An Ultimate Guide For Solopreneur To Email Marketing

Solopreneurs are those who set up their business and run them on their own. Being one forces you to learn how to handle all the aspects of your business alone, and even though it’s challenging, many businesses out there are thriving and successful.

However, being a solopreneur, you also need to consider email marketing as it’s the most effective channel for communicating with the customer directly. And to understand better, here is a guide for you to help.

Contents

What Are The Common Problems As Solopreneurs Face?

When you are a solopreneur, there are different problems you face. Not just that, when it comes to building and creating relationships, you need email marketing.

But before that, here are some of the problems you might know.

Reaching Out To New Subscribers

Well, in today’s world, you need to communicate with more people to build new customers.

Not just that, people are applying since they have a lot of options to make their choice.

And it’s important that you have to promote the brand prominently across different platforms.

This means you need to get more clients and find prospective clients.

Time Crunch

Being a solopreneur, you have to do everything regardless of how much work you have.

Here you are a one-man army, and your time is precious.

From getting new customers to building as well as maintaining one with existing ones, ones and to delivering the feedback, it’s on you.

Building Personal Connections

Small businesses need networking and relationships to thrive.

This is why you need to look for how to improve the personal connection with your audience; often, it starts with family and friends as they become your first clients.

So it’s important to remember them when your business is growing.

However, it becomes difficult to maintain the connection, or even staying connected with them turns too hard.

Doing The Follow-Ups

Well, entrepreneurs also need to ensure that potential customers are updated with all the products and services they are offering.

Also, the customers require to remind about the offers and sales by doing follow-ups.

Social Media Game

There is no doubt that social media is holding one of the important places for channeling as well as resourcing. And handling it on your own can be exhausting.

Some solo entrepreneurs also hire a professional agency to do social media marketing, but still, it can be difficult to handle.

Why Email Marketing For The Solopreneurs?

If you are doing an online business, you might have already known that email marketing is not dead. Instead, it has a great return on investment and assets that are owned by you, unlike social media.

Email is highly effective marketing for online businesses regardless of the types of clients and niches.

However, before you jump to know how you can start email marketing on your own, here are the reasons why solopreneurs need it in the first place.

It Shows You Are Not Taking Them For Granted

Well, email lists are the compromise of people, they are your community, and everyone signed up to receive something quality.

So when they said yes to your offers and were on the list, you should not take them for granted.

And that’s why when you share quality content and offers; it shows that being an owner, you have the value of your customers and subscribers.

Also, you can share what you want to tell your community, and it helps in making them feel closer to the brand.

It Gives The Choices And Empowers You

Building your email list is like building your community, and they have the potential to stay with a brand longer compared to others.

Also, it makes you a part of the community as well. With this, you have the choice of when, how, and what you can send emails.

You can choose popcorn topics or drill down one concept for an entire week, and it lets you choose what you want to share with them.

It’s a Constant And Engaging

Unlike social media, where you fly by the seat of your pants. Email marketing gives you the opportunity to build the list and create a community that is engaged and invested in what you do.

Not just that, email marketing is two-way communication, not one-way. This allows for improving engagement with your customers.

You can get the replies to emails you have sent; it can be something personal, a joke that makes you laugh, or sharing a tough story.

Also, the customers and subscribers can send feedback directly to you.

It Boosts The Relationship Building

Being a solopreneur, there is no doubt that doing everything on your own brings a lot of challenges and mistakes.

However, having a relationship that is based on trust and understanding helps as a backup.

With email marketing, you can build up such a relationship, and it allows you to talk with people who are showing interest in your offer without needing the outside noise.

People trust you by sharing your email address; they are the people who know, trust, and like you.

So they purchase products and services if you recommend them; also, with this, you can bring people from across the world to your email list.

It Brings The Real Conversation And Voice You Might Have lost.

Email marketing allows you to bring real conversation as you build a responsive email community.

Even though the engaged media community can be challenging, it does offer benefits as it grows.

You can make a real conversation with the subscribers; it can be sharing the tops or processes of the community, which can help.

Also, you can find someone who has a similar voice and way of doing such as yours.

It Brings Replies, Questions, And Comments

With an email list, you can provide education, information, and support to the people you are targeting.

Also, you can share about the help you can offer and other things from which they can contact you.

