How to Monetize Your Email List with an Evergreen Newsletter
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Learn how to engage, nurture, and monetize your email list without writing a weekly newsletter. An evergreen newsletter is the best way to keep you and your business top of mind for your audience and not be bound to writing a new broadcast every week.
“Now, your new subscribers will get your best emails!”
There are more people running online businesses than ever before, which means that the market is becoming more and more crowded. So, it becomes harder and harder to stand out, gain new leads, and remain relevant and top of mind for your potential clients and customers.
As a solopreneur or business owner with a small team, you likely don’t have the time, energy, or budget to create and post daily social media content.
I, personally, have not seen much business growth from social media. In my business, I rely on creating long-form authority building content like Youtube videos and email newsletters.
I used to create one new YouTube video and send out a new email newsletter each week. But I eventually burned out and stopped being as consistent. I hated that my audience wasn’t hearing from me weekly, but as a full-time college faculty member with growing leadership responsibilities, I didn’t have the time or energy to keep up the pace that I had previously set earlier on in my business.
That’s when I got creative. I created an email sequence with my best content and used Convertkit, my email platform of choice, to send those emails out to my subscribers once a week…automatically.
I created an evergreen newsletter. And it’s been the backbone of my six-figure business ever since.
What is an evergreen newsletter?
An evergreen newsletter is a sequence of pre-written emails that gets sent to your email list automatically. So, every subscriber will get to experience every email on your newsletter no matter when they join your list.
So, why might you want to create an evergreen newsletter?
Scenario #1: You write regular emails to your list.
What was the best email newsletter or broadcast that you’ve ever sent to your audience? You know, the one that had your subscribers replying immediately….
…the one that got forwarded to people outside of your list.
…the one that got the most clicks.
…the one that led to massive sales.
How many people were on your email list at that time? How much has your list grown since then?
Isn’t it a shame that your new email subscribers won’t get to experience the epic, valuable, and relatable emails that you’ve sent in the past?
Well, actually they can…with an evergreen newsletter.
Scenario #2: You’ve ghosted your audience.
When was the last time you sent an email to your list? Do you have a new offer to sell or a launch coming up? Perhaps you feel a bit icky about only sharing with your audience when you want them to buy from you.
What if you could show up in their inbox with massive value every week, keeping you top of mind, without you physically writing a newsletter every week?
What if you never have to feel icky about selling because you are providing regular support and value to your list?
…Well, it’s totally possible with an evergreen newsletter.
Scenario #3: You sell multiple offers.
You sell multiple offers to slightly different variations of your ideal client. Perhaps you find it difficult to decide which offer you will promote and market and when you should do it.
In my first business, I created a lot of lower ticket digital products. They were great and my customers got a lot of value from them. But eventually, my marketing became very confusing to my audience. They didn’t know which offer was right for them. I would get messages asking which offer they should start with. This is when I realized I had a problem.
Confused customers don’t buy. Having multiple offers can be very confusing to potential customers and clients who only follow you on social media. I prefer to promote only one or two offers publicly.
The rest, I sell on the backend, to my email list, through my evergreen newsletter. In email (over multiple emails), you can give more context around who exactly your offers are perfect for and when they would be most valuable.
Scenario #4: You are just getting started with your email list and it’s hard to prioritize taking the time to write an email to three people each week.
Yay! You’ve started an email list! Congratulations! This will likely be your best asset when it comes to making profit in your business.
But what do you do with the few people who have subscribed so far? Is it worth it to send them amazing emails that on one else will ever see?
Well, what if every new subscriber you get will get to experience every email you write from the beginning?
With an evergreen newsletter, every new subscriber you get could receive any email you’ve already written. So your hard work wouldn’t be in vain (or for just 5 people).
Don’t worry, you can always go back and remove irrelevant emails in the future.
How does an evergreen newsletter work…logistically?
An evergreen newsletter is an email sequence that could last 3 months, six months, or even 12 months or longer and will allow all of your subscribers to receive these emails in order; no matter when they subscribe.
For example, let’s say that you have 24 emails in your evergreen newsletter (sequence) where subscribers receive a new email every Tuesday.
