Mighty Marketing Mojo

Tag: content curation

5 Expert Resources to Inspire Your Email Welcome Series

5 Expert Marketing Resources Share Tips and Examples to Inspire Your Email Welcome Series

I’m a huge believer in the power of email marketing to build and grow a business in our very digital world. Email is far from dead! Authentic, value-driven, personality-sharing emails delivered straight to your prospects’ inboxes are a great way to build Know-Like-Trust factors crucial to turn a reader to a prospect to a happy customer. One of the most essential tools in your email marketing toolkit is your series of automated emails to welcome a new list subscriber to your email community.

But if you’re not a writer or ever get stumped it can feel miserably hard to figure out what to say in a welcome series of emails. I’m here to help with a round-up of examples of good welcome emails that you should steal borrow for your business. PLUS I have a workshop coming if you want hands-on help and accountability for your creating your own Email Welcome Series Mojo.

“8 out of 10 customers expect to receive a welcome email after they sign up for an email list”

This article on the 7 best welcome email examples to engage your customers – from OmniSend – restates a lot of the great data out there that backs up why email is still an awesome marketing tool.

It includes good reminders that you may also have automated welcome series after someone purchases a product (digital or otherwise) from you. Goal here is to make sure they are happy with purchase, show how to get the most from the purchase, and encourage them to be repeat customers later. Omnisend shares examples from a variety of larger brand names and e-commerce sites (e.g. Michaels, AirBnB, Away) and smaller niche sellers.

HubSpot always leads by example with content marketing and giving valuable content in exchange for email subscriptions. It’s natural they have a round-up of 10 examples of welcome emails to inspire your own strategy.

They include examples from Virgin America. Monday.com, Ikea and more. Yes, those are big names with big budgets but they send welcome emails just like we can and do as solopreneurs and small businesses! There’s always a nugget or two to learn from the larger brands.

SendInBlue’s post on 9 best welcome emails examples to win over subscribers reminds us that we want to use our welcome emails to ‘start off on the right foot’ with our newest community members. These first emails are the most read and a golden opportunity at relationship building. Naturally, as an email marketing tool they also give an opt-in gift of email templates and encourage you to use their product. But the advice and examples work no matter what software you choose.

I liked that instead of just 9 brands’ emails, they showcased types of welcome emails: video greetings, GIFs, personalization, product showcases, and more.

This article from Instapage on the 7 welcome email examples for your next campaign reminds us that a good, attention-getting subject line is just as important for an initial welcome email as it is for all the rest of our emails. Pay attention to the subject lines of the examples from all these articles AND from the emails you get as you subscribe to new lists.

Tip 2 from Instapage is key – “set expectations.” In your welcome series set the tone for your new email relationship and be clear about how often you email, what types of things you send, and just generally build up trust.

Bonus Tip: Keep an email swipe file in your inbox

I use a label in Gmail to indicate Email Swipe Examples – and tag anything that catches my attention that I may want to explore, copy, or be inspired by later. See a good subject line, like how they formatted an email, like a phrase they use to talk about something in your niche – save it to your Swipe File. Then review that folder or label later when you feel stuck or need some inspiration for your own emails.

From my own much-loved email marketing software, Active Campaign, is their 6-email sequence you can steal based on examples from AC users and experts

Yep, they want you to go right ahead and borrow/steal/use their email examples. I’m sure they’d love if you used ActiveCampaign to send those emails, but they recognize they are walking the talk in content marketing by educating and offering value to everyone.

Be sure to read or scroll though to see examples of exactly what some AC experts out in their welcome series.

Such as this example that lists a 4-email series:

1 – Welcome – a friendly welcome to new clients

2 – How we work – start building trust with giving info on the team

3 – What to expect from us – lay out exactly what the new client can expect

4 – What we need from you – if a new client needs to fill forms, do tasks, offer them a checklist to make it easy and smooth start to the relationship

There are other nuggets in all of the articles about what can go in each email in the welcome series. Pull what works for you and your business right now.

Also, that’s a big part of what I’m teaching in my Email Welcome Series Mojo workshop – what to put in your series, how to craft a compelling email, and then we get them written!

Go find some inspiration here to write or refresh the most opened emails you ever send your community – your welcome email series.

