Why You Should Use Email Marketing to Promote Your Membership Website

For many online businesses, the most valuable asset they have is their mailing list.

Email marketing remains one of the most effective ways to connect with and nurture an interested audience and drive business growth. The key to success lies in the quality of your mailing list. A valuable mailing list is not just about quantity but also about the quality of your subscribers.

In this checklist, we provide insights and actionable tips to help you build a valuable list with an engaged subscriber base.

Best practices to building your mailing list

• Think about how you will use the list.
• Make sure you have an opt-in box: it’s the law.
• Don't place restrictions on the data you collect: for example if you say, ‘sign-up for a monthly newsletter’, you can only send a monthly newsletter. If you say ‘sign up to regularly receive tips and offers’ you can send emails as frequently as you want.
• Give your visitors a good reason to hand over their personal information: give value to get value.
• Give away a free resource: a free ebook, discount voucher, video or anything else with a low cost to you and a high perceived value to your prospect.
• Make it easy for visitors to sign up: ask for the minimum information you need, which is usually name and email address. The more information you ask for, the fewer sign-ups you will get.
• Highlight your privacy policy: next to every place where you ask for customer data you should have a link to your privacy policy and a statement like ‘we take your privacy seriously’.
• Have a refer a friend option: there is no better time to ask people for referrals than at the point when they have just signed up for your list.

Deliver quality, valuable content to your email list subscribers

• Remind email recipient that they have given you their permission to correspond with them.
• Think carefully about the subject line: it will determine how many of your emails are opened.
• Make sure every message you send is relevant and valuable: always ask yourself “How will this information help my audience?” Will it make them money, save them money, make them healthier, or thinner, or wiser?
• Give enough information in the email to deliver value: but don’t give away all the information. Link to your website for the full story.
• Develop a consistent voice and personality for all correspondence.
• Don’t send too many emails.
• Don’t send too few emails.

Strategies to maintain your email list

• Reward loyalty.
• Stay legal: you must allow people to unsubscribe (but always ask them why they are leaving).
• Study unsubscribe rates to try to reduce them.
• Remember it’s not size that matters! The most valuable lists are the ones with highly engaged recipients. They open a lot of emails and they take action.
• Get more information over time – every bit of information you get from recipients increases a lists value.
• Prune your list: if some recipients never open your email, try to re-engage. If that fails ‘re-permission’ them to see if they still want to receive your correspondence . . . if they don’t opt back in, remove them.
• Never abuse your list.
• Never sell your list, unless you have got permission from the recipients, to pass it on to third parties.
• Nurture and care for your list. Help it to grow and flourish. It is your future success and prosperity.

In conclusion

A high-quality mailing list is the foundation upon which you can forge lasting connections with your audience, drive engagement and achieve your marketing goals. By focusing on the acquisition of genuinely interested subscribers, maintaining their trust and delivering relevant content, you can ensure that your mailing list remains a valuable marketing asset.

Email marketing is a is still considered the superpower of marketing tools for any business, but it can be especially effective if you’re running a membership website. Here are 6 ways to use email marketing to boost engagement and retention in your membership business.

Welcoming new members

An initial email to welcome new members is an opportunity to set expectations, provide important information, and get members excited about being a part of your community. More than a confirmation email, a welcome email gives you the opportunity to provide more information and an expanded welcome message, which often has the effect of feeling like a personal welcome from you, rather than a simple acknowledgement. Here are some tips for making the most of your welcome email:

Make it a personalized greeting: Who doesn’t like to read their own name on an email? Take this opportunity to begin by acknowledging that you know who you’re talking to, rather than just launching into your content with no salutation. Addressing the new member by name will help to establish a personal connection and make the email feel more engaging.

Provide an overview of the community: Provide new members with a brief overview of what your community is all about, including its mission, values, and key features. This should reiterate the information on your website so the member is reassured they have signed up for the right program.

Offer key resource information: Make sure new members know how to access any resources that are available to them as members. Your confirmation email will have let members know generally how to access membership content but don’t assume your member is willing to check back into that email. Your welcome email is a chance to give them everything they need to know to access the content they just signed up for. 

Inform about upcoming events: If you have any upcoming events that new members can attend, include information on these in your welcome email. This will help to get new members excited about being a part of your community and provide them with an opportunity to connect with other members. 

