Reconsidering Email Lists: A Thoughtful Approach for New Bloggers

What if starting an email list from day one isn't the best strategy for a new blogger? What if it's more beneficial to first focus on building your blog, creating solid content, and then strategizing your email communications? In this episode, I will challenge the conventional wisdom of starting an email list immediately and propose a more thoughtful approach. Let's discuss why rushing to collect emails without a plan could lead to wasted resources and unengaged subscribers. I'll even walk you through resources that can assist you in creating a clear, actionable plan for your email list.

Are you sending emails without a clear purpose or direction? Pause. The importance of an engaged email list cannot be overstated, and it's time we examined the foundation of your blog or online ministry for effective email communication. We'll explore the importance of linking your emails to the purpose of your ministry and how that can increase engagement and potentially lead to monetization. If you've already started building your email list but haven't engaged with your subscribers, I'll guide you on how to receive feedback and learn about their needs. Remember, building a connection and providing value should be at the core of your email communication.

If you are interested in taking your digital discipleship to the next level through blogging, YouTube, social media, and/or online Bible study groups, be sure to join my private FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/kingdombloggers
You can also follow me on YouTube where you will find a variety of helpful tutorials for navigating each of these important platforms: https://www.youtube.com/@KingdomBloggers

Transcript

LeeAnn Fox: 0:02

Welcome to the Kingdom Influencers podcast, where our mission is to get more Jesus online. This podcast will equip and empower ministry leaders as well as regular everyday Christians to take the message of Jesus Christ throughout the digital realm. I'm your host, LeeAnn Fox, digital Ministry Coach and the creator of the Kingdom Bloggers Ministry, and I am so excited and honored to be a part of this journey with you. Let's get started. Hi everyone, leanne again from Kingdom Bloggers. Today I'm going to be talking to you about your email list. So one of the first things that you want to or you're told, I should say, to start doing from the beginning is to start an email list. I am here to tell you that is a bad idea. I know that is contradictory to probably everything you've ever heard in any blogger training that you've ever been to, but as a Christian blogger who's been doing this for quite some time now and who has helped other Christian bloggers build their own ministries, I am here to tell you that if you kind of take this advice and put your email list building goals to the side for now, you will have a much better kind of engagement and just journey on that in and of itself. So let me break this down for you as a brand new blogger, or even if you've been doing it a while, we still kind of call you a brand new blogger. Once you learn the right way to do it, you're figuring out the world of blogging. There's so many new terms, all the technical stuff you have to learn just to get your blog to do what it needs to do, all the research, all the SEO, all the planning and stuff. So if you're also worried, or having to create opt-ins and send weekly emails and all that stuff, that's like an added layer of stuff that you were going to have to add to your to-do list, but it's also an added layer of stuff that really isn't productive during this season of your blogging. And seasons of blogging are very important because there's things that happen in each season that are the foundation for the next season. The next season will be successful because of the season before and if you did the right things. And so with your email list, if you haven't laid that organic foundation with traffic directed to search queries to bring the right people to your site, then you are going to be just getting all sorts of people signing up, maybe signing up, and in the end, when you start emailing them, there's probably not much of an engagement, but more importantly and this is something I've just heard over and over again from many bloggers so I started collecting emails from like day one and I have about 500 or maybe a thousand people on my email list, but I haven't emailed them yet, or haven't emailed them in over six months. So let me put this in like real world correlation. As a woman and if you're a man watching this, let's reverse it. If you're a man and then you get a girl's number, but if you're kind of in that dating season of life, right and you give a guy your phone number and he doesn't call you for six months, you're probably going to be like who this? Right? However, if you gave him the number and he immediately called you the next day, or whatever, or text you, you're going to be like hey, what's up? You know? Like thanks for calling me back. So think about that.

