Why Every Designer Needs An Email List

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This episode is all about why Designers need an Email List.  I see amazing designers focus their energy, time, and attention on social media while ignoring their email list... and while social media is important to growing your business...  it has nothing on email!  Listen to find out why.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Speaker 1:                    00:00               Hey, what's up fools? This is Lauren with Lauren Lesley Studio and today we're going to be talking about why every designer needs an email list. Now you may be thinking, what is an email list and why does it matter? And if you're wondering that you are in the right place. Today we're going to go over why you need an email list in the first place. Why an email is different from social media, how to choose a provider and how to get subscribers on your list and how to craft your newsletter.

Speaker 1:                    00:35               So the problem with social media, okay, so although social media is very important to growing your business online, you don't own it. So a few years ago, every business was trying to get as many people as possible to like their facebook page because then they would show up naturally in their facebook newsfeed. Well, facebook decided to change their algorithm because they own facebook, you don't. And now business page or pages are basically dead. So business has spent all this energy, all this money marketing, um, and everything trying to get people to like their facebook page. And then in the end, it didn't really make a whole lot of sense. It was totally useless because they didn't actually own all of these likes. I mean, facebook was, could just change it at any minute. Um, another reason why social media is a little bit harder than email is because it's difficult to contact your tribe directly if you're putting a ton of energy and a ton of money into social media, uh, especially a platform like facebook or instagram, you just Kinda have to cross your fingers and say a little prayer and hope people see your stuff in their feed.

Speaker 1:                    01:55               Like what if they're not on their feed that day or they're, you're posting at the wrong time or you're posting at a time where there's too much competition. So it's difficult to contact your customers or get your leads directly.

Speaker 1:                    02:12               Email lists, on the other hand, bomp bomp bomp allow you to contact your customers and leads directly in their inbox. So it's intimate. Um, you're contacting them directly on social. You're posting for the whole wide world. So that means something to your potential leads or customers. I'm a thoughtful email is a lot. It's just, it's more intimate, it's like chatting with a good friend and it's intentional, you know that someone sat down and crafted this email very intentionally where sometimes social just kind of looks like, Oh, here's a pretty picture. Hope you like it, you know? Cool. Also email subscribers are way more likely to become customers and existing customers are more likely to become repeat customers. Can I get a hell yeah?! Also with email lists, conversion rates are high. According to opt in monster article on May 29th, 2018. So this is very recently guys, there are 2.6 billion - billion with a b email - users versus 1.7 billion facebook users. So email is pretty much like double,

Speaker 2:                    03:29               um,

Speaker 1:                    03:31               the amount of facebook users are. So you just have a bigger audience to work with in the first place. Not everyone is on facebook. My cousin who's in his twenties is not on facebook. My fiance, who's, you know, 35 has a facebook account, but he literally never ever, ever, ever logs in. Unless I tell him, hey, you need to go contact this person or there's an event we're going to, you need to respond to. Some people just aren't that active on facebook, but everyone is on email for 58 percent of people email us their first check of the day so they may wake up and grab their phone and immediately what do they do? Look at their email or maybe they have breakfast, have their coffee drive to work, and then what do they do? They look at their email first thing,

Speaker 2:                    04:20               um,

Speaker 1:                    04:22               and only, I mean that's versus only 11 percent of people who look at facebook first part of the day. Um, and you also have to take into account different age groups, like what's your target audience? This and that. I'm someone checking facebook first thing in the day. They may be out on school break or may not have, you know, a huge to do list that day. So that kind of factors into also who you're trying to target. Okay. So 77 percent of people find promotional material acceptable in email. What that means, Hey, if you're sending a promotion, people aren't gonna be offended if you send them an email about it. They're like, yeah, that's cool. That's what email is for. This is where I want to look up sales and coupons and deals. Like I don't want to see it on my social media feed. I'm only four percent of people find it acceptable to see promotional material on facebook that's supposed to be this intimate time for their friends and family. That's what facebook was originally. It was supposed to be connecting with first your college friends. Um, and then it kind of extended and it's more of your family now and whatever, but that's opposed to be social. It's not supposed to be where you're shopping. Like you don't want to get on facebook to shop. Um, you want to get on facebook to see who had acute new baby or um, you know, who went to the beach last weekend.

