This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
You may have heard me or somebody else say at some point, if you ever listened to any kind of resource about small business, entrepreneurship, making money on the side, et cetera, you may have heard me say or somebody that you should be building an email list. It's one of the very few recommendations that just about everybody agrees on. We all have different perspective. There's a whole startup way of doing things that's very different from the side us all way. But just about everyone agrees that an email list is important in this day and age, no matter what platform comes out, no matter how communication changes, et cetera, email is still around, okay?
So this is almost always a good idea. However, you shouldn't just build up a list or a series of lists and not do anything with them, okay? I've actually done that before, so do as I say and not as I do. When people join your email list, it's because they want to hear from you, key point. So today's listener has a coaching service for writers and she has been diligently building that email list.
She's got the first step down, but now she wonders what she should be using it for. What's the next step? What can you do with an email list? [Music]
Hi Chris, this is Katie from London. I love the show, especially the new format, which is incredibly helpful.
I've recently set up a side hustle called Pick Up Your Pen, which is coaching for writers. I want to help writers reach their dream writing goal. So I offer accountability and I help them deal with procrastination, self-doubt and other creative blocks. I've just started to build up an email list and my question is, what do I actually do with it? Right now I'm sending out regular emails with writing tips and that seems to be going well, but what's the next step?
How do I go from here to actually selling my coaching services? I'm a writer at heart, so anything to do with marketing and sales makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. The only thing I've come up with so far is to offer discounts, but that's not a great long-term strategy. I'd love your advice. Can't wait to hear from you and thanks again for the great show.
Bye. - Katie, thank you so much. It absolutely sounds like you are on the right track. Sending out regular emails with writing tips in this situation is exactly the kind of content you should be preparing. I'd also recommend you do that on a consistent schedule so it's not just random, but it becomes something that your readers expect every Monday, every Monday and Thursday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, whatever it is, you can decide, but you just be consistent with it.
Now, Katie is also correct to wonder, okay, what's next? And since she is a writer and comfortable with that medium, I would recommend that she approaches the selling of her coaching services as a writer would. What does her ideal customer need to know? That's the question. What does her ideal customer need to know?
Consider writing them a letter. And your letter is an email, right? But your email is a letter. Here's your problem. I had this problem too.
I figured out how to fix it. And guess what, together, we can do that for you. We can do that with this coaching service. So it's not so much about offering a discount necessarily as it is leading them through this so-called funnel. And a funnel kind of sounds like this hard promotion thing, but it doesn't have to be.
As you're thinking through your email series, which is either like a static autoresponder sequence, a series of messages you write in advance, or an ongoing series of broadcast messages, consider what might make for a good ratio of helpful content to soft promotion. For example, if you send three emails in a row with helpful writing tips, and then one email that says, by the way, if you're enjoying this, you really should consider hiring me as your coach. Here's how you do it. And it's also okay to use some scarcity there to say, well, I'm a coach, I can't help everybody. So I've got two slots opening up next week or next month, or in the next cohort, however it works.
I don't think most people would find that excessive. I think that's actually natural. And again, that's why they're signing up for your email list because they want to hear from you. That's not the only formula, that three messages and then one message thing, it's more of a principle that you should include sales messages without overdoing it. Just make it natural, just make it flow.
Help people understand that over time, you're gonna give them the tips, but you also are offering something for sale. And that's okay, your customers actually want that. So good luck, Katie, thank you so much again. Everyone check out her site at pickupyourpin.com. Pickupyourpin.com.
Listeners, if you've got a question of your own, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. We will be featuring them throughout the year, along with updates from other listeners as they launch their projects. Thanks so much, I'm so glad you're out there. We've got a lot more coming up. The best is yet to come.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
