When you’re growing your email list, but subscribers aren’t converting to clients

Welcome to the next episode of the LionHearted Marketing Podcast!

What’s this episode about?

In today's episode, we're diving deep into the common misconceptions about email lists and the reality of how to truly convert subscribers into clients. If you've ever felt that despite growing your email list, you're not seeing a steady stream of clients, this episode is for you.

In this episode we cover:

1. The Myth of the 'Steady Stream'

   • The misconception about committing to email list growth equating to a consistent client influx.

   • The pitfalls of solely relying on ad campaigns and regular emails.

2. Three Pillars of Email Conversion Success:

   • Maximising the Impact: Learn how to get the most out of every resource and piece of content you produce. Remember Episode 5? We're building on that!

     • The importance of downloading rates and creating engagement from the start.

   • Curating a Personal Journey: Discover how to make your subscribers feel connected, known, and valued.

     • The overlooked treasure of welcome sequences and their potential impact.

   • Decreasing the Conversion Time: Accelerate the journey from subscriber to client. Are you utilizing segmentation?

     • The transformative power of segmenting and focusing on active subscribers.

3. Real-life Case Studies:

   • How tweaking email sequences can drastically improve engagement rates.

   • Harnessing the power of podcasts and integrating them into the subscriber's journey.

4. Practical Action Steps:

   • How to keep your email content fresh, relevant, and targeted.

   • Strategies for segmenting your audience and providing exclusive opportunities.

Links & resources mentioned in the episode:

• Previous Episode: Creating a Lead Magnet that Attracts Ideal Clients

• 1:1 Client Application: https://hello.dubsado.com/public/form/view/64949f0bbd75018a233d7dbf

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Read the transcript:

NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by an AI tool. Please forgive any typos or errors. LHM 009 - Solo - Leads no clients === [00:00:00] hello, and welcome to Lion Hearted Marketing. This is a podcast for bold businesses who are ready to go from a slightly scattergun marketing approach to connecting everything they're doing to create joyful, repeatable customer journeys, that build connection and consistently convert new clients. That's called a funnel. If you fancy. If you have that nagging feeling, you should have more of a grasp on your marketing, more of a plan, more of a system to support your pretty successful business. You're in the right place. This isn't about trying lows and new strategies. It's about taking what you've got and making the most of it. I'm Sophie your host. Self-confessed tea superfan marketing strategist and funnels or joyful journeys, as I like to call them, demystifier. Join me every Tuesday for my Lion hearted approach to marketing. To help you navigate those big moves, stay focused on your goals and ultimately take your business to the next level. Let's jump in to today's episode. Hello and welcome to the Lion hearted marketing [00:01:00] podcast. So today we are going to be talking about. What to do when you've committed to growing your email list, you're getting people on that. But you're just not getting clients from him. There seems to be a bit of a belief that I hear. Quite a lot when I talk to clients and on Instagram and when I read other people's content, That if you commit to growing your list by a certain amount each month, so maybe you give yourself a target. But you'll suddenly then start to get a steady stream of clients. And just the act of growing your list is enough to give you those consistent clients and inquiries and income. So that you don't have to rely on social media as much and to a point that it's absolutely true, you know, adding an additional marketing channel, you know, really committing to email marketing and using social media and email marketing. Should give you extra clients and income and revenue and more consistency. However. If you want to create a business that doesn't actually need you in it all the time gives you the flexibility to have more time [00:02:00] and energy freedom, as well as that financial freedom. I imagine. Like so many clients and me, like a year to six months ago. You might be getting clients from your email list. If you've been committing to it for the last sort of three to six months. Please, probably not as consistent and easy to predict or hands-free as you might have imagined. And what I see a lot is clients investing in ads in particular, obviously, because that's what I kind of work with clients on and growing their list. And there's a real focus on getting those low cost per lead, you know, and kind of really getting that settled. And that's absolutely the first step. So, you know, we start running ads, we test lots of different things and then we start to say, okay, on average, we, you know, every. A new email address going onto email list is going to cost you around. Let's say two pounds. Okay. And suddenly it's like, okay, great. I've got that to a point we always try and get that lower. I've got my welcome sequence. I'm committed to sending regular emails. And quite quickly, the [00:03:00] questions will then turn to, well, how quickly am I going to get discovery calls from this? You know, open rates are steady. People are clicking on the links in the emails. But, you know, getting replies to the emails, getting DMS, having calls booked is sporadic and the conversion rate then through to clients isn't as consistent as we'd like either. And some weeks it's working really well. And you think, yes, I'm doing really well. Other weeks. You're like, well, this worked really well last month. Why is this email not provoking more people to put their hand up and in a book, a call with me, it can feel really exhausting and not very rewarding. So, what I typically say then is there's a bit of a wobble. Is the money I'm spending on ads really worth it. Should I just spend more time on social media? The commitment to regular emails fades a little bit and often the content of emails gets quite sales heavy out to the left, because it's just about, I just need people to raise their hand. I just want people to. Tell me they're interested if I, you to do it from this angle and from this angle, and it almost becomes like an [00:04:00] ongoing sort of launch period, trying to get these people who've come onto your list. Mostly from ads. To actually convert into clients. And it can feel quite intensive. And despite everyone saying, you know, the money's in the list, you know, your highest conversions will come from people on your email list. It still feels really time intensive, really energy intensive, sending so many emails. To try and get someone to book a call and become a client. So from my perspective to truly benefit from having an email list and to start getting clients on what feels like autopilot, where you're not having to invest huge amounts of time and energy, to get them into your world and get them to book a call with you or get them to buy from you. We need to focus on three things. The first is maximizing the impact of every resource and piece of content you create. The second is to curate a journey that allows people to get to know you and build that know like, and trust as quickly as possible. I'm going to talk a lot over the coming weeks and on my social media about [00:05:00] this first 60 days when someone joins your email list because research has shown by a few different people actually. That first 30 to 60 days are so key when someone joins your email list, you know, we're bombarded. With emails. And when someone joins your email list, they are interested in what you offer. Hopefully the, you know, whatever they've joined for, whether it's a lead magnet, whether it's a downloadable or a guide they're interested in, and you've got a real opportunity to bit nurture them and build that relationship, but it's gotta be really intentional. Okay. So it's about curating that journey. And then the third thing is to really committing, to decreasing the time it takes to convert a subscriber or a follower. Into a client. And this is an area that is really overlooked. When we talk about email marketing. So. By focusing on these three things, you will be able to turn new people into clients proactively using automated marketing. Going to be using email marketing as [00:06:00] an example today, but a lot of these apply to ads as well. It's going to allow you to free up your time and energy and. And stop you having that feeling of just waiting for clients to raise their hand. Or having spent a lot of time on calls or DM-ing people writing endless ad hoc emails. With people that just aren't quite ready yet. Haven't been primed. Don't know who you are, you know, what you offer, what your values are, whether they're ready to work with you or not, it's going to make your sales job a lot easier getting this stuff right. So, what I'm going to do for the rest of this episode is talk about each of those three areas I just mentioned. And one way, an example, a practical way that you can turn email subscribers into clients more quickly. I'm probably with less effort than you're putting in at the moment. So let's start with maximizing every weasels. All content. That you create. So in episode five, a few episodes ago, I talked about how to create a lead magnet that attracts ideal clients. So for the purposes of this episode, I'm going to assume that you've [00:07:00] done that the people that are joining our ideal clients. And are looking for your support. What I'm going to talk about today is how you can maximize the impact of that lead magnet with those people to make sure that they actually get the benefit from him. So often when I start working with someone, I do an audit of their customer journey and I, we have a call and I ask them loads and loads of questions. And every time I will talk to me