How Sheila Went from the Starting Blocks to Total Clarity - an Email Marketing Case Study

Today we have Sheila FG on the show, who is part of our membership, The League. Sheila helps podcasters and event owners find sponsors for their events. She's been in business for years, but it's only recently that she started creating products for her business and pivoting into coaching and consultancy. This is a fantastic email marketing case study of how Sheila got started and got results by emailing her list. 

Ready to find out how your business could transform, too? 

SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:

(3:16) Fancy a 14-day FREE trial with Keap?

(6:49) Sheila's email marketing before she joined The League.

(10:35) The changes Sheila implemented when she joined The League.

(13:04) How Sheila's business has changed since she started email marketing.

(14:29) How Sheila feels about her email marketing now.

(16:10) The things that made the biggest impact on Sheila's email marketing.

(17:51) What's next for Sheila's email marketing? 

(18:30) Has email marketing become a full-time job for Sheila?

(19:58) Can email marketing work for YOU?

(21:30) Subject line of the week.

Sheila's email marketing before she joined The League

Like many people in business, Sheila only started thinking about her email list a bit more seriously when she started selling products. Before that, she wasn't sure what to email her audience about. She didn't have a framework, and, in her own words, she felt awkward. She didn't know what her subscribers would want to receive from her and felt uncomfortable with the idea of only sending promotional emails. 

Plus, with some big-name digital marketers and speakers on her list, she suffered from Imposter Syndrome too. Why would they want to hear from her? After all, Sheila was only just starting out in the email marketing space while they were seasoned and established.

Before joining The League, Sheila would typically put together a sponsorship package and email the event out to her list of sponsors from her Gmail account. She didn't use marketing automation at all, and she found the back-and-forth communication time-consuming and not efficient at all. She'd lose track of conversations, and it felt a lot like 'busy work'.

The changes Sheila implemented when she joined The League

The first thing Sheila did when she joined The League was to start sending regular emails. Although her emails don't go out daily yet, she emails frequently. She has a Google Doc where she saves any ideas for email newsletters and enjoys finding topics to talk about that have a business lesson behind them.

Another thing Sheila started doing was to include links in her emails - something she’d not done before. She now adds multiple places to her emails where people can interact with her, including in her signature. That way, all the areas of her 'marketing machine' now feed to each other. For example, her email list feeds into her Facebook group and vice-versa. She'll often share a post in her Facebook group encouraging people who aren't on her list to join, so they can receive her daily emails.

Sheila also implemented automated email campaigns, and she loves that. Once they're done, she doesn't have to worry about that side of things.  

How Sheila’s business has changed since she started email marketing

Now, Sheila has people joining her list that she doesn’t recognise – she has no idea where or how they found her. Plus, she gets responses or questions from her subscribers. That's led to actual conversations with people, and it's great for Sheila to know that there's someone out there reading and taking notice.

How Sheila feels about her email marketing now

Sheila now wants to get more marketing campaigns in place in order for her email marketing to run on autopilot. She also wants to start tagging her subscribers to gain more clarity on who's on her list, what they do, and where they are in their journey with her.

Sheila's email marketing may still feel like a work-in-progress, and she admits she has a long way to go. But she feels a lot better about it. She says email marketing is now fun work because she can see results almost immediately - there's a progression there. Now that she's using email campaigns and automation, she can spend more time focusing on growing her business.

What had the biggest impact on Sheila's email marketing? 

Taking action and being consistent is what gave Sheila the biggest results. In particular, she noticed how well her email list and Facebook group work together by sending people from the group onto her list and vice-versa. But also, getting responses from people was a game-changer for Sheila. 

Out of everything she's learnt and implemented since joining The League, Sheila would advise anyone who's getting started with email marketing to prioritise emailing consistently every day. "The more you do it, the easier it gets," Sheila says. Consistency also helps with generating regular conversations.

Adding links to your emails is also important to help you figure out where you get more clicks, Sheila says. That way, you can work out what works for you and build forward momentum, rather than just sending something out into the ether and not knowing whether it’s going to work or not.

What’s next for Sheila in her email marketing?

Now that she's happy with the work she's done on the product side of her business, Sheila wants to focus more on the sponsorship side. She knows now that she has topics to write about, so she's planning on adding her sponsors' database into her email marketing system. And that will help her become more consistent with her emails.

Has email marketing become a full-time job for Sheila? 

When Sheila first started out, she thought sending out regular emails would take forever. But she soon realised that like we always tend to do with something new, she was overcomplicating things. When she started doing it, it became clear that she could quickly write an email and move on to the next thing. Once you get into it, it's not as overwhelming as you may think! 

There are so many things we could do or ‘should’ do in business, but it’s important to tackle them one at the time. It’s a bit like watching a person on stage spinning plates. They start with one, and only when that plate is spinning do they add another, and then another, and so on.

Email marketing is very much the same. Get something going consistently and then you can add something else to it. All you need to do, from time to time, is to go back and check that the original plate is still spinning and doing what it’s supposed to do for you.

Can email marketing work for YOU? 

It's okay for us and for Sheila to do email marketing, right? But will it work for you? We asked Sheila, and she confessed she had the same fear. At first, she didn't think people would want to hear from her. She felt like she was spamming them. But then she told herself we’re all human.

If you can figure out who the people on your list are and what they’re looking to learn, you can sprinkle that into your emails and make them interesting, engaging, and funny. Because regardless of what you’re selling, we’re all human, aren't we?

Subject line of the week

Sheila’s subject line is “Clear enough for you?” It sounds a little angry and confrontational, but the email was all about the fact that Sheila bought some salad cream in the States, and it had a white sticker stamped on it that said “USA date” to let people know how they should read the 'best before date'.

Inspired by that story, Sheila sent an email to her list talking about how everything seems clear to us when we’re inside our business. But is it as clear for the people on the outside? It's always worth remembering that there are things in our business or marketing that aren't clear for our customers, guests, or clients. So how do we combat that?

Pretty neat subject line from our Sheila, don't you think? 

Useful Episode Resources

About Sheila

If you want to connect with Sheila, you can find her on her website – Connected Sponsors.

Related episodes

Product Launch Emails – Success Story with Kay Peacey.

Using Email Marketing to Build a Profitable Business – a Success Story from a Member of The League. 

Who should not join The League of email marketing heroes.

FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketing

If you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. 

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