LeeAnn Fox: 3:09

In blogging, you sign up for an email list. Because of whatever reason, you signed up, and then you have crickets for six months or a year and then, randomly, you get this email and you're like I've actually had that happen. I'll sign up for things from other bloggers just to kind of get ideas for content creation for printables. You know I like to kind of see everything that's out there, so I'll sign up for their email list. And actually in my beginning days, when I was signing up for kind of everything, I want to learn everything and I started noticing like they weren't at all consistent with their emails. And I still get emails from someone that I remember signing up for a year ago and I'm like really, I gave you my phone number, my email address, and it took you a whole year to connect with me. What kind of relationship is that going to build if it took you that long to correspond with me? If you're not engaging with them like right away and then delivering them actual, valuable content that keeps them waiting for your next email, your email list is dead. You may have a thousand people or 500 on your email list, but you really don't because they have no idea who you are. And so the idea of collecting emails from day one when you literally don't even have rhyme or reason to what all you're doing, it's just it's a waste of time for one, and again, I'm here to give you hard truths, but it's a waste of time that is accomplishing nothing. You just kind of think about that.

LeeAnn Fox: 4:26

In order to grow a successful email list, you need a plan, separate from your blog plan, that maps out what are you going to be sending them. That, really, it starts with what do my audience, what are my readers, want from me? Right, if you're going to be in their inbox every week, then you better be offering some value. And I'm going to do a whole series, an email series, a playlist. Just, I don't have them created as of the making of this video, but once I do, they will be listed in the notes of the step by step creating of your email list and all the important s assets, parts to it, whatever.

LeeAnn Fox: 4:57

But there is no reason to add that level of stress to you at this season, at this stage of your game of blogging. Focus on your blog. That's what I come back around to. I know sometimes I talk in circles, but don't even bother with your email list. Take those forms off your site. If you've been collecting emails, you haven't been doing anything with them, just delete it. They don't even know who you are. Honestly, when you really are ready to take that next step and get everything in order before you put the forms on your site, and again, I'm going to have a whole another series that walks you through that process.

LeeAnn Fox: 5:25

But the truth is, if you're building an email list from day one, it's going to go nowhere because you have no plan. Anything without a plan is going to be doomed from the beginning. That is one thing. Actually, many students who've gone through my GOOCAM or my SEO course or just in my Facebook group that's one thing they tell me over and over is thank you for giving me permission not to do this anymore, because the added element of doing the weekly emails and not knowing what to say just created such a stressful overwhelm for them that was actually distracting them from getting real work done. And so if you take nothing else from this today, I give you permission to XNA on the email just 86 it. Just stop doing it until you get your foundation to the point that you're ready. Here's another thing that many people don't consider, and I actually have a video I will link it below with Megan from Megan Ella Ministries, where she actually talks about this very thing and how she's glad she waited to start her email list, because when she did start it she was much more prepared and in the end result is how productive it has been for her ministry, her monetization and everything else. So I'll link that below.

LeeAnn Fox: 6:28

You know you're waiting to do your email. It's just going to free you up for so much time. You'll also be spending less money because most platforms, once you reach a thousand subscribers, you have to start paying for it. Why would you pay for something that's not returning? So the goal of email aside from connecting with your audience, actually to get more traffic back to your website there's a synom links to content on your site so that you can regularly pour into them, and so if you're not getting reverse traffic, then why are you paying for that? That's an expense you don't need, and the final video, or one of the final videos in the series, is really going to talk on the point of how to get your blogging journey started on as little dollar signs as possible. In the beginning, many new bloggers get duped into spending so much money on tools and plugins and things that they actually don't need, and so I'm going to kind of break that down for you so that that'll be towards the end of this series. So just a tune for that one.

LeeAnn Fox: 7:16

Stop working on your email. If you don't have your blog plan in place, if you're not already seeing organic traffic. So let's break down email. When you're writing content to a particular audience, then they're going to find you. They're going to click on your link. Click on a link end up on your blog and in that post there may be a sign up form. They're gonna join your email list. They are expecting that you are going to for whatever offer you gave them to sign up, like send a form, an email, you'll get whatever and again, we're not gonna go into those details today. So now they're on their email. So now you're gonna be sending them emails every week. If you're not writing stuff that actually relates to the reason they signed up, they're gonna get bored, like we get bombarded with so much spam email today. Everybody's emailing us. Even if you unsubscribe to half the marketing emails, you still get them. So my inbox is flooded. If I'm gonna open your email. I'm gonna take time out of my day to open your email. You better have some value and that value is gonna be respective of whatever your ministry is saying it offers.