Speaker 2:                    05:51               Um,

Speaker 1:                    05:53               so emails deliver an excellent Roi which is return on investment for those of you who might not know, um, which has 21 percent of the time versus a facebook and twitter ads are about 15 percent Roi. So get this guys, 66 percent of consumers have made a purchase because of a promo email. How cool is that? Sixty six percent. I think that's pretty good. Uh, versus only 20 percent has made a purchase based on a facebook promotion. So that Kinda shows you, hey, like people are kind of turned off by seeing, you know, promotions and ads on their facebook newsfeed. They're kind of like, Ugh, gross. Like I don't want to see that here. Um, but you know, in their email it's totally acceptable.

Speaker 1:                    06:45               Email reaches 79 percent of the people you send it to 'em and this is the average global inbox placement rate. Just Fyi, facebook's organic reach. Get this guys, this is crazy. It's declined to about one to six percent, one to six percent. How crazy is that? What does Mark Zuckerberg doing? I mean, really, really? So you put all this effort and energy into, you know, posting something on facebook or instagram and facebook's organic reach, like they're literally, they're trying to force people to buy ads so that your stuff even get seen, which is crazy. Like they should not, I mean in my opinion, and this is my opinion, but I don't think they, I understand they have to get paid. Okay? Like, yes, everyone has to get paid, totally get that, but it's just not fair. It's just not fair to, you know, basically fuck with the algorithm that much to try to force people into paying for ads just to be seen on facebook.

Speaker 1:                    07:47               Like, Hey, facebook, guess what? You're not that important email as a way better. I'm a statistics than and reach and effectiveness than you do. And so you're only hurting yourself. You're only hurting yourself. Facebook declining the organic reach, you know, maybe you could say, oh, ads have a boost that organic reach doesn't, but don't fuck with it and make it, you know, totally obsolete. That's just not cool. Like, no one's going to be on a platform if they can't, um, you know, share the cool things that they're doing. Um, yeah, so that means if you're, your pays, blah, blah, blah, I can't talk. That means if you're posting on facebook, only one to six percent of your facebook fans will actually see your posts, which really totally blows. So the bottom line is email has far greater reach than social media if you couldn't figure that out already.

Speaker 1:                    08:47               So you're probably thinking, how do I get started? Well, I'm glad you asked. I'm here to tell you. So the first thing you want to do is choose an email service provider and I'm going to recommend three different options for you guys. So the first one is convert kit. Now I can't personally recommend convertkit because I've never used it, but I hear people rave about it all the time. So it may be one that you want to look into. Some of the pros are that it allows you to tag customers so that you can target them more effectively. And bloggers love it. Um, it's really helpful for small businesses and um, and sending like a content upgrades for your blog posts. It's easy to send those downloads and that kind of thing. Uh, some of the cons are it's $29 a month for the bottom tier guys.

Speaker 1:                    09:40               So they have zero freemium option. There's no free option for if you're just starting out and it's not the most user friendly in the beginning. Um, I've heard people complain that, you know, um, they had a little bit of a hard time figuring out at first it's not as intuitive starting out, uh, the next email service provider that you could work with is mailchimp. Now, some of the pros of mailchimp is it's free for your first 2000 subscribers. That's pretty cool. I mean, you got to get mail chimp credit for this. Um, it's only $10 a month after that and then the tiers kind of increased from there. And one of the reasons I like mailchimp is because it easily integrates with squarespace. So I use squarespace for my, um, my website. And so mailchimp really easily integrates with them. So it's just like smooth sailing to collect emails from using mailchimp.

Speaker 1:                    10:40               Um, and one little other pro is, it's an Atlanta guy, so like come on, we have to support them a little bit. Um, okay. So some of the cons, I will be honest about the cons. Uh, it's, there's no tagging. They have like groups in segmentation, but honestly like it's, it's very hard to, for me at least to figure out, I don't find that very user friendly or easy to manage. And I have heart. I've heard other bloggers complain, um, and really not recommend mailchimp because once they have a really large list, the functionality is not great. So that's something that also think about. They're like, hey, if I could have started with convert kit and I would've saved myself this huge headache once my list kind of exploded because then they had to go back and fix everything and like Redo a lot of their sequences and whatnot.

Speaker 1:                    11:32               So that is just word on the street. And then the other Ma, a mail service provider that I do very much recommend and I have used them is mailer lite. Um, they are also free for your first 1000 subscribers, so it's not as many as mailchimp, but it's still great, like your first 1000 subscribers totally free. Um, and then after that it's only $10 a month as you incrementally increased here. So like for the first 1001 to 2,500 subscribers, it's only an extra, it's only $10. And then the next tier is only $20, et cetera. Um, so just as your subscribers increase, your fees increase. Um, the really awesome thing about mailerlite as well is that you can tag your lists to send more targeted emails. So let's say for example, um, as a designer, I, I work with a lot of real estate agents and I also work with bloggers I work with, um, I worked with like financial advisors, et Cetera.

