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What Is A Nurture Sequence?
Do you have a nurture sequence?
Well, the first question I should probably ask is, do you have an email list?
If your answer is no, head on over to my post all about Why You Need An Email List (Even In 2019) or check out Episode 1 of 10 Minutes Before Dinner. Your email list is the lynchpin, the foundation of your business. Without it, you’re not going to be able to grow and scale and bring in the income that you want.
And in order to do that, you need a nurture sequence.
Nurturing your audience is what allows them to get to know you and cements the fact that you are an expert in your field.
Why You Need A Nurture Sequence: It Allows You To Warm Up Your Cold Traffic
In online business terms, there are two types or traffic: warm traffic and cold traffic.
Well, there’s also hot traffic, but that is irrelevant to this post.
Warm traffic are the people online who already know you. They interact with your content, read your blog posts, follow you on social media, and may or may not have already bought from you.
Cold traffic are the people who haven’t encountered you before.
They may just be seeing your content on Pinterest, came across a Facebook ad leading to your freebie, or someone has told them that they need to check you out.
And once they are on your email list, it is your task to take them from cold to warm, and the easiest way to do so is through your nurture sequence.
Your nurture sequence allows them to get used to seeing your name in your inbox on a regular basis.
As always, consistency is key.
And you should ensure that your nurture sequence sends out immediately after and in the days following when someone signs up for your list.
Why You Need A Nurture Sequence: Your Audience Gets To Know You
One critical factor that your nurture sequence needs to have is that it needs to allow your audience to get to know you.
And especially, get to know you as the expert in your niche.
(Remember, you as the expert simply means that you are putting forth information that the people in your audience may not have. You just have to be one step ahead of your audience. No need to worry about being the all seeing, all knowing being.
As your business grows and your knowledge grows, the more your expertise grows. You are already an expert.)
In the ‘You’ side of your nurture sequence, you get to introduce your audience to you and your story. Your story is what makes you unique, what gives you the opportunity to put your spin on your niche.
Not only that, but how your story can help your audience figure out the unique problem that they have (aka the whole point of your business), and how you can help them.
Why You Need A Nurture Sequence: Your Audience Gets To Know Your Best Content
Have some popular blog posts?
Blog posts that are SEO optimized?
Posts that are monetized for affiliate marketing?
Some serious must-reads that show off your expertise?
Your nurture sequence is the perfect place to drive traffic to those posts.
It’s simple.
All you have to do is tell your list that there are posts that you recommend they check out. It doesn’t have to be a lot—it should be say, 3-5, posts, which is more than enough to send your audience down the rabbit hole of your most awesome content.
And what you should also ensure that you do in an email sending your audience to your content is:
– Ask them to leave comments with their favorite takeaways from the posts.
– Have them respond to your email with what they want to know from you, the expert (more on that in the next section).
It’s also important to remember that because not all people see all your content, you want to breathe life into your older, optimized blog posts by driving traffic to them any way you can, and not just your new stuff.
Why You Need A Nurture Sequence: It Allows You To Foster Engagement
As I mentioned above, engaging with your list is critical, and you need to encourage your audience to do so right off the bat.
Every single email you send should have some kind of call to action along the lines of, “Hey, hit reply to this email and let me know what you think about X.” Or, “Hit reply and tell me what your biggest struggle with Y is.”
Not only does it give you the opportunity to research what your audience wants and needs from you, but it also means you get to email directly with people on your list who could become potential customers.
Having an engaged list takes TIME to build, but is so worth it. Those people who are on your list and emailing you back, you know that they want help, want to know the things that you know.
And if they’re willing to respond to you, it means that you will be able to help them in some way.
Why You Need A Nurture Sequence: It Allows You To Quickly Convert Warm Subscribers Into Customers
There are countless ways to warm your subscribers up and turn them into paid product purchasers, and to do it quickly.
While it does tend to take at least 7 times before people take advantage of a paid offer, there are ways to allow that number to drop.
One way is to get them into a sales funnel that ends with a paid offering. A free email course that you offer could end with the opportunity for a discounted consultation with you. Or to a paid product.
Another opportunity is to get them to schedule a discovery call with you so you can turn them into a 1-1 or group client. And even if they don’t take on that offer, you still have the chance on the call to learn from them what they want out of your business. When you create value in line with what they want, it makes it likely that they will come back to you eventually as paid customers.
You can also get them to purchase your product right off the bat by way of a tripwire product. I’ve talked about this before on 10 Minutes Before Dinner, in Episode 71: How To Easily Monetize Your Opt In.
Ready To Start Your Own Side Hustle?
Have a lot to talk about, but don’t have the website to guide your readers to? Now is the perfect time to get started.
Now is the perfect time to take my free email course, where I teach you how to plan a year’s worth of blog content in just one day. This training takes away all the mystery behind figuring out what you’re going to write from week to week and helps you plan the ultimate in blogging content that your audience will absolutely love.
Don’t forget to get hosting (plus a free domain) for as little as $3.95/month through Siteground. You can read why I choose Siteground to host my websites in my post, 6 Reasons I Host My Side Hustle On Siteground (And You Should Too).
This was really insightful! Email lists seem intimidating to me, so it’s nice to hear more of the details!
Happy to share! An email list is the lynchpin to a successful side hustle. That’s your guaranteed place where you KNOW your audience will see what you have to share. Engaging with your audience means you have the opportunity to not only turn them into raging fans who will share your content for you, but they are the most likely to convert into paid product purchasers!
Such great tips! Thank you for sharing!
Any time! Having a growing and engaged email list is SO important, even in 2019! It’s the one place that when you send an email, you KNOW your audience is going to see it. You don’t get that with other platforms, even Facebook or Instagram.
Some really good advice, thankyou
Happy to share! Nurturing and engaging with your email list is critical to success in your blog or business!
This is very intriguing.
Happy to share! Engaging with your list is one of the most important things you can do with your business!