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Jan Koch
Jan Koch

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Why devs should use email marketing regularly

In this post, I want to share three actionable email marketing "hacks" for agency owners and freelancers with you, which will help you build a more engaged email list and turn it into a valuable asset.

If you're like me then email marketing isn't your strongest discipline. I'm the first to admit that I struggle with writing newsletters consistently - even though I'm fully aware of the benefits.

Think about what having an engaged email list really means... people are giving you their permission to send them information and want to interact with you. It might sound cheesy but it's a relationship that needs to be treated with respect.

While I'm trying to not come across as a sleazy marketer in my emails, I certainly also did not do a good job of keeping you in the loop about what is going on.

That's why I'm happy to share three tips I learned today from interviewing Davinder Singh Kainth for the 2020 WP Agency Summit. He runs three weekly newsletters and managed to scale multiple income streams for his WP business using email marketing.

Tip 1: How to never run out of things to write about.

You probably know this feeling as well as I do. You want to write a newsletter but don't know what to write about in the email.

Davinder is very pragmatic about this. He has three draft emails in Gmail for each of his weekly newsletters. As he comes across interesting articles or news, he just pastes the respective website links into the email drafts and then expands on them when he's writing the actual newsletter.

It's brilliantly simple. I'm doing the same from now on with a simple Notepad file on my desktop PC.

Tip 2: Clean your email list to improve deliverability.

Chances are that you have email subscribers that didn't open your last 10 campaigns. Guess what, they won't open any of the next 10 either, Davinder says. By removing inactive contacts, you increase your overall open rate and help improve the deliverability of your emails.

This point certainly is true for me. My business shifted so much over the years that subscribers who signed up five years ago likely don't care about what I'm doing now.

Davinder recommends to go through your account and tag those inactive contacts. Send them an email campaign asking if they want to stay subscribed and follow up after 3-4 weeks. If they still don't engage, tag them to be excluded in future communication or remove their email address altogether.

Tip 3: Keep your customers engaged throughout your projects.

Davinder introduced me to the concept of the "Friday" email. Every Friday, he recommends sending an email to your active customers about how far their project has come.

You'll receive two benefits from this:

Firstly, you keep the communication in the project going. This helps avoid frustration on the customers' end and clears potential miscommunication quickly.

Secondly, you are held accountable to stick to the deadlines you set. If you don't produce results, you have nothing to write about in your Friday email - which will look bad.

By simply sending your customers an update about what happened during the week, you can speed up your projects massively.

Now, these are just three tips I pulled out from a 45-minute interview with Davinder. If you want to hear all he has to say about how agencies can increase their bottom line with email marketing, make sure to catch his session at the WP Agency Summit from October 12th to 16th.

Grab your free ticket here: https://wpagencysummit.com

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