An Email Marketing Guide To Build Personal Brand

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Personal branding is the future of branding and business. And the increasing number of influencers, industry experts, content creators, and social media celebrities is only beginning. 

It is not outrageous to assume that more and more people will become media houses by themselves through their content-model business and followership. 

If you are one of those aspirants working towards building your own personal brand or already on the path, building your audience is still a challenge. 

One of the powerful ways to really boost your personal branding is email marketing. Not just it is an intimate and powerful way of reaching out to relevant audiences as personal branding. 

For every growing personal brand, the most important question is – 

Well, one answer to all of these above questions is  – email marketing. 

Then, the million-dollar question is how to build your personal brand through email marketing. Not to worry, here is a detailed guide on how you can achieve this. 

Step-By-Step Guide To Personal Branding Through Email 

steps to personal branding through email marketing

Step 1: Build Your Contact List 

The very first step in building your personal branding through email marketing begins right with creating a big subscriber list. 

These days ‘ the subscriber list’ often become more like a growth hack that business or people want just to get done with. 

But it is way more than that, and more work is needed if you really want to reap the benefits of this marketing strategy. 

Again, unlike those other growth hacks, with some dedicated time and effort, building a subscriber list will actually help you increase the number of your true fans. 

To build your email list, here are a few strategies to work on with : 

  • Asking for email addresses using pop-ups on your website 
  • Asking for contact info through a landing page 
  • Using social media to ask your followers to subscribe to you 

Step 2: Creating A Landing Page 

Now, if you are trying to get a subscription from the visitors and prospects through a landing page, which is true for most cases. 

Not to mention, it is highly effective and result-oriented as well. 

The landing page proves to be a powerful medium to communicate to your prospective subscribers regarding what they can get if they subscribe to your contact list. 

Here’s a great example of an effective landing page to get more contacts. 

Image Source: Semrush

This is a landing page from Allison Malson where the page clearly defines everything needed to convince prospective subscribers to enter their email addresses. 

Here are different highlights that you need to focus on : 

Who Are You? & What Subscribers Will Get? 

Allison Malson clearly defines in her landing page who she is, what she does, and how she subscribes to her or simply what she can offer. 

Your landing page must demonstrate who you specifically are and how you can help the visitor. What do you propose as a value? 

It is essential to specifically mention what the prospects will get when they subscribe to you or click on the CTA, whether it is an instance of access to helpful resources, a tool, or guides. 

What Lead Magnet You’re Offering

To get the email address of your prospects, you need to offer them something highly valuable and helpful that they have to sign-up with you. 

So, your lead magnet must be not just relevant to your target audience but also something they cannot usually get from any other place. 

It can be your ‘success’ secret, quick guides, free templates, or anything that holds value to your target audience. 

Make sure you mention how the lead magnet you’re offering can help them. 

Pro Tip: Use the words like ‘Free’ to hold their attention. 

Put Some Social Proof 

This landing page must have social proof, just like it is integrated with the landing page of the products to sell. 

The only difference here could be that here the social proof will establish you as a credible expert and authority on the subject. 

It can be your clients, the testimonials of people you’ve helped, or leading magazines where you get published. 

Tips For A Good Landing Page 

  • Make sure the landing page is pleasing and easy to read. 
  • Tell things briefly, and be concise and clear with your words. 
  • Tell them exactly why they should give you their email address 
  • Don’t be afraid to personalize the landing page as it is your personal brand.
  • You can also use the video featuring yourself addressing the target audience. 

Using Pop-Ups In Website Banner 

One of the most powerful ways to begin with email marketing for your personal brand is by putting pop-ups into the website banners and headers. 

The idea is to appeal to the visitors right away as they land on your website. You must make it more effective by blending in with compelling graphics and powerful copywriting. 

Here’s one of the examples to look at. 

Image Source: Semrush

Garyvee is a huge name when it comes to personal brands in the marketing and business industry. 

His homepage consists of a website banner with a featured video demonstrating his works and influence. 

Right below, with some brief but accurate copy, it allows the visitors to subscribe to his newsletter right away with a CTA button. 

Image Source: Neil Patel

There are other ways to do this, as you can put the pop-up bar right at the top of the website banner or header image. 

The landing page, website banner, and copy clearly state what you do and what you can offer to the visitor. 

And then, there is the CTA telling the visitors what exactly they need to do in order to gain the value just proposed. 

Landing Page/ Website SEO 

To get maximum subscribers through email marketing for your personal brand website, it is crucial to optimize your website or landing page.  

It doesn’t matter how well you design your landing page or website if people cannot find it. Search engine optimization allows you to make your website appear in the search result organically. 

When you optimize your landing page according to SEO signals, it means you will get more visibility which will lead to more subscribers. 

Better SEO you do on your website, the larger the contact list you can build through email marketing. 

