develops. Once that happens, they’re more likely to make a purchase.
Always Get Permission
There are email software packages that allow you to do one-click permissions so that if someone downloads your freebie, they are automatically on your list without a double opt-in, but you should ensure that you really do have their permission by adding a click box on the form that says they’ve given permission to receive email messages from you.
Implement Double Opt-in When Appropriate
Even though the technology exists as mentioned above, you can use double opt in to improve trust by enabling it when it’s appropriate, such as if your audience is uneducated about email marketing. It gives you another chance to get their permission.
Be Very Clear About Who is Sending Messages
Don’t use a “no-reply” email. That is only for huge corporations that don’t care about their customers so much. You are a small business owner, and it’s always better for you to use your name, and an appropriate email address with your business domain that can be answered and replied to that is also monitored.
Tell Them What to Expect in Advance
Always be clear when your audience is providing their email address why you need it and what you’re going to do with it. Tell them what you’re going to do in advance. For example, that you’ll send a couple emails per day regarding your niche or a weekly newsletter, or whatever you plan to do with the email. Be upfront and honest about it.
Be Transparent and Honest
Always be upfront and honest about everything you do online and offline. People notice dishonesty and will even accept dishonesty, so when you are transparent and honest, it really pays off.
Ensure Your Messages Have a Customer-First Approach
When you write any type of content, it’s imperative that you are clear on exactly who you want to consume the content and what you want them to do after. It’s always about them first.
Focus on Message Context
When sending any type of email, it’s imperative that the message is created in the right context, meaning it should be the right message for the right person and sent at the right time. You can only know this if you study your audience and your niche in an ongoing manner.
Use Personalization to Your Advantage
Autoresponder software has many opportunities for personalization that you can incorporate into every message. You can mention the person’s name directly in each email so that it appears to be a one-on-one message – even though it goes out to everyone who signed up for that list.
Cross-Promote Other Platforms
Always promote your other platforms for communication such as your social media platforms to your email subscribers. Add a message every few days that invites members to view you on social media so that they can follow you at every location you appear.
Set Up These Nine Emails Right Away
There are a few emails that every single member of your list should receive. Each will, of course, be customized and slightly different depending on what freebie or product they downloaded or purchased to get on your list.
#1 Welcome Message
Just what it says but use the welcome message to remind them how they got on the list and what to expect from you going forward – and then stick to it.
#2 Provide Social Proof
People trust others because they are trusted by people that they look up to and trust already. In fact, studies show that buyers are more likely to buy from you if you have testimonials and reviews by others, even if they don’t know them. If you can provide proof of this to your audience, you should create content that does that and send it via email.
#3 Product Demonstrations
Even if you don’t have something to directly demonstrate in a video, for example, you can still give an overview of your products or services pictorially and in words. This will give them an idea of what they’d be paying for with their hard-earned money.
#4 Invites to Webinars and Live Events
Webinars can be recorded, and they can be live. You can also plan live YouTube events and events on other platforms or even in-person events, depending on your business model. By inviting your audience to see your work in other ways, you further establish your expertise, and that builds more trust.
#5 Send Copies of Live Transcripts
Anytime you do any type of events, always get a transcript made. You can send out copies of your live event transcripts within your email to explain a concept or further drive home a point.
#6 A Surprising Extra
Sometimes it’s fun to shake things up and send some juicy gossip, or to stir up some controversy and intrigue with your audience. Think about eliciting fear, curiosity, desire, awe, authority, or even humor in your message and how that would affect the audience.
#7 Last Chance or Special One Time Offers
Email is the best place to send all your last chance or special offers. You can make these short and sweet too and intermix with your other educational and informative content.
#8 Discount Coupons
While discounts are always a nice surprise, send discounts later in the series so that they have a chance to buy your products at full price. If they are resistant or not opening emails or something else like that, you can send discounts and point it out in the subject line to get them to open. You can also send discounts to each buyer for the next product when they’ve had enough time to use the first one. It’s always nice to give special discounts to your VIP customers on the regular. It always costs less to keep a customer than to attract a new one.
#9 Surveys and Bonus Material
The other email you should set up is one offering a survey to help you get to know them better or other types of bonus material that helps them get to know you better, such as a link to a behind-the-scenes YouTube video or a checklist that helps them use your product better.
Thankfully, you can build trust with your audience by using content and your autoresponder. Once your audience gets on your list, if you have set up your autoresponder correctly, it’ll make trust-building mostly hands-off. However, you must follow a few best practices for building trust with your audience via email marketing.
Please leave any comments or questions below.
Thank you for joining me! To go to your next lesson simply click the “Next Post” button below.
