Email marketing is a wildly successful channel that still reigns supreme. You might think that social media tops the list of most effective sales channels, but it’s actually email that gets the job done.
Social media still plays a pivotal role in growing your email list, but once you have an audience, what will you say to them?
Email marketing can help you gain new clients because it works with warm leads. Instead of speaking to the masses to try to get people into your marketing funnel the way social media works, emails can get more personal. You can nurture your audience relationship and convert interested people into clients. How? Glad you asked.
Here are seven email marketing strategies to attract more nutrition clients:
Segment Your Email List Immediately
In order to get warm leads into your email list, they have to come from somewhere. Be strategic in how you get people onto your list and how you organize them once they are there.
You might be getting people onto your email list by using tactics like advertising or using a lead magnet (make someone sign up to get a freebie). Before people join, ask a few questions that can help you funnel them into the proper category. If you want to create an ad conversion campaign to grow your list, choose your imagery and copy wisely to target specific clients. Tag the data so that as names and email addresses are added to your list from these ads, you are able to put them into specific segments. You can then tailor your emails to your different audience segments. How do you create those different segments? Read on!
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Use Persona Marketing to Write Targeted Content
Who exactly do you want to attract? Create client profiles that include all the details you can imagine about your ideal clients. No detail is too small. Consider all the demographics and details:
- Home location
- Age
- Digital literacy level
- Likes, interests, hobbies
- Dislikes
- Nutritional needs
- Aspirations and goals
- Rate of work
Once you have your persona profiles compiled, you can have a very clear idea of who you are writing to. Brainstorm using the remaining strategies in this article and craft emails that speak directly to this person. You can segment your audiences according to your personas too.
Automate Your Emails
Help build rapport with your clients and set a good impression from the start by tailoring your content to your segments, and let your email marketing client do the heavy lifting.
Set up a welcome email series for your different segments. How do each of your marketing personas want to be greeted? What information would they immediately want to know about you and your services? Give it to them, but spread it out over 2-3 emails. In each email, also include a little bit more about you and your services. This kind of marketing is a little more subtle and balances added value with sales pitching.
Don’t forget to know where the series is going. What will you end with? Ask your readers to take action, like signing up for a mini course, joining another newsletter, or scheduling a free 30-minute discovery call to get to know you better and share their needs.
In addition to or in place of, you can also create an email mini course. Email mini courses are an automated flow of emails that provide free added value and can ask your clients to make small changes or track habits. The benefit of them is in the automation. Again, your email client does the heavy lifting. Think of them as free samples of your services.
Encourage clients to journal, track their diet or exercise habits, or be entirely knowledge-based, and provide clients with a mini informational series of emails on a particular area of your specialty. Like a welcome series, you also want to know how the course will end and what action you want your client to take next. Ask them to get in touch or buy services.
If writing is not your marketing strength and video or audio are more of interest to you, consider creating a video series, a podcast, or webinar. The content strategy is the same as for welcome or mini course emails: speak to your different segments, provide information of value to them, give them a free sample of your services, and let them get to know you a little bit better. You can still deliver your videos or podcasts via an automated email sequence.
Send Emails Regularly with High Quality Content
When you send emails regularly, your audience knows they can depend on you. Nothing is more disappointing and a bit suspicious than signing up for an email list and never getting an email, or being told it’s a monthly newsletter and getting emails every two or three months.
For a general email newsletter, have specific content that reflects your brand and demonstrates what you do for your clients. Perhaps you have a regular inspirational quote or story you share. Or you have a list of your favorite meals at the end of each email. Share client success stories and build your brand community through these emails. You can also link your emails with your other content; use them to highlight your latest blog and social media posts.
Keep your content relevant and contextual. Consider seasonal changes and local customs or holidays. Plan ahead for what you will be saying as seasons change and as holidays arise, like healthy eating tips or helpful dessert alternatives.
Send out a balance of text-heavy informational content and visually-driven image-heavy content in addition to sending emails for specific purposes.
Establish Email Goals
Whether crafting multiple campaigns across each persona or promoting a special offer or making an announcement, have a clearly defined email goal. Each email must have its own individual goal. If that email is part of a series, the series must have its own overarching goal as well.
For example, you might have a series of four emails that lead people to sign up for a particular service. Each email must have its own goal, even if that goal is to express a certain feature or value or explain a specific concept.
Always know what action you want you reader to take at the end of each email, even if that action is to read the next email.
Don’t make the goals too broad either. Provide narrow content that is engaging, easy to follow, short, and on brand. Try sending a mix of offers, updates, and announcements to your readers in shorter emails instead of long emails that provide too much information at once. You want to make conversion easy for your reader. Include buttons and links that are obvious and easy to use so that when they are ready to take action, the action is ready for them to take, no problems encountered.
Make Informed Decisions
Use the marketing tools that your platform comes with to measure open rates, click-throughs, and other data. You can also use A/B testing to try out different content layouts, subject lines, and more.
Do not simply play an unending guessing game or try new things without purpose or agenda. Use the data you have to chart strategic steps forward in making changes to your emails.
Maintain Your List
This last suggestion might seem counter-intuitive, but every so often, give your list a thorough cleaning. Coming a bit full circle to our first strategy, segmenting your existing list is one way to clean it up. You could send out a survey asking questions that helps you segment the list according to your audience’s answers.
Another way to clean your list is to ask people if they want to stay. Instead of worrying about a low open or click through rate or fearing that you are speaking and no one is listening, ask those who are listening to stay, and give those who are not listening permission to leave.
What happens after you glean your list is that you’re now speaking to a very interested audience. You will get more accurate data, and you’ll be able to speak to them more confidently knowing they are listening. And, don’t worry, you won’t miss anyone who leaves. After all, they weren’t listening anyway, so you don’t have anything to miss.
Sometimes, this strategy can lead to waking up a few audience members. It can also help maintain rapport with those who are listening.
Using email marketing to attract more nutrition clients is smart and proven. It can work wonders for your business if you are strategic about it and make the tool work harder for you. If you’re interested in growing your email list, check out this post.
