Email Marketing for Solopreneurs: A Step-by-Step Guide

If you want to grow your business in a sustainable way, you need to focus on building an email list so you can connect with, nurture, and sell to your audience. You want to get website visitors, social media followers, and podcast listeners on your email list so you can connect with them again. Email marketing is a powerful marketing tool for solopreneurs, small business owners, and large companies alike.

It's important to build an email list for your business, no matter the size. 

Why Email Marketing Is Important Solopreneurs

Email marketing has an average return of $42 for every $1 spent. That means that for every $1 you invest in building an email list, you can earn $42 in time.

Unlike social media, your emails go straight to your subscribers’ inboxes, which helps you build a connection with them. When you email regularly, you become part of their week and, hopefully, something they look forward to reading.

Email can help you build trust and showcase your experience and expertise over time. When you email consistently and share helpful content, your audience feels more connected and starts looking at you as a resource or expert.

Email can be prepared ahead of time and automated, making it a great marketing channel that doesn’t require you to be involved and work on it daily.

Best Practices: Email Marketing for Solopreneurs

Create a freebie or opt-in.

Create a freebie, lead magnet, or opt-in for your audience. You want to create something of value that will give them a quick win. They’ll sign up for it by giving you their email address in exchange for a copy of your freebie. It needs to be of value and helpful to them, or it won’t work. If you’re not sure what to offer, read this blog post that will help you brainstorm your opt-in or freebie. 

Create a landing page for your opt-in or freebie.

Once you’ve created your opt-in or freebie, you’ll need to create a landing page that your potential new customer can use to request a copy of the opt-in. You’ll want to keep it simple and clear so they know what to do and what they’ll get in exchange. Don’t ask for lots of extra information here; simply ask for their email address. You’ll need to connect your landing page to your email service provider so the opt-in or freebie can be sent to your new email subscriber.

Choose an email service provider and set up your account

Choose your email service provider. There are lots of options out there. I personally use Active Campaign and have for years, but others like Kit (formerly Convert Kit), Flo Desk, Mailchimp, Mailerlite, and others. Take a look at the options and choose the one you’re most comfortable with; they all do pretty similar things.

Set up freebie distribution via your email service provider

Depending on the email service provider you choose, the steps to do this may vary. I’ll walk you through the process for Active Campaign since that’s who I use.

I set up a new email list for the opt-in or freebie and connected that list to my landing page. When someone signs up for the freebie or opt-in, they are automatically added to the list in my Active Campaign account.

I then create an automation so that the new subscriber automatically receives the email with the item they signed up for.

Technically, how you set this up will depend on your email service provider, but you want to make sure they have a way of sending emails automatically to new signups so you don’t have to add people manually. This speeds up the process for everyone – your new subscriber gets their requested opt-in faster, and you don’t have to be involved in the process. 

Create a nurture sequence for your new subscribers.

Don’t just send them the download and ghost them. You won’t build a relationship with new subscribers that way. It’s important that you’re consistent and provide value to them on an ongoing basis. When someone first signs up for a freebie, they have a problem they’re looking to solve, or they want information you are sharing. You want to provide that, but you should also think about what else will be helpful to them. You want to send emails over the next 7-10 days showcasing how you can help them. Highlight wins from your clients or students, share stories, and provide encouragement and more to help them believe they can change things for themselves with your help. You’re positioning yourself as their guide.

Email Marketing for Solopreneurs Best Practices

After your initial welcome sequence, where you deliver the freebie and a few value emails to your new subscribers, you’ll want to continue to email them weekly. You can share quick notes, podcast episodes, blog posts, insights, etc. Be sure what you’re sharing is valuable and helpful so they want to continue to receive your emails (or they’ll unsubscribe from your list).

Be sure to email consistently. You can test dates and times to find the best one for your audience. You want to watch your open rates to see if you’re sending at a time that works for your audience. Ideally, you want to see your open rates in the 30-40% range or higher. Not everyone who gets your emails will open or read them. That’s OK; it’s normal and expected.

I can’t tell you the best day or time to send your emails. It will depend on your audience and when they read emails. Years ago, I was in charge of email marketing campaigns for an agency, and we accidentally found out that 4 am was the best time to deliver emails for one particular client because their audience was shipping managers who came into work super early and read email before getting started for the day. The team hadn’t intended to send the email out at 4 am – it was a mistake the first time it went, but it ended up performing much better than other emails had in the past, and they started scheduling emails for 4 am delivery. Some email companies will help with this. For example, Active Campaign offers a predictive send feature that sends your email based on when they think the audience member is most likely to open it based on past interactions with the system. If your system has a feature like this, you can test it and see if it helps your program’s performance.

If you want to learn more about building an email list for your business, request a copy of my Beginner’s Guide to Email List Building here, and I’ll walk you through the process step-by-step. Building your email list is one of the best long-term growth strategies you can use to help grow your business. It’s the net you’ll use to catch the traffic that’s coming to your website from your SEO work. When you do SEO, you get more traffic to your website, and when you have a good opt-in on that website, you can grow your email list.