How nurturing your email list = growing value and revenue for your business

In the last few weeks I’ve been talking about the benefits of email marketing and the steps you need to build your own email list. Let’s take this one step further now.

You’ll hear people talk a lot about nurturing your email list. Often marketing jargon makes no sense. It can be full of annoying bro-speak. But I kind of like the term ‘nurturing’ your email list. Because it’s all about taking care of them; showing them that you love and value them. Leading them on a journey of transformation.

What Does Nurturing Your Email List Mean?

Nurturing an email list means actively engaging with your subscribers through regular emails to build a relationship, increase trust, and provide value. The goal of nurturing your email list is to turn subscribers into loyal customers and advocates for you and your brand.

There are all sorts of ways you can do this:

1. Sending regular emails or newsletters, keeping your subscribers informed and up-to-date with your latest news, products, and services.
2. Personalizing emails: Address your subscribers by name and segment your list based on their interests and behavior to create a more personalized experience. (Quizzes are the BEST way to segment your list BTW.)
3. Providing valuable content: Offer your subscribers content that is relevant and useful to them (based on those segments) such as tips, tutorials, and exclusive offers.
4. Encouraging engagement: Ask questions, solicit feedback, and create opportunities for your subscribers to interact with you. Remember, these are real people you’re talking to, not just ‘your list’.
5. Testing and optimizing: Continuously test and optimize your emails to improve their effectiveness and ensure they are resonating with your subscribers.

How Often??

By now you might be thinking to yourself “what does ‘sending regular emails’ actually entail? Because that kind of sounds like a lot of work.”

First, yeah, nurturing your email list is a commitment. It takes time, but it’s worth it (more on that below). But what is ‘regular’, is totally up to you. For some people, it’s weekly. For some it’s monthly or quarterly. For some, it’s daily.

Also, it depends on your audience. How often do they want to hear from you? Do they want to hear from you daily? Or is that too much? I get a daily email from one person, but this email is about 4-5 lines long each day, sometimes even less, so it’s fine. I actually look forward to it each morning.

If you’re going to be sending monster emails with 8 different sections, then weekly might be too much for you to write and for your audience to read.

You need to find the right balance.

You might want to start slowly - maybe quarterly or monthly at first, and then eventually increase that to weekly as you get into the swing of things.

Because what’s more important than how often you send the email is that you are consistent. You don’t want to be sending an email once a week for a few weeks, and then nothing for a month or two, and then start up again. The subscribers want to know what to expect from you.

Now, what is even MORE important than consistency in your emails, is that you send them emails not only when you have something to sell your list. There is nothing worse than someone popping into your inbox just to say ‘buy my thing!’, especially when you haven’t heard a peep from them since you joined their list 6 months prior.

What If I Don’t Want To?

Let’s talk about some of the other potential drawbacks of not nurturing your emails list:

1. Low engagement rates: Subscribers who don't receive valuable and relevant content from you may lose interest and stop engaging with your emails. Low engagement could look like low click rates and low open rates.
2. High unsubscribe rates: If subscribers are not getting the value they expect from your emails, they may opt out of your list all together, reducing its size and effectiveness. Now, I’m not saying that unsubscribes are a bad thing, as long as people are unsubscribing for the right reason. If someone unsubscribes because they were never going to be a buyer, then great. But, if someone that might have been a buyer unsubscribes because you never nurtured your list properly, and only email them when you are pitching, then that’s a lost opportunity.
3. Decreased relevance: Over time, the information you have about your subscribers may become outdated, making it difficult to personalize and target your emails effectively.
4. Missed opportunities: By not nurturing your email list, you may miss out on opportunities to build stronger relationships with your subscribers and drive more sales and revenue.
5. Decreased deliverability: If you send low-quality or irrelevant emails, your subscribers may mark them as spam, which can harm your sender reputation and lead to decreased email deliverability.

Your Plan

I don’t know if I can emphasize how important it is to nurture your email list. I’ve seen way too many people work hard to build their email list and then ignore it until it’s time to sell their subscribers something. And then get disappointed when their launch flops. Nurturing your list is the #1 way to avoid this.

As you start to develop your own email marketing plan, start to pay attention to the emails that you receive. What’s the frequency? Does it feel like too much, too little? Is it consistent? Are they providing value? Do you enjoy receiving them? What is it that you like or dislike about them?

If you opt-in by taking my quiz or sign up for my free quiz training, you’ll end up on my email list, where I send out an email every week with links to my blog (which you’re reading now), as well as other resources for online business owners. I include things like amazing people that might be useful to you (SEO experts, Kajabi experts, social media experts, Canva experts, branding experts, etc.) as well as tools, tips, ideas, etc. that might make your life way easier as an online business owner.