Yvonne was one of the first people I met when I started my self employment journey. She had promised herself she’d start sending an email newsletter to her clients. She had lots of wonderful stories and knowledge to share. But, a busy schedule of client sessions and group talks, along with little marketing experience, left her unsure of the best way to achieve this. She had been on the look out for a flexible and cost effective resource that would help her develop a solution she was comfortable with.
The client : The Stress Medic
As The Stress Medic Yvonne Cocks provides “first aid for the mind”. Using a variety of techniques, such as EFT and NLP, she helps individuals move on from any stress, anxiety, trauma and phobias they have and enjoy life more. Yvonne had been practising as The Stress Medic for a few years and wanted to focus on communicating with her clients more often and growing her customer base.
Email newsletter deliverables
- Don’t let them forget you!
Yvonne already knew she wanted to send email newsletters. Her objectives were to stay in touch with existing clients and also generate interest in hre work with prospects. Yvonne already had a successful group talk programme which she throroughly enjoyed. However, she knew she was missing out on potential new clients as had no way of following up with them. - Data gathering
We talked about ways in which Yvonne would be comfortable asking people for their contact details during a talk. She had always avoided this as it was not something she found easy to do. Together we created an optional newsletter sign up form for her to use at her talks. She was happy to reference it at the end of each talk but left the audience to complete it themselves. After only a few she discovered her prospect list was growing quite nicely. In fact she quickly more than doubled her database. - Content planning and creation
When it comes to sending out email newsletters, it’s important to ensure you have the content to start with. Sounds obvious. But what may not be obvious is the time it takes to plan and write content of value to your audience. Initally Yvonne and I spent a lot of time working out what subject areas could be included in her newsletter. Eventually we agreed on a nice balance of storytelling, tools and techinques and her group talk topics. One of my favourites is “£5, parachuting and me”.
Working with a limited budget, and the fact that Yvonne wanted to manage the process herself in the future, it was necessary to develop a plan that was simple yet effective. - Website content updates & SEO
The content development process was very straightforward. I just required dedicating time to planning and writing. We held monthly marketing meetings where we would plan content for the next quarter. Yvonne would write the basic outline of each article and I would edit it as necessary. I then updated the website with the new content. We also reviewed the keywords used on cornerstone content pages and I ensured all content was optimised propely for search. - Email newsletter
We started a programme of quarterly newsletters which were targeted to diferent audiences. In order to monitor and compare open rates and responses the emails were split into different lists. At each marketing meeting we made sure we reviewed the metrics from previous campaigns, to see what insights they gave us into the success of each article.
“…Emma has taken a real interest in me as an individual and in my business…”
“Emma has highlighted simple ways to increase my database and provided the support I needed to produce the newsletter I had been promising for so long. It’s not just been about technical expertise within a budget. Emma has taken a real interest in me as an individual and in my business. She has been someone to bounce ideas off, and has been able to highlight things I have said to her as being excellent ideas for my website and newsletter. I needed someone to encourage and hold me firmly, if gently, to account. Whenever we have had meetings, Emma has been prompt in sending me a “client contact report” to remind me of what we discussed, actions agreed and decisions made, which has really helped to keep things clear.”