Why Emailing Once or Twice Isn’t Enough

“Do I really have to email my list every week?”

This is a question I get from my clients, prospective clients, and pretty much every business owner I come in contact with.

The answer is, YES!

How Many Touchpoints Does it Take to Make a Sale?

I’m sure you’ve heard the statistic that it takes 7-8 touchpoints to make a sale.

The truth is, it’s more than that.

According to Email Tool Tester, for a warm, engaged lead, it can take between 5 and 12 touchpoints. For a cold, unengaged prospect, it can take between 20 and 50 touchpoints.

Granted, “touchpoints” can be anything from an online ad to a retargeting ad, to a text message, and yes, an email.

However, all of this balances on how familiar your prospect is with your product or service.

If they’re already familiar with what you’re selling and are ready to buy, it will take far fewer touches than if they’ve never heard of you and have just joined your email list.

Thus, sending weekly nurture emails is the key to guiding your email subscribers to make a purchase.

Why Does It Take So Long?

Honestly, I think it’s because people have so much information thrown at them that it’s hard to absorb everything.

According to the website Frontiers for Young Minds, the average person is now trying to process as much as 74 Gigabytes of information every day. That’s the equivalent of watching 16 movies every single day!

When you consider that’s more information than the average 17th-century well-educated person would have received in their entire lifetime… Well, you can see we’re all a bit overwhelmed.

This means we need to hear the same information again and again before we fully absorb it and can act on it.

Here’s a good example of what I’m talking about.

I work as a voting assistant for the Elections Division here in Ventura County. (I promise this example is not political.)

During the recent California state-wide Special Election, I repeated instructions to voters 5-6 times. This was built into our system in many ways to make sure they got in, filled out their ballot, and got out as quickly as possible.

These were people who had voted in previous elections, using the exact same voting process. They’d received special voting guides explaining the entire process, and the single ballot measure we were voting on, in the mail (not to mention all of the political ads and mailers). And they were voting in an off-year, special election, so you know they were dedicated voters.

Even so, repeating this information was necessary because they had tons of stuff on their minds, even as they were filling out the lookup forms and standing in front of me as I looked up their voter registration, so we could print their ballots.

We’re bombarded with so much stuff. Paying attention to all of it, all the time is utterly exhausting.

Which is why your nurture emails need to keep popping up in your subscribers’ inboxes to remind them of your existence and throw even more information at them.

Another reason it can take so long is that not everyone who joins your email list is ready to buy right away. For some of them, they’ll need to be guided or “nurtured” along to reach that point.

There’s a framework for this.

The 5 Stages of Awareness

Eugene Schwartz, one of the most famous copywriters in the world (well, the marketing and copywriting world, anyway), came up with this framework of a customer’s “5 Stages of Awareness.”

To give a quick overview, it works like this:

Unaware

These are people who are totally unaware of your product or service. And/or they are totally unaware of the problem that your product or service solves. This is either because they don’t have that problem or because they haven’t discovered it yet.

Problem Aware

Once someone discovers they have this problem, they reach this next stage. They know they have the problem that your product or service solves, but they have no idea how to solve this problem, or even that there may be a solution.

Solution Aware

Our next stage is where people become aware that there is a solution (or many solutions) available. They’re starting to research and are probably Googling “how do I solve/fix [Insert Problem Here].

This is the point where people usually read your blog posts, download your lead magnet, or take your quiz and join your email list.

Product Aware

Once they’ve started researching, they’ll become aware of the many products/services available to solve this problem, including yours.

You will still have people joining your email list at this point, because they’re still researching. This is where your weekly nurture email is the most useful because you can give them the information they actually want to receive (and absorb) about your product or service.

Again, you are nurturing them through these two stages of awareness to the final stage…

Most Aware

These are the email subscribers who click on the link in your emails and buy.

They’re ready to solve this problem, they trust you to help them, and they want to hand over their hard-earned cash.

It’s also the stage where people who have done research on your product or service but haven’t necessarily joined your email list will buy. (Always a nice surprise.)

The purpose of your nurture emails is to guide people through these stages of awareness (primarily the last 3) to the point of becoming a paying customer.

And because of the information overwhelm, you need to keep them engaged on a regular basis, so they remember who you are and why they’re interested in that product or service.

So, to answer the original question…

Yes, You Really Should Email Your List Every Week

I know this sounds intimidating. And I’m sure that your first thought is “but won’t that just overwhelm them with more information?”

No, not if you write an engaging email that helps and guides before it sells.

This is what we do every week in my Email Writing Accountability Group.

We write engaging emails that help your subscribers cut through the overwhelm and see why your product or service is the one to help them solve their problems.

The process is simple.

You spend the first 30 minutes writing your email.

For the next 30 minutes, I review everyone’s emails and give tips on where you can make it more engaging and value-packed for your subscribers.

You spend the next 20 minutes incorporating my recommendations into your first draft.

And voila, your weekly email is done.

All of my current group members are grateful for the help and attention, as well as for the dedicated time to do this task every week. More importantly, their emails are getting results!

If you’re interested in finding out more about the Email Writing Accountability Group, click on the button below.

Because your subscribers have said they’re interested in what you have to offer. Take the time to tell them about it, and to make it worth their while to pay attention.

By the way, I took this week’s landscape picture on my weekly beach walk at Surfer’s Knoll Beach in Ventura, CA. And the adorable “touchpoint” picture is of two of my cats, Arawn and Nanner.

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