My newsletter and open rates… why do I need to know?

Newsletter hell.

Have you asked yourself this question before? Are you stuck trying to see what cool stuff you send in your newsletter? I know. I have been there. I have been naughty and not sent my newsletter because I had no idea what to send! You know I had a studio for a long time and we had to send weekly newsletters with all the cool stuff going on – arm balance class, workshop, teacher training. BUY! BUY! BUY!

All we wanted to do was sell events and get people interested. Guess what, at some point the newsletter consisted of the same shit every week because we either didn’t have that many events or they were in advance so we needed to send something right?

So annoying.

Yes, this is exactly what it turned into. An annoying task with absolutely no excitement other than maybe making a cool little artwork for the newsletter event. Woohoo. What started happening is that our open rates were low. People weren’t clicking or signing up. People would come to the events, yes of course, but because of the of the interaction at the studio or at the front desk. So few would pre-register making it even more stressful and honestly annoying.

What changed???

I had a vague idea of email marketing a few years back. I knew we needed to collect emails and then send newsletters. That was about it. NOT what I know now. Have you ever said to yourself “If I knew then what I know now…” Well let’s focus on what I know now, vs, what I knew then since it wasn’t that useful.

After taking many courses on marketing and rubbing elbows with some pretty intelligent and successful people, I realized everything I was doing was moving people away from clicking open. Because they were constantly getting yelled at with sign up, events, retreat and nothing else, they had no motivation. No bait as some say.

They were bored of not getting value.

I use this word value like the elephant in the room. It’s huge, it’s sitting there, but we ignore it. Poor elephant. I was scared of giving people FREE information in my newsletters! I just wanted to them sign up for the arm balance workshop, so why would giving them a video about arm balance be beneficial.

The hook.

That arm balance video was my free teaser. Was my lure to get them hooked. VALUE. I offered a video tip on how to get into crow but I didn’t give them a 2 hour long workshop in the email. What it did was spark the interest of the reader to want to learn more, easier and more efficient ways to do arm balances. Do you get it? Yup. This was the magic touch. Tease them with valuable info that they can take with them on their journey. Maybe you are really excited about offering a tantra workshop- well write a really cool article with awesome information about tantra. You aren’t giving away the whole pie. You are only giving them valuable tips to show you are a credible source to make them say, “WOW, that was amazing and I learned so much I want more!!!”

You get it?

Well, this is your time to turn around these email campaigns and get some interaction! Instead of little opens, I get replies from people saying thanks so much, that was exactly what I needed and more! It feels so good to know I can help via one video, audio or blog post.

Try it out!

On your next newsletter try it out and see what happens. Get some catchy titles, get creative, add your voice in the writing so it feels authentic and powerful. And guess what? You don’t always need to sell something!!! So cool right? Give and you might receive, but give anyways. As a yogi hearted business minded human you know it feels right to give from the heart… and even better your clients will feel it too.

Namaste!