9 Tips to Rock the Email Marketing as a Medium Writer
You are a writer on Medium. You are probably a star in making, too.
I do not doubt it.
But relying only on Medium hoping you’ll make a fine living is a formula only 0.1% of writers are fruitfully following. I’m being blindly generous with a percentage here…
You know this by now. You are probably searching for an extra push to your efforts on Medium.
But where should you start?
Should you start a blog? Write an ebook? Hire freelancers to help you with the exposure? Start making YouTube videos?
Honestly, I don’t know.
It depends on where you currently are, what you want to achieve, and how much time you have to fool around.
A good rule of thumb derived from years spent doing digital marketing thought me this.
Put more effort where you’re already seeing results.
Why would you choose email marketing?
Email is known as the marketing queen of intimacy. A channel where people give other folks explicit permission to send something their way.
Therefore, email should be taken seriously.
Let me be clear.
You should only consider using email if you already have a solid following on Medium.
I’ll leave it up to you to define “solid”.
A good reason to do email marketing is that emails sent by independent artists have the highest open rate at 34.4%, followed by education (34.1%) and travel and tourism (32.6%). Across all industries.
With this in mind, let’s jump to practical tips you could follow and see tangible results.
Bits of advice that came up after subscribing to newsletters from 15 fellow writers on Medium. And seeing what they did wrong.
#1 Set clear expectations with the first email you send
More than 8 out of 10 people will open a welcome email, generating 4x as many opens and 10x as many clicks as other email types.
Meaning, your audience wants to get a sense of what they could expect from you.
I don’t want you to panic here, but this might be the most important part of your email endeavors. If not done right, followers will never successfully transition into loyal supporters.
So…
Make it clear what they will receive, when, and how much extra value.
You need to show that you respect their digital intimacy. Choosing to consume your content in one channel extra is not a small decision to make.
#2 Be human writing to human
Being yourself is what brought you this far with writing.
Being more vulnerable, willing to share, and open up is what gets you even further.
People who clapped to your content clicked on the same spot a couple of times. Not a hard effort…
However, people who read an article, clapped, followed the link, went on a landing page, gave you their contact details. Well… That is a hard effort.
So, you should push more value their way.
Tell them the secret that made you happy, successful, younger, healthier, sexier, funnier.
Send them an image of your dog. Be willing to seek dialog the same way you’d have a conversation with your friend.
Anything that makes it more personal. Your loyal supporters deserve that.
#3 Reply to your audience
Recently I subscribed to a newsletter from a guy named Sol Orwell.
Sol, a successful entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience made a bold promise in the first welcome email.
He said he will read every email I send to him and reply if needed.
This dude, probably running more teams than you and I have tabs open in a browser, asked me to say “hi”.
C’mon…
It can’t be. I thought it’s either his assistant, an automated response, or some kind of an AI.
So I sent a “Hi” his way along with some questions. Just to test it…
To my absolute shock, he came back with answers in a week. The reply had a friendly personal tone. Plus, he answered all of my questions!
To my question about why he’d want to waste his time reading mostly irrelevant opinions, he replied by saying.
“It’s easy to read every email, I schedule it. I know Ramit Sethi does it too.
I think we do need more people talking about their experiences without trying to sell you something. If I may, I recommend Nathan Barry too — his company is far bigger, but he’s incredibly nice and thoughtful.”
Regardless if it was ever him answering that email, it felt personal and authentic. And it gave me hope there are still those people that give value unconditionally and reply to emails.
You should consider being like Sol as much as you can manage.
#4 Overdeliver with value
The plan is simple, just like my writing. But unlike my writing, this plan might work out 😆
Please don’t promise life-changing moments if you’re not 100% sure you can deliver.
I would even go as far as suggesting to underpromise and then overdeliver.
Just to make it extra sweet. That’s it.
#5 Register your domain name, please!
Although you’ve been writing for months and years now, registering a branded domain will turn you into a true professional.
Sure, you are probably thinking a personal email makes it more personal.
