One of the things that makes me sigh when I review a wedding business website is when I see a box shoved at the bottom of your page saying, sign up to my newsletter. Why? Because I know 99% of people are ignoring it. Do you know what? Nobody cares about your news. So in today's episode, I'm going to be sharing with you why this approach usually fails and what you should be doing with your email marketing instead.
I'm Becca Pountney, wedding business marketing expert, speaker and blogger, and you're listening to the wedding pros who are ready to grow podcast. I'm here to share with you actionable tips, strategies and real life examples to help you take your wedding business to the next level. If you are an ambitious wedding business owner that wants to take your passion and use it to build a profitable, sustainable business doing what you love, then you're in the right place.
Let's get going with today's episode. I might not like the term email newsletter, but that doesn't mean that I'm not a big fan of email marketing. Why? Because we know that it works. You know, in most cases, email marketing outperforms social media every time when it comes to visibility and even when it comes to making sales.
So in today's episode, we're going to be talking about why that is, why email marketing does work, how to make it more effective, and what you should and shouldn't be doing. So let's dive straight in. The first reason why email marketing usually outperforms social media is deliverability. You know, when you post something on social media, you have no idea who's actually going to see it.
You may reach a few people, you may reach hundreds of people, you may reach a high capacity of people who follow you, you may reach a lot of people that don't follow you. And it is a little bit of a game. The thing is, when it comes to email marketing, it's going to be delivered to everyone. If there's a message you want to get across to people, it is going to go to everyone on your email list. Now, not everyone may open that email, but they are all going to receive it unless it bounces.
So in terms of deliverability, email marketing is always going to be more effective than your social media is. The other thing is we need to look at the numbers. Now, I was reading a report by a company called Mailmunch this week and they were talking about the impact of social media versus email marketing and how many people are seeing what you do. Do you know, on average, social organic reach is only estimated to be 6%. And honestly, sometimes I think that's actually generous.
Whereas for your email marketing, the average email open rate is actually 21%. And I know because I've worked on lots of your email marketing campaigns, for some of you, your open rate is much higher than that. So that's a bare minimum. So let's imagine we've got 2000 people. 2000 people who are on your email marketing list and 2000 people that are following you on social media. How many of them are going to see your posts or your email messages?
Well, based on those averages, if you've got 2000 followers on social media, 120 of them will actually see the post. Whereas if you've got 2000 email subscribers, a much bigger 420 of them will actually read the email. More of them will see the email, but 420 of them will actually read it. So you can see, email marketing is going to outperform social media almost every time when it comes to getting a message across.
Okay, becca, you're thinking, that's great, but you started this episode by telling us email newsletters don't make you happy. Well, why is that? And why do newsletters not work? The thing is, when we put a thing on our website that says sign up to my email newsletter, we often do it because you've heard a talk where someone's told you email marketing is important, or perhaps you do have a regular newsletter and you just want to get a few more people signed up to it.
Or maybe your web designer suggested it because it was part of the layout of the template of that website. However, how often do people actually fill that form in? If you have that on your website, if you have a thing that just says sign up to our email newsletter, does anyone ever do it? What percentage of people actually do it? It doesn't work. Why? Because people don't want to give their email address away just to get news.
We are asked for our email addresses all of the time and we don't want to give it away all of the time because we always know we're savvy that people are going email us if we give them their email address. Therefore our email address is valuable. So just giving a newsletter in return for an email address for most people isn't worth it. So I want to think about some big brands and some of the reasons I've given my email address away over the last couple of years.
Because sometimes when we look at our own habits in other areas, it helps us think how we could be marketing more effectively in our own wedding business as well. I'm going to share with you six different places. I've left my email address in recent times, and I'm sure maybe you got some examples too.
As I go through them, think about your own habits and behavior and think if any of these resonate with you and whether you'd give your email address for something similar in the same way that I did. Now, on each of these occasions, I know that when I give them my email address, they are going to send me email newsletters. And I don't believe I've actually unsubscribed from any of these places. I don't often unsubscribe to a newsletter unless it's really, really irritating me.
So here are some of the places. So the first one is the coffee shops. I've signed up with my email address to Starbucks. I've signed up to my email address for Costa and probably a few others as well. Now, when I go into a cafe to buy a piece cake or a coffee, they don't actually need my email address. When we think about it, I'm going in as a human being, giving over my money and getting the product. So how have they managed to convince me to give my email address to them? It's simple.