On Thursday, March 9, Subscriber 1 joins your email list and receives a welcome email from you immediately. Then on Tuesday, March 14, they will receive the first email in your evergreen newsletter. This subscriber will receive a new email from you every Tuesday for the next 23 weeks.
Here’s the beauty of an evergreen newsletter: Six months from now, Subscriber 467 will join your email list, get a welcome email, and then the next Tuesday will receive email #1 and a new email from you every Tuesday without you doing anything to make this happen.
You set it up once and it runs forever! Boom…automated engagement with your list!
So, you can spend your time delivering your offers, attracting potential clients to your email list, and spending more time with yourself and your family.
How to Set up an Evergreen Email Sequence
I have great news! Evergreen email newsletters are so simple to set up! I use Convertkit and you can do this with any email management tool that allows you to create email sequences.
Here are two ways to set up an evergreen email sequence in Convertkit:
Option 1: Create a Visual Automation
Convertkit’s Visual Automation tool allows users to connect their freebie (or opt-in) to their Welcome Sequence with the click of a button. With this tool, you can then make sure that subscribers get your evergreen newsletter after they have finished receiving every email in your welcome sequence.
Option 2: Add to your Welcome Sequence
If you have an email list, you likely have a freebie that you promote. And when subscribers give you their email address in exchange for your freebie, you likely send them at least one email (but hopefully 3-5 emails) explaining how to access the freebie and welcoming them to your community.
You can continue adding emails to this Welcome Sequence so that it now serves as your evergreen newsletter.
The Benefits of Starting an Evergreen Email Newsletter
Consistency for your Audience
With an evergreen newsletter, you can show up consistently for your audience without having to devote consistent weekly energy to do it.
There is a reason that content creation experts recommend consistency as one of the best ways to grow a community for your business. It builds authority!
With an evergreen newsletter, you can guarantee that your audience will get consistent value and support from you every week for at least the length of your evergreen newsletter sequence.
More Sales
When your audience is ready to buy from you, you will be top of mind! As mentioned earlier in this guide, the number of digital businesses is growing which means that there is more competition than ever. You want your audience to think of you when they are ready to invest in support and solutions. Having an evergreen newsletter will help them decide how they want to make a buying decision.
When you are ready to launch a new offer or open the doors to your cohort-based course or group program, an evergreen newsletter guarantees that you would have nurtured your audience and primed them to see you as an authority in the field! Your newsletter will serve as evidence that you are capable of delivering on your promises. If you give this much value in a free newsletter, your paid offer will deliver even more!
Your Best Work is Front and Center
Creating your evergreen newsletter could be as simple as copying and pasting all of your old content into your email software and turning on the automation. I want you to be more strategic than that. This newsletter should be your best work! It has some heavy lifting to do!
With an evergreen newsletter, you can make sure that every subscriber gets a chance to see your best work first!
Improve Messaging and Subscriber Experience
With an evergreen newsletter, you can always go back and audit and edit your emails. Do any emails have low open rates? You can rewrite the email subject lines or completely remove them from the sequence.
Does one of your emails have a higher click-through rate or number of replies than the others? That could mean that the messaging in that email really resonates with your audience. You could use those words to create social media posts, YouTube videos, or even ad copy.
When you know what messaging is resonating, you can update the emails in your evergreen newsletter or add new ones to it. And now your new subscribers will receive the upgraded version of your newsletter automatically.
How to Strategically Build an Evergreen Newsletter That Grows Your Business
So, how do you build this magical evergreen newsletter? Well, it’s easier than you think!
I’ve created a resource called The Evergreen Email Blueprint that will give you the strategy that I use in my business to leverage an evergreen email newsletter to continuously engage my audience, build authority, make more sales on autopilot.
The Blueprint includes:
How to create an evergreen email newsletter from scratch
How to use relatability and credibility markers to build authority and trust with your email subscribers
Choosing an email cadence for nurture emails and sales emails
How to source content collateral so that you don’t have to build your evergreen newsletter from scratch
The first 5 emails of my evergreen newsletter
Tech tutorials for Convertkit, Flodesk, Active Campaign, and Mailchimp
The Evergreen Email Blueprint is clear and succinct (less than 30 minutes of video content). You can have your evergreen email newsletter up and running in a week. In some cases, less than 60 minutes.
