What We Send to Our Email Lists

Grow with Angie and April: A Podcast for Teacherpreneurs

What We Send to Our Email Lists

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What do you send out to your email list when they are not involved in a sequence? How often do you email them? Today we are discussing just that along with a special guest, Rachel Davis, from the Elite Edupreneurs Podcast. Rachel also does TpT full-time.

Disclaimer: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. You don’t have to purchase them through our links, but if you do, it helps us pay for the costs of the podcast and blog!

What do you send in your organic emails to subscribers?

There are many different things that you could email out to your subscribers. We recommend testing out different ideas and seeing what resonates with your audience. Use your data to drive your future decisions.

What should we link to? What should our call to action be?

Every newsletter should have a call to action but it can vary from email to email based on your goal for that email. It is recommended to have one call to action and to make it clear for your subscribers. Vary it from email to email. Test and re-test to see what works!

Blog Posts
Products
- New product emails
- Timely resource
Videos
Any content made for your business in other areas can be re-purposed into an email
Ask them for ideas for future products
Ask them for ideas that you can use for future blog posts
Ask them for feedback on a resource that you’ve made and want tested.
Ask them for their struggles or what they are currently working on.

If we send out a product release email won’t that be annoying if people also follow us on TpT and see it there?

It is definitely ok to do both. Your subscribers may also be your TpT followers but not necessarily. And even if they are, that doesn’t mean that they see everything that you put out. Sometimes people need to see it multiple time to be reminded of it and to finally taking the plunge and purchase.

How often do we send out emails?

We are actually pretty inconsistent here. We hope to get at least two out per month but it can be a struggle sometimes. We found it works better if we do a bunch at once and schedule them out. It’s harder to get them going if you have to keep remembering to go back and compose them each time.

Last month April sent out six emails in but not all of her subscribers received all six emails. If she releases a new resource for 5th grade, she will only send to those marked as 5th grade by using tags in ConvertKit or anyone who is not tagged. Then, if they click that link, she has it tag them as 5th grade for future emails. This helps her to really send them relevant information pertaining to their grade level. This is actually one of our favorite features of ConvertKit. Plus, we believe the more targeted you can make your emails, the better your open and click rates will be.

Do we send out personal information in emails?

We think it’s ok to be on the personal side especially if it pertains to what you are emailing them about. But, again, check your data. If your audience likes what you’re doing, do more of it! If not, move on to the next idea or do it infrequently.

What do we think about the RSS feeds that send out blog posts to followers?

April had some strong opinions about this. She feels as though this is not a good idea. Sometimes when those feeds send out, they will give the whole post and give the readers no reason to click over to your blog or website. We want to people on our websites for a few reasons.

Facebook Pixel
Email Opt-in
Other blog content
Get to know us better

We feel as if we have more control if we announce a new blog post by sending it out to our subscribers. That way we can tell them why they need to read it or get them to visit our blogs so that we may gather information in other ways. This helps for when we want re-target them at a later date.

What do we think about the Free Resource Libraries?

Angie decided not to do one because she wants to know which resources people are interested in. She can get this information from them opting-in to multiple resources. If they opt-in to a free resource library, you really don’t know much about them. They could download one thing or everything and you wouldn’t know that to be able to tag or segment them.

April has one but is not thrilled about it. She set it up years ago but didn’t see the results she was hoping for. When she made a more targeted opt-in, she found that people were more engaged with her emails because she could send them things that were more relevant to the resource they opted-in with. She still has the resource library but it is a lot of upkeep. She uses it by sending out emails with the free resources linked and segments her list based on which links they click.

How much do you give away for free after the initial opt-in?

We don’t give away many “freebies” after the initial opt-in. We do feel that we give a lot away for free though through ideas, and content, and through our blog posts. So just because it’s not always a “freebie” you can hold in your hand, doesn’t mean we aren’t giving away anything free.

What do you do if you don’t have a lot of blog posts to send out to your subscribers?

Angie doesn’t have a lot of blog posts (hoping to change that soon) and what she does is she figures out a need or a struggle that her list or parts of her list may be having. She tackles the issue in an email so she can send it out. Later she plans on re-purposing those emails into blog posts.