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July 16, 2021
Using Canva as Part of Smart Content Curation

Use Canva and Templates to Style Images for Smart Blog Post Curation

Solopreneur pals it can be stressful and feel time-intensive to keep up with content marketing. Especially if you feel you have to create new content all the time. But wait! There are ways to be consistent in content marketing without starting from scratch every day. You can use content shortcuts or licensed content as a brain starter. You can repurpose content across platforms as a time-saver. You can fill in content gaps by smartly sharing other people’s content with smart content curation. And Canva is an easy way to help you create your curations.

Content curation is not copying. That’s a big no-no and you already know that!

Content curation is not just re-posting something or sharing a link out via social media.

It’s more than just compiling a list of links and throwing them on a page.

Smart content curation means you add your own insights, why you are sharing something, and add value while bringing valuable content to your audience.

You are giving credit to the original source, even sending them some nice keyword, back-link juice. You clearly quote your source. You are doing favors both for your audience and the original content creator.

If you’re low on time, running around with clients, juggling multiple projects – instead of letting your blog sit dark and dormant – curate some content over there and help your people!

As a trained, degreed library professional before I went out on my own as a marketing coach, I know a thing or two about curating content and doing it safely and legitimately. Think about it – libraries are giant collections of curated content. Librarians are constantly searching out and then displaying and sharing new books, new films, new homework help, and new resources to help their particular communities. You can literally ‘borrow a page’ from them!

My coach and pal Kelly McCausey runs a Smart Curation Skills challenge and it kicks me in the but with a giant “D’UH why don’t I do this more often” every time I’ve taken it. Even if you miss the live week-long challenge you can get the tips, demo videos, and take on a 5-day challenge of your own any time of year.

Kelly says about smart curation:

“Think of curation as your ‘Easy Button.’ Other smart people are creating all kinds of amazing content that your people can benefit from. When you’re the person to introduce it, you gain authority by simple association.”

Content curation is a smart, easy way to be more consistent with your content marketing.

What Does a Curated Post Look Like?

First up, curated posts are not long.

Tell ‘em what you’re sharing, show the thing, tell ‘em why you’re sharing, and encourage your readers to go check out this other valuable post. That’s it!

One way we make sure we’re on the up-and-up with our curation is to never take another site’s images – don’t link to their image (that could break and it’s on the line for fair use). We instead take a screenshot to show what and where we are curating.

I also usually add a link back to the original post as the image link.

Kelly and I each like to style the images in way to show we ‘borrowed’ or screen-captured them – that they aren’t ours. Kelly loves Snagit + Photoshop. Me, I’m a looooong time Canva girl. (I do have SnagIt and like it a lot!) You can create blog post images – including curation posts – using the design or image tool of your choice. Don’t over think it!

You can use the many frames in Canva to style an image so it’s more clear it’s a screen-capture.

Below is a short demo video of me using the built-in-to-Firefox screenshot tool and my already created blog post image templates in Canva (affiliate). I use Canva (affiliate) frame elements to style them in a way that makes it a littler clearer the image is not original to me.

If you want to practice your curation skills to boost your content marketing consistency I highly recommend you check out Kelly’s Smart Curation Skills challenge.

**yes those are my affiliate links for Canva (affiliate) and Kelly’s course but I only share things I test and trust – you’ll never pay more for using my links and could often get a discount**

July 14, 2021
10 Types of Email Subjects to Get Attention and Opens
Solopreneurs Use These 10+ Types of Tested Email Subject Lines to Get More Attention and Higher Open Rates

You’ve heard and seen me teach and preach on the power of email marketing to drive business success for budget-minded small businesses and solopreneurs. Email marketing is far, far from dead!

But sometimes our stats look sad and we worry we aren’t reaching our mighty peeps on our carefully crafted lists. Look, there are a lot of reasons open rates may be down/off (and are a poor measure of overall success), but there ARE also ways we can work on getting more attention in crowded inboxes. I’m not talking about anything spammy! More like using some consumer psychology and knowledge of how human brains work – regardless of niche or industry or business size.

