I have a confession to make.
I have an email list that I haven’t sent anything to since last December. 🫣
Yeah, I know. That’s bad. Really bad for my email list engagement.
And to make things worse, before that, I hadn’t emailed them since last March.
Honestly, I feel terrible about it. And it’s why I’m so sympathetic when I talk to business owners who are in the same situation. Keeping up with regular nurture emails takes effort! I know this from personal experience, as I do it for a living for myself and for other businesses.
But do it we must if we want to ensure a steady stream of new customers coming into our businesses, and repeat business from current customers.
My Music Newsletter List
As you know if you’ve read this newsletter for a while, I used to be a professional touring musician. That’s how I got started in email marketing.
I grew a sizable email list of people all over the country by collecting email addresses at shows. I would send monthly updates to the full list, as well as show notices to people who were in the areas we were touring through.
This email list is the remnant of what I had from that time.
I still play music. I still do shows occasionally and every once in a while, I have new music to share. So, after years of not touching this list, I revived it and was doing a fairly good job of keeping up with the monthly emails I promised to send.
But lately I’ve fallen off the wagon.
I admit it’s hard to write when I don’t have that much to report or share. I’m not playing out regularly, just every once in a while. So keeping up with this list is not top of mind.
It should be, but it’s not.
Here’s the last email I sent them.
If you want to hear my rendition of The Holly and The Ivy, go here.
Now, here we are in July and while I have been better about playing music for myself since stating my New Year’s Resolution, I’ve been terrible about recording and posting new music, or setting up shows in my area.
I’ve also been terrible about emailing this list.
I feel guilty. I have reminder on my calendar to email them every month. Every month I look at that reminder and think to myself, “I have no idea what to write about.” So I let it slide. Again. And again. And again.
Which is why I totally get it when I hear the same thing from other business owners. I do it too.
Why Staying In Touch Matters So Much for Email List Engagement
Imagine for a moment that you meet someone for the first time. You strike up a conversation and this person is really interesting. You’re engaged by what they’re saying and you want to find out more about them.
The conversation comes to a natural end and you say, “Hey, I’d love to talk again soon. When can we get together?”
They say, “I’d love that! Let me get in touch with you so we can set something up.”
You give this person your email address or phone number and each of you goes on your merry way. You figure that you’ll hear from them in the next day or two, which is fine.
That day or two stretches into a week… And then a month… And then several months…
Suddenly, this person calls you out of the blue, after not being in contact for months on end, and says, “Hey, it’s me. Sorry it’s been so long, I meant to call sooner but life got in the way. Do I remember that you have a pickup truck? Can you help me move this Saturday?”
How would you feel?
If you’re like most people, you’d be a bit taken aback and taken advantage of.
If you’re a really nice person, you might say yes to helping them move.
But most people wouldn’t. They’d feel betrayed. They wouldn’t trust the other person because they never followed through on their promise to reach out. That’s if they remembered this person and how they knew them to begin with.
That’s how your email subscribers feel when you don’t email them regularly.
When you have that lovely lead magnet set up, along with a welcome sequence to bring people into your community, they’re interested. They’re excited by what you have to offer because you’re starting that relationship with them.
When you disappear for a while, then pop back up in their inboxes asking them to buy from you, they feel the same way you would in the scenario I described above.
That’s why regular nurture emails are worth your time and effort.
Building the Relationship
You need to build a relationship with your subscribers just like you would with someone in real life.
Tell them about yourself, your company, your mission, and yes, your product or service. Ask them to tell you about themselves and their challenges, so you have a better idea of who they are, what they’re looking for, what they believe in, and how you can help them.
Every relationship has its give and take. Ideally, your nurture emails are how you give. Your calls to action (CTAs) are how you “take,” whether those CTAs go to a blog post, a consultation, or a sales page.
And yes, you want to include a CTA in every email, so people realize you are selling something and so they become accustomed to clicking through to what you’re offering.
Disappearing Damages This Relationship
When you stop sending nurture emails, or you collect email addresses but never send anything (which also happens frequently), you’re giving people a bad impression of your business.
We’ve all heard the expression, “You only have one chance to make a good impression.”
Unfortunately, we have many, many chances to make bad impressions. Not communicating with your subscribers can definitely leave a bad impression.
That can lead to everything from people unsubscribing from your email list or marking your emails as spam if you do email again, to bad reviews and cancelled orders.
I’m dealing with this exact situation right now with an order I placed. I’ve emailed the company several times to ask them to confirm whether my order will arrive by a certain date. I still haven’t heard back, so I’m cancelling the order. And I may leave a bad review.
Bad communication leads to a breakdown of trust. And once you’ve lost that, you’ve lost a current or potential customer.
If you get a reputation for this, you’ve lost your business. Or certainly any chance of growing it to where you want it to be. That bad reputation can haunt you forever.
That said, I know all of this and I’m still guilty of the same behavior with my own music email list.
We are all human.
My Next Email to My Music List
I am in Minneapolis, MN right now for my annual science fiction convention. I will be performing there this Friday. Which means I need to email my music list to let folks who are attending the convention to come to my show, and to let everyone else know I’ll post a recording of the show shortly thereafter.
So now, I need to apologize to these people again for having disappeared for months on end.
The good thing is, I’m ultimately giving them something they want, which is my music. Despite my bad behavior, many of them will open the email, click through to the show information, and open the next email when I’ve posted the video.
This list is amazingly loyal for reasons I truly don’t understand. Every time I do this, I still get open rates of 30% and click through rates of 5%.
It is a tiny list, especially compared to what it used to be. But every time I email, I get responses saying how glad people are to hear from me.
And I really will try to be better about writing to this list more often. I say this every time I lapse like this. And yet I lapse over and over again.
It’s a lot easier for me to write to them when I have something to share, like a new song or an upcoming show. It holds me accountable for writing to them.
Having a Reason to Write and Being Accountable Really Helps
I’m serious about this. Having something to write about gives me the impetus to write to my music list.
You have the advantage of being on the Email Marketing Ecosystem newsletter, which I am much better about writing to every week, because I usually have something to say. And I hold myself accountable for writing to you regularly.
This accountability is important, and it makes writing every week a lot easier.
Which is exactly why I run the Email Writing Accountability Group. To give you and business owners like you the time, support, and accountability to write to your subscribers every week.
If you don’t know what to write about that week, we’ll talk through it, so you can open that blank document and tackle it with confidence, every time. Then you’ll get feedback from me, a professional copywriter, on what you wrote, so you can improve it during our editing time.
Once we’re done, you’ll be able to load that email into your ESP and hit send, knowing you are doing your part to build your relationship with your subscribers. You’re giving to them, they’ll give back to you in turn, and together you’ll fulfill your mission to make the world a better place.
If having this time, support, and accountability sounds like what you need to write nurture emails to your subscribers regularly, I invite you to join us for a free session of the Email Writing Accountability Group.
We meet on:
- Mondays at 10:00 am PT
- Thursdays at 2:00 pm PT
Just click on the button below to join an upcoming session now.
I hope to see you on one of those sessions very soon.
Meanwhile, I need to practice for my upcoming show. And write to my Music email list. For real this time.
Finally, thanks very much to Scotty Roberts, Peter Verrant and Mark Puareia for taking these lovely photos of me performing over the years.
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