What's an Opt-In?

Hi, my friends; welcome back to the Simple SEO Content Podcast. This is one of our Tuesday episodes where we talk all about marketing and entrepreneurship and how we grow our business in general with different marketing channels, not just SEO and content. As you know, I love search engine optimization and content marketing, but they're not everything we can or should be doing to grow our business. And today we're talking about email marketing because email is a super powerful marketing channel. It's another one that's low cost. It's not completely free, like some, but it's low-cost. You do have to pay for your email service provider unless you're still very small, very new, and you're using MailChimp because MailChimp does have a free tier. That is a great option when you're first starting out.

Today, we're going to talk about email opt-ins. How do we get people on our email list? Because that's one of the most common questions that I get when I start talking to people about email marketing is how do I actually get people to want to sign up for my emails? So, real quick, just saying "sign up for my email list" is not going to work. Most people don't want to get on your email list because they don't know what you're going to send them. They don't know if there's any benefit to them. They don't know why they would want to sign up for it, so we have to give them something that is of value to them. For many years, I worked with e-commerce and our opt-ins were always a coupon: "Sign up now, get 10% off." "Sign up now, get 15% off your first order." "Get $75 off your first order." Email marketing opt-ins are super easy for e-commerce. So if you're an e-commerce seller and want to offer a coupon, free shipping, 10% off, $20 off, whatever, that's basically your opt-in. It's really easy. But for other industries, it's a little more challenging because we don't necessarily have a coupon code, and our customers probably aren't ready to make a purchase immediately, the way that somebody might be when they're looking at an e-commerce site.

So, let's pretend that you're a photographer and you specialize in newborn photography. You might create a new parents' guide—a guide to the perfect newborn photo session. In that guide, you would give tips about when to feed the baby, what temperature to keep the house, and maybe ideas on props or the perfect age to do it. I remember receiving a guide like this from my photographer when my son was born because we did his newborn session when he was about eight or ten days old. She had this guide that told me exactly what to do to prepare for it because I didn't know what to do. That would be a fantastic opt-in for a newborn photographer. If it was a photographer doing family photos, maybe that opt-in would be a list of fantastic locations in the community for family photos or a guidebook on how to coordinate clothing colors with some sample ideas to make it easier to figure out what to put everybody in.

For me, my opt-ins include the SEO Content Quick Start Guide because if people are coming to me brand new and don't know where to start, they need something easy to understand. Then they have the free class. Those are both opt-ins. In both instances, they bring people into my world and get them on my email list. If you were a personal trainer, you might have an opt-in that included a free workout lesson, a guide to setting up your home gym, or a guide to the best home workout equipment for 2023 or 2024.

You want to think about who your ideal customer is, what questions they have, and how you can help them. You also want to make sure that your opt-in is tied to your core business priorities. For me, I sell Simple SEO Content. It is a paid SEO content course. I'm also selling Simple Marketing, which is a paid marketing course. My opt-ins need to tie to those products because those are the ways I make money in my business.

 If I had an opt-in that included a paid ads resource guide, it wouldn't probably do me much good because I don't have a class on how to do paid ads. I talk a little bit about paid ads in Simple Marketing just because they're one of the channels you can use to market your business, but I don't go in-depth teaching how to set up Facebook ads or Google ads. So, building an audience full of people who want to learn all about Google ads or Facebook ads is not going to be beneficial to my business, and I'm not going to be able to serve them in a way that's beneficial to them, either. So that's what you really want to think about. You want to think about your ideal customer, what questions they have, what you can help them with, and where you can help them get a quick win—something they can take no more than 20 or 30 minutes to look at. They can get a quick win, get an idea, and get set on their way, and then you can nurture them. So when they sign up, they opt-in, they say, "I want this item," and it's usually a PDF guide, a checklist, or maybe a free training class. It's usually something that's just a couple of pages or a quick video, something that's going to bring them into your world, help them, introduce them to the concepts at hand, and then they can go from there.

You then want to set that up in an email service provider. So there is some tech involved with this. You're going to need to choose your email service provider, as we talked about in last week's episode, where we just talked about the benefits of having an email list. You can choose Constant Contact, Flowdesk, Kajabi, ActiveCampaign (which I use), Mailchimp (which has a free tier when you're just starting out), ConvertKit; you name it. You do you; you choose yours. I'm not going to tell you which one to use. I've used a bunch of them over the years. They all have their pluses and minuses. I like ActiveCampaign for my business because I want to segment, I want to target, and I'm a data nerd. It's probably too much for someone who's just starting out or not doing all the segmenting and targeting and all the different things, and that's okay. There are ones you can use if you have five people on your list or a hundred people. There are ones you want to use if you have 50,000 people on your list.