Here are a few tips to improve the SEO health of your landing page/website : 

  • Write relevant content and copy it on your website 
  • Use keywords essential to your industry topics 
  • Write helpful and relevant SEO-optimized blogs 

Step 3: Choosing the Right Email Marketing Platform 

Whether you are starting your personal brand or already running one, once you go for email marketing, the first thing you will understand is that it has many moving parts. 

And thus, you require a system, a platform, or a tool to run an email marketing campaign, as it isn’t just about sending emails. 

It is better not to wait for your list to get huge to send your first email or start your first email campaign. 

In fact, the earlier you will start, the more grasp you will have on it and hence, better results. Also, in this way, you would know what works for you and what doesn’t. 

Make sure you leverage the advanced and powerful email marketing platforms available today to run and manage email marketing campaigns. 

It helps you with : 

Email marketing platforms require payment or subscription, which isn’t cheap. However, they do offer trials or free plans to get ahold of their system. 

So make sure to get a trial for the tool or the plan you are going to choose with the respected email marketing platform. 

If you couldn’t find a free trial, don’t shy away from contacting them and ask if you can anyway first try their platform before making the big purchase. 

Chances are, you will get overwhelmed with the options available today. Some claim to be popular, and affordable and others have many tags. 

Always get a free trial and test it for yourself, and then only make your decision. 

There are some basic and essential features that you should look for on these platforms before buying their plans or subscriptions. 

  • Automation:  Scheduling your bulk emails with specific targets and triggers. 
  • Mass Delivery:  Send out emails in large batches 
  • Segmentation:  Group your emails by common traits
  • Email Templates:  Provide features and tools to craft and design predefined emails 
  • Performance Metrics:  Track email performance metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, etc. 

Step 4: Making A Good First Impression With Welcome Emails 

Even if you get the visitor to enter their email address and become the subscriber to your newsletter, and your emails aren’t engaging, more specifically, you don’t have a good first impression, they are more likely to forget you. 

Getting a subscription doesn’t necessarily give you higher engagement. So make sure you make the first impression, that is, your welcome email or series of welcome emails effective.

Your first emails must be compelling, inspiring, and engaging for them. More importantly, it should have the promise of the value proposition on the basis of which they signed up in the first place. 

Here’s how your welcome emails can be : 

First Welcome Email 

Begin with showing gratitude as a “thank you for subscribing to your newsletter. Then, make sure to introduce yourself to all of your social media channels and websites. 

Mention how many emails they can expect and at what time of the day. If you’re unsure, you can, in fact, ask the subscribers what frequency of emails they will prefer. 

It won’t just customize their email subscription experience but also create engagement from your subscribers as they reply to you. 

Second Email 

In the series of welcome emails, preferably automated, the second email must be about developing understanding and familiarity. 

So, tell them how you started the business or blog you’re running. Share about yourself, your journey, and how you helped people like them. 

Clearly state how you can help them and what value you can provide. It must be compelling, highly valuable, and effective. 

Third Email 

Once you introduce yourself, your company, and your journey, along with what value you can offer, it is safe to assume that they relate with you and are looking forward to what you offer. 

So, the third email is to give the best of your content or value. More like a ‘trailer’ of how much helpful this newsletter or email subscription will be for them. 

You can handpick the best content on your website, a collection of links, and free resources to help them get started. 

Focus on making this informative and helpful for the subscribers so they remember you and even anticipate your emails to engage with. 

Fourth Email 

It is not mandatory but completely optional to have the fourth email in your welcome email series, but it can be highly effective in making your case. 

This email must be something more elaborate and value-packed to really hook your subscribers to keep opening your emails whenever you send them. 

So, give them some really valuable, so much, so it seems you’re giving away a paid digital product. 

It can be a guide, ebook, cheat sheet, or even a free trial for your tool or platform. 

Step 5: Making Your Brand Distinct Through Emails 

You have to understand the fact that for a long time, even if you have other avenues such as Youtube, blog, or software, your subscribers are going to interact with your brand only through these emails. 

So, it is your first and last chance to connect with them and convert them into paying customers or long-term engaging readers and users. 

Apart from that, it is also essential to consider the fact that your subscribers must have been receiving hundreds of emails on a regular basis. 

So unless your emails have something peculiar, something sticky or extraordinary to remember or stand outside from the crowd, they are going to forget you. 

Here comes the branding aspect of the emails that you will send. 

You need to make sure your brand sticks to the people’s minds, and there must be different factors contributing to it, such as : 

  • Make sure it is recognizable 
  • Build consistency in your interactions 
  • Make it relatable 

So, now the only question to ask here is how to achieve every single one of these to build a brand through your emails. 

How To Make Your Brand Recognizable? 

With emails, you have a limited scope of creating an identity and association regarding your brand. 

