Welcome to Boostly Podcast Season 8 Episode 37. This is a recap of my Facebook live video where I talked about the benefits of email marketing.
Here's the audio for this episode:
Here's the video for this episode:
Timestamp
03:00 About Email Marketing
07:00 How to send an email
11:00 How often should we send emails?
13:00 How to do email marketing around GDPR
15:00 Free email template
16:00 More free advice
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Audio – Boostly Podcast
Transcript from the Episode
About Email Marketing
Do you currently send emails to your list? Do you have an email list? Do you even know what an email list means? I'm going to give you some help and advice on how to get started.
Now why is email important? Two lanes, the slow lane is say somebody arrives on your website, somebody maybe sees a post on Facebook from you or sees a post on Instagram or one of the social media channels, they may see your advert in a magazine, or they may hit see your TV advert your radio. The slow lane isn't going to benefit you or them. You know, what you want to do is you want to get to the destination. And if you want to get to the destination sooner rather than later, then that's the fast lane.
So the destination is a booking. That's where somebody goes onto your website, picks up the phone, send you an email gives the dates where booking comes in. Okay, that's the destination. Now the Fastlane is email that email marketing is super, super, super effective because over here in the slow lane, there are loads of distractions. You know, the radio could be playing loud. You know, there could be things going on out the car, again with social media when you land on social media and if they see your post, even if they leave a like, there's still somebody else to look at below, there's that notification, it's going on in a top right-hand corner, there are loads of distractions that are there.
Now with an email, in the fast lane, you have got this amazing ability to have a one on one communication with somebody. Now, with tools like MailChimp, Active Campaign send Fox, you're able to have that communication at Mass. But the person getting that email doesn't know this. Again, just because you and I are savvy when it comes to email marketing, we know of the tools that are out there, don't assume that everybody else does. And again, you're able to with tools like MailChimp, and sandbox, send an email out, type out once and send it to thousands or hundreds of potential people in just one click. But when that person opens up that email as long as you've done it, well, then you've got that one on one attention with the guests.
And again, I think the reason why so many people get disheartened with email marketing is that they think of the emails that are in their inbox. They're thinking of the spam, they're thinking of the all the salesy ones that are just sat in there that you never read, or you put it to unsubscribe, or, you know, or even worse, those ones that come out once a year around Black Friday sales, they're the worst type of emails because people don't put much effort into it.
I would encourage everybody to get involved with email marketing. And if you're trying to get into the mindset of it is try and think that you're writing to a friend, or a pen pal. And that's how you should be creating content around your email. The second rejection whenever anybody says to me about email marketing is I don't know what to send.
How to send an email
Now, if you want the simplest way of sending an email and coming up with something to send, you've got a couple of options. Number one, you can just send them a link to your favourite Facebook post of the last month. Number two, you could talk about what you've been doing in the past month, or three, you could be talking about things that have been happening, or places to go place to visit places to eat again in the last month.
Now, obviously, the last six weeks is a little bit different from what you would normally write because with Coronavirus, but it doesn't mean that you can't send emails, the ratio that I like to adopt, when it comes up to how to send an email is I like to do the 80-20 rule. So 80% social 20% selling. So when you come to create that email and you send it, you know, maybe a couple of them will be all about what's going on in the area, etc, etc, etc. You either mentioned about special offers or anything like that, because then that becomes too salesy, well then that 20% that will be when you're going to send that maybe a special offer or a voucher or telling them about availability.
And again, this is where it is, is really powerful to do. And the beauty of the sending them to your Facebook page is that you're ticking off to two boxes here, because number one, you're gonna get someone open your email, they're going to click on a link, and they're going to engage with it. But then you're sending it back to your social media pages, whether it's Instagram or Facebook, and then they're going to engage with that, because we all know what social media is, is like, you can be visible on that newsfeed one second, you hit refresh and you're gone the next because so many people are trying to get the attention.
And that's the same for your email is as the same for your users, your followers, just because they're a follower doesn't mean that they see everything that you post out. But with this tactic of just sending them back to maybe one of your favourite posts from the previous month, is that you're able to bring them back. So maybe they've missed that post. And they've missed that whatever. And you can grab them and send them back now every time you get somebody to open your email, but most importantly, to engage in that email, whether it's a click or a reply, what you're doing is you are guaranteeing that your email doesn't go into junk or the spam folder later down the line.
So you've got to be sending something that you think that your audience would like to open and again, if you have got a business where you've got a very clear niche.
Like where I am right now, family-friendly farm stay property in the middle of the North Yorkshire was ideally located between Scarborough and Whitby. I'm not going to be sending to my audience. Some of the best places to go on a night out or the best bats. We're going to be talking about things that have been happening on the farm. We're going to be again sending them back to pitches of what we put up on social media of the pets and the animals. Around here, interviews and whatnot.