With this, you also get replies, comments, and questions from your audience. This helps in boosting engagement but also builds loyalty and relationships.

What Are The Principles Of Choosing Your Email Marketing Service?

Well, with average email marketing, you get an open rate of 15 – 25%, which is more than Facebook. Also, the value of an email is more than 3x as compared to social media.

Hands down but email marketing is the most effective and powerful way to build your business, especially if you are a solopreneur.

But by sending emails in bulk, you will need email marketing services.

You can’t use the Gmail or Outlook email blast, as it will ban your account.

So to choose the email marketing services that suit you, here are the basic principles you need to follow.

Are They Offering Free Or Free Trial Services?

Whether you are already established or just starting out, you need to have a budget.

When you are a solopreneur, you must take care of your budget so you don’t have to deal with pricey services that disturb other aspects of the business.

Most of the EMS platforms offer you free plans, and with them, you can get the basics covered. So you can consider those options, but make sure you ask if it’s going to be a free trial or indefinitely free.

What Are The Subscriber Cap You Get?

Wel. The free plan is free, but some services will charge you once you cross a certain number of subscribers. It can be around 250 or 2000, depending on the email service provider.

So that’s why you should choose the services which give you the runway to grow before you start paying, especially when you are planning to build the list fast.

That’s why you should know how many emails you can send in a month.

Can You Schedule The Email Campaigns?

When you are a solopreneur, there are a lot of things on your plate, and handling everything on top of planning an email campaign can get too much.

A lot of service providers offer an email campaign where you can schedule it. It makes your work easy and hassle-free; however, not all the free plans offer you the campaign schedule.

Do You Get The Automatic Option?

Email marketing is powerful, not just because you are getting direct communication directly from those who opted for it, but with automation and can sell whenever you feel the appropriate time in the buying journey; it can be anytime, including when you are sleeping.

The automated options can be the core of the email marketing strategy.

What Integration Are You Getting?

Email marketing strategy can help you in working better, and you can work with different strategies and tools.

So you should know if EMS integrates with others or not, including landing pages, eCommerce store, customer relationship management, preferred pop-up services, etc.

Also, if ITEMS are not speaking a similar language as the rest of your business, this might be a headache and costly in the long run.

Can You Offer The Segment Listing?

There are different customers and clients you get; they might be looking for help, it can be relationships, careers, business, emotions, etc.

So you don’t have to market in a similar way, and that’s why you need the segmentation email list.

Do You Get Templates?

The next thing you should look for is the templates. It can help with steering the flashy emails and help in saving time.

The pre-built templates can help in saving you from doing work all over again and making sure to look the product work better.

Does It Offer You Landing Pages?

Growing the subscriber list is a key goal of your strategy, and it’s one way of offering valuable services such as ebooks. With this, you get the email address of your clients and customers.

Here you need the landing pages, which Is a based webpage that encourages them to make the trade.

So you should look for the EMS, which offers you the creation of landing pages in an easier way.

Are They Offering The A/B Testing?

A/B testing is a crucial part of your email marketing. It allows you to send two groups while changing the variable, it can be the subject line to see how effective it will work.

It’s reliable, especially when you have a sample size at a minimum or you have a list of thousands of subscribers.

It can help you in knowing if the experiment is going to work for you or not.

How does Their Analytic Work?

Even when you send emails all day and do the hard work on quality, you might still end up shouting in the void.

You need to monitor the campaign and its performance for any email marketing strategy. Also, you can adjust the planning as you go.

So having the EMS that offers analytics can help, and some providers also ask you to pay.

How Much Will Everything Cost?

If you are planning to do email marketing in the right way, this eventually helps in outgrowing even the free EMS plan with the most generous services.

Here either you stop growing the business or need to pay, it can end up often handsomely.

So you need to understand what features are free in your plan or how other features need you to pay.

What do You need To Know About the Subscriber List And Set Up?

In order to get your email marketing to work effectively, you need the subscriber list.

You must reach out enough so your request does not end up like the pending request in your notification tab.

When you are building the email subscriber list, it’s important that you are getting deeper instead of wider and curating the audience you want.

Focus On The Archetype Of the Customer

You must find the tribe, people who care about what services and products you offer, and turn into raving fans.