Now, I don’t have hundreds of thousands of emails I can use as data to test everything about email writing or email subjects. At least not YET I don’t! But as I keep building my business through email marketing, I’ll keep sharing what I’ve learned on email writing. But in the meantime, you need to dive in and get writing! 😁

What Makes a Good Email Subject

Good email subjects are like good blog post headlines, attention-getting social media posts, headlines on sales pages – something that grabs your reader and makes them keep going. If a subject isn’t interesting, relevant and on-topic – it gets skipped or deleted right out of the inbox. We HAVE to get that first open so we can have a relationship with our email community.

How do we do that without acting spammy or feeling icky?

That’s where that consumer psychology research and years of copy-writing ‘hacks’ come in – that we can learn and borrow from. Using data says is proven to work isn’t icky – it’s actually pretty smart and saves you tons of time!

There are lots of places that talk about email marketing tips and in particular, how to write attention-getting, open-and-read email subjects.

There are some common points across the various sources, pointing to tried-n-true copywriting techniques on what gets people to open and read your marketing emails. Use these core types of email subjects to your advantage!

I’m a researcher and a teacher, so I’m trained to the core to share resources I’ve used. It’s about time I shared some of my ‘secret’ tools with you too!

Email Subjects Derived from Consumer Psychology – aka Why Our Brains Say CLICK

One well-researched, well-crafted, and frequently updated post with more than 150 tested email subject lines from OptinMonster. [It’s been updated AGAIN – now 164 subjects!]

This mega guide to email subjects that get attention is broken down by type or category of subject line – you should be aware of all 10 human-behavior types of emails.

They read like a primer on the human psyche or even the 7 deadly sins! Check out a few, see what might work in your industry or niche – not all will be a clear fit for every type pf business, but don’t write them off! Then mix, match, and test variations out for yourself!

The Core 10 Types of Human-Behavior-Driven Email Subjects

1) FOMO – Fear of Missing Out – also known as ‘scarcity’ or ‘urgency’
e.g. ” your 6-figure content plan goes bye-bye at midnight”

2) Curiosity – humans don’t like gaps or open loops in their brains
e.g. “9 disgusting facts about Thanksgiving”

3) Funny/Humor– a fine line and requires creativity but can pay off (could also be a spot where you use pop culture references
e.g. ” As You Wish” (a reference to the Princess Bride)

4) Vanity/Ego – we all want to be liked and accepted
e.g. “Your butt will look great in these workout pants”

5) Greed – it’s tough to pass up a really good deal
e.g. “Flash. Sale. Alert”

6) Sloth – we humans are a lazy lot! talk shortcuts or time-savers
e.g. “steal these email templates”

7) Pain Points – where are your customers on their customer journey? note the problems you solve
e.g. “stop wasting money on ink”

8) Retargeting subject lines (works if you have data about a subscriber – such as they failed to finish a purchase online, clicked your FB ad, didn’t purchase after a trial, etc)
e.g. “hey, forget something? Here’s 20% off”

9) Personal – personalization in subject lines (using a contact’s name)
e.g. “happy birthday Mary – surprise inside!”

10) Straightforward – when in doubt, keep it simple and clear
e.g.” Happy Holidays from [Company Name]”
e.g. “The 2021 state of social media report”

Other Smart Sources Agree on Key Email Subjects That Can Work for Many Businesses

Neil Patel agrees on many of these core, psychology-drive email subject types in his mega round-up of clickable email subjects.

He mentions:
- Curiosity
- Scarcity – aka urgency, FOMO; he suggests using deadlines for your CTA as well as the word “tomorrow” in your subject (boosted open rates by 10%).
- Free – we all love free things. Send your subscribers little extra bonuses from time to time – no extra steps required (I teach this in both my welcome series coaching program and my Write Your Damn Emails Challenge).
NOTE: Neil shares research here that says we should NOT fear using the word “free” in our email subjects – data that says you won’t immediately end up in spam. So test it out!
- Personalization – data shows it improves clicks and conversions. So go use your subscribers’ names! (and we better hope they gave us REAL names!)
- News – give your people the breaking news they want – just stay relevant to your business and niche.
- Social proof – we like knowing that something is popular, that others like us, like that thing too. “Join our 3000 active subscribers” or using a testimonial, a quote, a link to an ‘influencer’ in your niche.
- Announcements, events – if you are speaking somewhere, have a masterclass, are attending an event – let people know. And invite your readers to join you when possible.
More common types of emails – and subjects – mix in with the psychology-driven tips

