It’s vital to determine what works for your audience when it comes to email. Val recommends finding out what they are interested in and why they are on your email list. A good starting place is with the people who are already subscribed.
If you don’t have an email framework in place, now is the time to implement one so you can start collecting data. Don’t be afraid to fail—you won’t know how to harness the power of email until you try.
Dinner Party Strategy: Email Like a Human
Val suggests arranging your email strategy like a dinner party. You don’t serve the main dish the second a guest walks in the door—you start with drinks and appetizers, move through the courses, and finish with a dessert and plans to do it again. Email is most effective when it is strategic, intuitively paced, and human.
Val says it’s important to remember that you are not your subscribers and to use that realization as a foundation for how you reach them. Embrace a teaching mindset and share what you know in a digestible way.
Give people a choice about what they want to hear. Help them connect to your email content with analogies. Analogies and metaphors show that email doesn’t have to be complicated and it’s a constructive, human communication method. This is one of the core reasons why Val advocates the power of email: it’s the most private, human way for brands and customers to connect virtually.
16:41 “When you have email, you have ultimate control over your list. Sure, people can unsubscribe and set up filters and all those kinds of things on their end, but when you email people, they pay more attention than an Instagram ad or a Facebook message—and also mostly because they’re more likely to see it.”
Increase Customer Retention, Decrease Churn
Improving your churn can greatly impact your monthly recurring revenue. Val helps companies fix churn through email. She finds it’s easier to move existing customers up a pricing plan than it is to bring in new customers at a higher-priced plan.
23:16 “[Think] about your existing customers and how you can serve them . . . build a relationship, keep them on board versus thinking [with the] mindset of dealing with churn means going out and growing. It doesn’t have to mean growing. It can mean weeding the flowers you’ve already planted.”
Keep churn as far away from your business as possible: learn to build a team, don’t just hire help. Val has worked with a team of email strategy and copywriting specialists for the past two years—and she says she wouldn’t be able to solve churn without it.
To reduce churn:
- Stop talking about your features. Start talking about the benefits of your features.
- Educate and provide additional value for your customers. This connects you to them as a brand.
Learn More
Also Mentioned in this Episode: “Company of One” by Paul Jarvis
Leave a Reply