Ask Steph: How often should I email my subscribers?

Today I am answering a question from a listener who is excited to start doing email marketing in her business, but is unsure how often she should email her list and has no idea what to send them. In this episode, I'm sharing advice for anyone who is stuck when it comes to starting with email marketing in their business:

– Why you should avoid emailing for the sake of emailing—and instead create structure for accountability and consistency
– The benefit of emailing your subscribers and repurposing your content, even when you don't have anything to sell them
– Getting clear on your content marketing pillars and the overwhelming value of creating long-form content
– How surveying your audience and asking the right questions is a great way to create content that resonates.

Have a question you’d like me to answer on the show? Write in with your question at https://stephtaylor.co/asksteph

 

Today’s question from our listener:

“Hi, Steph, I love your show. I'm feeling excited yet nervous to get into email marketing this year. A few things holding me back is deciding how often to email my list. And what is best suited to my audience. I'm worried once a week is too much. I work in the makeup and beauty industry where a lot of industry content is on social media. So I'm unsure, what's appropriate for my audience. Would it be best to survey them? Thanks.” 

I want to point out how our listener in today's question mentioned that one of the things holding them back from email marketing was deciding how often to email them.

This sounds a little bit like a cart before the horse situation. I don't know if this listener has started building their list or if they've even sent an email to their list yet. But when we put the cart before the horse, we let little details derail us from even taking the slightest bit of action in the first place – and one of the reasons why I called my podcast, Imperfect Action is because I believe that taking action first and then figuring it out along the way is the easiest way to get that answer to these kinds of questions. 

 

Why you should avoid emailing for the sake of emailing—and instead create a structure for accountability and consistency

In this situation, I suspect that once you've started building your list and emailing them, you'll begin to find a natural cadence. You'll begin to know what feels like you're emailing them too much and what feels like you need to email them more, but you will only figure this out once you actually start emailing them and figuring out what content works best for you. And for your audience now, let's give you more practical tips that you can work with in the meantime.

 

The tips…

I want to say is please avoid trying to email your list just for the sake of emailing them. Now, remember back in the day when it used to be, oh, I have to post on Instagram five times a week because that was what the algorithm prioritised and people would start creating posts for the sake of it and they would publish posts five times a week because that was how they were going to reach more people and then Instagram became crowded with really average content. And then, as a result, the algorithm had to shift to prioritise quality over quantity. 

Now saying, oh, I need to email my list three times a week, or I need to email my list five times a week, that is a bad idea. Because then suddenly you find yourself in this position where you're thinking, I need to create something to email them, or I need to find anything to email them. 

And if you'd already have that kind of content on hand that can turn into just sending your list absolute fluff, nothing in general. Now the exception here is that having that kind of structure of “I need to email them X times a week”, or we email them every Monday, Wednesday, Friday — that does give you a structure to create content to email them. But you need to be disciplined in creating that content rather than leaving it to the very last minute and just writing something because you need to email them for the sake of it. 

 

The benefit of emailing your subscribers and repurposing your content, even when you don't have anything to sell them

So there was a bit of a distinction there between emailing them for the sake of it versus having a structure in place to keep you accountable to emailing your list. However, in my business, we email three times a week even when we're not launching anything. 

During a launch, it'll tend to be a little bit more. And those who are on the Daily Biz Booster email list get a daily email. But three times a week to the general list. 

And that is because every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, there is a new episode on this podcast which means also every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, my email list gets an email talking a little bit about the podcast episode and sending them over to the show to listen to it if it's something they are interested in.

 

Repurposing your content and the value of repetition.

This leads me to my second point, which is to email your subscribers even when you don't have anything to sell them. Because we've all been on that email list where we don't hear from them for six months and then they suddenly land in our inbox because they're promoting something.

So email your list, especially when you don't have something to sell them. And anywhere that you are creating any kind of free content online, this content can be repurposed into an email to your list. I am constantly repurposing Instagram captions into emails, emails into Instagram captions, podcast episodes into emails.

Secondly, they probably need the repetition before it's going to sink in. I have so many students in my paying programs, my paid programs who consumed all of my free content, and it's only after they've heard something for the fifth time and it might be that they've heard it once they're inside the course, that's when it sinks in. 

So if you're repurposing it as an email, that's okay because of the way the algorithms are these days, even if somebody is super engaged, they probably aren't seeing all of your content. So please keep emailing them when you don't have anything to sell them. And please don't be that person who only emails your subscribers when you are launching or when you want them to buy something. 

 

Getting clear on your content marketing pillars and the overwhelming value of creating long-form content.

The third tip that I have for you is to get clear on your content marketing platforms and your pillars.

So once you know what those core content pillars are, your broad content topics, then you can start to create long-form content for each of those pillars. And I've talked about it on this podcast many times before but long-form content is a great way to stand out in a world where everyone is sharing 30-second reels. Especially if you're in an industry like you mentioned. 

Some people prefer podcasts or YouTube or written content. So a really great way to stand out is not to just do what everybody else in the industry is doing. But to look at what is the industry not doing and how can I own that.

 

How surveying your audience and asking the right questions is a great way to create content that resonates

Then tip number four is yes, do survey them. As you mentioned in your question, survey them, but don't ask them how often they want to receive your emails because they don't know. They don't know whether your emails are going to be daily promo spammy emails that they don't care about, or whether your emails are going to be really helpful content because you haven't been emailing them yet. 

So instead, ask them, where are you struggling with whatever your area of expertise is?

Ask them what they would like to learn from you. Ask them, how you can help them. Ask them what questions they have and then use the answers to come up with topics for your long-form content. And then use that long-form content to give you content for your emails to your list. And I suspect that what might end up happening is how often you email your list.

I will simply correlate with how often you share long-form content that might become a really nice cadence for you and that might be once a week. That might be more than once a week. Once a week is a pretty nice amount of emails. I know for you, you think, oh, that might be too much, but I think that's pretty good sweet spot to start with. 

Remember, just start. 

Don't put the cart before the horse any longer, simply start, start building your list. Start emailing them and you'll start to find that cadence yourself. Avoid trying to email for the sake of emailing. Email them, even when you don't have anything to sell them. Get clear on those content marketing platforms and pillars. So you can start sharing long-form content and survey them, asking them what they want to learn from you. 

 

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