Good email marketing requires much more than strategies

Whenever I'm on coaching calls with clients, walking them through the entire Emailtopia ecosystem, there's one thing I need to keep repeating over and over again.

"DOING GOOD MARKETING REQUIRES A SUBSTANTIAL MINDSET SHIFT"

Ok, well, I don't say those exact words. But basically that.

So much of the email marketing we see out there (as well as what people teach us) is to:

1. Create a lead magnet (so we can get as many optins as we want)
   
   

2. Build a landing page where people can optin (and put the CTA above the fold to maximise optins)
   
   

3. Send out a 5-day email sequence and get them to take an action (like booking a call, buying a low-ticket product or something else)
   
   

4. Send emails to stay top of mind
   
   

5. Wonder why people stop paying attention and don't buy lol

The problem with doing email marketing this way is that it's relatively good at generating some revenue upfront.

BUT (and it's a big but), it's absolutely horrendous at generating revenue long-term.

I've seen behind the scenes of so many coaching business with 10k people on their email list. And when they run an email promotion?

Literally a handful of sales. That's it.

It's so sad to see.

And then instead of solving the root problem, they look at the surface level stuff and assume their email promotions aren't good enough. Or perhaps their newsletters are too boring.

Or worse - they blame the audience!

Like anything in life, if you want to solve a problem, you need to get to the root and solve it from there.

So, here's my hypothesis:

The context of how someone opts into your email list is how they will treat your email list

Let me give you an example.

If you bribe someone to join your email list with a PDF, checklist or something like that, a few things will happen:

1. They'll optin not because they want your emails, but because they want your PDF.
   
   

2. That means you need to convince them to read your emails from the get-go
   
   

3. Most people who download your PDF will probably never read it anyway. So not only do you need to convince them to read your emails, you need to do it without them even having the context of reading the PDF you created.
   
   

   1. (Most people download stuff and get to it 'later'. Which really means never)

So now we have a weird situation.

You've got someone on your email list...

But you haven't actually created an email subscriber.

You've created a PDF downloader who happens to have given you their email address.

Oh boy, there's a BIG difference.

And this is where the mindset shift comes in.

Because instead of asking: "How do I get as many people as possible onto my email list?"

I think we should be asking:

"How do I get people onto my email list in a way that makes them actually want to read my emails?"

Those are two completely different goals. And they'll lead you to build two completely different email marketing systems.

If you're optimising for optins, you might create the juiciest checklist imaginable, put a massive CTA above the fold and remove every possible bit of friction from the signup process.

You might get more subscribers.

Great!

But what happens next?

If the entire reason they joined was to get something outside of your emails, you've now got to fight for their attention every single time you show up in their inbox.

That's why I prefer using an email series itself as the lead magnet.

I call mine an Immersion Series.

Instead of saying:

"Give me your email address and I'll send you this PDF."

You're essentially saying:

"Give me your email address and over the next week, I'm going to help you solve this specific problem through a series of emails."

Notice how different the context is?

They signed up for the emails.

Reading the emails isn't an annoying thing they need to do before getting what they actually wanted.

Reading the emails is the thing they wanted.

And that matters because from day one, you're teaching them three incredibly important behaviours:

Open. Read. Click.

Open my emails.

Read what I have to say.

Click when there's something useful inside.

Do that consistently for a week and you've started creating a completely different relationship with your subscriber.

You're not trying to squeeze a conversion out of them before their attention disappears.

You're trying to make them think:

"Oh. Paul's emails are actually worth opening."

That's the game we wanna play here.

Because once somebody genuinely wants to hear from you, everything you do afterwards becomes easier.

Your newsletters perform better.

Your promotions perform better.

Your offers get more attention.

And when someone isn't ready to buy from you today, you haven't destroyed your chances of selling to them six months from now because you spent their first week on your list hammering them with CTAs.

This is why I think so much email marketing advice gets things backwards.

We're constantly trying to optimise the next step.

More optins.

More clicks.

More calls.

More sales.

But sometimes optimising the next step makes the entire system worse.

Maybe you could increase your landing page conversion rate by 20% by promising some enormous PDF.

Maybe you could get a few more calls by pushing new subscribers into a sales sequence immediately.

Maybe you could make a few extra sales this week.

But what did it cost you?

How many people did you train to ignore your emails?

How many subscribers mentally filed you under "another person trying to sell me stuff"?

How many potential customers would have bought from you three, six or twelve months later if you'd simply given the relationship more time?

That's much harder to measure.

Which is probably why nobody talks about it.

But it's also where I think the real money in email marketing lives.

Not in extracting as much value as possible from somebody during their first seven days on your list.

In creating the kind of email list people are still paying attention to years later.

So whenever you're building any part of your email marketing ecosystem, ask yourself:

What am I training people to do?

If your lead magnet trains them to download something and disappear...

Don't be surprised when they disappear.

If your welcome sequence trains them to expect a sales pitch every time they hear from you...

Don't be surprised when they stop opening.

If your newsletters are only there to "stay top of mind"...

Don't be surprised when people stop finding them useful.

But if the entire experience is designed around making your emails worth opening?

Now you're building something.

Not just an email list.

An audience that actually wants to hear from you.

And that is a much more valuable thing to own.