Speaker 1:                    12:37               So I might not want to send the same emails to my real estate agent customers as I do to my bloggers because they might have totally different needs and I might even be telling them about a product. Like I came out with this really awesome product. I'm God the real estate portrait Creator and it basically allows you to pick and choose some pre made options, literally over 70 faces and I'm adding more guys like if this is like a mega pack, awesome. 14 different houses and scenery. There's male realtors, there's female realtors on and on and on, different outfits. Um, and anyway, I would want to let my real estate customers know about that, but if I send an email to my entire list, then my, you know, blogger, customers are going to be like, I'm not a real estate agent. Why is she sending me this?

Speaker 1:                    13:31               Like this is annoying. So like tagging your list is, is important. So that's the really awesome thing about mailer lite. I love them and I do use them in conjunction with mailchimp. The only con I can see so far is that it doesn't directly integrate with squarespace, which is the website I use, website hosting. I use and I think you can get around this with I'm doing a Zapier, a doing a zap, um, and it Kinda. Zapier basically connects different apps together. Um, and I tried to do that with mailer lite and I wasn't successful then I just kind of gave up because I didn't have time to spend hours trying to get it to work. So anyway, I'm still using mailchimp and as I'm a, I'm just in order to basically, uh, remember what customers are who are signing up for my email list. I'm just creating different lists in mail champs so I just have so many different lists in mailchimp. So eventually I can bring those over to mailer lite and just tag them. Um, and then I can target my audience really easily. Okay. So

Speaker 1:                    14:42               after you choose a provider, convertkit, mailchimp, mailer lite, it's your choice. You have to decide what's best for you. I'm, you're gonna want to create a list for your email subscribers and you could just do like a basic one for now if you just have something very generic like a blog post that has, um, I dunno, organization tips or something that could be useful for anyone. Um, you could just make a subscriber's list will do for now. And then the next thing you want to do is you want to create newsletter signups all over your website. Now you want them to be strategically placed so that they're not too annoying, but at the same time like you want it to be seen. I feel like as as um, designers especially, but as any creative entrepreneur, we'd get a little bit nervous about, you know, annoying people, we don't want to annoy people, but I find that there's a healthy balance between pushing yourself a little bit out of your comfort zone and feel like you're being a little bit annoying.

Speaker 1:                    15:44               That's probably the right amount because honestly guys, like people just get bombarded with everything. Email, social media, whatever everyday. So if you just send or you know, like anyway, you get the point, you do need them all over your website or nobody's going to see them and nobody's going to sign up. I'm so you're going to feel like slightly annoying probably if this is new to you, but don't worry about it, you're really not. And that's, you know, that's the way people are going to sign up if they want to. If they don't, they won't. Um, so you'll kind of be able to see if it's working or not. And so you may be thinking, well, okay, so I put these all over my website, but what if no one signs up? Okay, so sometimes you do have to entice people to give you their email address.

Speaker 1:                    16:34               Why would they just, you know, people get bombarded with emails every day, so they're going to be a little bit hesitant, but what you can do, and this is a strategy that tons of people use and it's very highly effective. I'm offer a crazy, awesome freebie in exchange for their email address. Now, sometimes this feels like you're working for free, but if you can see the longterm picture, it's really totally worth it because you need leads coming into your business every single day. So you need to offer a really crazy, awesome Freebie, something that would probably you would normally charge for, but you just do the work once and people get to download it. It needs to be something downloadable. You don't want to sound like a hat because then you have to like pay for shipping every time someone gives you their email address, so you don't need to do that.

Speaker 1:                    17:24               You just need to spend a few hours and create a really valuable pdf checklist. Um, she, she, um, as a designer I have offered for free real estate logos, so that's something that, uh, is really great for people that are just starting out and I hope I can help them out with that. Um, and then I hope they also see like maybe once they start earning some good money, they get some commissions, then maybe they want to come back and get kind of the full branding package, um, instead of just like a little house icon logo. Um, but that's a great starting point for my real estate agent customers. Okay. So you'll see here an example of my for, for your real estate logos, and the button says, give me for free logos and so they have to click on it and then enter in their name and email address.

Speaker 1:                    18:18               Now, uh, this new law recently went into effect, uh, the GDPR, which I'm sure you got a million emails about, but you need to make sure every email signup that you have on your website is gdpr compliance. Uh, this is important, so it's not that hard. It's not that big of a deal, but what you do need is a privacy policy on your website and you can google, you know, how to do that for your business and just kind of like copy a template or something like that. Um, and then you need a disclaimer. Every time you ask for someone's email address, basically you just need transparency and telling them what you're doing. And so my disclaimer says, by signing up for this freebie offer, you agree to join our email list and receive occasional updates, we will never give your information to a third party and you can unsubscribe at anytime.

