Someone Gets To Know You

Over the past two episodes, we’ve been following the journey that someone takes from discovering you to eventually becoming a loyal customer or client. The next step is getting to know each other.

First we talked about someone finding you and how to create a lead magnet. Last week, we talked about someone joining your list and what you should send them afterwards. That is after they get your freebie and the importance of a welcome sequence. When the welcome sequence ends. What happens next? This is where the relationship should really begin, and today we’re going to be talking about—someone gets to know you: how to build trust through email. Because getting someone on your list is just one thing. Getting them to actually open your emails, look forward to hearing from you, trust what you have to say, and eventually want to work with you. That’s something that happens over time, and that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Relationships

Because your email list is a relationship. I want to start with a mindset shift for you. Your email list is not a database. It should not be a collection of emails sitting inside MailChimp, MailerLite, or ActiveCampaign. Primarily, there are real people behind those email addresses, and people who have chosen to give you permission to show up in their inbox, and I think that’s pretty incredible.

If you think about it, someone might see your post on social media for five seconds, they might scroll past one of your reels, and they might watch part of your YouTube video. However, when someone gives you their email address, they’re saying, “I want to hear more from you.” That means we need to treat that opportunity with care.

As I have mentioned, the goal isn’t to convince them to buy something. The goal is to build a relationship. There’s a phrase that we hear all the time in marketing: know and trust. Although it sometimes does sound cliché, there’s a reason we hear it so often.

Know and trust

People need to know who you are, they need to understand what you do, and they need to see that you understand their problems. They need to experience your personality, they need to see that your consistency provides value, and over time, they will begin to trust you. That’s why you can’t expect one email to turn a complete stranger into a customer.

Yes, sometimes it happens, but most of the time it takes relationships, and your regular email is where you have the opportunity to build that relationship. This is probably one of the biggest questions that I hear: “But Alyssa, what am I supposed to send to my email list every week?” And I think sometimes we make this harder than it needs to be.

You don’t have to come up with something completely new and revolutionary every single week. Instead, think about the ways that you can serve your audience.

Here are some ideas:

You can teach them something. This is one of the easiest ways to provide value to them. What do you know that your audience needs to know?
If you’re an author, share something about writing. Also, you could share something about publishing or the subject of your book.
If you’re a speaker, maybe you can share a practical tip related to your area of expertise.
If you’re a coach, teach them something that helps them move forward towards their goal. And notice I said something.

You don’t have to teach them everything that you know. You just give them one useful idea, one strategy, one tip, one thing that they can take away and use. Your goal is for them to finish reading your email and think, “That was helpful.” Another great type of email is telling a story, and this is something that many of us overlook.

Stories

You don’t always have to teach. Sometimes you can simply tell a story. Maybe something happened to you this week that reminded you of a lesson that you want to share. Maybe you made a mistake and you learned from it, and you can share that with them. Maybe you had a conversation with a client that taught you something.

Maybe you’re working on a book and something happened during the process. Maybe you experienced an answered prayer. Your story does not have to be dramatic. In fact, some of the simplest stories are the ones that are obviously most relatable. You can take an ordinary experience and connect it to something your audience needs to hear, and that’s a great way to let people get to know you, not just your expertise.

Most of all, you want to be yourself. This is another reason that I love email. Email gives you a fantastic opportunity to let your personality come through. You don’t have to sound like a corporation or write a textbook, and you don’t even have to make it perfectly polished. You can sound like yourself.

Tell them what you’re working on. Tell them what you’re learning. Tell them what you’re excited about. Share a behind-the-scenes look at your business. Let them see that real person behind the business because, especially as Christian entrepreneurs, we’re not simply trying to build a brand. We are serving people, and people connect with people.

Resources

You don’t have to create everything yourself. Maybe there’s a resource that you have found helpful recently. Maybe you read a book that you think your audience would enjoy or listened to a podcast that they might like. Maybe you found an article, a tool, a website, or a resource that could help them.

Then you can just tell them about it, and here’s the important part: Don’t just send them the link. Tell them why you think it might be valuable to them. You might say, “I came across this resource this week, and I immediately thought of you because…” and you share that information with them because you’re serving your audience.

You can also answer questions. This is another great source of email content for you. What questions are people asking? Pay attention. If someone asks you a good question in an email, a DM, a Facebook group, or during a coaching call, there’s a good chance that other people are wondering about that same thing.

So you can turn that question into an email. You can even start out the email by saying something simple like, “I received a question this week that I thought you might be wondering about, too.” And then you answer it. You don’t have to sit around wondering what to write about. Your audience is actually giving you content ideas all the time.

Email selling

Now, let’s talk about something that’s really important. You should sell in email. Yes, let me repeat that. You should sell through email. We’re gonna talk about more about that in the final episode in this series that’s next week, but you don’t want every email to be, “Buy your book, my coaching, join my course, buy this, buy that.”