Other types of emails, that you can mix in or use with the psych and copy-writing tips are those shown to be effective in research on subject lines from Instapage:
- How-To – classics can work! You’re telling your reader you’re about to help them. It can also have aspects of curiosity at work – people want to know HOW you’re going to deliver on what you’re teaching
  g. “how to grow your business in 15 minutes”
- Self-interest – we all want to improve something about ourselves, so tap into that.
  g. Mint’s “Can you guess your top spending categories last week?”
  E.g. CoSchedule’s “21 social media templates to help you execute a strategy for 10x growth”
- Quick Fixes – tap into human behavior #6 from above, “Sloth.” Humans are lazy. We are wired to look for quick fixes. Why things like “secrets”, “insider’s tips” or “just 15 minutes” can work so well.
  g. Salesforce “36 enterprise apps you could build and deploy today”
  e.g. IMPACT blog “ 4 simple tweaks to convert more subscribers on your blog”
- Comparisons – we’re constantly comparing ourselves (and our businesses) to others to see how we stack up. Play in to your reader’s inner competitiveness.
  g. Experian “see how you measure up”
  e.g. Formstack “12 problems all digital marketers understand – do you relate?”
- Ask Questions – I’ve personally tested this one multiple times through A/b or split testing and question versions of subjects usually win. Easy to pair with the other suggestions.
  g. “Will this be your defining moment?”
  e.g. “Sally, want to quit your job and get paid to write?”
Still want to see even MORE examples of email subjects that have worked for businesses across industries and niches? Ok!

Check out this roundup of 180+ proven email subjects – sortable by category!- from Sleeknote.

The categories Sleeknote has are echoed by the earlier lists -using a mix of consumer psychology and copy-writing 101.

E.g. Funny, Curiosity, Social Proof, Last Chance (aka scarcity)

Plus use-case or event types of emails like: cart abandonment, follow-ups, promotions.

Some of the examples I liked include:
- Personalized: “We’d love your feedback, Seray!” from Joybird
- Funny: “Great, another email” from Studio Neat
- Scarcity/Last Chance: “bye bye bye” from Proven
Of course the content marketing experts at HubSpot have their own round-up of email subjects. See their 150+ best email subjects. How many follow the Psych 101 tips or categories mentioned above? 😉

Note: You have to scroll a bit to find out the brand, product, or industry of some of the emails. But many of the subjects are general enough to tweak and use in any business I suspect.

Some of my favorites from the HubSpot list:
- “*Don’t open this email*” – ohhh some reverse psychology!
- “As you wish” – ahh a pop culture reference – and one of my favorite
- “Do not commit these Instagram atrocities”
I’ve talked about these email writing tips in several of my live video chats – so if you don’t want to keep clicking and reading – you can watch the videos below. Then go write some mighty email subjects to test.

Email Marketing – Improving Your Subjects – Better Subjects for More Opens

Is anyone listening? How to make an impact with the ONE thing you truly control in open rates – your email subject. I share some of my split test results on email subjects plus a favorite tool for writing better headlines (and email subjects).

Don’t over think things, don’t try to use ALL of these all of the time, do pick 2 or 3 types of subject to try out with your list and see what the data shows is working. Keep testing and learning. When in doubt, always be clear and give value to your people – align the subject with what’s inside your email – no ‘bait-n-switch’!

To avoid landing in the spam folder, the dreaded ‘promotions’ tab, or just being deleted – take a little time to use natural human tendencies to craft a subject line that gets attention, gets opened, and gets read.
July 13, 2021
4 Ways to Evaluate Content Beyond Pageviews

Solopreneurs Concerned with Content Marketing Should Know These 4 Ways to Evaluate Your Content Success

You know I love digging into data and research and sharing tips with you – so this post about the 4 ways you can evaluate and measure your content success beyond standard old pageviews, caught my attention. I’m a big believer in letting data inform our marketing and help us improve our efforts to serve our audiences. Do more of what works!

From the content marketing team at AudienceOps…

Pageviews don’t give you a full picture of your content’s effectiveness. You need a deeper well of metrics to know whether your content really fulfills its purpose

Which is why as smart small biz folks using the power of content marketing, we need to know the tips, tools, and ways to make it work for us. You want to check out these 4 other ways to look at seeing if your content is doing what you set out to achieve.

