Email Marketing

for
No Code Startupsand Makers

©Jens Lennartsson 2020

Original cover photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko


 HELLO!
This e-book is a work in progress.

What you are reading now, is the first version and it will be
updated a few times (if I know myself).

I would love to hear from you, if you have any thoughts or

feedback.

Just shoot me an email (hello@jenslennartson.com) or hit me

up on Twitter (@jenslennartsson)!

Seriously. Get in touch!

Jens Lennartsson
www.jenslennartsson.com
TABLE OF CONTENT

INTRODUCTION 6

WHY DO YOU NEED A MAILING LIST? 7

WHERE DOES YOUR MAILING LIST FIT IN? 10

A MAILING LIST, NOT A NEWSLETTER 11

SO, WHAT SHOULD YOU BE EMAILING ABOUT? 13

Start by defining who you are writing for 13

Understand what they love and hate 15

The only time you are allowed to talk about No Code 17

Pick a format 17

DON’T ASK PEOPLE TO SIGN UP FOR YOUR MAILING LIST 19

People won’t remember your name right away 20

BUILDING A MAILING LIST THAT PEOPLE WILL SIGN UP FOR 22

Three simple guidelines for successful email marketing 23

1. Take them forward step by step 24

2. Give as few – and as obvious – options as possible 25

3. Always offer a chance to get even more value 26

THE ANATOMY OF GREAT EMAIL MARKETING 29

1. Reach out on social media 29

2. Offer more value with evergreen content 31

Creating content that attracts the right people 32

3. Get their email address with content upgrades 35

Use multiple opt-in options! 36

Make it easy with the right tool 38

Don’t ask for the email right away 39

Don’t waste the opportunity to get to know your audience 41

 Keep the momentum! 43

4. Build Trust with Automated Sequences 44

GETTING YOUR EMAILS OPENED 45

What is a normal email opening rate in the tech business? 45

Write magnetic subject lines 46

Don’t leave the preview to chance 47

GETTING YOUR EMAIL READ 48

CONCLUSION 50
 INTRODUCTION

The No-code universe is growing.

Fast.

New No-code tools, No-code startups, and No-code makers

are emerging every day and people are building and sharing
like crazy.

This is awesome because it makes it super-easy to make your

idea into a real product.

But it kinda sucks if you want people to actually use it.

With so much happening in the No-code space, it is hard for
people to remember that thing you made, even if they
thought it was really cool and useful when it flashed by this
morning.

With so much going on, your problem is not to create a great

product (I know you know how to do that) but to get in front
of the right people and to stay in front of them long enough
for them to become a paying customer.
You need to build trust with them. And the best way to do
that?

Make your mailing list your main priority!


 WHY DO YOU NEED
A MAILING LIST?
In 2018, Facebook made a huge change in its algorithm (that
decides what you see in your feed and who will see what you
post).

From one day to another, most companies saw their traffic

from Facebook to their website cut in half. It dropped by
more than 50%.

Organic Facebook Post Email to Mailing List

3% 85%
of your followers reached of inboxes reached

These kinds of changes are made all the time, on all social
platforms.

You can never know when – or how – it will change again.

This means you have basically no control over your followers.

You don’t even know if the social platforms you are using
today, will be around in 5, or even 2 years.
Social platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok,
Pinterest and so on) are great for reaching a lot of people.

The problem is to make sure you are keeping in touch with

them long enough to make them a customer.

Few people will go from hearing about you for the first time
to signing up for an account (or even free trial). You need to
build trust and you need to show them how they will gain
from using your service or product.

But how are you supposed to do this, if you don’t even know
if they are going to see your next Tweet or status update?

Get them from your social platforms onto a platform you

can control – as soon as possible.

You control your email list. No one (except a few persistent

spam filters) can decide who will receive the emails you send
out.

If someone signs up for your emails, they will most certainly

receive them (whether or not they open it is completely up to
your copywriting skills though.)

 ”If you have a Facebook page that
has 50,000 likes, your latest post is
likely to be placed in the newsfeed of
approximately 1,000 to 3,000 of
your own Facebook fans.

If you sent an email to a list that

same size, it’s likely to be placed in
42,500 inboxes.”

– Email Marketing vs. Facebook

Ads: Which One Wins?

Another huge benefit with email marketing is connected

to what we just discussed; the conversion rates for email
marketing are bigger than for any other marketing channel!

If done right, your email list will make it possible for you to
make your audience trust you and when it’s time to sell; give
you the best conditions to convert leads into paying
customers.
WHERE DOES YOUR
MAILING LIST FIT IN?
If put to good use, mailing list is like a huge bucket.

It is a way to capture leads and make sure you are able to

keep talking to them.

To build trust, learn more about them and show them how
your product can make their lives better.

Whatever kind of content you create – updates on social

media, podcasts, videos or blog posts -your mailing list will
do 2 things for you:

🧲 Capture and nurture as many leads as possible.

🎯 Help you qualify the ones you have: to sort out the
ones that would really benefit from your product.

Instead of using it as a way to “poke” people every time you

post a new blog post or have a new offer – which will make
people walk away from their inbox and into the very distractive
internet – your mailing list should be a content platform of
its own.
 A MAILING LIST, NOT A
NEWSLETTER
After spending months, possibly years, developing a digital
tool or Saas (with No-code or for no-code people), that
product is more or less the center of the universe for
everyone involved.

As a member of the founding team, you know everything

about it; how it was built, the obstacles you had to overcome,
all the kick-ass features, the numbers, and statistics.

But your potential customers?

They don’t give a sh*t about that.

No-one cares about you or your company.

The only thing they care about is how (and if) your product
will help them.