Speaker 1:                    19:09               Please read our privacy policy here and I have a hyperlink to have my privacy policy so that everything is very clear and transparent. Um, and then if you're using mailchimp, I'm especially, you can do a double opt in, which is an even kind of an extra safety check. So you know, when people do sign up with your to get your free offer, your Freebie, they have to double opt in, which can sometimes be annoying because sometimes it goes to their junk folder and they don't see it and then they never get their freebie and are kind of wondering what happened. But you can try to follow up with those people, especially in the beginning.

Speaker 1:                    19:46               Here is also an example of my landing page. So when you first go to my website, you'll see, um, what's up fool. I'm Lauren, Leslie, portrait, illustrator and designer. And then the very next thing you see at the bottom of the landing page is grab your free surprise and I'm asking for their first name and email address. So you know, people might not do that right away, but there is a little trick in sales that says people have to see things seven times before they buy. And I would be willing to bet the same thing is true with giving you their email address, so you just want to kind of make it very easy for them to sign up for your email address and put it all over your website. Okay. So the next thing you want to do is write a freaking email. It's gonna be weird.

Speaker 1:                    20:33               At first it was weird for me. I didn't know what to say. I just was kind of blabbing on and then I was telling people about my new products and a few people on subscribed, which is always disappointing. But now I feel like I'm in a much better rhythm and I'm telling people that they actually want to hear about. Um, and I feel like I've really gotten comfortable with my own voice when I'm writing emails. Um, instead of sounding too quote unquote professional or Stoic, you know, you want to really put your personality in your emails, but the only way to get to that point is to start. So you just have to start somewhere. Don't worry about it, don't stress about it. And don't worry if people unsubscribe because new people are going to start subscribing everyday. Hopefully once you get that really awesome freebie up.

Speaker 1:                    21:21               Okay? So your subscribers obviously signed up your email list for a reason. They love you and they want to hear from you and you don't want them to forget about you. So you know, if you, I mean, how many times have you gone to, you know, pinterest and then you ended up on some blog and it maybe it was a cool recipe or maybe it was something and you ended up subscribing for their email list, but then you never heard from them again and you totally forgot about them. But in contrast, maybe you did the same thing, but you hear from this person regularly and you were like, oh yeah, like if I need a recipe, I know I can go to this Vegan blog or whatever it is. Um, and it just like,

Speaker 1:                    22:01               it just makes sure that you don't forget who they are. So you don't want your customers to forget about you. You spend a lot of time on this Freebie. Make sure that you are emailing them at least once a month. I would say like people say once a week, but at least once a month. I would email them when they first get their Freebie you want to send them, I would say three to four emails and you can space it out if you are scared about being annoying you, you could send the first email and then two to three days later a setup, a sequence where another email sends to them and then two to three days later another email sense to them and then you can kind of cool it and maybe email them once every week, two weeks, three weeks or once a month. But definitely keep emailing them because they're going to forget who you are if you don't and then you just wasted all this time and you know your potential lead is Kinda gone.

Speaker 1:                    22:51               So you definitely want to do that. I'm not rules in next steps. I mean this is pretty obvious guys, but just don't spam people. I mean obviously that's probably the opposite of what you're thinking. You're probably scared to send an email in the first place because you don't want to seem spammy, but for those of you who are a little bit more ambitious, just, you know, don't spam the hell out of people like people hate that they're going to unsubscribe. Just bring value and be yourself and people will like getting your emails. That'll be fun. Oh, I'm going to be something they can kind of check when they're first getting out of bed or when they're sitting in a doctor's office kind of bored. Um, okay. So you. And then you want to set up an ongoing email sequence that's on autopilot so that way you're not having to like, scramble and Think, Oh my God, what am I going to email everyone this week?

Speaker 1:                    23:43               You just want to set up a few at, I would say at least five to six initial emails just to get started. Um, and then you can tweak them later if you want to kind of change what they say or whatever. At first, do you want to thank them for signing up? Second, you want to give the full their freebie. They signed up for a reason, give them their Freebie, next, tell them your personal story. So we don't want to get personal all the time, like we don't want to be like, here's a picture of my dog today for like 30 days in a row because people are like, I don't, I don't get it. I don't care about your dog, like whatever. But if they are interested in something like getting a real estate logo from you or you're interested in their, um, recipes and maybe eventually you're going to buy their cookbook.