However, in time, your audience does want to hear from you. When there’s something that you can share that you can sell to them because you’re not just building a relationship. Think about your personal relationship. If a friend only contacted you when they needed money or you wanted to buy something from them or they wanted you to buy something, you wouldn’t feel connected.

So this is not the first thing that you do, obviously, but eventually you’re going to give them the ask. So you’re going to give before you ask. Teach, encourage, help, share, and serve, and then when you feel like you’ve genuinely helped them, then you can invite them to take the next step.

Don’t be afraid.

So don’t be afraid to sell. Don’t think that you can never sell to your list. That’s a mistake. If you have something that they can generally be helped with and you’re going to sell… let me back up. If you have something that you can generally help someone with, it actually is part of serving to tell them about it.

If you wrote a book that can help them, tell them about your book. If you have a course that can help them to solve a problem, invite them to take it. If you provide a service that saves them time or helps them to reach their goals, tell them about it. And you don’t have to apologize for having something to sell.

The key is balance. Your audience should hear from you when you have something to offer them, not only when you have something to sell them. Now, another question that comes up often is, “How often should I email my list?” And my answer is the frequency that you can consistently maintain. I would rather see you send one valuable email once a month than disappear for months at a time.

Be consistent.

You may think, “I have to send an email every week.” I have clients who send emails quarterly, I have clients who send emails weekly, and I have clients who send emails monthly. And I say do what you can be consistent with. Consistency builds familiarity, and if the people regularly see your name in their inbox, then they’re going to recognize you and they’ll know what to expect, and eventually they’re going to look forward to hearing from you.

If weekly feels overwhelming, start with every other week. If you can only manage once a month, start there. But don’t disappear for months at a time and then suddenly show up to sell them something. Your email list should be a regular part of your marketing rhythm. And here’s something I want to encourage you with.

You probably already have a lot of content, blog posts, podcasts, or YouTube videos. Maybe you have books or you have social media posts that you’ve written. You might have created trainings or workshops. You don’t have to create something new every time you send an email. Take something that you’ve already created and expand upon it.

Expand

Turn a podcast topic into an email, take a social media post, and tell the story behind it. Share one lesson from your book. Answer a question that you’ve received. Point people to an old blog post. Your email doesn’t have to be brand-new content. It just needs to bring value to the person that’s reading it.

So if you’re sitting here thinking, “Oh, Alyssa, but I still don’t know what to send,” let me give you a simple formula. Okay, so let’s do this. Think about four categories, okay? The first category is:

Teach. Give them something useful.
Category number two is tell. Tell a story about something happening in your life or your business.
Three is encouraged. Give them something they need to hear.
Also invite. Invite them to read something, listen to something, attend something, download something, or eventually buy something.

And you can rotate through these categories, and you’ll never run out of things to talk about if you’re paying attention to your audience and your own life and your own business.

And it doesn’t have to be perfect. Your email is never going to be perfect. The subject line doesn’t have to be brilliant. As well as your graphics, they don’t have to be elaborate. Your email doesn’t have to be 2,000 words, and you don’t have to sound like someone else. Sometimes the best email is simply saying, “Here’s something I’ve been thinking about this week, and I thought you might need to hear it, too.”

Stories and lessons

Next you tell them the story or give them the lesson and send it. Don’t let perfection keep you from showing up. So here’s your challenge. If you already have an email list, look back at your last five emails and ask yourself:

Did I provide value?
Did I let my personality shine through?
Did I teach something?
Did I tell a story? Did I encourage my audience?
Did I give them a reason to want to hear from me again?”

If you’re not emailing your list on a consistent basis right now, I want you to choose a frequency that you can realistically maintain. Maybe that’s every other week, maybe that’s once a month, maybe that’s every quarter.

Make it a commitment because your email list doesn’t become valuable simply because people are on it. It becomes valuable when you put the work in to build the relationships with the people that are there. And that’s the point of this entire series. Someone discovers you, they download your lead magnet, they join your list, you welcome them, and they continue showing up.

You also continue showing up. You teach them, you encourage them, you share your stories, you provide value, and they begin to get to know you. Then they begin to trust you. Eventually, when they have a problem that you can solve, you’re the person that they think about. And that’s how a subscriber becomes a super fan.

Subscriber to Super Fan

It’s not a trick, it’s not a hack, it’s a relationship. And coming next week, we’re going to talk about the final step in the journey. That is when somebody is ready to buy. Because eventually, if you’re doing the work of building relationships, your subscribers will begin to be interested in what you actually have to offer.

We’re going to talk about how to sell through email without feeling salesy or pushy. Yes, you can serve your audience and sell, and these two things don’t have to be opposites. So if you’re enjoying this series, make sure you’re subscribed to the Christian Business Advantage podcast so that you don’t miss that final episode.

And if you know another author, speaker, or coach who struggles with what to send to their email list, share this episode with them, and most of all, thanks for reading.

Someone Gets To Know You

Someone Gets to Know You