Include a call to action: Include one primary call to action in your welcome email. Try to avoid sending new members somewhere other than your website to start, such as to join a social media group. This might be confusing if it drops them into a group with other members at very different experience levels.

You're better off to promote your website with a call to action that takes them directly to the web page that is referenced in the link, whether it's a sign-up page for a welcome package, or a calendar page to book a call.

Provide a contact person: Whether it’s you or your assistant, make sure new members now where to reach out for help.  If there are several different avenues, such as Facebook group, Messenger, a customer service email address or a contact form, include them all.

Regular Newsletter Updates

Regular newsletter updates keep your audience informed and engaged, especially if you can use images, videos, and infographics to make it more visually appealing. And newsletter content can be repurposed as social media content…or the other way around. Remember to keep your newsletter updates interesting, informative and engaging. Here are some specific content tips on how to make the most of regular newsletter updates.

Industry news: Lest this become a copy and pasted somewhat dry summary of an update from an industry source, be sure the headline is enticing. Which is more engaging: “New data suggests holistic medicine sales on the rise” OR “Learn how these 3 mavens in the spiritual healing space made six figures in their first year of business…”?

Company news: Keep your tribe informed of new services, new products or even a new business model you’re trying.  Keep them not only informed, but involved. You’d be surprised how well members will respond to being included in new decisions you’re making about your business.  Polls and surveys asking them what they think or better still, what services THEY would like to see in your business are a great way to keep members engaged and retained.

Customer success stories: Not only does this keep members reminded that they are making the right decision by starting with your membership, it also gives everyone a chance to shine. Offer your students or members an opportunity to be spotlighted in the newsletter.

Tips and advice:  Everyone loves a listicle! But they also love a live interaction. Why not offer a “Hot Seat” opportunity to one or two members per month or per quarter? This takes tips to another level and everyone benefits.  If you don’t want to create a specific event around it, simply turn your regular coaching or group session into a hot seat session, or tag it onto the end of your call instead of a Q & A.

Promotions & discounts: These should be offers that aren’t available to non-members, whether it’s the aforementioned Hot Seat opportunity or a discount on a new service you have decided to offer. Use seasonal opportunities like Black Friday, Valentine’s Day or simply the advent of spring to create your promotions.

Include a call to action: End every newsletter with a call to action, whether it’s a direction to something related to the content, or a generic link to your website.

Choose the right tech: This one has a tendency to trip people up. If you’re using the SubHub platform, you don’t necessarily need an email service provider to provide an opt-in opportunity and then send out newsletters.  The opt-in banner layout is available to include in your homepage or landing pages (also provided within the platform).

The opt-in contacts are saved in the backend of your website, or can be directed to your Mailchimp list, or both. News can be easily imparted to all members, or even segmented by member group, through the Email Members option in the SubHub member manager.

Deliver targeted content

Segmentation in email marketing can be a huge boost to your overall marketing strategy. Most email marketing programs including Mailchimp offer the ability to segment your lists by various criteria, allowing you to send targeted campaigns to specific groups of members.

Design your segmentation

There are three most frequently used types of segmentation:

Buyer Persona:

Your “ideal client” might have more than one profile. Let’s say you’re a business coach. You might market to one buyer persona that is a new business owner, and another that is more seasoned. If you’re a lawyer, you might have different buyer personas for victims of personal injury and those at fault in an accident.  Each of these buyer personas might have different problems, issues and have completely different questions about their situation. 

Sales Cycle:

Visitors to your website may be at different stages of your sales cycle. They might be just trying to learn about your industry.  They might be interested in your service but trying to find out more about you. Or they might already know all about you, love you, and are ready to buy from you.  In each case, your message is likely to be different.

You can differentiate among those stages by offering different opt-in options on your website. For example, someone who opts in to receive a free e-book on a fundamental aspect of your service could be assumed to be a new visitor. Someone who opts in for a consultation would likely be more serious. They already know enough about you to want to talk. These types of website visitors could be segmented within your email program.

Member Group:

You may have your members segmented by group on your website. The SubHub platform offers unlimited member group options, so you can have members sign up for different levels of services, different types of services, and access to courses and content tailored specifically for each group. Now you have a couple of options for emailing each group:

• In the SubHub platform, simply go to your member manager and search by member group. Click the Email Members button to send out an email to everyone in the group.