A great example is tip #1: Lead Generation

If you create content with the intent of bringing in mighty, awesome new potential clients or customers … how do you know if your website content is leading to new leads? And even more importantly, is your site attracting and serving the right-for-you kind of audience? Are you getting bot traffic? Lookie loos who skim and bounce away quickly? Fluff traffic attracted by a viral, fluffy, not-on-message, blog post?

The most fundamental way to fix this is by asking visitors to do something on the page that pushes them into the next stage of the customer journey.

Translation – do you have a super opt-in form and gift in ALL your blog posts? [uh oh time to add one here too! 😉] Or are you asking them to leave a comment? to share your post with THEIR people?

I also like the bonus tips in this section on things like testing your CTA, putting your opt-in or CTA in different parts of your post, using different buttons or graphics, etc.

The other areas we should look at for content success metrics include: user behavior, quality engagement, and brand reputation.

All the points offer good ways to use the time and skills you have to dive a little deeper into seeing what is – or is not – working on your website with your content marketing.

July 12, 2021
Smart Content Curation for Quick Solopreneur Marketing Wins

So, What IS Content Curation and How Does It Help for Easier Solopreneur Marketing?

Naturally, as trained library professional (once one, always one), curation is right up my alley. Without that degree I’d still be a natural, life-long learner and sharer of information. I consider it a core part of my business to go find smart, useful resources and share them here with you – that’s content curation in a nutshell.

Maybe it would be better if I SHOWED you what smart content curation is .. by curating from one of the masters. 😀 I’ll let my biz coach and content marketing master extraordinaire, Kelly McCausey tell you about content curation as a component of good, easy, quick content marketing that is PERFECT for us solopreneurs. When you have only a small chunk of time to work on some marketing, content curation is a perfect fit.

When you see something smart that another writer, blogger, biz owner has written and you want to share it – pause before you automatically drop it in to Facebook. Instead, go to your website, create a new post, add in a few paragraphs (100-150 words, 2 paragraphs at most! This is supposed to be quick) about WHY you think that thing you read is great and worth sharing (or why it got you hopping, blood boiling mad), and link to the original post. Take a screenshot of the original post, put that in YOUR post, along with making sure you note who the author of the original material is, and BOOM. You have curated content ready to share. NOW you go share YOUR post to Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.

If you want to see some example posts I curated here at Mighty Marketing Mojo during Kelly’s most recent 5-day curation challenges, you could read my posts on: How Can Solopreneurs Beat Imposter Syndrome, the 5 Core Social Media Skills for All Solopreneurs, or one that amplifies a fave topic of mine, You CAN Grow Your Social Media Presence Without Tons of Time.

Join me and Kelly McCausey of LovePeopleandMakeMoney.com as we chat about content curation in marketing

To help reinforce how easy and natural it is for us to curate and share smart content – we already do it nearly every day on social media, let’s just take it back to our own home bases (our websites or blogs) – I invited Kelly to chat with me and my community during my 30in30 Mighty Marketing Challenge.

Kelly is so smart and down to earth and fun that I can’t just keep that chat inside my community, I gotta share it with everyone! 😁
I especially need to share with all my pals who couldn’t make the chat live and begged me for replays. Click below to pop-up the video and watch our chat.

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And if you want to dive a little deeper in to refining your content curation skills as part of a smart content marketing strategy for your business – I’m happy to chat with you and definitely think you ought to check out Kelly’s Smart Curation Skills class that’s available for you to go through anytime.

Something we chatted about quite a bit in the video was how it’s ok, even necessary, for you to take a stand and share your opinions, even through your content curation. Of course, Kelly has a post about powering up your blog by being more opinionated. I think too many of us shy away from getting up on our soapboxes (you know you have one) and sharing our opinions (you know you have those too!) about what’s going in our niches, our industries, what we think is awesome and what just drives us bonkers. Check out Kelly’s 7 tips for sharing your opinion – and I’ll add that these tips work for those posts you’re curating too.

Now go do what you already do – share stuff you love with your audience of customers, clients, and prospects. Give them good, useful info and help build that KNOW-LIKE-TRUST factor that’s so important in growing and marketing a business. Come over to the Mighty Marketing Mojo Facebook Group and share with us what you curated in just 10 minutes!

April 23, 2019