By If you’ve spent more than ten minutes googling about internet marketing then you’ll have probably read at least half a dozen times that “the money is in the list”.
That means that you should start building a mailing list as soon as possible to capture your leads and turn them into raving fans. Of course once someone has joined your mailing list you now have a way of communicating with them as often as you want to whether it’s to send them to a new blog post, video or podcast or selling them your latest product.
Once you’ve decided to build an email list you’ll then will have found out about Autoresponders.
These are software tools that not only allow you to email to your list but they also allow you to setup emails that get sent automatically.
For example someone joins your mailing list and they get sent:
Day 1 – Welcome Email
Day 2 – Free Content Email
Day 3 – Free Content Email
Day 4 – Selling Email
Day 5 – Selling Email
Day 6 – Free Content Email
Day 9 – Free Content Email
etc…
Using an autoresponder email you can build a fanbase, send content and sell your products automatically without ever having to think about it.
The conventional “wisdom” on how often to send is usually every day for the first week, then every two to three days and then reduce down to every five days.
And I agree, it can be a very powerful way to build a business and a fanbase. It’s an approach I used for years.
But is it always the best way?
Going against the conventional wisdom I would say no.
There are a few things that I’ve found over the years to not be so effective, and the first is…
Decreasing the quantity of emails you send out each week
In my experience decreasing the quantity of emails you send out does one thing, reduce your sales.
There’s the mistaken belief that people may unsubscribe from your list if you email them too much, or if you sell to them too much.
And yes that’s true, people may well unsubscribe from your list.
In fact, people WILL unsubscribe from your list. That’s just the nature of the business. You mustn’t become over-concerned with people unsubscribing, because it will happen. All you need to do is add people to your list faster than they’re unsubscribing.
Think of it like this:
The chances are that you’re building a mailing list to make your money.
If you email people a promotion selling your product and they unsubscribe, do you think they’re likely to have become buyers anyway?
I can tell you that the chances are slim. I can also assure that a lot of people who unsubscribe from your mailing list will, at some point, re-subscribe.
Having significantly tested different timeframes for sending out emails, every single time we sent one or more emails a day we got the most sales and built the strongest relationships with our mailing list.
So I recommend you email daily.
Of course you can email daily using an autoresponder email. That’s absolutely fine and can work very effectively, particularly when your only publishing content on your blog once or twice a week.
However when the content on your blog reaches the scales of four times or more a week then this changes.
Your readers will want to read your content. Which means when you publish a blog post you want to tell them about it. If you are publishing on your blog every day then you don’t want to have an autoresponder sequence going out and be sending them an email broadcast (one that you send manually) every day.
Because you’re going to lose control of where people are in your sequence.
Are they receiving content?
Are they getting a promotion?
Are you overloading them with information?
At this point it’s better to remove your autoresponder content and simply use the autoresponders to deliver your lead magnets and warm your prospects up for a few days before you switch to sending them the daily emails you are writing manually.
The other benefit by writing each day is that you get to use things from your life that are happening to you in your writing which will bring your audience closer and help form the connection that you need with them.
Incorporate what’s going on in your life into your content and your reads have the opportunity to feel like they know the real you.
This is a vital part of the process of developing a long-standing blog and email list.
My recommendation is:
Less than three posts published a week then you can use an autoresponder to deliver your emails with no problem.
More than three posts published a week and you’re going to have more control and a better relationship by writing your emails each day.
(and if you have exactly three posts published each week you can take your pick)
What do you think?