• Use Mailchimp or another email service to have member group information automatically uploaded from your membership website subscription records to the same email list or separate lists.

Automate your segmentation

You can set up automated campaigns targeted to each list or list segment. For example, your first-time visitors might benefit from a short email tutorial series. Visitors who download a white paper, for example, might be interested in a series of emails containing testimonials, information about your company, and any new services you’re offering.

Test your segmentation

Be sure to send test emails to ensure the right messages are scheduled for the right segments. Then watch for results. Hopefully, by identifying your segments, targeting your messages and automating your delivery, your engagement will increase as will conversion rates. You will want to keep a close eye on analytics so you can tweak and refine your messages and segments as you grow.

Encourage engagement

Segmentation

We've already talked about segmentation, but it’s such an important technique, it bears mentioning again. How can you increase engagement using segmentation? Use data to segment into groups based on previous purchase history, abandoned carts, click through rates and even general interests if you have that information. What better way to encourage feedback than to send an email to specifically address the fact that someone got halfway through their purchase and then stopped for some reason?

There are a few ways to approach this conversation. You might want to just ask if they are still interested in the item. After all, it’s so easy to get distracted these days, you might be doing the person a favor by reminding them that the items is still available, and you can make it super convenient to finish the purchase by providing a link in your email to the shopping cart or payment processor. You can also ask for information about why they didn’t follow through. You may not get a response, but then again, you might find out something extremely valuable, whether it’s an undiscovered technical glitch, or the potential member simply changed their mind.

Personalization

Most email marketing programs make it easy to insert the persons first name in the salutation of the email. If you can personalize it further, that’s even better. For example, you might send an email to someone who purchased your new skin softener with a subject line of “How are you enjoying [insert name of skin softener]?” On the other hand, you might have members on your list who have never purchased from you, and in fact haven’t opened any of your emails for a while. Checking to make sure they still want to hear from you is a great way to encourage feedback. At the very least, you can slim down the size of your list, which might save some money the next time to send out your campaign.

Optimization

Use conversion rate optimization techniques to encourage clicking on a call to action. Some examples of conversion rate optimizations:

•  Use an enticing headline. You want your headline to be intriguing but not a mystery. Say plainly but succinctly exactly what your message is about.
• Break up your text. No one wants to read paragraph after paragraph of text without a break.  Use sub-heads to highlight the topic of each paragraph.
• Make sure your email is formatted correctly by sending yourself a test message. Sometimes formatting can be tricky because your readers are viewing the email using different email clients and in different browsers. But at least take a look at how you see it as a viewer, and that will give you a good idea of the user experience. For example, make sure that line spacing is appropriate, as is the amount of space between paragraphs.
• Avoid technical jargon. Unless you are speaking to a technical niche audience, try to avoid jargon and technical terms in your emails. It's not so much that they may not understand, but the fact is, people read all day for the most part, and your email will get best results if it's easy and quick to digest without your audience having to translate technical terms into layman's terms.
• Add images and/or a video to your emails. An email message that is visually appealing has a better chance of being read to the final call to action.
• Optimize your emails for mobile. The last thing you want is 5,000 recipients opening your email on their phone and only being able to see the left-hand side of the top banner message. All the elements of your email (images, videos, text and buttons) need to be responsive to desktop, laptop, tablet and phone screen sizes.

Win-Back Campaigns

Email marketing can be a powerful tool for winning back customers you've lost. By reaching out directly to past customers and offering them incentives to return, you can increase your chances of re-engaging with them and bringing them back to your business. Here are some tips for using email marketing to win back customers:

Identify

First you need to identify who these customers are. Search your list for those who have purchased from you previously but haven’t for a certain period of time. If you’re running a membership, this will be easy because their subscriptions will have expired or been cancelled. You may also want to include lost members who simply did not renew because of a lapsed credit card. It’s possible they just forgot. Your email might be just the reminder they were hoping for!

Calculate

Calculate the value of each client. You may already have worked out a cost to acquire a new clients vs. the cost to maintain one. What is the value of each customer to you over a period of time?

