Hello 

Life – and business – can be a rollercoaster. Especially over the last few years. And when you hit a low stretch of the track you have to focus on the essential jobs to get you through, like serving customers and getting paid. In a small business that means marketing can be pushed onto the back burner.

The first casualty can be email marketing

I’ve found with my clients that email marketing tends to be even more vulnerable than other marketing channels.  If your website suddenly went down it would make you look bad in a matter of hours – maybe minutes - but you can quietly not get around to emailing for a few weeks and it’s not so obvious.

Yet when a crisis does happen and you need to drum up sales quickly, an engaged list of email subscribers is one of the best ways to do it. There’s no other channel where you have the attention of so many people who want to hear from you.

What happened to me

I’ve been guilty of this too. I hit my own dip in early summer this year when I had to step back and sort out some family stuff. Then I decided that the Speedy Email marketing club I started last year wasn’t working and I closed it down.

Don’t worry, we’re OK, it’s just the way life is at this post-covid, post-Brexit point in time. And the Speedy Email Club was actually a valuable business experiment that I learned a lot from. But any dip in the rollercoaster track takes time, energy, reflection and regrouping to get through.

It's not just about the time

As small business owners we tend to see it in terms of not having the time to do our marketing, but it can also be about not having the mental bandwidth or the creativity. And if this goes on too long it can sap your confidence, too. Luckily I didn’t feel that this time, but I definitely have in the past. If life feels like a slog it can feel impossible to come up with creative ideas or appear as upbeat as you feel you need to be.

So what can you do? 

These days I remind myself that I’m not a machine that can keep going whatever life throws at me. There will be times when I have to rest, rethink and regroup. That’s not being lazy or falling behind, it’s basic maintenance. Having support really helps, too. 

Don't deal with it alone

You might not be in a position to outsource your email marketing (if you are, you know where to find me! 😊) but having business friends to bounce ideas around with can really help. This is why I’m a member of Drive The Network. Not being afraid to open up to friends who aren’t in the business world is important, too. An evening out or a chat over a coffee makes me feel a lot more positive and able to tackle what life throws at me.

Practical things you can do save time and work

If you aren’t able to outsource your email marketing, there are things you can do to save time and streamline your process. 

• Check your reports to see what’s working and drop what isn’t. Are people really reading those long monthly newsletters? If not, a short round-up might be more effective as well as quicker for you to produce. 
• Can you set up an automated welcome sequence so that new buyers and subscribers get to know you right from day one? 
• If you’re posting a lot of great content on social media, can you repurpose some of it for your mailing list? Many Instagram posts can easily be expanded into a short article, for example – and many of your subscribers will never see that post on Insta anyway (thanks a lot, Meta. Grr).

All this does take some time and mental bandwidth of course, but not usually as much as you think. If I’m on a low stretch of the rollercoaster it’s usually a question of setting aside a quiet half-hour to get my brain thinking about who I want to reach and how I can best help them, then the ideas start flowing more freely.

If there’s anything I can do to help you get through your email marketing dip, just hit reply!

Have a good week,

Helen

• Want my help with your email marketing? I've updated my home page to better explain what I can do for you.
• Not sure exactly what I can do? Here are some projects I've worked on.