LeeAnn Fox: 8:09

So like my ministry is Bible study. So I actually have two kingdom. Bloggers have two sides. I have the faith content and that is the bulk of my traffic. 99% of the organic traffic to my site is through the faith content, not the blogging tip. But I have two audiences there. I do have the blogging tips side of it and in that there are email sign up forms for those who want blogging tips. But my blogging tips emails don't go to my faith subscribers, so it's very important that you're delivering them what they signed up for. So on my faith side, it's Bible study tips, everything about how to study the Bible, understanding the Bible, better resources to study that's what I'm telling them. I offer. I have free printables, free Bible study printables and so forth, and so the emails that I send out every week directly relate to that in some way, and so, as a result, I have a very high open rate and click through rate in my emails. But if I started sending them stuff about starting a Christian blog, they probably stopped opening it, because that's not why they signed up. On the flip side, my blogging tips they signed up to receive weekly blogging tips from me. If I start sending them emails just about the Bible, of course they're all Christian bloggers, so they some may like oh, that's interesting, but again, that's not why they look forward to my email. It's because of the tips I offer.

LeeAnn Fox: 9:18

So it's very important that you, to keep your audience engaged, tie it all together. What is my blog about? How can I tie that into my email? But, from a foundational point, your blog foundation and I mentioned earlier in the series that this applies to YouTube as well. So if you're doing the video on YouTube, this email sign up thing same thing. It's gonna bring the right people to your site who will then sign up for your emails, right. And so now you're building a list of people who are interested in what you have to offer. They're more likely to open those emails.

LeeAnn Fox: 9:44

When it comes to monetization, if you happen to recommend products in your email that relate again to the overall purpose of your ministry, your blog, they're gonna be more likely to make a purchase of through the affiliate link or of your product. Not only is your blog foundation important to bring the right, the traffic like traffic. So three conversions traffic, email subscribers and money. Those are the three conversions, whether it's affiliate sales, product sales, whatever your foundation of traffic, your organic traffic from SEO is literally the building block to make those things happen. So when you get the people on your email list because they really came looking for what you have to offer, that is also going to improve your monetization efforts. You're not gonna have to sell to them because they're already sort of they've already bought in to what you offer, and so when you offer a product or recommend something, they're already in the mindset of what you're offering, so they're more likely to make the purchase, and so it's all tied together.

LeeAnn Fox: 10:36

You're trying to build your email list from day one. You're just not gonna be successful at it. So the thing I would like for you to take from this for today is if you are just getting started or maybe again, you've been doing this for a while and just haven't made it a success just stop the email list. I would also encourage you go into your email those of you who do have an email list now that have really had no rhyme or reason and take a look at your analytic. What is your open rate? Is it above 30%? If it's below 30%, that's not good. Okay, you could have 1,000 subscribers, but if less than 20% is open, that's 20 or 200 out of 1,000 might be opening it. And then, if they open it, are they actually clicking the links Again, the goal being to get traffic back over to your website? And so, if that percentage is my new, you are literally spending a lot of time, for you're working for pennies, and that's just not a productive way to go about blogging.

LeeAnn Fox: 11:23

Stop with the email. Now you may say I have a few email subscribers. If you do have some and they regularly open your email, maybe just say, hey, I'm gonna take a pause and try to re-ask for feedback. What is it I can offer you? What things are you missing in your life, related to whatever your blog? First, things you can do to help get some data from those you already do have, but I would definitely take the forms up your site to quit getting more until you actually have a plan for what you are going to do with them.

LeeAnn Fox: 11:50

Anyway, that's all for this. I just wanted to put this one out there because this is very, very important, again, from the financial side. Why are you paying for an email list? That isn't kind of paying you back, so to speak, but it's also just one less task for you to worry about right now so you can really focus on building your foundation. Thanks so much for joining us for another episode of the Kingdom Influencers podcast. Please join us again next week as we dive deeper into growing your online ministry as a Christian influencer. Remember, if you are not using the internet to lead people to Jesus, the enemy will be using it to lead them away from him. Have a great week, guys. Bye, bye, god bless.