Incentivize

For prior customers who left simply because they didn’t see the value anymore, you may want to offer an incentive to give your service another try. A free trial, discount or bonus offerings could be just the incentive for your former client to become a current client again.

Follow up

Didn’t get a response the first time? Send your email again, or follow up with a new message. You can sweeten your offer, but just be sure to stay true to yourself. Make sure the time and effort you’re expending on winning back this customer is going to be worth  it in the end, and doesn’t feel like you’re bombarding your client. Remember, you might know what your ideal clients need, but they might not know, or they simply might not be ready.

Analyze

Keep track of how many customers you're able to win back and what strategies are working best for you. Segment your list so that you have a separate segment containing only your win-back clients. You will likely want to address them with different messages than regular clients. This will help you optimize your campaign and improve your results over time.

Reminders and announcements

Here is a great chance to overtly sell products and services to your clientele. After all, they’ve already expressed interest in your work, and may have already purchased from you. From selling off older products and courses bundled at a discount, to announcing brand new exciting offerings to come, your newsletter is the perfect vehicle. Here are a few other ways to use reminders and announcements to stay in close touch with your current and prospective website members.

Event reminders

Whether it’s a live event, webinar, or in-person meeting, event reminders are crucial to maximizing the likelihood of good attendance. Most people forget what they signed up for, never mind the date and time. The good news is the vast majority of these kinds of reminders can be done on autopilot using various kinds of software. Most platforms offering webinars can be embedded into your website, and reminders go out automatically. If your event is in-person, you can use Eventbrite to set up reminders at certain intervals or even a few minutes before the event starts.

Product or service updates

If you’re running a membership website, it’s crucial that you keep your content updated. You can use email to automate reminders that new content is available on your website. If you are offering a new service, remember to let your tribe know. Tell them what’s new about it, how it differs from your current offerings, and what is the primary benefit to your client. Another service update that can be very effective is to remind potential buyers of your money-back guarantee. Your next new student, member or product buyer might be 90% convinced that your program is for them. But what about the 10%. You might be able to cover it with a 30 or 60-day money back guarantee.

Special occasion discounts and incentives

Whether it’s Black Friday or the 4th of July or anything in between, seasonal discounts are not only welcome but almost expected in most industries. You never know who on your list might be just hovering on the verge of buying from you, and that discount or free trial just seals the deal.

Surveys and polls

You’d be amazed at how willing people are to help you understand what they need. Don’t be afraid to send out surveys asking for feedback on your latest webinar or course. Polls can help you understand more about your community’s interests and values, which can help you craft future services and promotions. Let’s say you teach yoga online and you discover by poll that your students like a particular charity. Now you have a prize for your next draw or incentive.

Industry news

Sharing industry news and developments not only helps keep your readers up to date on the latest developments in their field, , but it also helps to position you as an industry influencer. If you are a trainer or coach, your students and clients are going to be interested in any new government regulations, particularly in the healthcare field. Technological advancements are also going to be of interest, including software or tools recently made available to professionals in your field. In addition to announcement s about events that you may be putting on, remember to let your clients know about industry events that they may not want to miss, or that you especially recommend.

Ready to get started on creating some awesome connections with your followers?

Start with a SubHub membership website. The framework and design templates are all included.

