🎧 Listen to this blog post as a Podcast instead 'When should I start an email list?'

✉️ Are you wondering when to start your email list? 

⏳ In this episode I'll be helping you decide when the time is right for you and your handmade business. 

💙 Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting out, we'll guide you through everything you need to know about starting an email list. 

👍 Tune in for expert advice to help you make the most of this powerful marketing tool.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Handmade Bosses blog 👋. So today, we are going to be talking about email lists, and specifically, when you should start one?

The short answer is yes, if this is going to be your home hub, and if you don't know what a home hub is, or you have no idea how to find yours, how to nurture yours, how to really get yours growing and going, then I would say, read to the blog that talks about, can you have a business without social media? 👉 Click here

But for now, just know that a home hub is the place where you are going to nurture your target market, where you're gonna send people that come into your world if they are not ready to buy, but want to keep up with you, and wanna know more about you. And again, really nurture that know, like and trust. 

Do I recommend just having an email list? 

I think it would be slightly more difficult to get that initial growth from just having an email list because you are not getting organic people finding you from platforms  like Instagram and Facebook. With an email list, it's literally just people who you send the link to and they physically sign up for it. It can be a little bit tricky to get an email list to grow, but not impossible.

An email list is great if you are really wanting to power up, if you're like Steph, I have time, energy, I have the effort and the money to be able to really make a go of it…stocking my Etsy shop, running it, having a home hub and having an email list. I really think that is the sweet spot.

When should I start my email list?

I would say if that is you and you are ready to really push the business, I would say start an email list pretty much straight away. One big thing is to recognise that for a handmade business your email list is the place where your customer wants to go to get information, to get help, but to also find out a little bit more about you and the brand and sort of really understand what makes you special. 

How often should I email my subscribers?

Remember your subscribers want to keep up with your handmade business, if it’s new products or behind the scenes. A lot of people get quite scared to email for the fear of emailing too much. And they're like, oh my God, like I cannot spam them, I cannot email them too much, I can't sell to them too much.

One thing to keep in mind is these people chose to subscribe to your email list because they like to see what's going on and what's being sent.

And honestly, I think out of probably the 35, 40, that I've signed up for just this year alone, I think only one person is consistently emailing me every week with the right kind of stuff. The rest of them are either just not bothering, or they're literally just sending out an email with a picture of their latest thing, and being like, look at this new thing in my Etsy shop, and that is it.

Really remind yourself and understand that there is an actual human behind the screen who wants to hear from you, and who is looking for that additional nurturing before they are likely to buy from your handmade business.

So don't worry, if it is two to three times a week, that's not too much. If it's outside of a big product launch or a big shop relaunch, I would say maybe three to four times a week, keep it at that maximum, but the minimum is one time a week. 

Why should people sign up to my mailing list?

Now, speaking of signing up to email lists, one thing I think a lot of businesses miss is they won't have a decent enough incentive to make people wanna sign up. Really, at the end of the day, it just simply has to be something of value that you are giving someone in exchange for their email address.

You can do the whole, keep up to date with me and sneak peaks. And if you've got a big audience where you are nurturing them, and you’re getting really positive feedback, your handmade products sell out, you have an engaged audience, then I would say that simply would be fine. But for the majority of us, we are unknowns for now, right?

We are someone who has just started a shop, our brand isn't very well known, our Etsy shop isn't very well known, what we do is very well known…yet. We are trying to break into this scene of whatever our niche is, whether that's jewellery, t-shirts, slippers, mugs, candles, etc. So offering some kind of incentive, it's kind of like saying, okay, I know I'm new, I know that you don't really know me all that well, but give me a chance, here's a little something for you to sign up to my list. And hey, if you don't like it, you can unsubscribe, okay? 

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Now that thing of value, the most common one I would say for a product-based business is some money off their first order. The reason for that is because everybody loves a discount, it's easy, it's just a code, you're done, you're dusted, sorted.

The other reason is that when you're thinking about it, people who sign up to your list to get the coupon are only gonna be those who are genuinely interested. And that is the huge difference between a crappy freebie, something that's just very generic, that won't get the right kind of people on your email list, versus something that's a little bit more specific, because what we want, essentially, is a super engaged list of people who want to hear the next thing from us, and who eventually want to buy from us. 

So for example, for me, with my handmade jewellery business, it was always a 15% off coupon. It was enough that I could offer it, that it wasn't going to really dent my profit margin that much, because I had priced it with that in mind, but it was enough to make people go, you know what? That's actually a pretty good one. I'm gonna sign up for that.

If it was 5%, I'd maybe say, is that enough? Unless you're selling something for like £500 or over, then I'd say probably a minimum of 10% would be a really good idea.