Here you need to understand what they are like, and for this, it’s crucial to know about the archetype of the customer.

In order to get the idea, here are some of the questions you should ask.

What are the age, gender, profession, and income bracket?
What does their normal day look like?
How do they want to feel?
What style of communication are they doing?
What are the beliefs they have about themselves?
What challenges are they trying to solve?

When you have the answers to all such questions, you can have an imaginary avatar and it will give you an idea.

Do The Segmentations

So when you start working on the customer archetype and know that they have multiple personality disorders.

And your business is not going to serve everyone, instead of picking one kind of person.

It’s going to be a line drawn, and a group created based on what they like, their interests, and their needs. And that same goes for the email list too.

Here to do this, you are going to need the segmentation. Where a lot of EMS allows you to do the segmentation using the groups and tags, there are some chances you have to do it manually.

Segmentation needs to be done before you send the first email, but as you go, you can make changes, and It will help in understanding what your customer needs and offering exact things to them.

Offering The Opting In

Behind the successful media strategy, the key rule is offering the opt-in to the audience in their own record.

It doesn’t involve the importation of personal contacts or scattershot on the Facebook page.

Opting is not just good as its law jurisdiction, but it helps make good business sense.

Here it means why do you want to waste resource marketing to those who have no interest in what you are offering? So let them choose if they want to be in or not.

However, here you get the option of Single Or Double Opt-in.

Single opt-in means that it allows the audience to use rice using the email address with one click only. Here you are, letting lost wanderers in the club without caring much.

Doubt opt-in means that it allows when the audience gives their email address in the signup forms, which triggers the confirmation email, and inside the email, they have the confirmation click to ensure if they want to be on the list or not.

How Can You Start Your Email List Right Away For Solopreneur?

The Internet practically forced you to start an email list, and being a solo entrepreneur, you might feel the pressure from time to time.

However, the email list should be started as soon as you have the chance, so you won’t end up sabotaging the business.

But if you didn’t, then don’t worry; it’s never late, and here are pointers to start it without much hassle.

Start With Choosing The Right Platform

When you start, there are a lot of options you get some offer a wide range of built-in services, and some have combinations.

You need to pick the one that suits you the best and since all the basic principles are explained, choose the one that answers all of the questions instead of what others are telling you to.

Decide The Content You Share

While here, you don’t need to have the editorial plan for the newsletter, so you should decide ahead on what you are willing to share.

It’s not a blog, so you need to categorize the emails and choose consistent messages.

Also, if you have multiple issues when it comes to addressing, a good alternative is to have a newsletter on different topics.

This can be a creative approach as choosing special days for the topics with having one email list.

When it comes to a newsletter, you get different types of newsletters, and some solo entrepreneurs tend to have more than one for use.

Here are some of the points that you need to look for :

Share Status Update

This one is the easiest that you can set up. Also, it doesn’t need a lot of thought to create.

Here you just need to add what is happening to business or life since the email you have sent.

Provide The Value

This one includes sharing the pointers and tips that helped in accepting what you did, or you can share how to do the specific task; you can even share the resources for helping motivate your journey.

Sharing Testimonials And Sales

One of the most common and hated too, but sharing testimonials and sales is not as bad as it seems.

However, when you know how to make it interesting to improve the journey of your audience/

It gets worse when they look exactly the same and nothing different for the subscribers.

Commit To The Consistent Frequency

Nothing in the world can happen with one try; you need consistency and it is loved by the world too.

Also, you need to mix it with frequency, so when you start, it is important that you keep all the pointers in your head.

To people who signed up, they expect to get emails, and it’s your job to do it.

When they sign up, they are putting their trust and expectations; they want to hear directly from you and count on you, too, so it’s important to commit with frequency.

Even though you can only send one email in a month, but you can do it with frequency; it’s still better than promising to deliver every week but not doing it once.

So no matter what you choose, make sure that the audience is expecting you to deliver it at the promised time.

What Should You Know When You Send Your First Email?

Now it comes to sending your first email for email marketing, and it is a crucial aspect because what goes in your email makes the whole effort worth it.

So to start with your first email, here are the basics you should cover.

Creating Your Content Strategy

The first thing that you need to consider is to start the content strategy so you know what you are sending to the email.

Here are some of the options that you can consider.

