So our list is the selling stuff, right? You notice different ways you can use a list, we need to explore how often we're going to be sending out an email. But we also want to look at how we retain our list as well. So it's great to build it all up is great to put all that content out there and give people the option to come and sign up and get something for free. We have to understand that an email marketing list is more than just a tool to sell products. So there's different ways you can use your list.

The traditional way is increased sales. And that's the way most people think about email marketing campaigns, but did you know you can get social engagement from your list and your list members. So a really powerful thing is deepening that relationship with them, especially if you're selling expertise, or creating that connection with them, creating that brand. connection with them. If you can get them engaging with you and talking to you, and your email list is helping you develop a long term relationship that can lead to long term sales, long term value for yourself and your list. You can also improve your site SEO.

So by creating a email, when you put new content out letting people that new content has come out, you're going to get an influx of visitors and a new piece of content. And when Google see that, and they see the stats, and they start seeing lots of people hitting that page and spending time on that page. Remember, your email list is hyper targeted to your content. So if you put content on your page and and send them to that page, they're going to spend time on that page and the way one of the big factors in SEO works is time. On page, if you've got people on your page on an article, that article then gets boosted in search and people and can find it, it will get a higher ranking from Google in search. So that's a really good way of creating an impact and the same for content launch exactly the same thing with a podcast or a YouTube video, I will do this a lot of YouTube videos.

If you're on my email marketing list, you will see this when I release a video, I'm going to tell people why. Because those first 24 hours of a brand new launch of a YouTube video. If I can drive 100 200 views in those first couple of hours, YouTube are going to see that and they're going to sit up and take notice. And if that search term comes up in search, you're gonna go this is new, this is hyper relevant, and people are watching this and they're engaged and again, you've got that hyper, connected, engaged group of people. watching your videos. So you can boost a content launch.

So I hope you begin to see now that a list is more than a way of creating sales. It's about you coming back to it that permission for you to be useful if you're useful. If you engage. You can get so many more benefits out of your newsletter list than just sales. You can get long term relationship, you can improve that site SEO. And you can also boost content launches when you do some content marketing, maybe a new blog or a video or podcast.

Extremely powerful. How often? Well, this is all about audience tolerance. I could say to you once a month is is enough, once a week, once a day. Some people have email lists that they they email them literally every day and they get high retention rate. So audience tolerance is really important.

How do you figure out the audience tolerance? Ask them you know You build up a list every now and again, say was doing weekly emails? Do you find that useful? Two emails a week, would you prefer that? Once a month. So that's something you have to consider.

The other thing is your time commitment. So, if you're the marketing person for the business, that's fine, you're gonna have time to do as many emails as you want. If you're a small business owner, and your time for marketing, you're doing the marketing, then you have to consider time commitment. If you commit to a one a day, email, then you've got to do that. And that's a lot of work. So you might do fortnightly, you might do monthly, but I wouldn't leave it too long.

So we want to retain that list. How might we decide? Well, come back to audience tolerance. So if if you've got a newsletter on the Ford, Capri or old car that people love and You're going to do a little newsletter once a month. For them, that's probably fine. If you're doing a WordPress security email, for instance, where people, there's constant threats that come in, people are gonna want that in their inbox straightaway.

They're not going to want you to wait till the end of the month to find out that three weeks ago, you knew about a security hack that they suffered. Now I know they're extreme examples. But you got to think about the audience tolerance. How many emails can they tolerate before they decide you fill in their inbox up too much, and how much you commit to your email marketing, and you have to be realistic about that time commitment. So you've built up this list and it's going really well, but are you retaining? You see one of the most important things is keep them engaged, keep those emails useful, keep them relevant and be relevant.

And if you can do that you need to retain your list. Now, the biggest drop off reasons for dropping off of a newsletter is people start out with great intentions. last couple of weeks, they go out and they get, you know, 2030 4050 people on that email list. And then they send out an email for a few weeks, and then they forget. And then six months later, go, Oh, I'm gonna send out an email and all of a sudden I send out an email, people get this email in their inbox, and they're like, why am I getting this email spam, I don't remember signing up and all of a sudden, you've been marked as spam, and you're in trouble. So you got to be relevant.

You got to keep them engaged. You got to set iterative process, you've got to keep putting out those emails. You've got to create an A content creation diary. So decide, I'm going to send out an email every Thursday, I'm going to send out every Monday I'm going to send it out on the 20th of every month. Whatever that length of time you've decided is correct for you and your subscribers. Make sure you fulfill it.

Now losing subscribers What you're going to find is often in a business is, as your business grows, and it slowly changes direction, people that sign up early on, not gonna want to stay on that list. Don't be frightened of losing subscribers, you only want people on your list that are hyper targeted. So as they move down that funnel, your marketing funnel, sometimes that marketing funnel is going to reject people. And that's okay. It's okay. Don't be worried if you lose the odd subscriber here on a regular basis.

And we'll look at some metrics later on, but be prepared for that. And it's actually a healthy sign in a way because you and them are not a good match anymore. So don't be too worried. But we don't want to lose them for the wrong reasons. We don't want to lose them because we haven't bothered to email them in 12 weeks and now we're going to send them a special offer on the new shiny object you've got in your store that will have Sudden you think they need to have that's not the way to manage your list. You really have to concentrate and retain in your lesson.

Sometimes that can be difficult because it can seem like you're not getting much results from your list. You might get discouraged. You got to push through that.