Yellow Dog Consulting

Sales & Marketing Consulting for solo-preneurs.

My 3 Favorite Newsletter Response Stats

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When you send out your first newsletter it’s pretty awesome, and maybe terrifying.

  • norm digging for a toyYou’ll get a few email responses from folks who are happy to hear from you (hi dad!)
  • You’ll get a few people who unsubscribe because they hate you aren’t in a place where they need your information and that’s OK – you want readers who want to hear from you!
  • You’ll probably get a few bounced emails – be careful, Mailchimp isn’t a huge fan if you get a bunch of these!
  • You’ll get people who are ready to hire you because they forgot you offered your amazing services and they’re ready to buy!
  • You’ll get people wanting to pitch you their service because they don’t have a newsletter and aren’t great at reading buying signals

Whatever it is, about a week after your first newsletter goes out these are the 3 newsletter response stats you should check out:

  1. Your Open Rate – just how many people are interested in reading your content? Remember – anything over 20% is good (yes, 70%-80% of the people you send to aren’t going to read it!) – if it’s lower then that, pay attention to time of day or frequency you’re sending out your newsletter
  2. Your Unsubscribe Rate – this settles down after the first few regularly scheduled newsletters, but good to keep an eye on it
  3. Website Clicks – it’s helpful to see who’s clicking on what on your website. If you want subscribers to read that whole article, you may find that including it in the newsletter gets a better response than “click here” to finish. BUT if you want them to click and play around on your website, then make sure your content is enticing enough so they do!

Questions? You know who to call.

5 Ideas for Better Speaker Follow-Up

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norm being difficult
I didn’t have a good pic for this post, so here’s Norm being a puppy

I was talking to a friend of mine a while ago about speaking and list growth. She mentioned when she talks she encourages attendees to go to her website to signup and download her giveaway and get added to her newsletter. Then she mentioned her conversion isn’t great for this. So we talked about an alternative to get more subscribers to her list when she speaks. Here’s what I suggested:

  1. Ask for a list – When I speak at an event I always ask for a list of attendees WITH email addresses. Let’s be honest, email is the currency of choice (besides cash, duh) when speaking. If I can’t get a list of attendees (which is OK) I ask if I can have a signup form passed around or I will do a drawing for a free phone consult or something along those lines. Pro tip – MailChimp has a sweet app you can download to save yourself a lot of time. 
  2. Pitch the follow-up email – When I speak I mention that I’ll send them a couple of things in the follow up email they’re going to get. “If you give me your card and write X on it, I’ll send it to you after the event.” “I’ll send you an example of this after the event, just make sure to give me your card.” Let them know they’re going to expect something after your talk.
  3. Write the follow-up email before you talk! You know exactly what you’re talking about and what you’re offering or pitching at the event. Save yourself the time and energy and write that follow-up email before you walk into the room. You’ll thank me later.
  4. Get that follow-up email out within one day – Ideally you’ll have time that afternoon to input all the emails into your newsletter program and hit send. If you’re using the MailChimp app it ‘s super easy to do this, if you have a box of business cards to input, turn on some Housewives, pour a “reward” drink and input those bad boys!
  5. Do the Follow-up – People this isn’t hard. If you’re speaking at an event make sure that if someone asks you for something specific or wants to buy into your program but has questions, DO your follow-up. Once you hit send on that email you’re going to get responses, so make sure you have time blocked out to do the follow-up from your event.

What other follow-up best practices do you have when you speak?

Let’s Launch Your Newsletter!

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Let's Launch Your NewsletterOkay folks, we’ve talked about it long enough. It’s time for you to start a newsletter. NOW please. Why? Because you’ve made excuses for too long and you have to start at some point. So, how about now?

But it’s Summer!

Yeah, it’s a little less crazy in the summer, which means people have time to read your content AND respond. We’re over half way through the year, people are realizing what they haven’t done so far this year, and that means when your name shows up in their inbox they’ll realize they need to hire you. Yesterday.

So where do I start?

Fabulous news! I have built you a snazzy, kickass Newsletter Setup Checklist. It’s everything you need to get started and finally write that million dollar* newsletter. Head over to this fabulous landing page I created** just for you. It will walk you through every step of the way. And if you get stuck, you know where to find me!

Good luck, I can’t wait to read your first newsletter!

*A girl can dream

**Paid someone to correctly build