My next step for starting my mailing list was to go back through our existing marketing efforts and see what had worked in the past, what did clients like in the past? You should really be checking your data because sometimes it is surprising what works. Something you will learn quickly if you follow me for any period of time is that I love data and think that most people don’t spend enough time on it. Why should you check your data? Read this blog.
Getting back to the point here though, at Novus Law Group we had a Facebook post about digital licenses that was really popular when I shared it the first time. It was really no better or worse than any other content I shared but it was very popular, so I went back and found it and copied the information into a blog post (here). I put a clear call to action at the bottom of the post (join the mailing list). I then put quite a bit of that information into the draft first email. This is the content that I decided to share in the email -
Digital licences are great but you need to make sure that you take some precautions, particularly with the increased Police presence over Christmas.
If you don't use digital licenses, but someone in your life does, then you should go ahead and share this email with them. Some of the precautions I cover include -
You don't have to physically hand your phone to the police officer (section 61C of the Act), it is enough for you to show them and they will scan the QR code. You do have to hold it in a productive fashion, or refresh the screen or otherwise assist them to see it.
You probably do have to hand it to another drive if you are in an accident, you cannot demand that they have a QR code and failing to provide details after an accident is a criminal offence. Before you ditch the physical licence think about whether you want to have to hand over your phone after an accident.
It does not count as a driver's licence if your screen is damaged in any way. Keep your physical licence with you or buy one of those drop proof, water proof cases.
I have included some other tips in the blog post, like using guided access so that the other driver cannot look around your phone.
Now that is more content than I would ordinarily include in the actual email. Normally you only share a snippet, partly because most email inboxes will cut off the content after a certain amount of time so you have very limited page space, and partly cause I generally want people to click on the link and drive traffic to my site. This email is different though because it is the first email to a new list of people, so I have a different goal. Quite simply, I want them to open it (which is a problem in and of itself), and if they do open it I want them to actually read it so that they open the next one. The reason that is a problem in and of itself is that many (or most) of my first run of emails will go into a spam box.
This was the open rate for that first email, so not excellent but you have to remember that a lot of these emails would have gone into junk.
Now part of my problem here was self made, notice the time, I sent it just after 5pm. Generally that is a poor time to send email, because those who check it at work have left or are trying to leave. When they return in the morning my email will be buried under a bunch of others. That being said, what is important is that you record what has and hasn’t worked so I didn’t feel too bad in the end, this also probably indicates that a lot of my subscribers are checking their emails at work (and therefore on a computer instead of a mobile).
So the next step after this was to find all of those who had opened my email and put them into their own group, in order to optimise my open rate next time.
If you want more information about setting up an email list then you could join my mailing list below.