But most of us don’t even have an email address without weird numbers and nicknames screaming out to anyone who opens their mail inbox.
Here is a pro tip.
If you have created your email account during high school or college, don’t use it for the newsletter.
Think about it. Who would you rather receive emails from regularly?
homer.simpson67tiger@gmail.com vs. homer@thesimpsons.com
The point is, the custom domain will give you an instant credibility boost.
#6 You don’t need email design and images
To blend text and images, you either need an email marketer/designer, at least a month spent on Coursera or Udemy, or a fine software that does a lot of hidden work for you.
Most of the email marketing tools have predesigned templates. Which is fine…
Just please don’t buy overly expensive email marketing tools. You don’t need it for your personal business.
Let’s be clear about what is important here.
The message you send is the focus. Design should fit the message, not the other way around.
Text-only emails have shown amazing results in sales automation, b2b, and nonprofit marketing automation. Why wouldn't it work for you as well?
Just consider that up to 25% of email subscribers can have images turned off by default (including versions of Android and Outlook).
You don’t really need to try out images and designs. Choose a cheap and easy-to-use marketing software for email automation and just write.
If you want the design tips, here is what you should do and it will work beautifully.
- Make lots of white space between headlines, body copy, and calls to action
- Use the bigger font: minimum 14pt font size that sizes up on mobile devices up to 25–30pt
- Make the email skimmable (rather than readable!)
Subscribe to Litmus newsletter, they are the gold standard in this area.
#7 Don’t write articles, it’s not Medium
If you are lazy or don’t have time for writing a variety of content, email is not for you.
If you do it however, your loyal supporters will bounce and eventually unsubscribe.
In the last month, I’ve subscribed to 15 newsletters from writers on Medium, and 50% of them made this mistake.
For some reason, writers tend to think their readers want to slowly transform their Gmail mobile app into a Medium application. So they can have two of the same.
Think more as a copywriter and a marketer.
Here is why.
Your subscribers have a lot of junk in their email.
By being more direct, and crafting your content to be skimmable you are more likely to stand out and get your reader’s attention.
Follow some of the copywriting formulas like AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) while not being too religious about it.
Grab their attention with gut-busting subject lines.
Try to highlight the problems you know your readers have.
Convince them to download your free samples, statistics on your medium profile. Anything that sparks action.
I’m not trying to turn you into a top shop advertiser, but rather a writer who is aware of the marketing game. Whether you want to admit it or not, you are in the different waters with email.
#8 Pay respect to your readers’ journey
If digital marketing has thought me anything… it’s this.
With greater audience size comes greater automation effort. 😅
Segmentation. Creating audiences and campaigns. Making lists. Automating emails.
Now I’m even telling you to become a qualified email marketer instead of just writing. 😂
But meditate on this.
Your readers might know you for two days. Maybe they have been around since you wrote your first piece.
They might have different interests, desires, behavior, and goals.
Now, you might have heard about customer personas before…
With persona, you create an image of what your average reader looks, likes, and follows. It’s fun but it is old school and misleading.
Readers’ journey is what matters.
Readers’ journey is a story you create with wild guesses and brainstorming, about what your readers will do after they first engage with your content.
Creating a reader’s journey map allows you to place the right content at the right time to the right audience. And keep your readers happy at all times.
Segmenting makes sense only after you’ve done this.
It’s a bit more complicated marketing approach to your email efforts. A concept I could dive into more deeply in one of my future articles. (let me know in the comments).
For now, keep this in mind as an option.
#9 Test your headlines for future articles
While you’re experimenting with email, consider getting some value right away.
Across all industries, the average email open rate is 19.8%, the click-through rate is 11.3%, and the bounce rate is 9.4%.
If you manage to get an enormously high open rate in one email compared to the previous number sent, you probably wrote a killer headline.
Use it, don’t let it root in the past. It will probably work on Medium as well.
That’s it — Go ahead and give it a try
Just, please.
Once you have your readers’ addresses, make sure to take good care of them.
