So you’re a creative business owner and you’ve been told to start your email list. Well, whoever told you that – maybe it was me – they were right. It’s so important to grow your email list so that you can increase your revenue in your business. By growing your email list, you’re going to have direct communication between you and your customers and have the ability to sell them more of what they already want! You’re stuff! Read more to know The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing For Creative Entrepreneurs.
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Do you have a ton of questions for starting an email marketing software? If so, I’ll answer your questions to help you get started in growing your email list today!
Starting Your Creative Business on a Budget: Choosing the Right Email Marketing Platform
The most important first step is picking a platform to grow your list with. I don’t know about you, but ,my first concern is always about the price. How can I achieve my goal by spending the least amount of money? Some people might say that it’s worth it to spend more money if it’s going to produce great results. And those people probably weren’t business owners of a creative businesses. Because as you well know, we aren’t starting out with a lot of money in the beginning. So saving money is an absolute must.
Luckily, when it comes to email marketing platforms and software, the cool thing is that you can literally use a low cost or free platform until you outgrow it, and then move on to something more expensive that has more features that you need. This is often the case with most software programs when running your creative business. You can always decide to upgrade later. The key is that you start. And if that means going with a cheaper option, then by all means, do that!
The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing For Creative Entrepreneurs
Let’s talk about the marketing platform I started out using in my business, which was MailChimp. MailChimp was a great starter software for email marketing. Why? It was free! It allowed me to get started right away for no money at all for up to 500 subscribers. That’s a great deal if you ask me. I think Mailchimp is a great first place to start if you’re only working with one to two lead magnets to bring in your audience.
And that’s exactly how I recommend you grow your email list – by the way – is through lead magnets. So please, creative business friends! Do not put random people you know on your email list. I can admit that I did this when I first started out. Don’t make the same mistake as me. If your friends and family are interested in what you do, they will opt in for your emails. You don’t have to manually put them on the list. It is going to muck up your analytics in the long term, and it’s actually illegal.
MailChimp for Creative Beginners
Here are a few elements of Mailchimp that work to your advantage as a newbie creative business owner.
It’s easy to use, with drag and drop email builders, so it’s helpful for creatives who aren’t as tech savvy. It has predesigned templates that you can access so that you don’t have to do a lot of design work yourself. It’s an all in one marketing platform with email campaign automation and landing pages and forms that you can create easily. And it allows you to segment your list based on their interests, behavior and purchase history.
Why I Switched Email Providers
Here’s where Mailchimp lost me though as I grew my creative business, and maybe this can help you as you make the decision for your marketing software program and where you are in your business.
My main goal in my handmade party decorations business was to grow my list to sell people more party decorations. So I wanted to offer them a freebie from each of my different party themes. That would mean that I would need to categorize each of my audience members on my list into many different segments. At the time when I first started, Mailchimp wasn’t offering this kind of segmentation, so I had to leave the platform. Now from what I’m told, Mailchimp has added this ability, so it might still be a great platform for you to look at.
Why ConvertKit is the Best Choice for Creative Entrepreneurs
It was because of that information at the time that I ended up moving over to Convertkit. (Convertkit is now Kit.) It’s my favorite email marketing platform that I still use to this day in my business. At the time, Convertkit was offering the ability to create as many tags as i needed for each of my audience members. That way, if someone signed up for my peach party decoration freebie, I could send them emails directly related to that party theme. And I could do this for my other 100 party themes simultaneously. And I have loved it ever since.
But if you’re still considering which email marketing platform to go with, I want to give you a few other benefits of Convertkit that make it my number one choice for creative entrepreneurs. The first thing is that Convertkit is really focused on creators like you and me. For example, bloggers, artists, and online entrepreneurs. Its features are tailored to help grow an audience and monetize content, making it an ideal choice for creative businesses.
The Convertkit platform itself is extremely user-friendly, which is really important for us creatives who can sometimes find the tech overwhelming. Amiright?
The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing For Creative Entrepreneurs: Why I love ConvertKit is the Best Choice for Creative Entrepreneurs
And here’s something that’s super important. ConvertKit might be the best email marketing software for selling digital products. It has built in tools for selling digital products like printables, courses, or eBooks directly through email. You don’t have without requiring third-party tools or plugins. It has built in landing pages, and forms that are more robust than Mailchimp, allowing you to easily create lead magnets and capture emails.
This is great for creatives who need simple, customizable ways to grow their email list. Convertkit also has great customer service. Every time I’ve reached out with a question or concern, they get right to the problem. Even when my question is probably a very dumb one! They always seem to help me out.
And lastly, as part of Convertkit, you can opt into their creator network. Every time someone subscribes to you, you can recommend other creators that are handpicked by you. And this goes both ways. When other creators get email subscribers, they can recommend as a creator to follow as well. I’ve gained a lot of email subscribers this way, and I think it’s a really nice way to collaborate with other creators all across the web.
But Of course picking your email marketing platform is only the first step to growing your list. Once you do that, you’ve got to figure out how to get people on your list. And that’s why I created my free guide that will help you do just that. It’s the The Step-by-Step Guide to Building Your Email List with Lead Magnets.
Thanks for Reading The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing For Creative Entrepreneurs
I hope you enjoyed reading about The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing For Creative Entrepreneurs. Let me know how I can help you in the comments below!
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