If you're online at all, you know the massive amount of emails that need to be written on a weekly basis. And those can really add up, and we can find ourselves wondering what types of emails we should write. They start becoming redundant. That's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about the 10 types of emails that you can create and how to boost them for engagement here on the Resilient Faith Online podcast. Welcome. I'm Marissa Shatterick, host of the Resilient Faith Online Show. I'm a digital strategist and certified copywriter, but more importantly, a woman of faith. In this podcast, you'll find a biblical perspective to the external and internal challenges we face as online content creators. Join me for some inspiration and practical tips as we let our faith shape our work to create positive change online. To connect with our private Facebook group of faith-based online entrepreneurs, go to Marissa Shadrick.com forward slash faith. And as you know, I am not only an online business coach, an online marketing coach, but I'm also a Ray Edwards certified copywriter. Became a copyright in 2019. But I originally started by just cutting my teeth on writing articles. Loved the writing process, still have an idea for a book that I want to write, but the writing led to copywriting. And I realized early on that the one thing, one skill that I needed to master was copywriting, especially if you're going to write a book or if you're going to have a product or a service or be online, you need to write compelling words. And so I decided to study copywriting. And I was so glad that I did because I learned so much and still learning. We never arrive. But today we're going to talk specifically about emails, simply because there's so many emails that we have to write every week, from launches to follow-up emails to promotions. There's all kinds of emails. And we need to make sure that we add the elements in these emails that will make them engaging. First of all, to catch their attention. So they'll click and read it, right? Open rate is important, but they will continue to read the email and be able to take action when you ask them to click or subscribe or to register. So why is this important? Why do we need to focus on emails? Can't we just send out an email and call it good? Well, first of all, people are getting a lot of emails these days, and we're not going to stand out if we just kind of throw something together or we leave something to the last minute to put out. Emails take a lot of time to write. And it's not enough to just use a bot and it's not enough to use templates. We've got to get creative because we got to, you know, rise above the noise. We got to stand out. And our headlines need to stand out as well. And it's an ongoing process. We may be on fire one month and writing stellar emails, but we may get busy and sort of lose our momentum or our motivation to write the same type of emails the following month. So it's something we have to be conscious of every time we're communicating to people because here's the fundamental truth, right? Here's the biblical perspective. We want to treat others the way we want to be treated. We want to treat them like real human beings. There are real people behind that email. So let's begin by looking at some statistics so that we know if we're hitting the mark or if we need to improve our emails. Now I searched a lot of different resources to kind of get a feel for the current open rate, you know, after 2020 and 2021 coming in, just trying to see what the consensus was. And from a variety of different resources that I was checking out, uh the average open rate for emails is about 18%. That's the average. 18%. You think, oh my gosh, you know, after all that work I did to get them into my email list to get them to be part of my community and only 18% open them. If you're hitting anywhere from 20, 25%, that's really great. I mean, you're doing really, really well engaging your email list. So don't think that if you have an email list, you're gonna hit it right out of the park and everyone's gonna open it, 100% open, right? Because that just doesn't happen. Statistics tell us that. Of course, it varies from industry to industry, but if you're hitting somewhere, you know, 16, 17, um, that's still within kind of the average range, but it could probably stand some improvement. But 18 is the average, that's a pretty much approximation of what they're saying. So we want to strive for 20 or 25% if we can. And that's why it's important to have a healthy email list as well. Because if you have some sort of campaign and maybe you do a giveaway and it's totally unrelated to your brand, you do some giveaway where you give away an Apple Watch or something. If who's gonna give away an Apple Watch? But maybe you do, right? Well, people will sign up for that, it'll grow your email list, but are they gonna be interested in the content that you're gonna share? So sometimes these giveaways, you know, you have a giveaway to try to get people to on your list. You know, some of these gimmicks aren't gonna work because yeah, you'll grow your email list, but they're not necessarily gonna be interested in your topic and what you have to share. So the first thing I'm gonna share is the types of emails. There's a whole bunch of them, but I'm gonna cover about 10 of them and you'll probably recognize them, but then you'll get an idea of the variety of emails. So you need to know what email to take out of the toolbox for whatever season you're in in your business. So I have these in alphabetical order. The first one is the abandoned cart email. So if you're selling something and they land on a checkout page, and for whatever reason they don't complete the transaction, there's a way with automation and with some of the tools we have these days to be able to send an abandoned cart email to them and follow up to see, you know, why they didn't complete the transaction. So that's one