7 mistakes coaches make with email marketing

If you think email marketing is dead, you've either been doing it wrong or you've been listening to bad advice.

Email marketing is one of the best marketing tools for generating sales for your business.

Email marketing isn't an alternative to social media marketing it's complementary to it. The best and most cohesive marketing campaigns will have aspects of both social media and email marketing.

For example, you use social media to drive people to your website and then offer something of value for free to subscribe to your email list and then you use email to drive them to sales (in a measured, gradual and purposeful manner).

Social media both free and paid is great, but email marketing is still how most successful entrepreneurs drive sales to their businesses.

It doesn't matter what industry you are in. And before you say "but my business is different", it isn't.

Here are the most common mistakes we see coaches making with their emails.

Mistake 1: Only Sending Email Newsletters

Email marketing isn't dead but a lot of people think it is because they are no longer getting results from their fancy email newsletters.

No-one cares about your newsletter. Sorry harsh but true. By the time you've collated all your news, and created a fancy newsletter it isn't news anymore. They've seen it all already in their social feed or on the internet. Your news isn't relevant or timely when you only send it out once a month (or even worse once every few months is what most coaches manage).

A newsletter is not a powerful incentive for someone to give you their email address as there isn't any real value in it for them.

Mistake 2: Including Too Many images and Fancy Formatting

Platforms like Mailchimp with their rich email editing tools enable you to easily create fancy and beautiful emails.

Unfortunately, since they created these great tools email anti-spam technology has caught on.

Did you know one of the biggest factors in determining whether your emails are delivered to your subscriber's inbox is the amount of formatting and number of images? The fancy images and formatting you put in your emails is a red flag to mailboxes like Gmail that your emails are salesy and spammy. Straight to either the spam folder or the "promotions tab".

Simple text-only emails are far more likely to reach your customer's inboxes. The other benefit in simple text-based emails is that they are much faster to create and feel more personal.

You are probably thinking "What about branding?". Don't worry about that in your emails, each email should have a purpose and an action you'd like the recipient to take so will have a link to either your website or social platforms. It's those places that can reflect and emphasise your brand. Don't try to cram your brand into an email.

Mistake 3: Not Personalizing Messages

Most coaches don't personalize their messages. Personalization is a simple and effective way to make your emails more engaging to your customers.

Most email marketing platforms have the ability to merge in the subscriber's personal info like first names, location etc.

If you have the users first name in your email system then you should use it. If you don't have it you should fall back to a general term. You also shouldn't necessarily just restrict the personalization to the greeting but also use it in the subject or the body.

e.g

Cam, how do you feel about your swim stroke? needs work right?

In most cases, you will have the first name of some subscribers but not others, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't use personalization. Most platforms will allow you to merge in the customization or fall back to general text if required.

E.g with Drip you can use the liquid shortcodes like this

{{ subscriber.first_name | default: "So" }}, how do you feel about your swim stroke? needs work right?

If the subscriber has a first name set it'll send this;
Cam, how do you feel about your swim stroke? needs work right?
if not it'll send this;
So, how do you feel about your swim stroke? needs work right?

Mistake 4: Not Including Real Personality

For some reason when coaches send out emails to their subscribers they tone them like they are some sort of faceless organisation with hundreds of employees and don't include any of their own personality. In some cases, they don't even sign off personally.

If you are a one-man or woman band then act like it. Just be yourself in your emails, don't hide behind a brand because you think that's the way to appear professional and serious. It's far more important to engage and connect with your audience in a personal manner.

It builds trust and being known, liked and trusted is one of the biggest assets to your business.

Mistake 5: Not using any Structure, Sequence or Automation

All email marketing should be planned, structured and automated in some way. Emails should be well thought out in terms of individual emails but also how they relate to other emails within a cohesive sequence.

The emails that your subscribers get should be determined automatically by their behaviour like what links they click on, how many emails they open and what pages on your website they've been to.

Emails should be part of a campaign. Most coaches just fire off an email when they have the time or just when they get around to it.

It's no wonder most coaches don't think email marketing works.

here are a few things email marketing should include but most don't.

1. Structure and Sequence: A clear sequence of emails when your subscriber's first signup. 5-10 emails is a good rule and thumb. The first few should build trust and offer value, then slowly start to introduce your paid products and services. One-off emails perform very badly compared to a well-structured series.

2. Automation: Subscribers should automatically be tagged and segmented based on their interaction with your emails and whether or not they purchase your products or services. If they click a link or buy a product they should be tagged and grouped. You can then use that group of subscribers in other campaigns or further down the sequence to make decisions on what to send them. e.g if they click on a link to go to a landing page for your services but don't purchase, a day later you can send a follow-up email to remind them to go back and buy. Remember just because they didn't buy doesn't mean they didn't want to, maybe they didn't have their credit card on them or maybe they were on public wifi and didn't want to get hacked. If they clicked on the link then they were definitely interested so don't worry that it might seem too aggressive. Alternatively, if they do buy you don't want to then send them another email in the sequence sending them back to the sales page again, you can use the fact they have purchased to filter them out from that part of the sequence.