They have coffee clubs. I'm sure lots of you are part of the Costa club or the Starbucks club. Whenever you order a coffee, they'll say to you, are you a member of the Costa club? Do you want to scan your points card? And you do it. But in order to do that, you have to give over your email address. Now, obviously they then collect data from you because they're scanning it every time you order a drink and they end up knowing you better than yourself. Now, what does this club offer?
Well, occasionally it's a reward scheme. You know, like the old printed cards that they used to give you at coffee shops. So you collect so many beans for your hot drinks and then they'll give you one free. Occasionally they'll send you other offers and deals as well. Why? Because they know you. They know your buying habits. I had a great one through from Costa this week where it said when I go in next and buy something, I can claim a free Diet Coke. They know I love Diet Coke. Why?
Because they can see how many times I've ordered it and they know that offer is going to work for me. So despite feeling like a place where I really don't need to give my email address, almost all of us probably have done this and given our email address in return for being part of some kind of club. So that's example one. Example two is when you have to give your email address to get access to some kind of tool.
Now I actually do this quite a lot, but one of the examples I think again a lot of us probably have done is BBC iPlayer. So if you want to watch a show on BBC iPlayer, you have to log in. Now there's no cost associated with BBC iPlayer, but you have to log in. It's the same with all of those different free television streaming services. So you are giving them your email address in return for access to the tool. Now this happens as well with various tech tools.
So another one I've signed up to recently is the ubersuggest page where you can get some SEO information and you can get some of that information for free. But in order to do it, guess what? To use that tool you have to give them your email address. So the second reason I give away my email address is in return for some kind of tool. Okay? The third reason I give away an email address recently is for some kind of discount or offer.
Have any of you ever been online shopping and you're looking through outfits or you're looking through products? And then up comes a pop up saying if you give us your email newsletter you'll get 10% discount, you'll get free delivery, you'll get 5% pounds off your first order. All of those are very tempting. Why? Because you're already on that site, you're already interested in what they have to give you.
And so why wouldn't you want to give them your email address and get that special discount or special offer? An example I've done recently is I have a Tassimo coffee machine and I was ordering my Tasimo coffee and they said well you can order it without signing up, but if you give us your email address we'll send you a free delivery code. Well, guess what I'm going to do? I'm going to give them my email address.
So the third reason I would give away my email address to a company for email marketing would be for some kind of offer or discount. And again, I'm sure lots of you listening have done this as well. Okay, fourth one is the one we probably talk about the most in our industry, and that's giving away a free resource.
So when you go to a talk or a seminar, when you hear a podcast episode, when you go to an online training, or when you follow someone on social media, quite often you can get a free resource in return for your email address. I'm currently planning my next holiday to Disney and I see lots of these creators who have these cheat sheets or ways to plan out your day in Disney and all of these things. But if you want to get hold of them and that resource, guess what?
You've got to hand over your email address. I did it recently here on the podcast with the AI cheat sheet with Bailey. You just go to Becca bot write in AI cheat sheet and you can get that free resource. But guess what? In return for an email address, and I would do that myself, I want to get those prompts. It's useful to me. It's going to benefit my business. But I know I've got to give my email address in return.
So that's the fourth example is when you give away a free resource or get a free resource in return for your email address. Okay, my fifth example is a competition. Again, lots of us do this all of the time without thinking about it. We want to enter a competition, but in order to enter a competition, guess what? We need to give our email address.
So if you listen to the radio quite often at heart radio where I used to work, they'll have competitions which are free to enter online, but they're not entirely free because if you want to enter them, then you have to give your email address. There's competitions all over the Internet and quite often you end up signing up to a random email newsletter in order to get the competition prize or to be in with a chance to win it.
Now the benefit of this is normally the company is selling the thing that you're interested in. That's why you're entering the competition. Another example from my own life recently is I entered a competition to win a copy of the computer game FC 25. Now this is a silly game that comes out every single year for footballing mad children. And basically you have to keep buying the new copy because they always want the latest one and it's really expensive.