type of email. The second is the announcement email. The announcement can even be teasing it up about an announcement that you're gonna, you know, broadcast. You can be announcing something new. Like, for example, when I launched this podcast, there was an announcement email that I let them know what was coming up, that I was gonna be launching my podcast, and I was going to let them know when it would be ready for them to be able to download the first episodes. So that's an announcement email. You're announcing something. The third is the follow-up email, and this is just as it states follow-up. If you have something that you're offering, some type of free resource, a PDF, you are going to deliver that information with a follow-up email. Now the fourth one is the gift email. A lot of times we're offering some great resources, some great lead magnets, and we put it out on social media, but let's not forget our list. They would love to have something free. So that would be the gift email where you tell them that you just created something new, and because they're on your list, you would love for them to have it first. And you send out that email introducing this PDF. And if you segment your list, if you split up your list by interest, make sure that the freebie is something that they're going to be interested in and something that it's useful for them. The fifth one is the holiday email. I love the holiday email. I love sending something positive and encouraging during the holiday season or Thanksgiving. And it could be as simple as an email, you know, from my family to yours and with nothing, no agenda, just a holiday email where you can just send them good wishes. And of course, there's a lot of holiday campaigns and things that people do, Black Friday and those kind of things. But a holiday email to me is just something that you create to just wish them well and a special little greeting, a warm greeting to connect with them. Number six is the newsletter email. Now, if you have a lot of content that you create and you're maybe blogging and you're creating videos and maybe you have a podcast, a lot of times they can't keep up with everything, right? So you might want to have a newsletter type, only just don't call it a newsletter because it's kind of boring calling it a newsletter. But you could have a summary of maybe uh things that you've created throughout the week or a month. I like to create a monthly brief where I just give them kind of a recap of everything that's been created. So if they miss something, they can catch up. They can just look at see at the list, and if there's something there that they're interested in, they can click. It's kind of like a courtesy. The seventh one is the promotional email, and that's simply sending out a series of emails where you're asking them to either sign up for a boot camp or maybe you're selling a low-ticket offer and you're creating some type of promotional sale, and so you promote this digital product for a limited amount of time. Number eight is the registration email. Registration would be for like a webinar that you would want them to register and you let them know what all the benefits are of this special masterclass that you're creating, and you maybe ask them to share the love and to invite other people too. And you can make these registration emails really fun. You can add bonuses, you can do all kinds of things to get engagement with a with a registration email. The next is the survey email. I love survey emails because it gives you so much information about what your audience needs or what their struggles are, and there's different ways of doing survey emails, and the frequency just depends on your business. You might want to do a longer one at the end of the year, but typically a survey email is a series of questions that you ask just to see where they are, you know, just staying in touch with your list and trying to get as much intel as possible so that you can create the content and maybe future products from the information they give you. The tenth email is the welcome series, and that's simply a set of emails, maybe two or three, where you're onboarding your new subscriber, you're getting them acclimated to your community. So they probably responded from an opt-in. So you can set maybe a second email where you check to see how the resource worked for them, if they have any questions, and maybe the third email might lead them to the next step, whatever that might be for them. So there's the 10 emails. To recap, the first is abandoned card email, second is announcement email, third is the follow-up email, fourth is the gift email, fifth is the holiday email, sixth is a newsletter email, seventh is a promotional email, eight is a registration email, nine is a survey email, and ten is a welcome series. Now these emails can certainly blend. I just wanted to break it down. Like for example, the promotional email and the registration email could be a blend of something that you're asking them to register, but you're also promoting something. So there is a blend. I just wanted to break it down for you so that you can identify each different one. Now that you know the different types of emails that you can create and you kind of have that in your toolbox, you still need to know what elements to put in an email to make it really engaging. So I wanted to make this really, really easy so you remember. And so I use the word emails as an acronym. So we're gonna go through the elements of an email. This isn't a template, it's the elements you need to make an email engaging. So we're gonna start with the E in the acronym emails. E means to engage. There's got to be a hook, you've got to get their attention right from the headline to the first few lines inside your email. So you need to engage them. And one of the great ways to do that is to be able to create curiosity. Curiosity is the easiest and best way to be able to engage people. And in your email, you