But still, you have your email design, subject lines, tone of writing, font style, and overall email style, as all of these can create a specific persona of the brand. 

The audience can recognize through all these that it’s your emails. And in the long run, they will become habitual of your style, and it will become highly recognizable and memorable as well. 

How To Build Brand Consistency In Your Interactions? 

First of all, you have to increase the number of interactions you have with your audience. And interaction is not just about engaging but also just being seen. 

So, make sure you have a specific routine and a set frequency of sending emails depending on your campaign goals and business needs. 

Customize as per the requirements of your audience. For example, they might prefer to get your emails at the end of their day, so choose that time. 

Focus on creating engagement and maximum open rates through your campaign. 

How To Make Your Brand Reliable? 

If your brand is relatable, people will remember you; in fact, they are more likely to buy from you, and it is easy and comforting to associate with what a person resonates with. 

And that also applies to the brand. So how do you make your brand relatable? 

Well, first of all, focus on making it relevant and helpful. To do so, you need to understand your audience. 

The better you know your audience, the more relatable you can be. Also, you can share content that helps your audience to identify with you on different levels. 

Don’t be afraid to make it more personal and share your journey and struggle as that people quote relate to. 

Make sure you share original and authentic content that comes from an honest place. People will find out if you are dishonest or trying to play them. 

Also, have a friendly tone and personal connections to the people you write to. 

Think that you are talking to people and not numbers from your subscriber list. It can be challenging as your contact list grows, so use segmentation and personalization at its best. 

Step 6: Finding Out What Works 

This is the final but most important step in building your email list or running a successful email marketing campaign for your personal brand. 

You have to constantly monitor your campaign performance through various performance metrics. 

Keep checking the open rate, which tells you about the percentage of people opening your email. 

Also, see the click-through rates, as it gives you the rate at which people opened the links through your email. 

These performance metrics will give you an in-depth understanding of what’s going on with your campaign and where to improve. 

Then, everything is about using different permutations and combinations to find the best result from your campaign. 

You can do A/B testing with everything ranging from changing different subject lines to email content. 

Email marketing platforms will give you elaborate data through their dashboard that helps you understand things at once. 

Email Marketing Strategies/Tips For Personal Brands 

pro email marketing tips for personal branding

Make Sure To Personalize Your Brand 

It is crucial to personalize your email marketing strategy to build a personal brand. Not just it gives you more identity to your branding image but also has a highly convertible target audience. 

Segmentation is an effective way to step towards personalization that leads to successful marketing. 

You can use the segmentation to create and send out highly relevant and personalized content to each and every individual subscriber. 

It is essential to understand that not all content is relevant to everyone. So, segmentation helps you to identify the preferences and specific requirements of your subscribers. 

There are various criteria on which you can segment your contact list for effective personalization, such as gender, location, financials, buying history, purchasing habits, and much more. 

Then, there are other ways to personalize as well by optimizing the email contents and design of the emails you send out. 

Your focus primarily should be to know your target audience the best you can. It is essential to personalize your branding and marketing efforts according to your targeted audience. 

One basic example can be if you’re running a female-led company, it will be impactful to communicate your company values to the female segment of your audience. 

Or, if you’re selling female-based products with an idea to empower them, then personalize your brand with the same identity. 

Using Email Marketing To Promote Your Brand Awareness 

Email marketing is a powerful marketing method to promote your brand and spread brand awareness. 

In fact, it is the most intimate and effective way to reach out to your target audience. 

With consistent and strategized email marketing efforts, you can imprint your branding to your targeted audience, if not anything. 

It becomes even more important when you start out your business and try to reach out to a larger audience first. 

To do this effectively, it is important that you primarily focus on this one goal or objective, that is – brand awareness and create email campaigns accordingly. 

You can create a high-value content-driven newsletter that must be something compelling enough for the audience to sign-up for. 

Focus on the value you are providing them and highlight what they are getting from this subscription. 

Send out your branded newsletters regularly, like every day, bi-weekly, or weekly depending upon your email marketing strategies. 

Make it interesting, valuable, and very specific to their requirements and preferences. Apart from it, you also send out the latest updates about your brand to your subscribers. 

Consistency and the quality of the content are the keys here. So if you send quality, relevant and valuable content regularly to your subscribers, they will be more likely to read your emails. 

They will soon become very versed with your brand and, over time, even become interested in purchasing or giving it a try, at least. 

Focus On Building Better Email Campaigns 

The core benefit of using an email marketing method to promote your brand has the ability to generate a valuable amount of insights and data on your subscribers. 

Email marketing platforms and tools today allow you to monitor, record and analyze valuable data from your subscribers through campaign performance metrics. 

It is essential to focus on creating better email campaigns that give higher open rates and engagement rates. 