Now, I saw this competition pop up where you could win a copy of it, so I thought why not enter it? But of course when you enter a competition, you're giving away your data, giving away your email address. Now, sadly, I didn't win the competition, so I probably will still end up getting it for them for Christmas. However, this is smart on the advertisers part because the people entering to win that prize probably want it. So now they know that they have my email address.
I'm interested in buying that particular game. So if they were to happen to send me a discount or an offer for that game over the next week or so, chances are they would convert me into a customer. So having a competition is another time when I would give away my email address. The final example that I have for you that I thought about recently was when you fill in a quiz and then you have to give your email address to get the quiz results and again end up on that email marketing list.
If you ever done this, you ever entered one of those free iq quizzes or. What I did actually recently was a health check quiz. You could fill in all these details to get some kind of healthy eating plan. Seemed like a good idea at the time. You fill out all the time, all the quiz details, and then guess what at the end of it, if you want to see the results, you have to give your email address and you then get the report sent through. Again, pretty much worth it.
Again, clever on their part because they've now attracted someone that's interested in exactly what they sell and they've got them on their email list. Each of these different examples from some of the bigger companies are very, very different, but they all have something in common and that's that I'm getting something in return for my email address. I know my email address has value to the company and to me, and I don't want to just give it away for free.
When we just say sign up to receive our newsletter, we're not giving them anything in return. We're just saying sign up so I can send you more emails. So if you want your email marketing to be successful, we need to ditch this newsletter model and think about it differently, learning from some of these bigger players in the market. Okay, so I've given you lots of different examples. I now want to talk through which one of these could work best for you in your wedding business.
So we're going to go through each of the examples again, and this time I'm going to talk to you about how I think you could or couldn't use this in your wedding business. And let's see which of them resonates for you. For each of you. It may be very different, but there may be something in here that you think, yeah, that's the strategy that I'm going to go forward with. Now, there's no way you could action all of these, especially as a small business.
So listen to each of them as I go through them and then work out which one you think would be the best fit and would be the most effective for you and your business. Okay, let's talk about the coffee club one first of all. Now, this is probably not relevant for almost all of you because the technology involved is big and being part of a club is hard. However, I do think this would stand you out from among your competitors.
If there is some kind of club you could create, not in the same way as the Costa club, but some kind of planning club they could be part of where they get access to free pre recorded resources that would set you apart from your competitors because not many other people are doing it. I had this idea on vicinity weddings that I've never really got very far with where there was a planning club for couples, but I do think it could be effective if I'd have spent more time with it.
So they give you the email address and in return they get hold of some planning tools, maybe some kind of club membership, maybe they get some kind of reward for booking certain packages. They become some kind of gold member. I don't know. I never really took it any further. And although I don't think most of you, this would fit with, some of you actually maybe want to take this idea forward and think about how could you create a version of the Costa or Starbucks club in your business business?
What could you give that makes someone a member? And how could you reward your members in return for their email address? And for them being part of that club, do they get early access to something? Is there something that's worth seeing? Okay, the second example I gave was giving your email address in return for some kind of tool. Now again, this probably isn't relevant for most of you in the wedding industry, however it could be.
So perhaps you've got some kind of tool that helps people to plan their wedding budget. Maybe it's an excel spreadsheet or something like that. If you have access to something like that, that would count as a tool that they could use. It might also fall under the resource category, unless it was a particularly complex tool that you had built on a website with code and things like that. They can only see if they stay on your mailing list, and if they unsubscribe, they lose access to that tool.
So again, probably not for most of you, but there may be some of you that think, yeah, actually I could create a tool, or I have the skills to create a tool like that that they would want to use, and therefore they'll want to stay on my email newsletter. Otherwise they lose access to that tool. Okay, third option then is some kind of offer.
Now you will know if you've listened to this podcast for a long time, I am not a big fan of the word discount in industry, you will have heard me say it time and time again, Disney never discount. And we all need to be a little bit more Disney. I don't think, unlike retail, that offering big reductions on your products and services is a great idea. I think it undervalues what you do.
However, if you do want to go down this route, then you need to think carefully about how you could do some kind of offer, or whether it's some kind of time limited offer or whether it's maybe an upsell or an upgrade. Now, the one time when I do think this strategy can work is some kind of offer that you offer at a wedding show. So if you're trying to get email newsletter to sign up at a wedding show, you could do some kind of special edition.