Tech companies are really good at coming up with innovative products or services that change the very nature of how we do business. Without Skype, Basecamp, Uber, and so on, we’d still be struggling with communication failure, data silos and project chaos. However, when it comes to selling technology or making laymen understand it, tech companies fail big time. The minute marketers try to get a word in about creativity, disruption or conversion, the wisest of tech entrepreneurs clam up. Techies continue to find refuge in doing what everyone else is doing and sending out the same boring emails that their peers are sending. We need to break this cycle and make tech entrepreneurs understand some fundamental facts about email marketing. What we need is a cross of Richard Branson and Elon Musk to make technology and innovation more appealing to the end customer. Content Writing clear and crisp content that connects with the reader has been a thorn in the side for most techies. In the war between marketers and techies, it is usually the techie that wins. And if that doesn’t happen, the result is a 50-50 chaotic mix that confuses the reader even more. Thrice a week, I get emails from TechTarget, a site for tech pros that shares industry news and expert advice. These emails are so dull and lifeless that most of the time, I move them to trash without even opening them. The content of these articles is really good but that knowledge comes only after you open the emails. What if you are not, unlike me, duty-bound to read tech emails? Chances are, you’ll end up deleting these emails. Now here are some ideas how this can be changed… Questions: Look at the following email from ElegantThemes. Including simple question words like “why,” “how” and “what” in your subject line can create inquisitiveness in your reader and encourage him to click. Catchy headlines: I love this headline – “Man Bites Dog” – from Business Applications Digest (TechTarget again). Although there is no continuance in the body of the story, the headline is good enough to get a click. Think of catchy headlines as your favorite crostini or meatballs. Do you like them mushy or soggy? Apply the same rules to your email headlines. Storytelling: Using storytelling in your emails is better than click-baiting – it doesn’t just attract readers but also keeps them hooked. It encourages recall too. Everyone loves a good story; it’s in our DNA and no one can fight it. Product pitches: When it comes to promotional emails, things can become sticky very quickly. Here are a few things you can learn from this email from a project management SaaS provider: soon after I signed up for Wrike, I got this email from their founder and CEO, which I think works way better than getting an email from some sales rep. It’s a perfect example of how straightforward, honest pitches should be. It doesn’t have images or color, but the content does all the talking. [comments mine] A lot of these tips aren’t new, but what I am trying to prove here is that even boring software businesses can turn their brand around with the help of crisp and catchy content. Layout What I always fail to understand is why tech emails have to be so colorless. Blues and whites seem to be their only choices of colors. I love what CyberLink has tried here. It uses bold pictures and colors, and the layout is incredibly clean and user-friendly. If however, you want to send strictly text emails and still want them to make them more aesthetically pleasing, here are some layout styles you can follow. These layouts are designed to provide enough breathing space between each section and allow you to categorize news/stories in a hierarchy of importance. This not only makes them easy on the eyes but also ensures your most important messages are not missed. It is about time technology sites and software providers started making their emails a little more pleasing to the eye rather than those immensely cluttered and randomly thrown-together lists of links. Apart from a few forward-thinking startups, no one seems to have mastered the art of aesthetic email marketing. That said, well-designed emails need not be expensive or resource-intensive. An uncomplicated email marketing suite such as GetResponse makes designing and optimizing emails with personalized layouts a breeze, with pre-designed email templates, free stock images, and a responsive email builder that doesn’t need coding. Frequency We come across the “right times” and “right number of times” to send email all over the place. And every study varies from every other study in its results, industry and insights. While Rohan Ayyar wrote the seminal post on email timings over at the Search Engine People blog, he offered a nail-on-the-head sum up: “Persistence is key, together with content quality and segmentation.” If your website generates a lot of awesome content and a weekly or monthly roundup won’t do justice to all of it, try customizing your email lists based on the type of content and handing over the control to your subscribers by asking them to select the frequency and type of emails they wish to receive. While you’re in the formative phase of your email marketing strategy, lock in the schedule for your drip campaigns, newsletters and promotional emails. Here’s a prototype that might help: As they say, strike the iron while it is hot – send newsletters more frequently in the first two months after people sign up for your emails. In the next 2 months, reduce the frequency to 2 a week or less, so as to not annoy people. If you still see people unsubscribing from your mailing lists, reduce the frequency even further. If you provide SaaS-based or similar services with annual (or periodic) renewals, start increasing the frequency of your emails after 10 months or so, as the renewal date draws near. Takeaway Tactics The days of “spray and pray” marketing are long over. In the MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2015, a lot of ideas on content, layout and frequency were discussed; give this case study a quick read and sign up here if you’d like video replays of the sessions delivered to your inbox.cas If you don’t have time to do either, here are some quick tips: • Create something easy to remember about your product/service. • Infuse feelings in your messages. • Tell great stories that can be shared. • Give a hierarchal structure to your layout. • The “rule of thumb” in white space is to have 40-60 pixels between elements. Finally, segment your lists and customize and personalize your emails to keep your subscribers engaged. Retaining an existing customer (or subscriber) needs far less work than acquiring a new one. I’ll leave you with a quote from Diana Primeau, Director of Member Services at CNET: “I work in a world where it doesn’t matter how many subscribers we have. It's about more engagement.”