Focus on certain essential performance metrics of your email campaign, such as open email rates, engagement rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates as well. 

Knowing these metrics and how it works, you can customize your email marketing efforts towards achieving better specific results. 

Not just that, but you can utilize this data so you can build better email campaigns. You can analyze and see what kind of content is working and what doesn’t. 

Always Start By Introducing Yourself First 

The first impression is the last impression. How well you will be able to connect with your subscribers at the first email will depend on the success of your campaign. 

Also, it is important to sound like a Human and not like a brand or company. 

After all, you are building a personal brand, so it means you need to come across more on a personal level. 

So, you better start by introducing yourself in your first email, and make it more authentic and natural. 

It is crucial to not make it seem like you’re selling a product or service and don’t do it as well. The first few emails must always be about familiarity and promising value. 

Open yourself to an extent where a person gets a clear picture of who you are, what you do, and what they can expect from you. 

Make it relative, and don’t try to sound too boastful. Either thing should be factual or communicative.  

Make Your Emails Exciting To Wait For 

It doesn’t matter if your emails are valuable, but if it is too clumsy or boring to read or go through, no one will be reading them. 

But the fact is, even before that, it is extremely difficult to grab people’s attention with so much content going around. 

So, the only way you can hook your subscribers is to make your emails exciting, so your subscribers will anticipate it. 

Create it more engaging and entertaining to go through. 

It certainly cannot be as exciting as the other form of content that your subscriber might be consuming through the day, such as an Instagram post, video, or reel, but it certainly can be better than just boring. 

Make your emails visually engaging to begin with. Use high-quality, optimized images or graphics like GIFs or animations to make it hold attention longer. 

Emails are still, and always going to be, a crucial part of people’s day-to-day life. Millennials and Gen Zs at least open their email twice or thrice a day. 

Choose the right design tools to create your emails. Make sure to avail of effective email templates. 

One of the great ways is to remember from your own experience what kind of emails stick to you longer or engage you more. 

Use examples of the successful email marketing campaigns of your competitors and other brands around the world. 

The idea is to increase the open rates and boost engagement. Subject lines are also a crucial part here of making your emails more exciting. 

Use a Hyper-Personalized And Branded Subject Line 

Personalizing your subject lines is essential for brands, apart from making it compelling enough to be clicked on. 

Your open rates significantly depend upon your subject line. 

When it comes to personal branding, it is crucial to hyper-personalize your subject line, not just according to the target audience but also to your brand identity. 

You need to create your own style of connecting to your audience, and that very much reflects on your emails as well. 

First of all, your personal brand must have a value quotient; this means there is something valuable or entertaining about the content you offer them. 

Now, you can always use the value quotient and infuse it with your subject line to hook them and make them click on your emails. Don’t make your subject line about selling but rather value-driven. 

Don’t be afraid to infuse your personality traits into your subject line. For example, if you are quite known for your humor or, in fact, a specific type of humor, find a way to put it in your subject line. 

Using Humour In Your Personal Branding Emails 

Humor makes things more personal and relatable which is exactly what you seek in our personal branding. 

To connect with your audience, don’t hesitate to bring your personality-driven humor into your emails. 

Do something that people can recognize with you and your persona. Something specific and signatory of your style. 

It can be some pun-based jokes or some callback to your old emails or movie references, or anything that you own. 

Also, don’t try to forcefully insert jokes in your emails. Humor has to be something that comes from you.

Don’t Just Promote 

This is the worst way to build a self-brand that never pans out very well. 

To first be able to sell something to a targeted audience, especially through personal branding, you need to build a loyal audience who finds you valuable enough to invest. 

In fact, with usual brands and businesses, you can still create content and sell, like having a balance between creating valuable content. 

But when it comes to personal brand, it becomes crucial to focus more on the value you’re providing to them rather than sales pitches or marketing content. 

A personal brand only works when you have a loyal audience who consider you an authority on a particular niche. 

Only when they are habitual of your content and develop trust or relationship, then is it better to provide them more of the same but as a product or a service. 

The core idea of personal branding is value and personalized connection to your audience, which can be leveraged further to sell your products, and that’s too ethical. 

Creating A Community Using Emails 

The best way to grow as a personal brand is to build a community around your niche or the solution you offer to them. 

This way, they are not just connected to you but also inter-connected to each other. 

By creating a community, you can have a self-sustainable model of cross-engagement without pressuring too much on creating content all the time. 

A community is also a focus group, an audience with the same interest, and more importantly, your potential buyers for the products or services you offer eventually. 

Emails are highly effective in building a community as you will be able to consistently email value-driven content to each and every one. 

Once you gradually grow your targeted email list, you can send them links to join a community, whether it is a closed Facebook Group, Telegram group, or other platforms. 

You can share the perks and benefits of joining the community where you will be especially present to connect with each of them directly. 

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