The Generic Newsletter

This one is an okay-ish place that helps to cut the teeth, but it won’t inspire.

So some people might want to hear about the company in the media, receive updates, and see the deals of the week.

But with this, it won’t encourage the sign-ups in mass or keep anyone on the list for a longer time.

Selling Relentless And Shamelessly

However, this one should be avoided. But if you are considering, you can opt for the 80/20 rule, and for every sale, you need to send at least four emails that are sales-free.

The Branded Newsletter

The newsletter is highly recommended; however, it includes the structure, layout, and content for each week with consistency.

It also makes huge differences in open rates, and it’s important that you keep it in one place.

An Update About Blog

If you are writing a blog, you can share it as content with your subscribers on a daily basis.

This can also be automated, so every time you hit publish the blog, a customized email is also sent to the followers about the update regarding the new blog.

Product Launch Formula

This one is a variation in marketing strategy, which can make a huge difference.

However, to follow this, here are some of the points you need to follow.

Send the pre-pre-launch email; it can be a survey to build anticipation and excite your customers.

Sending a series of three pre-launch emails which contain exceptional content for cultivating authority, trust, social proof, etc.

Then, you can send five or seven sales emails that have the leverage of urgency and scarcity.

Always Add Value

Well, the rule of thumb that you need to follow is ABAV, also known as Always Be Adding Value. And this is how the free market works.

Regardless of what content strategy you choose, it’s an important rule that you should remember.

Value can be anything, but it should be helpful and valuable for the audience.

Well, the secret of business is to offer someone more value than the individual worth in dollars. Also, this will allow them to throw money too.

The golden rule in email marketing says that sending emails that are incredibly valuable. The specifics might vary, as it can be something entertaining, discount codes, useful tips, or exercise plans.

Also, content is king, here you need to send email content that contains high quality, and it will help you in getting :

More sales
Trust
Authority
Loyal fans
Expectational engagement from suburbs
Boost in the open and click rates

Your Subject Line

The email’s subject line is one of the most costly racial tactics regarding email marketing strategy.

Also combining this with a preview snippet can help in determining the open rate of your message.

However, it’s important that you avoid using the boring subject and add something spic so it can help in getting better results.

Some of the key triggers that you can consider using are scarcity, personalization, curiosity, and emojis.

Also, when your words are fewer, it will avoid the trigger spam, so it will help in performing burgers.

Template Or No Template

Templers are helpful, as they are pre-built and contain all the basics you need to add the information, and it’s all set to send.

Regardless of what type of services you offer or the industry belongs to, templates save time.

For solo entrepreneurs, It makes sure your emails continue the consistent and similar.

But again, it’s an option, as it depends on whether you need them or not.

Here your brand personality plays an important role; if you have visuals such as jewelry primarily, then your customers will look for the graphics For the compelling case and use emails that look like a regular one.

And a lot of time, choosing a simple template can help fly under the radar.

The reason is that audiences feel overwhelmed with receiving the marketing message, and they look for excuses in order to delete it.

But the simple one gives the vibe it is related to colleagues and friends, so it has a lower chance of getting blocked.

How To Write Your Email Copy For Email Marketing?

To improve your email marketing, you need to write great email copy too.

However, it takes time to understand, but to improve then, you should consider the following points to help.

Write As Its For Your Friend

The ideal way that you can write without sounding like a corporate shill, here you need to make it like you are their friend/

It’s best to pretend that you are writing for friends, but make sure you are not going over-friendly.

Also, start with Hi, instead of writing Dear. It’s important that you use contractions as well as a simple language.

As people are tired when it comes to formality, so your email sounds like it’s for humans, not for robots.

Share Your Stories

People connect with authentic and genuine stories, and it also improves the connection with the,

That’s why you should consider storytelling for gaining inculcation as well as achieving success.

With this, you can build trust and improve the overall journey.

Keep Your Message Short

When you convince the subscribers to open the note, you don’t want to lose them because of the wall of text.

So, make sure you are using short paragraphs which only consist of one to three lines.

It’s important that you limit the words to 300 so that without scrolling, people can see the CTA on the screen.

Here you need to remove the unnecessary words and also add one CTA.

Keep the message short and on point, and make it easy to read.