can use a little bit of story and just a couple of lines to make it engaging and create curiosity. So the E stands for engage. The next one is M, and that stands for meet them where they are in the customer journey. This is where you really want to put yourself in their place and think how did they come into your community? What did they opt into? What is their interest? And if you do segment, then make the at least the beginning part of the email appropriate for that segment. Even if you're leading them to the same thing, you might want to communicate it in a way that's clear to them. So segmenting is a great way to be able to increase engagement and get clicks because you're going to start it off a certain way. For example, I have a segment of people that are interested in copywriting, and I have a segment of people that are interested in just having niche clarity. So for those people that maybe are interested in copywriting, I may just lead off by talking about something about copywriting and then lead them to whatever webinar I'm going to have or whatever offer I have. But the same thing with the people that are trying to figure out their niche, their brand message could lead them to the same webinar. But I'm just leading off with something that makes sense to them. So I'm meeting them where they are in the customer journey. I'm meeting them according to their interest. So the A in the acronym emails is appeal to their emotions. You want to be able to touch their emotions and figure out what is the pain, what is the struggle that they're having, and use as much of emotional connection as you can to reach them because that's what's going to pull them in. You know, when you talk about the particular pain or the lack of time that they have or the money that they're losing or whatever it might be, that's going to catch their attention. So you want to appeal to their emotions. But then when you have their emotions all heightened, right, the next letter is I in the acronym emails. And that means improve their circumstance. Don't leave them that way, struggling, right? Improve their circumstance and let them know how you are going to support them or help them. And that could be as easy as leading them to your latest podcast or leading them to some blog post that you created. Improve their circumstance. So your emails are going to address a problem or pain, but you're also going to invite them to participate in the solution, which is going to improve their circumstance. The L in the acronym Emails stands for lead them to a call to action. Ideally, one call to action, and you can actually put that call to action in a couple of places in the email, depending on how long it is. I like to do that just in case one link, one hyperlink doesn't work right or something. I like to have extra links in there, but it makes it really stand out, makes it easy for them to be able to know where to click for that next step. The S in the acronym email stands for series. Make it episodic. In other words, have a series of emails and maybe you're sharing some tips and asking them to join a webinar, for example. So you might share a tip, maybe common mistakes or something that every marketer needs. And then you tease it up in the story that you've created by letting them know that you're going to give them tip number two in the next email, whether that's the next day or in a couple of days, but tee it up so that they know that the rest of the story is coming. And some people even start a story and don't give the entire ending until the second or third email. So people will find it intriguing because it piques their curiosity. And they also anticipate and look forward to the emails that are coming. So there you have it. I gave you about 10 of the different emails you can have in your toolbox, a few of the email elements that you need. Let me recap the email elements for you. I use the acronym Emails, E-M-A-I-L-S. The E stands for engagement. The M, meet them where they are in the customer journey. The A appeal to their emotions. The I improve their circumstance. The L lead them to a call to action. And the S make it a series. Make it episodic so they look forward to your next emails. I hope that helped. I know it's really hard on a podcast to show this. I do some of these in uh video form to help people understand the process. So if you have a question, DM me on Instagram. That's the easiest way. Just search Marissa Shadrick and you'll find me. And that would be awesome. I would love some feedback. In closing, I just want to remind you that every email address represents a real person, a real person with real dreams, talents, gifts, struggles. Struggles are problems that you can help them solve. So we have a great gift, a great opportunity as online entrepreneurs. We have the opportunity to reach people across the globe. I mean, it's amazing to me that we can do this on the internet. So the next time you have to write an email sequence or an email campaign, consider the relief, the solution, and even the joy you're going to bring to someone who might be at the end of their rope. So write to many by writing to one. Make it personal, make it human to human. And even pray and ask God to help you help others with your products and services so that you can make a difference in the world. These are real people. With every email, it represents a person. So instead of looking at it as a drudgery or a big job, know that you have an opportunity to touch a person's life. So until next time, continue to cultivate resilient faith online to create positive change in the world. If you found this podcast helpful, then subscribe from wherever you're listening today so you never miss an episode. Every subscription, review, or rating means so much to me. So keep them coming and share this with a friend. For more free content, go to marishashadrick.com and remember keep cultivating resilient faith online to create positive change in the world.