Do you want to know the one thing that stands out most to me about successful email marketing in a spiritual or creative business?

It’s not about your choice of CRM (Client Relationship Management system - your email software), although that helps. 

It’s not about always getting it right with irresistible subject lines - though that double-helps. 

And it’s not even about embedding all the fancy gifs and videos (but again, that can be pretty awesome too)...

For me, the one foundation of successful email marketing is to remember that email is a two-way communication relationship. 

Think about when you get an email from a friend or someone you love. Do you feel happy to receive it? Interested to open it? Excited to respond to it?

Email marketing gives you the opportunity to build a relationship with your community and clients. 

If you are a spiritual or creative business owner and you have some deep inner resistance to marketing your offers, email marketing could actually be the best marketing tool for you.

While it can be great to interact on social media - and hopefully you are doing this too - you’re at the mercy of the platform you use. So if they shift the algorithms, or shut down completely, you could find yourself losing all those years of client-relationship building overnight. 

But what’s great about social media is that it helps you get to know your clients. It gives you an instinctive two-way relationship that enables you to get to know them, empathise with them, and understand how you can serve their needs. 

With email marketing, you own your list. So nobody can take it away from you. The trust you build through your email list is trust that lasts forever...

When people talk about email marketing, I hear them talk a lot about “know, like & trust”. That is, the foundation of any email marketing campaign is to build know, like & trust with your audience. 

And if you are building your spiritual or creative business, you probably offer a service or practice that requires a deep two way commitment of know, like & trust between you and your clients. 

So you can take what you’ve already instinctively implemented on your social media platform, and apply it to your email marketing strategy. 

That means taking time to get to know, like & trust who’s on your list. 

This is great if you have a small list. It’s one of the top ways to increase your conversion rate waaaaaaaay above the standard average of 1-2%. (Yes, that’s 1-2% of the people on your email list who are actually likely to buy from you during any given campaign. It’s why big brands go for big lists.)

With a smaller email list, you can really get to know your audience and get in tune with their needs and desires, which supports you to better support them. It’s actually possible to convert at rates of 20, 30 or even 50% with a small list and some sassy strategies!

If you have a larger list, you can treat it like lots of smaller lists by using segmentation techniques such as tagging to create a more personalised customer experience. 

There are lots of ways to be successful in your email marketing. But it starts with knowing your audience. 

Here are my top tips for successful email marketing in your spiritual or creative business:

1. Get to know your audience by creating opportunities to develop a two-way relationship. Consider that know, like & trust work both ways, and that email marketing can help you get to know your audience while they are also getting to know you. 

2. This may mean inviting them to reply directly to your email to answer a question, ask a question, or respond to a prompt you’ve suggested. (Bonus tip: encouraging people to reply to your emails actually increases the deliverability rate and reduces the chance of your email going straight to Junk.)

3. Ask questions that will help you understand what your audience needs or desires, what obstacles are currently in their way, and how you can help them make the transformation. 

4. Have them ask you questions, and respond. 

5. If you have a medium-sized list, create a short survey to help you gather data - and then address the common issues in your regular emails, or respond directly to individuals.

If you’ve always thought of marketing as something icky (I know I did), it’s probably because of the way it’s been done up to now. 

As a spiritual or creative entrepreneur, you are part of the paradigm-shift that’s happening. You’re leading the transformation in consciousness through your services, offers and practices. 

You have clients who are waiting for you.

When you start to consider your marketing strategy as a holistic extension of your spiritual or creative business, you can begin to create a virtual sacred space for your clients to step into.

As you would greet them and gently get to know them in the offline world, you can do the same here in the online world too. 

Much love for now,

Sally-Shakti 

To find out more about how you can create a virtual sacred space for your clients, download my free ebook here.