Sell The Benefits

People are not interested in your product features but in how it can help them. So when you are writing the email, focus on selling the benefit instead of the features.

Also, highlight why they should be using it in the first place and explain what problems your service or product can solve.

Use The Mental Triggers

An ethical marketer should have a master’s in psychology as it can help influence the audience.

With this, you can improve the chances of getting more clicks and engagement from your audiences.

There are different ways that can help your audience to click on the email, it includes:

Anticipation: Here, you need to build the buzz.
Authority: Create the position of yourself as an expert
Community: Let people feel like they are part of something bigger.
Likeability: People do business with those who are like them.
Reciprocity: Give fit and this will make people obligated to give back
Sacristy: Everyone feels more excited to get what is hard to obtain.

What Are The Tools That Will Help In Growing The List?

Well, once you are zeroed in on having the ideal customer, segment into groups and collect the email address.

Even after doing all things, you need to understand the tools which can help in gathering email lists.

But how can you get the list of growing? Here are some of the tools which can help you. Also, you can use these as clever solopreneurs tools for your help.

Visible Subscribe Box

At a minimum, the visitors should see the subscribe box at the top and bottom of the homepage as well as the blog on your post.

It is included on the about page along with a navigation menu.

Well, here it needs healthy traffic, which rests on content marketing and its strong foundation.

Landing Page

The next one you can use is to use the landing page, which is a specialized web page to get the audience to take a single action and it can be sharing the email address.

It includes the logo, headline, which should be compelling, a shortlist of what they get along with, social proffer, and CTA. And also an email signup box.

The Content Upgrade

Such ones are hyper-targeted to the specific interest, you can use the upgrade to those who are interested in your blogs and it can help in conversion instead of using the generic lead magnet.

You can target the people who are interested in knowing about the blogs and offer quality content to them.

Lead Magnet

There are some leverage gifts that will help the prospects to trade, and in exchange, you get the email address.

You can add ebooks, free trails, image packs, apps, Quizlet, free brownies, webinars, checklists, free trials, etc.

Surveys

People also get warm and fuzzy when you ask them about their opinions.

You can easily host this, as a lot of EMS platforms allow you. If not, you can get apps that help in conducting the surveys.

This can help in gaining insights into your audience and target audience. Not just that, it can help you in improving the strategy and everything as you gain more information about your audience.

What Mistakes do Solopreneurs Need To Avoid In Email Marketing?

Email marketing is a crucial aspect for the solopreneur, but there are some mistakes that you should avoid.

These mistakes not just make your email marketing less effective, but you might end up losing resources, money, and time.

So it’s important to know what you should not be doing.

It includes :

Avoid The Special, Spam, And Promotions Folder

Examples like Gmail have understood that you are buried in email, and they try to help.

But by putting spam in the corner a lot of times, it gets wrong, and you might find some legitimate emails there.

This is more common for subscription-type emails.

You can avoid the pseducy spammy words as well as phrases like free, discount, prize, offer, etc.

Don’t Obliterate Inbox

Well, even though you like graphics-heavy emails, you need to keep the size of your images small.

Such emails get blocked by email providers and end up in spam.

Don’t Ignore The Data

There is a reason why data is crucial and it can help you understand what is wrong and how you can improve the results.

Some of the important ones that you should know are :

Click rates

Even though it seems discouraging, here you are getting an average of 2 or 3%. So you can get more than 5%, so don’t forget to track your clock rates.

Open Rate

Depending on what industry you work in, you should at least target 25% as its receptacle target.

Also, it is determined on the preheader and subject line.

Unsubscribe Rates

Every time you send a note, 25% of the list will drop, which makes it unavoidable.

But if the rates go higher, it tells you something is up.

Sales

With this, you can integrate it with your email campaign reports along with several eCommerce platforms.

Tracking can help you understand how your campaign is going, it saves time, effort, and money which Is crucial for solo entrepreneurs.

Practice The Good Hygiene

Well, it’s important that you do regular cleaning of your email list. It helps in practicing good hygiene and making sure those you are not interested in are not taking the space in the list either.

Make Sure It’s Mobile Friendly

Having an email that is not mobile-friendly adds issues for readers who are using mobile-like devices. Every Time they have to pinch to zoom in so they can read.

However, when you are sending emails to the audience, it’s important that you consider all of these points too.