There’s lots of talk about how to get people onto your email list. But, then what? What do you SEND them? How do you find good material to send to your email subscribers? That is what we are going to be talking about in this episode; Episode 81 of Coffee Break Blogging.

There’s no greater tragedy in this business than an email list which isn’t being used. So in this episode, I will show you how not to make that mistake and also, we will talk about where to draw material from, to send to your email subscribers – both using your autoresponder and your broadcast emails.

You’ll learn:

• The important mindset to bear in mind here, especially if you’ve been blogging for awhile.
• The simple tactic to use right after they subscribe.
• How to cross-promote different lead magnets
• The biggest mistake people make when sending a new lead magnet to their EXISTING subscribers
• How to identify “money posts” to send to your list

See, there’s a lot of talk out there, including by yours truly, on how to get people to opt-in to your list. And that is certainly an important topic. I mean, really, your email list is the life boat of your entire business. So it is important to get people onto our list. And a lot of the last many episodes here on Coffee Break Blogging have talked about that in one way, shape or form. The question is, then what?

What do you send these people after they have opted-in?

Now, in Episode 78, we talked about the autoresponder sequence and we talked about 7 things that you can do with that autoresponder. I gave several ideas. This is important. But those autoresponder sequences are automatic. Now, there is a lot that you can do on automatic by doing pre-written emails and it puts a lot of things on this autopilot. So you can be literally doing the whole stereotype of sitting on the beach, with or without your laptop, whatever. Your choice. And emails will be getting sent to people. And this could be done using your autoresponder sequence. So if you have not listened to Episode 78; it is just a few episodes ago, go back and do that because it is going to be a very useful episode for you.

But we also want to talk about where to get some of these material? And also, where do you get some of those material that is going to be used for your one-off broadcast emails because not everything that you send is going to be automated?

Sometimes, you are going to just type out the email manually and you are going to send it to people with a one-off “email blast” which I hate that one, you know? Built to blast… In fact, we are going to talk about that in the coming episodes; The Death of the Email Blast. But anyway, topic for another day.

One thing that I want you to keep in mind is that you need to realize that just because you know; that you have talked about something many times before, doesn’t mean that you are new email subscribers know this. Okay? So that is one thing that I want to preface everything here with, is that you need to remain firmly lodged inside the brain pan of your prospect; not inside your own. And this is one trap that I have fallen into before because I have been blogging about this topic of blogging and online marketing for six years. I have been doing it in one way, shape or form, since about 2008.

So from my perspective, out of some of the newer topics or as my approach to things changes, there is a lot of topics out there that I have talked about until my mouth… well, you know, just bad things. It is just like I talked about the stuff to the point where in some cases I am just plain out tired of talking about it. But it doesn’t mean that that needs to translate over into people who get into my list. The people who get into my list today are not me. They are not tired of it; otherwise they would have not opted in. It’s just a mindset thing.

So with that in mind, you can go back and look at your own content in your own blog archives with fresh set of eyes. Look at it from the perspective of somebody new to you; to your brand. What can you bring out of that and how can you give them value on an ongoing basis via your email list?

A Few Recommendations

Set Up A Survey

So, one of the first things that I recommend that you do is set up a survey that goes out to new subscribers. And the survey; what you ask them is up to you. But the whole idea of it needs to be to find out what your subscribers need and want. What are they looking for? What are they going to look for from your list that is going to determine whether they are going to remain a long time subscriber? And I would just straight up ask them! I have done this in the form of a form that literally is on the Confirmation Page and I just give them a survey right there. But I have also done it via my autoresponder like, “What is their biggest challenge right now?” And I will just say, “Hey, hit reply and let me know what your answer is.” And I want them to actually hit the reply button and tell me their answer.

But the whole idea here is to have an ongoing form of survey built in to your lists subscription process so that you have subscribers actively telling you what they want. And that is very important because if you give them what they want, they are going to know, like and trust you and that is important for our marketing. Correct? So ask them. Find out what good material you can send them by asking them first.

Now from there, let us go into some of the different strategies, and some of these we did talk about in Episode 78.

Cross-promote Things

One of them is the idea of sending different lead magnets to them. So in a few different episodes here we talked about how you want to have different lead magnets to get on to your list. And these lead magnets are going to attract people of unique set of interests into the list. That is the entire point of that lead magnet. The thing is, because somebody opts-in to one of your lead magnets doesn’t mean that they are not going to be interested in one of your “other” lead magnets.

So, what you can do is cross-promote these things. So you have somebody come in to lead magnet 1, whatever that might be for you and let’s say that you think they might be interested in lead magnet no. 3, or you can promote that to them. Now do not make the mistake of thinking, “Well, they are already are on my list, let me just send them the lead magnet like a direct download.” No, no, no… Do not do that. Send them into a squeeze page and have them to opt-in again. I understand that they are already on your list but the thing is; go back one episode, go back to Episode 80 where we talked about how this is for segmentation purposes. We want them to actively raise their hands and say “Yes! I am interested in the topic of lead magnet no. 3” whatever that might be for you.