Email is by far one of the best digital marketing solutions to have in your toolbox. However, with this approach there is plenty of room for error amid an industry rife with regulations; delivery, filtering and other technology concerns and a glut of ever-evolving best practices. While email marketing is definitely not rocket science, there is a certain degree of skill and artistry involved in crafting a winning email campaign. Proceed with abandon and it’s likely you’ll end up wasting time and money on failed email campaigns. Email campaign failure can happen for a multitude of reasons, and the 5 missteps listed below are among the most common and easily avoidable offenses that every online marketer should take proactive measures to avoid.

1. Boring The Audience: There are a ton of ways online marketers can bore their audience, from lackluster subject lines to verbiage-laden text only emails, to emails that only talk about the company and provide nothing of tangible or even perceived value—the all-important “what’s in it for me” factor. While email can feel one-sided, it is really intended to be a conversation—the start of one. Savvy marketers understand this. For a better success rate, provide an enticing offer and certainly an eye-catching subject line to encourage positive open rates. Design colorful and well-branded graphics to appeal to our world’s love of visual content. Provide valuable resources, articles, offers and calls to action that truly give something to your email audience.   Ultimately, think about how you can provide value to those on your email list.
2. Annoying The Audience: You know the feeling when you get interrupted by a little fly buzzing around your head, and then again 30 seconds later, and then yet again 30 seconds after that? Don’t be the little fly pestering people too frequently. Of course, finding the “sweet spot” for the timing tolerance of each audience takes a little experimenting, observation and an understanding of the industry in which they operate. Your audience will love hearing from you if you are providing value in a way that gives them room to breathe—to consider your office and how it fits into their own needs and objectives. Understanding the “pulse” of an industry and the standards by which they operate is a great starting point to determine a suitable frequency and timing of emails. When you find the sweet spot, you’ll know it and your audience will respond to your campaigns in kind.
3. Confusing The Audience: All too often online marketers try to cram too many messages into one email, trying to accomplish or convey too many things at once. There should always be one clear call to action and any messaging or imagery, and links should always direct the customer to a landing page where they can act upon that main call to action. When an email campaign vehicle is cluttered with multiple messages—to purchase one thing, call for a free consultation, follow the brand and more—the recipient can be distracted from the main reason for the email. Stick to one primary message around which all else is focused and be sure to tell your potential customer what you want them to do next. Don’t cause them to wander aimlessly around your website or landing page.
4. Bombarding The Audience: Marketers get excited when they’re embarking upon an email marketing campaign. It’s where the rubber meets the road. As touched on above, they often try to throw everything they've got at their audience in the form of too much written copy and too many design features such as star bursts or complicated shapes. While you can include all of these bells and whistles from a technical standpoint, it’s simply not necessary or even beneficial to do so. The best email campaigns are those that keep the design interface and messaging simple. That means clearly written and formatted content as well as clean, fresh graphics and design. Keep in mind that even the best email marketing vehicle won’t convey your message as effectively as a well-conceived and executed website. This is why the email campaign should compel the recipient to head in that direction and facilitate in an intuitive, efficient and streamlined fashion.
5. Missing The Audience: At a high level Email marketing seems simple enough but, when you dig into all of your options with data filters in particular to specifically target certain audiences, it becomes clear just how complex the endeavor really is. Today, online marketers have countless list segmentation options but, sadly, they often choose poorly when it comes to filtering their email list. There are many mission-critical segmentation options to consider like geographic, socioeconomic and demographic filters that allow the user to refine a list. For example, a localized Mercedes dealership would target potential customers who live within a certain zip or area code radius of their location, have certain interests and make enough in salary to afford a high end vehicle. In this way, online marketers can use list segmentation filters to target an audience with a high likelihood of being receptive to your message.

While nothing in the advertising and marketing realm with notable upside comes without risk and there are definitely ways to waste money and ruin opportunities with email marketing, there are even more ways to increase site traffic, lead generation and revenue among other goals. The key is to invest the time up front to design an effective email campaign, which starts by heeding the blunders detailed above. For extra assurance, digital marketers often enlist the help of field experts and outside voices who can consult on the preparation process and catch errors that may have otherwise been missed. When executed properly, email marketing can grow a business in a very strategic and calculated manner, not just delivering a good return on investment for a single campaign but also ultimately growing your business over the long-term.