In my recent article, Plan Your Email Calendar for Growth, Revenue, and Profit, I talked about how to plan an email calendar. I discussed how the email calendar can increase email consistency. Plus, it can help you plan the products you promote and the emails you send. It can save time, serve your audience better, and help you reach your revenue goals.
An email calendar can also help you plan the growth of your newsletter.
Planning the Growth of Your Newsletter
Essentially, growth for a newsletter focuses on increasing the number of subscribers and revenue.
My previous article discussed how the calendar can help you achieve your revenue goals. This article will focus on how the email calendar can help you increase the size of your list.
And one very effective way to do that focuses on sending your promotions to other lists. Essentially, people promote your offers to their lists. The goal is to add some of their subscribers to your list and earn revenue.
Here are a few reasons why I put promotions to other lists on my email calendar:
- I want to make sure the list grows each week. A list is a perishable asset. So, the list will eventually die without adding new subscribers and cultivating current subscribers. By adding these promotions to the calendar, I can visually see what is being done to grow the list each week.
- Building your list can help generate immediate revenue if you have a product funnel or at least one product offer once people subscribe to your list.
- New subscribers can also create additional revenue by the offers being promoted to the list each week.
- I want to ensure promotional partners have any assets they need in plenty of time before the promotional dates. Adding their promotion dates to my email calendar reminds me to reach out several times before the promotion. This helps ensure everything goes smoothly.
- The key to life and success in business are relationships. Instead of one-time promotions, why not develop promotional partners? Promotional partners are people you build a relationship with, and you both promote each other regularly. I want to ensure promotional partners, or anyone promoting, have a good experience. Also, I want the people on their list to have a good experience, as well.
Here are some of the promotions going to other lists that I add to an email calendar. Each type of promotion has a different color on the calendar, so it is easy to identify, what type of promotion it is.
Affiliate Promotions
Affiliate promotions are when someone promotes your lead magnet or offer to their list in exchange for a percentage of revenue. What is wonderful about affiliate promotions is that they are performance-based. You only pay for the results that are delivered. Affiliate promotions are great for building your list and for generating revenue.
Affiliate commissions vary from 10% to as high as 75% or, in some cases, even 100%. Just make sure the commission incentivizes people to promote your offer to their list.
If you are starting to build your list, why not pay a 100% commission on the first product if an affiliate has a large list? Maybe you pay 50% percent on the second product in your sales funnel and you will still earn money.
A couple of these types of promotions with people with significant lists can help you quickly build a list. Once you have a list, you have an asset that can open many doors and possibilities, from generating revenue and cross-promotions to creating many other opportunities.
Most importantly, when negotiating with affiliates, ensure the deal you agree on benefits you, the affiliate, and the affiliate’s list.
Paid Media Buys
Media buys are also known as paid advertising. Essentially, you pay to promote your ad to the list. Ads can be in the form of text ads, banner ads, or dedicated emails.
Text ads and banner ads are placed within a newsletter. These ads may compete with other content, links, and additional ads in the newsletter.
Dedicated emails are also known as promotional emails and solo emails. Often, these emails are 100-400 words, and any links only promote your offer.
Text ads, banner ads, and dedicated emails can drive clicks. They can build your list and generate revenue. Often, dedicated emails will drive more clicks than banner or text ads because you are not competing with other links or offers.
Text ads, banner ads, and dedicated emails are often sold at a flat rate or on a cost-per-thousand basis.
Flat rates are a set price for your ad.
Cost-per-thousand pricing is based on the number of subscribers on the list.
Text and banner ads can range from $5 to $35 per thousand, while dedicated emails can range from $35 to $250 per thousand subscribers.
Swaps
Swaps are one of my favorite ways to grow a list. With swaps, you promote the person to your list, and they promote you to their list.
A couple of things about swaps. Ideally, both lists should be about the same size, but they don’t necessarily need to be. With swaps, you can negotiate and are only limited by your imagination.
For instance, you can negotiate providing a service, or offer a two-for-one swap, etc.
Finally, each person should track the results with an affiliate link. You can both agree to pay each other a minimal affiliate commission, like 5% or 10%. By tracking affiliate links, it helps each partner track the results of the promotion. Also, you can see if both lists can deliver similar results.
By tracking clicks, opt-ins, and revenue, both parties can track if it is beneficial to cross-promote each other again in the future.
Other Collaborations
Collaborations can be anything from being a guest on a podcast, promoting each other’s webinar, or participating in summits, giveaways, or bundle offers. They can be in the form of an event with beginning and ending dates. The key to collaborating is to be creative and create win-win relationships.
A Dependable Source of Revenue
An email calendar is a powerful tool that can drive growth for your business. It can help you add new subscribers and earn more revenue. As the list grows, it can supplement your copywriting income, and before you know it, your list can become a dependable source of revenue.
Also, an email list can become another layer of financial security in conjunction with your copywriting clients. For instance, you can build a list and start your own newsletter, or you can help clients by managing their list, newsletters, and promotions. Both can create additional revenue for you.
Finally, my favorite part about an email list and how it can impact your business is reflected in this quote by Dan Miller, “When you own a business, there are no guarantees, but there are no limits either.”
Start building your list today. Your list is an asset that can drive significant growth and revenue. Plus, writing a newsletter will help improve your writing and copywriting skills.
Now, take the first step, and begin.