And you want them to do that by actually opting-in for it because that gives you permission to now talk to them about that topic because they have indicated interest. If you just send them the link to a PDF, that is not the same thing. So make your people opt-in again if they are coming in from a different entry point on your list. Send them a link to a direct squeeze page; not to your blog, not to your sidebar, go directly to a squeeze page, okay?

This is how you make this marketing thing go in a circle. You are going to have people who come in to one of the many different entry points into your list. If they don’t buy something related to that lead magnet, they are going to end up on your general list. Now, is that general list or they just done being marketed to? Are you never going to try to sell them anything again? Of course, not. The way you can do this; other than just running a one-off broadcast promotion to them is to get them into another entry point into your email funnels by getting them to subscribe to a different lead magnet. And then they are going to be seeing a new offer related to that particular lead magnet and maybe they’ll buy it. Okay?

So, different lead magnets are a very, very important core component of the overall strategy. And you can definitely send that to your email subscribers.

Money Posts

Another thing that you can do is to send money posts. And so you literally go to your archives and you find your money posts and you send those to your general list. And you could do this as a broadcast or you could do it as an autoresponder.

Now, what the hell is a money post? I think I have talked about this before but I actually do not remember right off the top of my head. But here is what a money post is; it is essentially a blog post that just gives them a ton of value but the post was particularly written in order to pre-sell them into something that they are going to buy. So it is a post; it is a piece of content, it is not a sales pitch. I mean it is straight content, you are helping them out but it is essentially a pre-sell to get them interested in something that you can put as a call to action on that blog post. And so if you write the blog post in such a way where it is attracting those kinds of people and get them to a call to action; that can be a money post.

Now it doesn’t really matter if that money post is already getting good traffic or not. Really what you are doing is looking at that money post as a part of a funnel; it is another entry point into a funnel. And you can send that as blog content to your subscribers. It helps them, it gives them useful content, topnotch stuff but it also can potentially get them in to another entry point into your sales funnels and maybe get them to buy something.

Related to the money post idea would be the idea of just going to your blog archives and finding your best stuff; finding your popular posts, your top posts. And these can be ones that you have handpicked for strategic reasons because you think that blog post is really nailing hard on a topic that you know your people need and want because they are telling you. And even if Google Analytics is saying “Yeah, that blog post is performing on average, it is not one of your top topics post” if you know that it is fulfilling a need for the people who arrive there, then you can bump it up to the top by highlighting that blog post to your email subscribers using your autoresponder.

Social Media Sharing

But you can also go into Google Analytics and you can sort your list of blog posts by those that are getting top traffic. And so if you know what your top traffic posts are you can actually bump them up even further by featuring those already trafficked posts to your list especially if you know that that post is being shared a lot on social media. If it is hitting a cord with them and they are just like, “Ah, I just want to retweet the hell out of this post” help them do what they are already doing. And you know, if your audiences are showing that “Yeah, they really seem to like tweeting this post out or sharing it on Facebook” then help them out.

Give it to your email subscribers. They might not have already seen that blog post so send it to them and then maybe they will follow suit and give you a little bit of viral promotion, okay?

So I hope that you can see it, I hope you can be a little bit more strategic in what you are actually highlighting to your email subscribers over time. And again, it is all prefaced by the fact that just because you know you have already covered it or something like that, it doesn’t matter. These are new subscribers and they might not be aware of that awesome blog post you wrote three months ago. To them it is brand-spanking-new! To you, you are like, “Eh, three months old…” Whatever; it is new to them. So put it on your autoresponder or send it out as a broadcast. Your broadcast doesn’t have to only be for the new stuff. Okay?

…

Now I want to end of with a little call to action here. I practice what I talk about and I have talked about ending all of your content with a call to action. So you will all notice that I do that a lot with the podcast. And I want to point you to a course that I have mentioned before that is inside the Blog Monetization Lab and it is called List Building Simplified. Now a big part of the List Building Simplified goes in to the topic we are talking about right here. What to send the people after they have opted-in? Okay? Because I know that is a point of confusion to people. They do all these things and get these tools to get people onto the list and then more often that I like to see, they drop the ball, they are not actually sending anything to their subscribers because they really do not know what to say. And we have got to get over that.

So the Course List Building Simplified goes into that; there’s also one in there called Master Your List which definitely goes into that topic. Actually in a more robust way than even List Building Simplified does. But both of those courses are available exclusively to members of Blog Monetization Lab. So, run on over to blogmonetizationlab.com. You can join today for less than a buck a day. I am not fleecing anybody here, but this is probably one of the best values that you are going to find when it comes to true blog business training, okay? That is at blogmonetizationlab.com.

And with that, I will see you in a few days with Episode 82. 😉