This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
An email strategy for event planning. Let's talk about it. Specifically, a Los Angeles event planner. And not just for this industry, but how you can apply a couple of quick lessons to almost any industry. What is the best email strategy for someone moving into this field?
Or perhaps another, welcome to Side Hustle School. Chris Guillebeau here, your host. Every single day, seven days a week, bringing you daily tips, questions and answers, case studies, ideas, all with the goal of helping you make extra money without quitting your job. Perhaps eventually quitting your job, but getting you to the point where you can, in fact, have more options for your life, more independence. That's what it's all about.
And I'm so glad you're here. We've got an amazing community of folks all over the world. Today, we're going to Los Angeles, at least virtually, to talk about this email strategy. So Marcus in LA has a question about email marketing. I'll bring it to you in just 30 seconds.
Quick shout out to our sponsor. And the question and my answer. [Music]
Hey, it's Marcus. Thanks for all you do. Los Angeles is buzzing with events of all kinds, and I'm jumping in with my event planning business.
I want to use email marketing to build my brand, but where do I start? How do I write emails that people won't just skip over? And is there a way to make sending them out less of a headache? I'd love to hear your thoughts on making emails a bit more personal without spending forever on them. [Music]
So I think the first thing we need to think about here is why does email matter?
You might say, well, this is an event planning business. It's very much an in-person business. A lot of it comes by referral and such. You just got to be kind of on the ground, out and about, making connections and such. And some of that is true to a degree, but really almost any business in any industry can benefit from email marketing and building an email list over time that you are able to then contact and reach out to at your discretion.
I feel like a lot of event planners do most of their connecting through social media, and that can be fine for some things, but you have no control over who's going to see your posts. So if it's a business that is built entirely on a very small network of in-person relationships or relationships that develop over direct messages, for example, then that can be fine without email. But whenever I talk to any new business owner or somebody starting a hustle, I'm always like email marketing is one of the few things you need to think about. Like a lot of stuff is optional, but if you're going to choose just a couple of strategies, a couple of platforms to build, an email list is one of them because you can build it for years and be connected with people. And again, not be dependent on the whims of a social media platform or anything else.
So, you know, I think Marcus understands that a bit, but he's like, okay, how do I start? How do I write emails that people won't just skip over? Well, you do have to find a way to make it interesting. You do always want to think why should someone care about this? If I'm sending like an individual message to somebody or if I'm writing a group message, why should they care?
Why should they notice when they've got all kinds of stuff coming in? Just kind of doing a little gut check before you send any message and asking that question. You can just do it intuitively, very quickly. And when you don't have a good answer, then that tells you, oh, maybe I need to change something. Maybe there does need to be a little bit more life here or some personalization, or, you know, if it's an actual business tool, like if I'm trying to make a sale or something, then there needs to be some actionable point.
There needs to be a call to action, a CTA. Maybe there's a discount or a special offer or some other kind of incentive that I can push to get people to care, because that's the thing, that's the real battle, right? To get people to care in the midst of so many different messages. So the thing, you know, these days tools like MailChimp or ConvertKit or others, they do make things pretty simple in terms of the logistics of like, okay, I just need to go here and write and send this out for that mailing list. But you want to think about, okay, what is the content and what is the message that I want to share?
Social proof also helps even in a client-based business, you know, including a little testimonial or a so-and-so mentioned that you might like this, you know, that kind of thing. Lastly, for events, you want to keep your subscribers engaged, perhaps sending thank you emails after the event. That just kind of nurtures the relationship, gets them to keep you in mind going forward for future events or for some other business relationship. So spending some time on email is worth it. That's what I'm going to conclude on.
Spending some time on email marketing is worth it. Many other things you can skip or avoid. But this one I want to recommend to most people, most. And, you know, ultimately you make the decisions of what's important to you. So that's just my recommendation.
If you have a question or an experience or something that you're working out, I'd love to hear about it. sidehustleschool.com/questions. We have all kinds of people out there doing all kinds of things. So I try not to overgeneralize, but I do want to give specific information as much as possible so that you do have like a practical step or an inspiration point every single day. That's my goal.
Let me know how I'm doing. We'll continue to improve. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