If you sign up to this, you will get this much credit towards your wedding day, or you'll get this additional value as well when you book us whatever it is. But it's a time limited thing, only available to the people in that room on that day. So it's not something I would put on your website. I wouldn't be offering big discounts left, right and center all over your website.
However, it could be a strategy you would use at a wedding show in order to attract people over to give you their email address. As we know, it can be harder to collect email addresses in person even than it can online. So that's the option for number three, the offer. One I would recommend for a wedding show, but maybe not for your website. Okay. Number four was the free resource. Now, this one is something that every single one of you can implement.
The free resource is a bit different to the tool because it's something that they get and then they normally download and they get to keep forever. So it's not like a tool that they lose access to if they unsubscribe. It's more like a document. So they could subscribe, get the document, and then unsubscribe, and they would be in their right to do that.
So an example of some kind of document you could give them would be some kind of cheat sheet, a planning guide, some top tips, questions to ask your venue, questions to ask you, maybe a supplier list of resources. I don't know. There's all sorts of different ways you could give away a resource that they can't get anywhere else. Now, this resource needs to be attractive to them. It needs to solve their problem, and it also needs to be related to where you fit into their planning process.
Because if you give them away something that isn't anything to do with what you are starting to sell them. It's hard to turn those email subscribers into a follower. So, for example, if you were a photographer and you're giving away a planning checklist, that's helpful. But they might just want the planning checklist. But it's not actually because they're in the market for their wedding photographer. In fact, they may have already booked their wedding photographer.
So you need to think about something that's particularly relevant to you, maybe poses for your wedding photos, how to prepare for an engagement shoot, what to wear in an engagement shoot, some kind of guide that is very relevant to the service or product you are trying to sell them. So a resource is one. Almost every single one of you could implement an action. And that would be the simplest thing to add to your website.
Instead of sign up for our newsletter, it would be sign up to get our guide to XYZ. Okay. The fifth example I gave was for a competition. Now, I do think competitions can work successfully in our industry, but there are pros and cons to running a competition. The first thing is, if you are going to do a competition to try and attract email addresses, is you really need to be hot on the terms and conditions.
I know it's not particularly interesting, but if you're based down in Cornwall and someone enters your competition to win a product up in Scotland, well, that's not that relevant to you. And now you've got to travel all the way to Scotland to deliver it for their wedding day, which isn't ideal. So if you are going to have some kind of competition, you do need to make sure you put terms and conditions in there.
Make sure that the wedding date is in a certain period, make sure that it's within a certain location. The other thing is you do want to give away a service or product that is reasonably related to what you do, again, because you want to attract the right people. So, for example, you could give away a copy of a video game like the competition I entered, but then you'll get people entering that aren't even getting married or in the market for what you do.
So you need to really think about why they're going to enter and how you could then convert them into a customer. So the competition option is a good one. This, again, particularly works well at wedding shows. Now, the reason it works well at wedding shows is because you could give away a more generic prize. An afternoon tea, a spa day, a bottle of prosecco, because you know the people in the room, 99% of them are there because they're planning their wedding.
Otherwise, why are they coming to a wedding show? So it works better than just putting it on social media or online where anyone could enter. So a competition does work, but you do need to think about T's and C's. And you do need to make sure the prize is relevant in order to attract the right email subscribers that you can then sell your products and services to. One note on competitions is don't do a competition where they have to make a purchase to enter the competition.
This isn't good practice in the competition world and it doesn't really work. So an example of that would be that the prize of your competition is a free, light up letter when you book a wedding package. That's not a competition prize, that's in fact an offer. So if you are going to do a competition prize, it needs to be no purchase necessary and it needs to have those good T's and C's. Okay, the final example I gave you was a quiz.
And again, for those of you that want to go deeper with your email marketing, I think a quiz is a good option for a lot of you. Everyone loves a quiz and you can tailor that quiz very specifically to what you do. So for example, I have a client who worked with us at the wedding pro agency and we created her a great quiz all about finding your skin type. And it's really helpful.
If you are someone that wants to understand your skin type or your makeup, what makeup you should be using, then why wouldn't you want to fill out that quiz and get those results delivered to you? So it is a really effective way. There's a complicated way to do a quiz and a simple way to do a quiz. The complicated way is to use a piece of software where people can actually fill in the results and then they get the results sent to them. This is more professional looking, but will be more costly.
