What to do with an email subscriber once they sign up

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It’s a great feeling when you get notified of a new subscriber, but once they’ve opt-ed in… what exactly are you supposed to do with them? Find out what to do to take advantage of this crucial moment when you have their attention.

What to do with an email subscriber once they sign up.

Perhaps you’ve always known you needed a way for people to opt in, especially if they’re not ready to purchase from you.

You’ve then spent time working on a great lead magnet (the thing they receive when they give you their email address) and that’s taken up ALL your mental energy to get the thing launched…

And then all of a sudden, people are opting in… What now? Well, let me introduce you to…

The power of email

If you’ve not yet realised it, email marketing is one of the most valuable sales resources you have as a business owner, because:

• You own your list of subscribers and are not at the mercy of algorithms

• You have a direct connection with your subscriber to let them get to know you and your brand better. This builds trust and brand equity.

• You have a way to directly market to them to sell your products to the people who need them most.

Your email list is going to be one of the main revenue generators for your business and even if you’re just getting started in ecommerce and have nothing to sell yet, you need to set yourself up as the business person you want to be.

7 things you need to do once you have your first subscriber

1. Deliver

This is a pretty obvious one, but make sure that you’re delivering on the thing you promised to send them.  Whether that’s a coupon code for a discount in your store, a PDF guide on how to do something related to your brand and products, or a sample of your product. You need to make sure you check, and double check the customer journey through your tech to make sure everything triggers correctly and delivers the thing to them. 

There’s nothing worse than someone taking the time to enter their details for you to not deliver on your promise. This immediately breaks the trust you built in getting them to part with their email address and it starts your relationship off on the wrong foot.

2. Consistency

This next step isn’t a tangible action but it will lay the foundation for building know, like and trust with your readers and customers. Set yourself up for success and commit yourself to a regular schedule. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming, so choose a schedule that you know you’ll be able to stick to.

Some companies email once a month with updates of their products and businesses, some it’s a weekly endeavour and in some cases (like some of the clients I work with) email every day. Choose what works for you and how you run your business, but commit yourself to it so that your readers start to expect your communications in their inbox on a regular basis.

3. Share

The next step is to commit yourself to sharing. You don’t have to reveal anything personal if you don’t want to, but you started your business because you had a mission in mind. You must remember to share your mission and your message over and over again so that your customers recognize what you and your business stand for. 

You may feel like you’re repeating yourself, but people often have to hear something 20 times over before it settles in their subconscious.  And even if you reach that tipping point, reminding your customers of why you’re in business helps them to associate your brand with it and they’re more likely to share it with others.

4. Ideas

Set yourself a regular schedule to come up with ideas about how to link your products with stories, topical news or seasonal activities. There’s nothing worse than sitting down to write your weekly email than staring at a blank screen not knowing what to write. You may want to promote a particular product, but positioning it right in your emails is the key to clicks and conversions (by that I mean getting them to click through to your products and purchase). Take some time to brainstorm each month so you can start creating a promotional schedule.

Sometimes ideas come at the most inopportune time so have somewhere you can store your ideas when they come to you – perhaps your favorite notes app on your phone.  I find ideas come to me usually when I’m disconnected from work (like sweating a bucket on the stairmaster at the gym) and so I have a note in Google Keep for my “writing prompts” to jot down the idea before it disappears into the ether of forgotten ideas.

5. Welcome

One of the most underused email strategies is the welcome email or sequence.  Once someone opts-in to your list, or in fact becomes a first time purchaser, you should have an automated sequence to let them know more about your brand, your products and what they can expect from you. 

It doesn’t have to be a long sequence, in fact it could be just one email that is separate from your opt-in delivery email. It’s a way of reminding them of who you are and what you do so that you start building on your relationship.

6. Segment

At some point during your welcome sequence you might want to add some way to segment your audience. This just means getting a little bit more information about who they are with regards to their needs and interests. 

If your subscriber is a new customer, you’ll know the products they bought which will give you an idea of what they like and you can automatically create tags within your ESP to associate their record with the interests. Likewise with a specific opt-in. 

When it comes to general opt-ins you’ll still want to try to grab some information from them. There’s no need for a big survey, just a question or two within your sequence that will allow you to segment them based on needs. You don’t have to do anything with this information to start with, but it’s a good idea to have this information from the beginning. 

This will look different for every business, but if your products range across several categories, you can use those to ask “what are you most interested in?” in an email with several options to answer and then tag their record if they click on that answer.

7. Engagement

When you send your emails, even if you’re not selling anything, it’s a good idea to ask for engagement, meaning… ask them to reply to you. Keep doing this, even if you get no replies as it takes some time for people to feel comfortable enough to respond. 

This not only makes your readers feel like they care about what you think, but it has a purpose to show the email platforms like Google and Outlook that your message is genuine and not spam (the assumption is that if an email is getting replies, it generally means it’s not spam). So for deliverables sake (how many of your email sends land in the inbox as opposed to bounced or into the junk folder).

These are just a few tips to get you started with momentum, because you don’t want your hard work to go to waste.  

Having people sitting on your email list in a barren digital landscape is no good to anyone. They gave you their email address for a reason and they will want to hear from you about how your products solve their problems.

It may take you some time to build your email list but setting you business up for success from the start is essential.

If there’s just one thing I want you to take away from this post it’s the old quote of: 

“The money isn’t in your list, but in the relationship with your list”

Build the relationship and the sales will follow.  Because after all, the more sales you make the more good you’re doing in the world, so it’s your duty to make more sales.