This featured article is brought to you by: Ashley DeLuca, Email Marketing Strategist

I promise I’m not trying to catch you with a misleading hook. As an email marketing strategist, this is a bold statement to make when (almost) my entire professional business career links back to email marketing. And with that, how it can successfully help business owners reach their goals.

I’m a cut-the-fluff kind of gal, so let’s dive into the two reasons shall we?

#1 – If You’re Playing The Short Game…

…there’s a really good chance it won’t result in a massive amount of sales. 

Of course, there are those unicorn moments that we all hear about as someone created an opt-in, linked it to a product, and sold half a million in courses. I’m not dismissing that it won’t happen. I simply believe in managing expectations.

Let’s define the short game and what it means to play the short game as a business owner. 

Short game, noun, is defined as actions you take for the here and now.

In the financial sense, so many entrepreneurs do this too. They chase the quick turnaround sale, the post that gets these strategies, and try to get new clients in a short period of time.

It’s a low-effort, quick return that results in you playing the short game. There is a time and place, but email marketing is not the place to do this especially if you are just starting out or your list is small and new.

So if playing the short game isn’t the way, how should you play?

You could probably guess, the long game. Let’s define it.

Long game, noun, is defined as actions you take for future outcomes.

When you play with a long-game approach, you know that sprinting really hard isn’t the answer. It’s something I see all of the time. People will pick up email marketing, email their list consistently for a month or two, and then drop off the face of the earth.

It’s something I’ve been guilty of doing even. Life happens, and priorities get shifted. With that level of honesty, I recognize my email list isn’t going to pour sales in those moments of breaks or auto-buy when I come back.

Set yourself up for success. Don’t feel like you have to write 30 emails in 2 days or have it all figured out in a month. Slowly integrate email marketing inside of your business and take one step at a time as you slowly build.

Slow and steady will win the email marketing race – especially if you want to outdo your competitors. Find ways that you can break it up into parts so you can accomplish it bite by bite throughout the week if that feels better to you! 

I often do it like this:

Monday – Outline
Wednesday – Write
Friday – Proof & Publish

Create a routine that best fits your needs and matches your creative flow. The most important part is setting aside the time that you know you can focus on actually accomplishing that small bit of the email process.

#2 – If You Don’t Have A Clear Journey

…there’s a slim chance they will actually get to the sales finish line.

I’m going to use an example that George Bryant (who I’m the CEO of too) shared with me when it came to understanding the customer journey.

Imagine you’re all packed up for a road trip and you’re about to leave. What’s the first thing you’ll do? For most of us, we’ll pull open our phones and plug in the address for the destination. We will then follow our GPS until we get to the destination.

If you’re like me, I can’t miss a meal and so there’s a good chance I’ll rear off the path to grab some Chick-fil-a. Customer journey is essentially you being the GPS for your ideal client to the destination they desire.

Could you imagine being reared off the path every other turn, leading you in circles, stopping you in the middle of nowhere to “think about” what to say next, and taking 3 hours longer to get to your destination? Oh gosh, I think we’d all be boycotting that GPS, right?

That’s exactly what we do inside our customer journey. We bring people into our world and we drop them an email about their freebie. Before they know it, we drop them an email about our podcast (but that’s before they even finished the freebie, a sharp left turn on a new path.)

From there, we ghost them for 3 weeks trying to think about what to say next only for that 3 weeks to turn into 3 months of no contact. Unless your subscribers are as abusive as my ex-husband, there’s no reason to keep them in no contact zone for 3+ months. 

Yeah, I just said it as a reminder for myself, but also let this be a reminder to you too. Your subscribers consented to be part of your world. They WANT to hear from you. They desire to be led by YOU.

Using customer journey and having an actual step-by-step plan/flow for your subscribers (whether attached to a freebie or not) is what will allow you to actually create trust, build relationships, and help you boost your email marketing sales. 

Being a leader via email marketing is the easiest way to establish your authority as it doesn’t require you to get ready, brush your hair, or have a fancy video studio. As a single mom of a 4-year-old, this is key for me.

Now that we know that we’re not going to get boycotted due to our inability to lead and guide our subscribers…let’s get into the customer journey portion.

I mentioned a man earlier, George Bryant. Truthfully, he’s the master of customer journey and has taught me everything I know. So if you want to get the good stuff right from the source – he’s over at mindofgeorge.com with an incredible free series on getting you started.

But I want to leave you with something tangible you can do right now.

I want you to think about the customer journey as you simply reverse-engineered your own journey to their preferred after-state. For many of us, we’ve lived the experience, we walk the talk and are living proof of what is possible. 

When you consider customer journey and implement it into your email marketing, you’re working backward, tracing your steps back to where you originally started (which is where they are now!) 

To get your brain moving in the right direction, I’ll give you some prompts to think about with examples as if I was doing this…

1. What is the one most important foundational piece your ideal client needs to know?

Ex: Understand that their email marketing strategy doesn’t have to be a 40-page report and can be a one-pager of an intentional well thought out plan.

2. What is the one most important foundational piece your ideal client needs to be able to do?

Ex: Be able to put in 1-2 hours a week into writing an email out to their list based on the outlines I create for them.

3. In order to help them know their email marketing strategy can be simple and to be able to write an email in that short amount of time to their list, what are the steps they need to take?

Ex: They need to be able to be shown the structure that they can then start to play with and test in their own business while giving them the support to reach the mini-goal of simply writing one email in under 2 hours.

Now you may be wondering if this then turns into a customer journey implemented into an email sequence. 

I’m glad you asked.

Here’s the live version of a customer journey/email sequence that walks you through exactly how to create a one-page email marketing strategy using my structure AND how to use it to create an engaging, creative, and fresh email in under 2 hours to your list.

It’s free.99 and I think you’ll love it, so click here to check it out!

Don’t worry, if that’s not up your alley. If you found this valuable and want to connect, I’d love to see you over on Instagram @ashleykdeluca. 🙂

This featured article is brought to you by: Ashley DeLuca, Email Marketing Strategist

Ashley DeLuca is an email marketing strategist who uses Conversational Email Marketing to help you connect and convert your subscribers into buyers. With a toddler on her hip, in the fall of 2021, she walked away from her abusive marriage and within 6 months, completely rebuilt her life from scratch using her business as her foundation. Through her journey, she believes truly betting on yourself is one of the most impactful decisions you’ll ever make!

>>>>>> Access Ashley’s FREE Walkthrough Guide HERE! Want to know how you can implement the tips shared in this article? Download Ashley’s walkthrough to discover exactly how to create a one-page email marketing strategy using her structure AND how to use it to create an engaging, creative, and fresh email in under 2 hours to your list. Talk about a NO-BRAINER. Grab it here! 

Connect with Ashley on Instagram here. 

Head to Ashley’s website here to learn more.