Or you can just do a basic quiz, you know, like a magazine where you answer mostly a's, mostly b's, mostly c's. You can easily make something like that on canva and offer that as the quiz that they only get once they've given you their email address. So again, a quiz could be a really good option, is more exciting than just a resource, is interactive.
And again, depending on how you set it up, if you use those professional pieces of software, you can give people different email responses depending on what they answered in their I quiz. And that is when email marketing goes to another level. Okay, I've given you loads of different examples there of ways you could be using email marketing. That's not just the standard newsletter. Hopefully one of them is resonating with you.
Before I end the episode, though, I want to talk to you about what actually makes you read emails in the first place. We know that emails on average have a 21% open rate. So why are the other 80% of people basically not reading your email? So again, I thought through my own habits and I, I wanted to think about what makes me read an email. So the first thing that's gonna make me read an email is an interesting subject line.
If you send me an email that says October newsletter, I'm probably deleting it straight away. You need to entice me in. You need to give me a reason to hook me into reading that email. Maybe you're gonna promise to show me something inside that email. Maybe it's a hook, kind of a line that's intriguing and it makes no sense and I wanna understand why you've written it that way.
If you're not paying attention to the subject lines in your email, then you might be losing people clicking reading them. The second thing that will make me want to read an email is when you're giving me interesting information. That same client with the skincare quiz at Holly is amazing and I love that I'm now on her email list.
Originally I signed up to it to test that it was all working for the agency, but I've stayed on her email list because every time she sends an email about skincare, it's really, really valuable and I enjoy reading it. She gives product recommendations, she gives top tips about what I should be doing with my skin, and it's really, really worthwhile. I enjoy reading it. When I see that email come into the inbox, 99% of the time I'm going to open it.
So if you are sending emails, then you need to think about why someone would read it. What interesting information are you giving them? How are you helping them make their lives better based on whatever they signed up for in the first place? Okay, the third thing that makes me want to read an email rather than delete it is when I get early access to something, maybe early access to a product, a pre sale on something, or early access to information that nobody else else knows.
Now, an example of this is the England football emails. You will know if you listen to this podcast that at least one of my children, if not both of them, are quite into football at the moment, and so they like to go and watch some of the England games. Now, I signed up to the England newsletter because it gives me early access to products and information. So it will tell me what the upcoming games are, which is really useful. It will give me early access to buy tickets, which is really useful.
And often they have competitions in there as well. So nine times out of ten I will be reading the emails they sent me because I know they're going to to give me something really good. So is there an example where you could give your email subscribers every now and again early access to something or early access to a piece of information?
Maybe you're raising your prices or you've only got a few dates left for a certain year and you're only going to let your email newsletters know that and you need to tell them that, you know you're getting this information early because you're on my email list. Therefore it's giving you an opportunity to act before anyone else sees it. Maybe you're going to release a new product or service.
Tell your email subscribers first and again, tell them that's what you're doing so they feel valued and they're glad to be on your email address. The final thing that makes me want to read an email often is just it coming into my inbox. The right place, right time.
You know, when you're thinking about I don't know what to wear to this event or I don't remember how to do this with SEO, and then suddenly an email comes into your inbox and the title line, it feels like, oh, it answers my question that I'm thinking about right now. And sometimes that's all it is, right place, right time. That's why email marketing is effective, because you may feel like, oh, these subscribers are all on my email list and they're not doing anything.
But then suddenly you'll send them an email with the right thing at the right time and they'll take action on it. Last week in my emails, I sent out something about wedding shows. And I know that some people will have read that email with a wedding show coming up over the next couple of weeks when they've been stressing about it, thinking, oh, right place, right time.
Becca's got a resource on wedding shows, so sometimes just landing in someone's inbox at the right place at the right time is what's going to make them read your emails. So don't give up. Put the information out there. Okay. We've talked about alternatives to the email newsletter. We've talked about what would make people read your emails when you send them the final thing I'm going to share with you is a few top tips when it comes to this email marketing. That's not just a standard newsletter.
The first tip is that once they sign up to whatever it is that you've promised them that you put them through some kind of welcome sequence. Don't give them the free gift and then just drop them into a standardized set of emails. Instead, give them some kind of relevant, useful email sequence that they get before they just go into your master list. So for example, let's use the skincare example. I filled out the quiz.