about, about your lead magnet. How does it do. And nine times out of 10, they will say it does well. Yeah, it's pretty good. And what they mean is they're either getting a good cost per lead. So they are, they're using ads and people are finding up are relatively low at a cost that they're happy with. Or like when they share on social media, they get good engagement. They might get good feedback from people. Who've downloaded it saying that they've got great outcome from it. So overall they feel happy that it's the right lead magnet. What I have never had someone say to me is how [00:08:00] many people are actually downloading it. So when someone finds up to your email list, they obviously get an email which has a button that they're going to download it. Well, I've never had someone talk to me about is how many people are actually downloading it from that email. And why that is just so important is because, you know, you've put all this time and energy into and thought into creating this lead magnet that is going to help someone, you know, you've set up attack. He really identified, you know, the small change that that's going to help them with, you know, demonstrated how you work or the value they can get from working with you. That's our first step into working with you. And actually it's all very well them signing up for it, but if they're not downloading it, then it's a total waste and they're not actually engaging with you to start this journey off. So recently I worked with a client on increasing their download rates of a freebie they'd been using for awhile. So they're set up. They had, when I started working with them, it was, they had one email. It gave the link to the freebie and.[00:09:00] They'd had over 400 people download this freebie. So that's, that's where reasonably reliable and around 50% of people who received the email downloaded the lead right now. So that's pretty good to be honest. You know, you've got to remember the ads is totally cold traffic. So these aren't people who already know what you're about. So some of it will go into spam and junk. I'm 50% is pretty, it's pretty solid. So it's going to always going to be one of your most opened emails, but this first one, delivering the freebie and then your click through rates should be a lot, lot higher than generally we'd expect from a normal email. But the aim was to try and improve that even more. So what we did was we introduced two further emails, one sharing, a snippet from the lead magnet, showing the kind of value that was in there. And then one sharing some social proof from people who had taken action on the lead magnet and got a great result. Now, the way we set up in that email system was that as soon as someone Clicked on the download. They dropped out of this sequence. So they wouldn't receive all three [00:10:00] emails if they downloaded it in the first email. So I was not like, well, bombarding people with trying to get them to do something they've already done. So they, as soon as they download the email, they drop out of that sequence. And what we found by introducing these additional and additional 25% of people actually downloaded the freebie. So over the three emails, 75% of people he requested the download, actually download it. Which means that for every hundred people that joined her list and additional 25 people, and now we're going to experience her freebie, which directly links to how she works with client. She gets a really good follow on rate. Her next step is really easy for them to take it brings them further into her world. And then she can build that relationship with them and nurture them. This was a pretty recent change and I just can't wait to see how that flows through, into her sales so that's one way of maximizing the impact of the lead magnet you've created. Make sure you have at least three emails where the clear call to [00:11:00] action is to download the lead magnet. Before you go into your welcome sequence. Okay, so next up, we're going to talk about curating the journey so that people get to know you. And what I want to talk about today with this one or that one practical tip for you. It's being really intentional with the links you're sharing in your welcome sequence. So if we know that every person who joins our list we'll get sent the same sequence of emails in the same order when they've clearly just indicated to us, they're interested in what we offer. It really highlights just how key the sequence is. And often when we write the welcome sequence, we set it up. We get it live. We very rarely revisit it and check if what we're saying is still relevant. If we're missing something. When I review welcome sequences for clients, sometimes I find throughout the whole welcome sequence, there is very few links at all. So we might be telling them a bit about ourselves, like an intro email. Maybe you've got a link through to Instagram or LinkedIn just generally like, come and say hi. Maybe on another email, it's just talking about, you [00:12:00] know, your approach or some social proof. And actually there's no links at all. So the first thing we can do is give them an opportunity to really connect with us and speed up the time it takes for them to go from a stranger to a client. So I recently worked with a client who had a podcast and it was growing really fast she's. She was in the charts and actually was ahead of Lisa Johnson's podcast for a few weeks, which was really exciting. Yeah. When we reviewed her welcome sequence, which had been set up quite awhile ago. It didn't mention the podcast at all. She sent weekly emails to her list about it, but she didn't give people who were new to her world. I'm really interested in what she offered the opportunity to have that longer connection with her a lot earlier in the journey. So when we reviewed her welcome sequence, this was a big, this was a great addition to be able to add in and help people connect with her much earlier on. Well, we also did, when we were looking through her welcome sequence was decided that she really needed an episode of the podcast. Which talked much more directly about her group [00:13:00] program, which was her main service. She had five phases in the group program. And each one helped clients achieve a different result. So what we did was structured a podcast around those five different results and talked then quite directly about how her group program helped. This was such a perfect next step to have in the welcome sequence. After the lead magnet, the lead magnet was like one of those five steps. So, what it did was flowed really nicely of people who were interested in that first step then within the welcome seat. Cause we could talk about, you know, if you want to learn more about that, that first step and the other fourth I do with clients. Here's a podcast, which will tell you all about it. So instead of just getting them on a call straight away, you know, book a call with me and we can talk about those five steps. Actually it gives people a chance to. You know, listen to your voice, have 20 minutes, half an hour with you find out if the five steps are really what they're looking for. And. And then if they do book a call from Matt, her call to action within the podcast was then to take the next step and book a call. They're much more aware of what she offers. That podcast episode [00:14:00] recently went live. So it's very interesting to see. How that impacts. Have flow. And if you don't have a podcast, that's absolutely fine. There are loads of other ways that you can link to useful things for potential clients. So blog posts also really good. Cause you can make them about really specific things and make them almost next steps on from your lead. Like that. Low-cost offers now that is a whole other separate episode because you know, having a low-cost offer in your welcome sequence can be incredibly powerful, especially if you want to start that paying for your ads and turning people. Quickly from subscribers into clients, which I'm going to talk a little bit more about next, but I think I'm going to save the