It always sounds weird when I tell people that I write emails for money. It can usually go one of two ways:
- Oh, you’re the Nigerian Prince who needs some money to help overthrow his father.
- Why would anyone make money from emails? It doesn’t make sense!
Unfortunately, I can’t help you with #1. Not sure why I said unfortunately but I’m going to assume that one out of a thousand people that come here are looking for the Nigerian Prince method of making money.
This isn’t it.
This is how you and anyone else can start writing emails for money.
But before we get into the actual emails we probably need to understand how online business works.
The Attention Economy
If you want to make money in today’s world you only have one choice.
Get people’s attention.
If you can’t get someone’s attention and keep it then you’re going to find it really hard to make money. This is one of the most basic principles found in The Pocket Business Framework.
- Get them to notice you
- Get them to pay attention to you
- Get them to trust you
- Convert that trust into money
If you can follow that framework then you’ll start printing money.
But what does email have to do with all of this? Think about where you give most of your attention. A lot of it goes to social media if you’re on that and once you’re on social media it is hard to leave.
Those platforms want to keep you on there because they have advertisers that are paying for attention.
Whoever controls the attention, controls the bank. But once someone pays attention to you on social media then you have to fight against everyone else also trying to get their attention.
You also don’t know where someone is consuming your content. If they’re quickly scrolling through Instagram to pass the time then are they going to remember that message you’re trying to send?
Probably not.
Email is the one place where people will give you their undivided attention. It’s also one of the few places where you know your message is going to be delivered.
Look at that deliverability rate. Look at the bounce rate. Look at the open rate.
If you have 2,200 followers on a social media platform you’ll be lucky if the algorithm shows your content to 10% of them.
That isn’t the case with email and that’s why it’s so important in helping you build an online business.
Taking Them on a Journey
There are times when you will buy something immediately after you see it. Maybe someone posts something cool on TikTok and you’ll buy it on the spot.
But that doesn’t happen with everything. A lot of times we need some time before we buy something. If you’re running a business this can be frustrating because you want people to buy from you right now.
Unfortunately, you can’t dictate when someone is going to buy something. The best thing that you can do is be around when they are ready and it’s hard to be around on social media.
Not that you can’t post every single day, but can you trust that the person who is ready to buy is going to show up that day? Can you trust the algorithm to show them your content?
You can’t and that’s what makes email special. You can show up in someone’s inbox every single day until they are ready.
But a more important aspect of email marketing is the fact that you have an opportunity to take someone on a journey.
Sometimes people aren’t ready for your offer because they haven’t reached that part of the journey. For example, you can buy my content creation services but they don’t make any sense if you don’t see how content can grow your business.
If you don’t plan on having a blog for your website because you don’t know what a blog is then me showing up and telling you to buy these services doesn’t make sense.
However, if I sent you a series of emails that explained the benefits of having long-form content on your site that acts as a resource for your audience, then the picture becomes more clear.
Then it would make sense to show you what I can do to help grow your business. Otherwise, it doesn’t make any sense at all until you are ready.
One of the strategies that I use across all Makers Mob brands is to create what I like to call a Big Value Asset (BVA). This is a piece of content (or multiple) that walks people through a journey.
In a sense, it should get people to where I want them to go, but the problem is that it only works under the assumption that someone is going to sit down and go through it all.
What if they want to but they can’t at the moment? Then what happens?
Chances are they completely forget about it and move on with their life until 6 months later they come across me again (thanks algorithm!) and remember that they want to go through the material.
This is why email is so vital to growing any type of online business.
Okay, now that you understand the importance of emails for your online business the question becomes how do you write them so that you can start making money.
Writing Emails for Money
The biggest mistake that people make when writing emails is that their emails consistently suck. Everyone writes a bad email from time to time, but if you’re consistently writing bad emails then your audience will not want to see you in their inbox.
And that becomes a problem because by the time you want to send that magical sales email, they’ll be tuned out.
So what you need to ensure is that every email counts.
What’s the Revelation?
Every email that I send I try to provide some type of revelation to the reader. Something that maybe they didn’t know before or something that they should’ve known but were missing.
Do this consistently and you’ll find that people race to open your emails. Forget about the people who want to make you believe that you need to send a million emails to make money.
Your goal is to have each email have an impact so when you do send the ones that are supposed to convert readers into customers, it will have the biggest impact.
Segmentation, Use It
The easiest way to make a sale is to send a message to someone who wants it. The worst way to make a sale is to try to force someone to buy something when they don’t want the message.
This is what makes segmenting so valuable for emails. If you don’t know what segmenting is then it’s simply the act of separating your subscribers into groups and only sending emails that are relevant to that group.
For example, if you care about email marketing and I’m sending out an email on affiliate marketing, then my best bet is to exclude you from the affiliate marketing emails.
But what if you really want to know about affiliate marketing? Then I’ll first send out an email asking if you are interested in affiliate marketing and if so, click a link, and I’ll add you to that group.
Segmenting helps you increase your open rates, decrease your unsubscribe rates, and make your conversion rate look pretty good.
Make the Action Obvious
If you want to get people to buy your offer from your email then you need to make it obvious that they can do that.
If you don’t then you’ll be left wondering what is going on with your emails. Aren’t they good? Why is nobody buying?
Sometimes the easiest explanation is that the link to take action wasn’t as obvious as you thought it was.
Send Often
There is this stigma that it’s possible to send too many emails and I’ve found that is almost never the case if your emails are good. If a person knows that you’re sending an email that will help them in some way (remember, what’s the revelation), then you’ll be in a good spot.
I tend to send an email out every single weekday for Odd Noodle and you’ve seen the numbers above. People don’t complain and not many unsubscribe.
But by sending emails daily, I’m getting people used to seeing me in their inbox. By making sure that each email carries some type of revelation I’m getting them used to the idea of opening the email.
And when it does come time to sell some of them are more than ready to make it happen.