The first email is going to tell me the results of my quiz and then I'm going to get a series of other emails with really beneficial tips and information about how to look after my skin. And then after that I'm going to go into that generic email that I get every month about skincare tips. This works really well because it helps me to know, like and trust the brand.
It shows me why these emails are worth reading and it's sending me a few of them right at the start when I'm the most interested in what they have to say because I've only just filled out the information. The second tip is to make regular contact with your email list. If you are going to do email marketing, don't neglect your list.
At least try and email them once a month with something useful that will make them want to read your emails if they don't hear from you for ages and then suddenly they pop out of nowhere. It feels really odd. Now, last year I went to a conference and I got signed up to an email newsletter and I heard nothing from this person for probably eight or nine months. Months.
And then recently, all of a sudden, they've obviously decided to work on their email list and they were suddenly emailing me every three days. And it felt really odd to me because I'm like, where's this person come from? I don't even really remember signing up to that list. Why have they not contacted me for the last nine months? And now they're emailing me all of the time. And so sadly, I did decide to unsubscribe.
So if you are going to collect email addresses, be a good user of those email addresses and contact them regularly. Give them the option to unsubscribe, of course, but if you're giving them regular, useful information, they're more likely to. Thirdly, don't worry about people unsubscribing. In fact, celebrate occasionally when someone unsubscribes because it's a good thing. I actually like it when people unsubscribe from my newsletter. Why?
Because it probably means they don't like what I have to say or they're not interested in what I have to say, which is fine, so let them go. And also because when you reach a certain amount of email subscribers in your software, you have to pay more. So if someone's not interested in what I have to say or doesn't want to work with me, I'd rather they left rather than sat there and cost me more money. So you have to have that mindset with your email. Stop looking and agonizing.
Every time someone unsubscribes, it's not a personal thing. For some reason, they've just decided that email's not for them right there and then. Maybe it wasn't relevant. Maybe they forgot they signed up to it. Maybe they did just enter the competition and now they're not interested. Let them go. There'll be new people who are interested. A huge email list isn't what we want.
What we want is a really useful email list of people that are interested in what we do, engaged in what we do, and eventually will buy what we do. The fourth thing is to review what's working. So go into your email software and look at the numbers, look at the analyst, work out what emails are being read more, what subject lines worked really well, what emails cause people to reply or to book or to pay you something and do more of them.
If you review it regularly, then you will see where the benefits are. Often we send these things out and then we don't go and review it, other than to feel sad looking at the unsubscribes. But actually we need to look at, right, I got more than a 21% open rate on this email. Why was that? Was it the time I sent it? Was it the subject line that I gave it? Was it because it was particularly useful or had some kind of special offer in it? What was the reason?
And how can I replicate that in the future? And the final thing that I say to people all of the time, and you've probably heard me say it before, but I think it's worth repeating, is remember when you send someone an email and they don't open it, at least they thought about you and your business before they deleted it. Which means you stayed top of their mind. Which is why sending them regular updates, even if they don't read it, is really valuable because maybe they will read one in the future.
And if they don't, they remembered that you exist. I hope today's episode has been super helpful when thinking about email marketing and thinking about how to avoid the standard sign up to my newsletter idea and if you need help with this, if you're thinking Becca, that's great, but I'm completely overwhelmed. Then please do reach out and chat to me. I'm sure there are ways I could help. At the wedding pro agency, we build email sequences. We build quizzes.
We build this stuff for you so that you don't have to do it. We work together to come up with the concept and then me and my team go away and build it for you and then it's all ready for you to start using at a wedding show or on your website. If you want help with that, reach out.
We also do regular newsletter updates for clients, so if you want to send a monthly newsletter but you just don't have time to do it and you want to chat with us about whether we could do that for you, then again, reach out. I'm happy to chat. Or it may be you want more of a strategy call to see where marketing with email fits into your overall marketing strategy.
I do have some spaces for one to one s over the next few months, so if that is you and you want to see a broader picture of your marketing strategy and how email can fit into it, again, reach out to me and let's chat. Good luck. Go take that line about signing up to New York newsletter off your website and replace it with something much more effective. I'll see you next time.