There is also another way that you could do it. It could be something like a PDF, a guide, a booklet, even like a mini course in exchange. Now I would say the only thing with that is that it can be quite tricky to nail that sweet spot in terms of what pain point they have that drives them enough to want to sign up for it versus the kind of people that you're going to get on your list.

Because like I said, at the end of the day, the whole idea of this list is to get people that are more than likely going to eventually buy from you and become super fans. Because super fans are the ones that continuously buy, buy, buy, buy your stuff, which are the ones that we want. As we know, it costs a lot less to sell to an existing person within your world, whether that be email list, home hub, than it is costing wise to acquire a new customer.

What tech do I need to start my mailing list?

So, when we talk about starting tech-wise, I personally really love Mailchimp. It’s something I wish I had stuck to. At the moment, with Handmade Bosses, I am with ActiveCampaign, and honestly, it is the most complicated email software that I have ever used.

If you are just starting out Mailchimp,is great because it's simple and easy to use. It gives you a landing page that you can create to get people to sign up. Really easy click and drag templates for you to make the emails.

It's even got some AI tools in there as well to help you actually write the damn things. The customer service is absolutely stellar. I think the other place I would recommend when you do get a little bit more advanced maybe, is ConvertKit.

Again, I wish I'd stuck with them because of the simplicity of it. And I, yeah, obviously went to ActiveCampaign, and now it's a freaking nightmare to get anything done. And my list now is so huge that the idea of migrating away just terrifies me.

So bear that in mind as well, is that the bigger your email list grows, the more kind of embedded you are to your current tool. I know that there are people out there who can help me with it, but I'm lazy. I just like to keep things simple.

So MailChimp is a really good starting place. They have a free or a low-cost plan. And you get a lot of bang for your buck in terms of the functionality. 

What do I do when people have signed up?

So you've decided an email list is for you, you’ve got a nice landing page for people to sign up, an incentive for people to sign up. And you are kind of really looking at now, what do I send them?

The first thing I would say is to have some kind of welcome sequence. This should be about five to eight emails twice a week for the initial three weeks to four weeks. The first email will deliver whatever it is you promised when they first signed up…a discount code, ebook, whatever. 

And then introduce you a little bit more, the brand and the brand values and what they stand for and why you are doing what you do. Something really good here could be like a handwritten typed email from you as the business owner speaking on why you started the business, what makes your heart soar, maybe even include some testimonials in there, basically being like, hey, this is me, this is what I do, this is what makes us unique, and this is why people love us.

The second email should be building off that, maybe talking about your favourite product, why you liked creating it, what you love about it, and what other people love about it as well. And it just continues on like that. You are gradually introducing people to your brand.

Imagine it as you get a two-minute pitch every week, and you have to just talk about the best bits, about what makes you unique, the best testimonial you ever got, your customer stories and what they've used your products for. 

Really, really look at the emotional value of your product and think of ways you can lean into that by using client testimonials, by using your own feedback, by using product testers' feedback if you have them. You can even take screenshots on social media of messages that you've had or comments that you've had and just really kind of put your best foot forward because this welcome sequence is gonna be the foundations as to what everything else afterwards would be sent

The best thing about this is that you have the first four weeks of emails already done and you just literally have to just sit back and they also send out and that's that. And then you can move them on to like your every week sequence, which is where you start writing emails every single week. Now talking about writing emails every single week, it can totally be a more in-depth version of a social media post.

It can also be a blog or simply just you being like, this week has been a nightmare, the kids have been off, but I've managed to get this particular product made. You don't have to overthink it that much again. You don't have to present this perfectly polished facade. People connect with those who are more like them, like real people.

Talk about things that your target market wants to talk about. Talk about concerns, wins, anything along those lines and get people to reply back to the email. You can even put polls and timers in emails. 

How do I get people to sign up?

You have your incentive that you're giving people in exchange for their email address. But where do you get people to sign up?

Well, the first place would be if someone says to you, Hi, do you do this in gold or silver or can you do this? You could add the signup link as a PS on every single message, email, DM, etc. The other great thing that I tend to use is I will put it in a listing image on Etsy, and I'll literally have almost an ad for it in my listing image.

You can put a QR code in here, which by the way, Canva can do for you for free. Or you can just put, hey, the link for this will be at the very bottom of the listing description. So if you just scroll to the bottom of that, you'll see it there.

And that, honestly, just by doing those two things, I grew my email list to a massive amount, just by virtue of the amount of people that were coming through into my Etsy shop.

I really hope this  has helped you to get kickstarted on this whole email list journey within your handmade business. We've talked about why you should have a list, what freebies should you offer, how you should send your first emails, what you should write after then, and how to get people to sign up for your list. So I hope that this has been helpful.

I'd love for you to DM me with any aha moments that you've had, because that would be amazing to be able to get direct feedback from you guys. 

 Love Steph xox

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