I’m going to start by confessing to a load of things that I regularly procrastinate about and only ever do late (or sometimes not at all). 

I tell my husband every week that I’m definitely going to valet the car and then I don’t.

I put off paying my car tax and organising my MOT until I get red notices. 

I can go days without filling up my car windscreen wash even if I can’t see properly.

Don’t even talk to me about checking the tyres. I’d need to be grinding along on wheel rims to do that. 

Oh, and I also have a box of books and clothes in the back seat that I’m definitely going to donate next week year. 

Hang on. I sense a theme here. My massive blind spot is anything car-related. 

And the longer I leave things, the less likely I am to do them. 

But, I’m also not a slob and I love a clean car. So obviously, eventually, these boring auto chores get done and I feel AMAZING. 

Granted, that’s about twice a year and every time, I promise myself I’ll do it once a month (and then don’t). 

Do you know what people confess to me the most during coaching sessions?

“I never email my list.”

“How do I even start without it being awkward.”

“I have no idea what to say.”

“They won’t even remember who I am.”

“I don’t want to create content that only a few people will read.”

These are all legitimate concerns, but I’m going to demolish them all for you in one go. 

At some point (probably even right now), you will want to sell to those people. And you absolutely can’t pop up out of nowhere and pitch your product to a stone-cold list.

Can’t be done. Unless pushy hard selling is your jam. No? Thought not. 

In this article, I’m going to be focusing on why and how to re-engage your email list (or start from scratch) even if your list feels like Siberia right now. 

And I’ll make you a deal. If you email your list after reading this, I’ll clean my car. No, really. 

Why you should email your list regularly

Before we dive into what to say in your overdue (or never sent) emails, let’s just talk about why it’s important to send regular content. 

Yes, you might already have an email funnel in place, which is a series of automated emails which hopefully lead to sales. 

That’s awesome. You definitely need that. 

But most people know where an email funnel is leading. They know that eventually you are going to pitch them a product. And that’s ok too. Asking for the sale is important. 

But it can’t be all you do. Imagine if YouTube was 90% ads and 10% content. No one would use it. 

You’re probably thinking… “But I don’t sell to my audience all the time. I only email them once or twice a year with a special offer.”

If that is the only time you email your list, even if it’s only twice a year, then the ONLY thing you are doing is selling to them.

Sending regular emails is important because it gives everyone on your list a chance to get to know you, build trust and enjoy your content without being sold to. 

A cold audience, who don’t have the warm fuzzies about your relationship with you, will not buy from you. Or if they do, they are much more likely to be comparing you on price to every other competitor. Without nurturing, you are going to find it harder to make a sale, because they don’t really know you and they don’t have that trust.

(A great book to read on this subject is Gary Vaynerchuk’s Jab Jab Right Hook, by the way).

What to write when you’ve ghosted your email list

First things first. You can’t just pop up out of nowhere and act like you haven’t been missing in action. You need to address the elephant in the room. 

My good friends, Rob & Kennedy, call this the “Bad Friend” email. They call it that because this is where you admit that you’ve dropped the ball and not been in touch as much as you should have. 

(You should totally check out their email marketing membership.)

I’m not advocating brutal honesty along the lines of “I’ve been watching Netflix in my PJs and couldn’t be bothered”.

But sharing a little of your recent life challenges is perfectly fine. 

Make sure you:

• Acknowledge that you haven’t been communicating regularly
• Explain why (in a positive way)
• Tell them what you are going to send them and why
• Offer them the option to opt out

Hell, why don’t I just give you a copy and paste version for you to swipe!

---

Hey <Name>

It’s been total radio silence from me lately, right? Hope I didn’t startle you! 

(Optional – insert gif or meme)

Over the last few months / summer / years, I’ve been working on / spending time doing / putting my family first / enjoying some down time.

It also gave me some much-needed creative space to finally put together some great thoughts / tips / ideas on my specialist subject.

But I didn’t want to drop into your inbox like nothing had happened. And it’s definitely been me and not you. 

Sounds like I’m trying to break up with you, doesn’t it? Actually, I’d like to make up with you and start sending you some regular emails. 