Speaker 1:                    24:28               They want to know your personal story. They want to know who they're buying from and they want to really be able to connect with you. So share with them. Everyone has a story and everyone has been through something really shitty in their life but hopefully has a positive outlook on it. I mean, for me, like when I tell my personal story in my emails sequence, I want people to know, you know, that I'm not perfect and I'm not. I don't have this perfect life. Like my dad took his own life when I was six years old. And that really sucked, you know, and it still sucks, but I was really able to like dive into my art and in a way I think that my creativity kind of saved me. It was my strength, it gave me strength. Um, and then I kind of talk about, you know, my steps in my career, you know, how I was an art major in school.

Speaker 1:                    25:17               And then I had my first job as a t shirt designer. I decided I wanted to do graphic design and not fine art full time. So that's what I did. And then, you know, that wasn't really a great fit. So I got my first or my second big girl job. I say my big girl job as a textile designer at a home decor company in Atlanta. And that's when I finally got to kind of say peace out Spartanburg, Spartanburg. It's my home. But I mean it just wasn't a good fit for me long term in terms if I want it to be a designer. Like I would have not been able to progress like I have in a big city like Atlanta. So that was just such a better fit for me and I'm so I really flourished here in Atlanta, so that's something that I tell my customers and they love it.

Speaker 1:                    26:04               Like I've had people respond and be like, wow, thanks for telling me this like, and it hopefully makes them want to do business with me because they know that I'm a real person and I have struggles, but I also have successes and we're more alike than we are different. Um, so another idea for an email in your sequence is to share your best resources and tools. So if you use a program like a sauna or Trello, you can say how wonderful it is at project management. It helps you play in your blog posts or whatever your projects are in your business. You can talk about that. Um, you can talk about what kind of equipment you use, what books are you reading, if you have some cool business books that you're reading. I read entrepreneurial you by Dorie Clark who loved it, wrote a blog post about it. That's awesome. Um, recently read or I listened to the audio book, Anna Kendrick, scrappy little nobody. Oh my God, she's a freaking hilarious. You guys have to listen to her audio book. Don't read the book, listen to the audio book because she is so perfect in it and she's, her personality really comes through her voice and with her narrating the whole thing. It's just, it's pretty great. So that's another idea for your email list. Just share some cool resources and tools and like things that have inspired you in your business lately.

Speaker 1:                    27:24               And then, um, at the end of your email sequence you can offer our prayer a, sorry, a paid product that is relevant to the Freebie that they wanted. So like my example of the real estate agents I'm giving for free real estate logos. But what I can do at the end of my sequence is say, hey, like I also have this paid product that's so much better than the four Fri logo. So like whenever you're interested, here it is. I hope you'll buy it

Speaker 3:                    27:53               sometime at some point

Speaker 1:                    27:56               and then you just want to make sure to remind them of how to find you on social. So I know this whole kind of videos about why email is so much better than social, but that's not to say that social isn't important. You still want to be able to connect with people on social. They want to be able to see your pictures. See that again, it's just another way for them to see that you are a real person for them to get inspired. It's just another point of contact. So while email is number one, you definitely also want to connect with your customers and leads on social, especially if they maybe a little hesitant to give you their email address. Maybe that's, you know, the second best thing you can do.

Speaker 3:                    28:36               Um,

Speaker 1:                    28:37               so, uh, I wanted to also let you guys know where to find me in case you ever want to work with me. My website is Lauren Leslie Dot Com a l a U R e n l e s l e y Dot Com. Lauren. Leslie Leslie as my middle name. I like the alliteration, that's why I chose it. Okay, so a click the link in the show notes to get the link to your email providers. And these are affiliate links guys. Um, but it's, that's great. It's a win win for you and me because with the affiliate links I can make a little bit of money, but still keep these videos totally free for you guys. So help us out.

Speaker 1:                    29:19               Okay. So if you guys have any other ideas on why you love an email list or if you have any other email hosts, providers you want to recommend or any other ideas for an email sequence, please leave a comment in the notes below. And that way we can all share ideas. That'd be really great. And don't forget to subscribe to my youtube channel. Click the little button in the right hand lower corner and to get notified, click the little bell so that way you won't miss the next episode. And if you are on facebook, you can definitely join our facebook group. It's called the design tribe. So you can go to facebook.com/groups/design tribe. Lauren, Leslie, um, and I will also be live streaming videos in the facebook group, so that's a great place to find me. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you next time. Bye guys.