How to Nurture Your Email List for Sales Growth

Growing your email list is the lifeline of your business. In fact, having a successful email list building strategy yields amazing dividends like revenue and sales growth, repeat sales, and loyal customers that stick around for the long haul. You can accelerate your business goals simply by bolstering your email marketing strategy.

The key, however, is cultivating your list in a way that moves them closer to the buying decision and keeps them engaged with your brand. Increasing your website leads count is meaningless if you don’t have systems in place that converts them into customers. Nurturing with remarkable content that solves problems and appeals to their interest does the trick!

If you’re struggling with finding ways to nurture your email list that lead to sales, here are five tactics you can include in your overall inbound marketing plan.

#1 Create a Welcome Series

Take your new subscribers on a journey by crafting a welcome series that draws your recipient into your brand and culture. These emails are inviting, friendly, and completely separates you from competitors who tend to focus on one welcome email.

Depending on your niche, you can use this opportunity to tell your story (each post builds on the previous one), give a 5-part training series, share testimonials or give advice. Be creative. The beauty is that it improves your open-rates and sets an awesome tone from your brand. Your list will also be more receptive to your sales promotions and any upcoming events you have in the future!

#2 Send Monthly Newsletters

eNewsletters are amazing content pieces that keep your list engaged and connected to your brand. When you consistently send your newsletter on the same day each month, you will create an expectancy for your audience which significantly increases open and click-through rates. It’s an ideal tool to share company news, give customer testimonials, and offer content relevant to your niche.

Here are some other key pointers to consider when crafting your monthly newsletter:

• Use colorful, compelling design that exudes your brand and captures attention
• Curate content to share the best sources in your industry
• Promote your popular blog posts
• Include large, distinct call-to-action buttons
• Highlight team members and/or employees to further humanize your brand

#3 Share Mini-Blog Posts

Although long-form content is the better option for SEO ranking and higher social media shares, short-form content works well for sharing sound bite-like pieces of your longer blog posts, strictly for your email subscribers. Think about those questions that are frequently asked by your followers and prospects. You can give the answers in a short blog post and share the link with your list.

This is a great strategy to drive ongoing traffic to your site while giving value to your subscribers. They can quickly scan the answer and be content with you keeping them informed. Another advantage is that these mini-blog posts don’t take long to put together. So if you’re short on content to share, you can craft one of these in no time to fill in the gaps of your content strategy.

Since email subscribers are 3 times more likely to share your content on social media than other sources, encourage them to share your blog link on their social networks. Give the CTA within your blog post prompting the share.

#4 Segment Your List

Did you know that marketers have noted a 760% increase in revenue from segmented campaigns (Source: Campaign Monitor)?

Email segmentation is perhaps the best tactic you can employ in your email marketing. By categorizing your list, you can create personalized messages that truly speaks to the heart of your recipient. They will feel that you’re talking directly to them and will take action much faster versus a message that was crafted for your entire list.

The following offers suggestions on how to segment your list to boost engagement and sales:

• Gender
• Age
• Demographics (city, region, state, or neighborhoods)
• Subscriber content interest (which content types of content do they click on the most)
• Preferred/Loyal Customers
• Past Purchases (for upselling opportunities)
• Career
• Buyer Personas (if you have multiple ones)

#5 Promote Evergreen Blog Content

Your popular, evergreen content should always be recycled with your list. This is content that never gets old and will always pertain to your business. Whether they’re product posts, brand/company-related, shares your story, or delves deep into an industry-related topic, evergreen content pieces are pure winners with your list.

Bear in mind that your list is constantly growing. Also, people tend to forget something you may have shared months ago. Promoting your evergreen blog content educates your audience, serves as a reminder, and is certainly fresh content for your new subscribers.

Conclusion

Building your email list and nurturing your subscribers are important ingredients to the inbound marketing way. It’s how you turn prospects into customers…and customers into loyal fans who keep coming back to you for more.

Choose 2-3 tactics, test them with your list over a period of time, and discover what breeds the most engagement and sales. Keep what works and continue refining what isn’t. With consistency, you will create the winning formula that transforms your list into a sales-generating machine.

Much success.