Every week, I’m going to be sending you this awesome thing which is going to help you solve this problem without feeling / doing this thing.

(Optional – you can elaborate on the kind of content you plan to send them here)

But I don’t want to clutter up your inbox with my (name of content) tips and cheesy memes unless you really want me to. 

So, if you’d like to give it a miss, just click here and I’ll take care of it.

If you’re sticking around, then welcome aboard. I’ll see you soon (and this time I mean it!) 

---

But I don’t want to write email content that only 30% of people will see

 hear you. I used to feel like this too, but here’s the secret about great content. ALL OF IT can be repurposed to reach other channels and if you get into the right workflow, you can turn it into permanent evergreen content. 

Take this paragraph you’re reading right now. 

First, it’s going to be a paragraph on Instagram with a nice graphic, then I’ll repurpose it to Facebook and at the end of the week, it will become part of a blog post. Then the Instagram graphics will be repurposed to Pinterest to drive traffic back to the blog post. Eventually it might even end up as part of a free e-book.

Magic, right? 

(If you’d like to learn how to do this too, you can buy my Easy Content Creation workshop right here, BTW.)

Butu the point is that the 30% (that’s an average open rate) of people who open your regular emails are just the tip of the iceberg. You can make that content work SO much harder with very little extra effort. And it also takes care of what the hell to post on socials at the same time.

In addition, the discipline of sitting down every week to write my Monday morning email gives my whole week shape and focus and it means that I’ll be creating content consistently.

How often should I email my list?

Let’s imagine I’ve convinced you to start emailing your list regularly. And by regularly, I mean as often as you feel is sustainable for you. Writing once a month reliably is better than stopping and starting. 

But do think about potential future campaigns when you might want to send a bunch of emails in a shorter space of time. Perhaps only emailing once a month isn’t enough to build the kind of relationship where you can suddenly start selling. 

For me it isn’t, which is why I’ve settled on once a week without fail, or twice if we have a blog post or a free event happening. 

How to make your list more responsive

If you’ve been the ‘bad friend’ and you start emailing regularly, there are inevitably going to be people who either won’t remember you personally or their need for your product has gone away. That’s fine. They just won’t open your emails. So don’t be too disappointed if you initially get low open rates. 

But don’t worry – we can do something about that. We can get rid of the people who aren’t interested and who are never going to buy from you. 

Hopefully, you’ve already culled a few with your ‘bad friend’ email. Some will have accepted your invitation to opt out. 

And painful as it might seem to delete more hard-won subscribers from your list, you must. Because those non-responsive people aren’t helping you and in fact, are actively harming your growth. 

There are 3 excellent reasons to be ruthless.

1. They might be costing you money you don’t need to spend.  

Those unengaged subs can push you into the next price band with your email marketing provider. 

2. They can affect your deliverability.

When you have a list that you haven’t been regularly looking after, over time the chances of your emails landing in someone’s junk folder increases.

3. An engaged list won’t create responsive Lookalike audiences in Facebook and Instagram.

When you have a lean and mean email list full of engaged subscriber and buyers, you can use that data to find other people just like them on social media and advertise them. When you have a bloated, sluggish list, your paid ads become so much less effective. 

When & how to delete subscribers

Once you start emailing your list regularly, you’ll be able to see who hasn’t opened or clicked your emails. After 3 months, you should remove these cold subscribers from your list. Go on, just do it!

If you really feel wobbly about doing this, you can send them a final email letting them know you’ll be removing them unless they confirm they would like to stay. 

In fact, with many email marketing platforms, you can automate this entire process, and regularly email unengaged subscribers and remove them from your list. 

A healthy, responsive list is one of the most effective tools for business growth. 

If you’ve been putting off emailing your list regularly, I can promise you that it’s transformative. You get to build real relationships with your subscribers, build trust over time and produce content that can be endlessly repurposed across social channels to amplify your message. 

It really is the gift that keeps on giving.

And I’m off now to clean my car!

If you need a hand kicking your marketing pages into shape, check out our membership for small, but courageous businesses – The Marketing Fix.