And again, that's, that's something that we know that our audience likes. Now, what I love the best about websites such as MailChimp, and Sendfox, not only are they free, so it's free to get started. So it's zero cost. But what you're able to do is you're going to go into an email, you're going to send it out to your list. And what you're able to do is say that you've got a list of 100 people, you'll be able to see A, who opens that email up, B, who is clicking on the links. So if I go back and look at the last four emails that we sent out the last four campaigns, then I'm able to tell number one, who's open them. But number two, how many times is that person clicked on a link, because that tells me that they're really engaged, and they really want to find out more about us.
Now even better on that email, I'm going to send out a link to going to send them to my booking page, I can then open up that email and go right out of the hundred people that I've sent this to 50 people have opened it, but there are two people that have clicked on the link and gone to my booking page. And I send that on the first of May.
So I can go to my PMS, my property management software. And I can go Okay, on the first of May, did this person who clicked on the link, go to my booking pages. And it's a yes or no. And if not, then you've got two hot leads, right there somebody that you can send a personal email to, if you're brave, you can pick the phone up and have a call to. And again, that's super powerful and actually stop sending one email.
How often should we send emails?
It's totally up to you. But it's totally up to your data. Now, if you've never sent an email before, or even done wrong for a long while, then my recommendation would be to start off monthly. Once a month, that's all you need to do gently when you're way back into it. When you get more confident, you can start to do weekly, and then what you'll be able to do again with the reports as you go, right, so I've sent six emails over the last six months. I send it once a month, and we've got an open rate of 40% which is great. When I started sending them weeklies over the last two months, I've been sending them weekly, and at 40% has dropped down to 15%. Then what's that telling me that my audience don't like to get weekly emails, they prefer to get one email once a month. So again, you can you can flip back, and again, you've got to test and trial it, see how it goes, look at the numbers. And then you can always then adjust from there.
The beauty of websites like MailChimp, and Sendfox is again, they are free to use. You don't have to have any costs. So it's not like there's a big setup cost. And you can get started right now.
How to do email marketing around GDPR
And one of the biggest questions I get right now when I talk about email marketing is GDPR. So it's signup forms, how do I get started? How can I send an email to a list of people that I've, you know, I've already got How do I do it around GDPR. And again, with MailChimp and sandbox, they let you create signup forms that are GDPR compliant. Now you cannot know in 2020 and moving forward, just go into your report into all of your PMS, export all of the bookings, take the emails, dump them into MailChimp and start sending because that's not allowed, you've got to have an actual tick or acknowledgement from your guests that they are okay with you sending them marketing emails, but again, it's free to do now right now with MailChimp you to set up a signup form, you send them the link and they will opt themselves in. So again, these big companies now make it super simple.
So what I would recommend if you haven't done this in the past, so if you haven't got physical proof that somebody has opted into some of your email marketing, whether it's from MailChimp or anywhere else, then what I recommend that you do is start now with MailChimp and all of the software send Fox as well. What you're able to do there is when somebody joins, you can tag them. So if you have got an email address from a guest to a state of fire in the past, you can add the tag as guest. If somebody signs up for your email list from say your website or from social media and they haven't stayed with you before you can tag them as non-guest. This makes email marketing even better, because now you've got one list here of guests one list of non-guests and it may be that the email that you send to a guest will be different to the one that you'll send with the non-guests. So it makes it really cool. Really simple to use. And again, the beauty of it all is that it is free to do.
Free email template
if you would like to get At my email template that we've sent out to guests created with a copyright, I used it time and time and time again and it works so well. All I want for you to do, just pop into the comments is put in #emailtemplate. Once you've done that, you're going to go to boostly.co.uk/mdb, it will divert you to a Google Doc. And then what it will take you to is to an email that I've got, which is called the Do you know, anyone email and it's a super effective email to use and you can start using it straightaway. In times like these with the with the Coronavirus is really, really, really effective. Because you're able to use that template and put it into practice straightaway. It's called the Do you know anyone?
Once you've get access to that email template, there's a little video right at the top, which just shows you how to use it. And you can go ahead and go from there. All I ask is that when you get that email template, don't forget, boost it up code at UK forward slash M. D, B, go there, grab the template. Once you've used it, please report back to me.
More free advice
If you want to get more free advice on how to get started with all of his direct booking tactics, then all you need to do is to go to boostly.co.uk/YouTube, it will take you to my YouTube channel, I put a lot of tutorial videos on YouTube and you can go and just type in MailChimp in the search bar. And I've got step by step guides on how to set it up how to set up a signup form, how to share it with guests how to share it with previous guests, how to put it on your website, how to put it on your social media, how to get more and more people on. Now once you've got people signing up. And again, I think people worry about the numbers game here, they'll go to a mark, I've only got four people on my email list. Well guess what? That's for potential bookings right there. The best thing in the world is when you first start off an email list, and you've only got four or five people, because you can pretty much email him directly and say, hey, what would you like me to send you? What would you like to know more about, you've got the perfect little case study right there. Because when it grows to the numbers that I've got right now, we're into like the 4000s. It's hard to do that.
So when you have got such a small list, you've got a perfect little core group of people that you can contact with and engage with and ask questions, and they will tell you what they want to see. So please do get started with it. Please do share your results with it. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a follow-up podcast later down the line when we get some results. And I want to share with everybody the fantastic work that you've been doing.
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