low-cost offer for a whole separate episode. You can share client case studies that are based on your website and you can also send people through to your social media. My, what I tend to suggest it to people is you don't just say like, come on, follow me on Instagram. You have either use one of your videos that you've already got there, or you create a video and put it there [00:15:00] about something that's going to add value. So it could be just an intro video about you. And how you help people. It could be a value adds you could do a video, like the podcast episode that my client did about your program and how you help people. What you really want to do is encourage people to go onto your social media for either your Facebook page or Instagram page. And watch a video. Because then when you're running ads, if you want to get into re-targeting and using ads in different ways and building up audiences an audience of people who have watched a video on your social media is a really powerful group of people to kind of track and have. So I always recommend you have a video that people can go through and watch. I generally recommend try and keep it to one link per email. There are some occasions where you'd have maybe more than one and give people a different format. They prefer. So for example, if you have a podcast and a blog that talks through the similar kind of content, you could give people the option. I would highly recommend you give them some kind of longer form content to get [00:16:00] to know you, how you work, your values, your experience. So that when they're looking at taking the next step, they are fully informed. And finally for today. Committing to. Decreasing the time it takes to convert a subscriber or a follower to a client. Now often when I talk to clients about this,. They speak about it as if it's quite passive thing. So I hear things like, oh, well the average client's been on before someone works with me, you know, they've been on my list for like nine to 12 months. And generally people take a long time to buy, or maybe it's my audience, or maybe it's my product. They offer. And my challenge always is okay, what have you done so far to reduce that? So rather than just accepting like, oh, people on my lists tend to take six to 12 months to convert into clients. How can we say okay. Without me doing anything to speed that up. People take six to nine months to convert to a client. How can I reduce that to three to six months or four to six months? And that might be quite challenging care because [00:17:00] you might be thinking isn't you. Being consistent on social media, regular emails, handraiser content, you know, great welcome sequence. A podcasts workshops. Isn't that enough? If I'm putting all of that out there and people are consuming, it surely it's up to them. Like when they're ready to buy from me, like, I don't want to push people into buying too soon. There is so much to talk about within that. And absolutely you're doing all the things. But the idea of a curated journey and, you know, really knowing your numbers and seeing where people are in different stages of your journey. The idea then is not just to know that, but to take action on them. And one practical way that you can take action on it is segmenting. Now, when I started with a client a few months ago, I asked her how many people on her list that were in her like warm audience. If you like, say, you know, engaging with her emails, clicking on links, watching her evergreen masterclass downloading your freebies. You know, that sort of stuff. And she didn't know, which was absolutely fine. That's really, really common. [00:18:00] So I had to look for her. And in the last three months, you know, those people who take an action who were indicating they are interested. She had 75 people on her email list who were in this warm audience. Now they're not all going to become clients and it's not like they're all there ready and waiting if she just does something, however, naturally a proportion of those will probably become clients. And the first thing I do with clients, when I start working with them, actually, isn't to look at the lead magnet and flow it through it's to look at okay, who's in your warm audience right now. And how can we start converting them? And then we'll work our way back along the customer journey, because really the key is if there are people in your audience right now, who are on the fence, And interested in buying. If there's a way that you can help them make that decision quicker, give them the information they need. Why would you not do that? So by by segmenting out those people. So those 75 people I'm focusing on a differentiated strategy for them, she can position her messaging [00:19:00] differently. She can do slightly different calls to action and she can help speed up the process of them becoming a client. So, what we discussed was setting up a sales sequence for core she's launching in about a month's time. So she could automate that then going forward. Recording a short video with value content that have VA could then send to those people. Either by email or on social media as a bit of a bonus content. She's considering doing an invite only masterclass and just inviting those people. She could also record a video, ask with information on her program, and then it has a button at the end that they can click. If they want more information. All of those things are offering them information opportunities to connect with her a way of them coming further into her world. And the difference straight away is that she can take positive action directed at people who are already interested and are likely to be receptive to it. And position that as an exclusive opportunity. Rather than going out as, [00:20:00] rather than just going out to our whole list and hoping the right people see it and take action. And there are lots and lots of different things that you could do within this. You can send people voice notes. You can record videos, you can set up automated sequences. You can offer. Extra value or even discounts. If you want to, there is so much you can do once you know who these people are. So I hope these three things I've given you some practical inspiration for making sure your email marketing can start working a little bit harder for you and converting new people into clients. If this sounds like something that, you know, would support your business growth in a really aligned way, giving you more energy and time freedom as well as growing your business and getting more clients. I do have limited spaces for one-to-one clients, where I will work through all of this with you over a period of three months, we do a full audit strategy, and then I could either coach you [00:21:00] and help you implement all of these things in a really supportive way. Or I can actually, just do it all for you. There is a link in the show notes to apply for a call. And also, if you are interested in using ads and email marketing to create sales and your business every day with a low-cost offer. That leads people to your high ticket service. I add eight brilliant messaging mentor I work with are working on a B2 group course, which is going to be really, really epic. If you're interested, I will also pop the waitlist link in the show notes for that as well. There'll be a lot more details coming out about that soon. And I am going to do a whole episode on low-cost offers and using ads that email to make that work for you. Thank you so much for listening today. I hope you found this useful and I will see you next week. Thank you so much for joining me this week. Before you go, make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you can receive new episodes every Tuesday when they're released. And [00:22:00] if you enjoyed this episode, I'd love for you to rate or leave a review wherever you are listening to it. It only takes a few seconds, but it really does make a massive difference to new people finding me. Thank you again for joining me, Sophie, in this episode of Lionheart Marketing. See you next time.