Your needs today may change in the future, so don't worry about getting the email service provider that's going to work for you when you hit X magic amount. Get the one that works for you today because you can always export your list and transfer to a new service provider if you need something else. It's also a good way to help control your costs. Choose the tools that will help you get the job done today versus choosing the tools that you don't need until some point, four or five years down the road. Save the money now and just buy what you need for today. So, choose your email service provider.

Determine what you're going to use for your opt-in. Create your opt-in. If you're not super visually or graphic design-oriented, hire someone to do it for you so that it looks professional. If you have Canva, you can generally find templates and stuff on there. I've gone to just working with a couple of designers on Fiverr to do all of my social graphics and to do my opt-ins and things like that because they're better at it than I am, and that frees me up to focus in my zone of genius, doing other work that's going to have a bigger return for my business.

So you may want to write the content for it and then have someone actually design it for you. Have a professional do it so it looks great. Then you're going to want to set it up within your email service provider so that when they join a list, they get that email, and you want to make sure that they get a link that they can download right away. Then you're going to want to set a nurture sequence so you don't just send them that email one time and never email them again. There are specific emails we can send in a nurture sequence when someone first comes in because we know they're having an issue, they've got a problem, they've got a question—that's why they signed up. We want to talk about this option that we have for them, this item they requested, and then maybe talk about their business or their challenges. Then, we want to send an email that shows we can help them. We have this product or service that can help them. Then, we want to send our weekly email. Once they've gone through their new welcome nurture sequence and gotten our nurture emails, then we want to put them into our weekly email list so they continue to get information from us on a consistent basis. That's how we're really going to build our like and trust factors. They're going to come back. If we make our emails helpful, beneficial, and full of insights and information they look forward to reading, they're going to be more likely to remember us when they're ready to make a purchase. Now you can promote. If you're on my email list, you know that you get promotions from me periodically.

I do free training, so I'll tell you about those free training classes, and you always know that free training is no obligation. Come learn as much as you can. If you're ready to join me in class, then join me in class. I would love to have you in there, but if it's not the right time for you, that's okay. Still, come, take the free training, learn what you can, and then implement from there. If you need to make more money to pay for the paid class, implement what you learn in the free class, save the money you earn from what you've learned, and then take the paid class. If you're ready, take the paid class. I have some students who come into my world and sign up and take the paid class within two days. I have others who spend six to eight months with me, learning as much as they can for free, soaking it up, and then joining the paid class.

You want to make sure that you're providing value for everybody on your email list each week. If you have multiple ideal customers and different opt-ins, you may want to do more than one email a week to that segment. But don't send a bunch of emails each week unless you're in a promotional period. If you're in a promotional period, give people a way to opt out and just say, "I like your emails, but I don't want to hear about this promotion." That's okay, too. You have to make sure you're providing value for them. Keep your promotional emails limited to less than 20% of the time.

It is okay to sell. You have to sell. The only way your business is going to make money is if you sell. When you see my emails, and I send you through, usually once a year, the full sales portion for the course, whether you've signed up or not, I still don't necessarily feel like I like doing that, but I also know you have to sell. I'll invite you to the free courses. I'll tell you about the free training. I hope you sign up for them.

Every once in a while, you might actually get the sales emails, and I know people say I should do it more often than I do, but I don't like doing it a lot. I don't like to be high-pressure or sleazy sales. I don't believe in any of that. I'm more about "come to me, and I'll help you," and that's what I want for you to do as well because it builds a better relationship with your ideal customer. What I want you to do if you're not yet consistently creating emails, you have a list, and you have not nurtured them, or you don't yet have an opt-in, I want you to create one of your goals for Q1 of 2024 to get your email list in gear. If you need an opt-in, your goal is to create an opt-in, get your email service provider identified and set up, get that going, and start offering it to people. If you have a list but you're not emailing on a regular basis, then I want that to be your goal for Q1: get yourself into the habit of emailing once a week. If you are promoting heavily and not providing value, I want you to change that around and start providing more value and less promotion in your weekly email so that your list will improve, people will be excited to get your emails, and they'll want to work with you when they're ready.

If you have any questions about how to create an opt-in, share them everywhere. Put it on your blog post, website, or social media, and share it in your podcast or interviews. Always, always, always offer whatever opt-in you have that's going to be the most beneficial to them. "Take my free class," "grab my guide," "get the checklist," "take the free video"—whatever it is that you have that's going to help them. As long as your opt-in is helpful, you'll be fine. They'll sign up, and then it's up to you to take that relationship to the next step, nurture them, and keep in touch regularly. Periodically invite them to free training, give them a little gift, or offer your new fall lineup or whatever it is.

You have to invite people to work with you so that they know they can buy from you. Build your email list and protect it because it's one of the best assets you can have for your business. If you have any questions, you know how to find me. Email me or DM me on Instagram at Etched Marketing Academy. I would love to chat with you. If you are ready to join Simple Marketing, you can join now. We are in session, or we will be in session again in February. All right, I'll see you guys. Bye for now.