Why A Virtual Assistant Needs To Build Their Email List
Email marketing is increasing in popularity for critical reasons. For any business owner, especially a Virtual Assistant, your email list is your most important asset.
Imagine this, you wake up early on Thursday morning, and poof, your business Instagram account has been hacked or disabled.
It can happen.
Recently, an entrepreneur I follow, who has over 700 thousand (yes 700 thousand Instagram followers), lost access to her Instagram account because someone reported a post she made against community guidelines.
What?!
Yes, it's that easy.
It can happen. We all spend a lot of time building up our followers and creating valuable content for our social media followers. Because we don't own Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok, it can be gone in an instant.
But you know what, you can own your email list.
It is essential for every virtual assistant needs an email list. It won't matter if you lose your social media accounts because you'll have your email list waiting in the background for you to serve.
What You Need To Send To Your Email List
Valuable content.
It's just that simple.
You provide your social media followers valuable content. Do the same with your email followers.
Here are a few examples:
5 Steps To Stop Procrastinating
5 Ways To Achieve Your Goals
5 Mistakes To Avoid On Instagram
How To Write Your Instagram Profile in 3 Steps
3 Ways To Use Pinterest To Grow Your VA Business
As long as you provide value, you're on the right track, and you can make it that simple.
Should you sell your services in your email?
Of course.
But you don't want your list to start unsubscribing, so follow this rule of thumb. Provide value 80% of the time. Promote your business the other 20%. So, if you write four emails a month, only sell your services in one of them.
How Often Should You Email Your List
Unfortunately, it all depends. I recommend that if you're just getting started with email marketing, try once a week. Once your list builds, you can grow it to twice a week, but I wouldn't overwhelm your list with multiple emails a day in and day out. You'll end up suffering from low open rates and a high number of unsubscribes.
The most important thing is to be consistent, which I know you hear all the time with content creation. No matter what it is, social media, Pinterest, email marketing - be consistent. When you get a new subscriber, let them know what they will get from you, how often they will get an email from you, and then show up consistently to do it. That should be your goal.
How You Can Grow Your Email List
Choose an email marketing platform that is easy to learn and use. You want an email provider that will provide a legal way for you to gather contact information. If you've read and or downloaded my blog post about tools every virtual assistant needs, then you know that I started with MailChimp, but I've recently switched over to FloDesk. MailChimp's free version allows you to gather up to 2000 subscribers before you have to pay. However, you don't have automation or workflow abilities with the free version. FloDesk does not have a free version, but you get everything with them no matter how many subscribers you obtain. I found both easy to use, but I must admit I love FloDesk a whole lot better. If you want to try FloDesk, you can click this link and get 50% off your first year.
On your website, put several simple opt-in buttons everywhere you can. It should be on every page of your site if you can manage it. In addition, as soon as someone visits your site, a pop-up should...pop up...to collect info as well. You never know what information will bring someone to your website, so be prepared to collect emails everywhere possible.
Bonus Email Marketing Tip
Create an opt-in or freebie. If you know who your dream client is (I hope you do), then create a valuable freebie so they will download it and become a subscriber.
I hope these email marketing tips help you on your virtual assistant journey. I love to hear from anyone who reads my blog, so drop me a DM on Instagram.