Mistake 6: Caring too Much if People Unsubscribe

Just because people unsubscribe doesn't mean that you are sending too many emails. As long as your emails are relevant and provide value to your target market then unsubscribes are fine. The size of your list is not as important as the relevance of your emails to your intended audience. Don't be afraid to send more emails out of fear of people unsubscribing.

People unsubscribing from your email list in general is a good thing. If they unsubscribe it means they just aren't really interested in the topics of your emails. That's fine, maybe they ended up on the list somehow and shouldn't of, or maybe they have just moved on to something else in life and just aren't interested in the value you provide anymore. You only want people on your list who value your content and are a good fit for your products and services.

Mistake 7: Using Free or Cheap Email Services

Most coaches from my experience use the free version of MailChimp. MailChimp was one of the earliest email platforms and is great for creating and sending beautiful emails. Unfortunately, the free or cheap version of this software and other platforms don't have the tools required to run a comprehensive email marketing campaign. If you aren't spending any money on email marketing systems don't be surprised if you aren't making any money from your emails.

Email marketing platforms are designed to make you money, therefore should be considered an investment, not a cost. As the old saying goes you have to spend money to make money.

Let's not get carried away though, some email marketing platforms (or marketing automation platforms) cost over US$300 per month. If you have the skills to implement all of their features you'll easily make that money back each month. The problem is most coaches don't have those skills or the time to learn them.

Recommended email marketing platforms

Below are examples of email marketing platforms that you might consider using for your email marketing campaign. If you are using Training Tilt, you'll see that we integrate with many of the email systems that we talk about.

MailChimp

MailChimp was the first email marketing platform. They were the first, the biggest and the best platform and one that is familiar to many people.  We don't integrate with them at Training Tilt simply because we believe there are better alternatives available now with a more sophisticated suite of features.

Intercom

Intercom contains an email marketing platform.  Its an excellent platform but we wouldn't advise beginners to start with this platform. Intercom offers in-app messages and website chat widgets. It's very powerful but can get expensive as your audience grows. It's definitely a platform to consider for further growth down the line.

Drip

Drip contains an email system and additional features such as marketing automation. It is also relatively expensive.

We use Drip at Training Tilt. This is much more advanced marketing automation compared to others on this list. You can integrate Drip with other platforms like Facebook advertising, Google AdWords and your website.

ConvertKit

ConvertKit was originally created for creative people to monetize their products and services but is now much more mainstream.  

Like Drip, it is also an email system with marketing automation.  ConvertKit has recently launched a free plan where up to 500 contacts can be managed under one subscription.  This is similar to the cheapest plan on ActiveCampaign mentioned below.   It also offers built-in landing pages allowing you to build your own sales pages inside the system.

I personally really like ConvertKit and follow its' founders because I like them as a company.

ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign is similar to ConvertKit. They don't offer a free plan, but they do have a low priced monthly plan allowing for 500 contacts and unlimited sending. In addition to email marketing, subscribers can send newsletters, create subscription forms and engage in marketing automation. Like ConvertKit, they offer built-in landing pages which means everything is integrated without having to figure out how to plug things together. It's definitely an advantage and you don't need to create a new page on your existing website if you need to put a campaign together quickly.

SendFox

I wanted to mention another platform called SendFox. We don't use Sendfox at Training Tilt but it has been recommended to me by someone that I trust. SendFox has a $49 lifetime deal where subscribers get up to 5000 contacts for the price - a much better deal than the 500 contacts offered on other free versions - as mentioned above.

Integrating with Training Tilt

Training Tilt integrates with Intercom, Drip, ConvertKit and ActiveCampaign. Training Tilt coaches on the standard plan or higher can connect their accounts to one of these platforms and benefit from our integration.

These integrations allow you to run an email marketing campaign via one of the platforms and trigger actions based on your customers' or potential customers' activity in Training Tilt. For example, if an athlete signs up to one of your paid plans we can alert the email system to stop sending that athlete emails in the sales campaign and instead send them another automated series which might be a set of emails that you've set up to go to all new customers. This could be an email to a link to a "new member form" so you can find out more information about them. Or it could be a series of email tutorials on how to use your system or follow your training plans.

You can also use the platform for other things like onboarding your coaching clients to make a good first impression and to share with them all they info they need when the start with your services.

Conclusion

Are you doing the right things in your email marketing? just like everything the quality of results from email marketing is determined by the execution not the idea of email marketing itself.

Email marketing is not dead, it's possible you just aren't doing it right.

Need help getting setup or tweaking your current email marketing? get in touch as we now offer a paid service to help you get setup with your email marketing strategy and campaigns. We currently only take on 2-3 new clients a month so act quickly as it's first in first served. Part of the service includes documenting all the work we do so once setup you can manage and create your campaigns on your own. This is a premium service and is not inexpensive. There is a lot of work required to assemble all the pieces, but it's a one off investment that if you continue to manage over the long term will have good returns.