A newsletter – where you write about the new employees,

features, and successes of your company – is just you blowing
your own horn.

No one wants to hear it, and no one cares.

To create a successful mailing list, you need to make sure

that every step is adding value to the (potential) customer.
The very first thing you need to do is to understand how you
created it or with what doesn’t matter.

The first rule of the No-code mailing

list club? Don’t talk about No-code.

Sending a monthly email with the latest updates or discounts

will reduce your subscriber count faster than you’ll attain
new ones.

Your mailing list is your most valuable way to send real value
directly to your potential customers.

For a brief moment, you will have their attention without

many of the distractions you’ll otherwise encounter online:
images, links, tabs, and ads!
 SO, WHAT SHOULD YOU
BE EMAILING ABOUT?
Before you start creating your mailing list; decide who it is
for.

It sounds counterintuitive, but the smaller your target market

is, the easier it is to reach your audience.

A fitness app “for everyone” will drown in all the others on

app store.

A fitness app for “Skinny Nerds” will be the obvious choice

for every skinny nerd that finds it!

Start By Defining Who You Are Writing

For
Define what the common denominators for your end-users
are.

There’s a lot of different ways you can segment your

market:

🧗 Vertical: A business or title: dentists, yoga instructors or

entrepreneurs.
🌅 Horizontal: A need they have or a problem they need
solved: "faster website", "being better at planning" or "getting
the tax papers in order”.

🧠 Psychographic: A value they have, something they

believe: “the earth is flat”, “eating animals is wrong” or “no-
code is the best thing since sliced bread”.

🤱 Demographic: A persona - how they are described to

others_ "stay-at-home moms", "45+ CEOs" or "Couples in
Denver”.

💻 Platform: A specific platform they use: WordPress, Adalo,

Airtable.

A rule of thumb is to use at least two different markets to

define your market audience:

Entrepreneurs (vertical) with ADHD (demographic) that

want to be able to focus better (horizontal)

Startup Founders (vertical) that believe acquiring investors

is to sell out (pshycographic) but still need a capital to
launch (horizontal)
Dog owners (demographic) who want to learn how to take
better pictures of their fur babies (horizontal) for
Instagram (platform)

Understand What They Love And Hate

Everyone wants to improve. We have problems and hardships
every day and we want to make it easier for ourselves.

Your product solves a problem for the user.

A training app will help people to lose weight or bulk up.

A Twitter scheduling tool will help users grow their

audience.

A to-do app will help people that don’t have enough time to
prioritize and get stuff done.

If “not having enough time” is a big issue for your target

audience, you probably already realized this is an external
problem (i.e. not the actual problem but a manifestation of
their internal problem).

They don’t really need more time (they can’t have it even if

they want it), what they need is to manage the time they
have better (internal problem).
Your main and sub-topics could then look something like this:

Topic 1: How To Get Things Done

• Planning and organization
• How to work more efficiently
• Distractions and how to prevent them
• Brain and body hacks for productivity
• Digital and analog tools

By discovering and deciding on your topic and sub-topics you

always know what to talk about.

Ask yourself this:

If you were one of your own potential customers – would you
rather open an email you knew will try to sell you
something or an email with actionable ways to solve your
problems and reach your goals?

IMPORTANT!
The topics you talk about and share on your mailing list
should be closely connected to the problem your product
solves.

This way, you’ll know that the people on your mailing list is
interested in solving that problem – i.e. would consider
paying for it.
 The Only Time You Are Allowed To Talk
About No Code
There is one exception to the No-one-cares-that-you-used-no-
code-rule.

If your target market is No-code fanatics and actually

interested in hearing about it.

If your product is created for No Coders, of course, talk about

No Code.

But unless almost everyone using your product knows about

and is involved in No Code, it is just not the right thing to
talk about.

And hey, even a for us No Coders, it can be a little too much

of the good stuff.

Pick A Format
If you are not yet comfortable – or don’t have the manpower
– writing your own content – start with curated content!

Every day, thousands of articles, blog posts and videos are

uploaded online. Way too many for your audience to go
through even if they would love to.

You could be the much-wanted source that delivers the best-

of-the-best every week (or if you dare; every day like Michael
with Nocode Coffee)
If you want to take it a step further, consider giving your
own 2 cents on the content of someone else.

The Product Person dissects one online article every week,

and add a lot of their own ideas and thoughts into it.

As long as it is adding value to the people reading it – no one

will care if you wrote it all yourself or added your insights to
something pre-existing.

When (and if) you find the opportunity to create your own
content from scratch, shoot!

One of my favorite mailing lists doing this is Marketing

Examples.

Every week, an extremely thoughtful case study arrives in my

inbox from Harry.

Whatever format you choose; you have one goal:

To make people understand that every time they get your

email, they are in for a treat!

Make sure it is fun, interesting, educative, thoughtful

and/or that it makes them go “Holy shit!”.
 DON’T ASK PEOPLE TO
SIGN UP FOR YOUR
MAILING LIST
No-one has got time for more spammy emails today.

The word “mailing list” (or God forbid, “newsletter”) will

give exactly that vibe. More companies trying to sell their
sh*t in my inbox.

Asking people to “Sign up for our mailing list!” isn’t going to

do anything to your sales.

The reward is not enough to outweigh the risk (getting

spammy email that you don’t want).
A slightly better way is the promise to get notified whenever
you publish a new blog post. This might get the people that
really loved the post they just read, to give you their email.

But using a mailing list only as a way to broadcast when you

have something you’ve published something new elsewhere,
is a huge waste of the power in email marketing.

Your marketing funnel (of which the mailing list is a vital

part) should not be sending leads back and forth like the ball
in a game of tennis.

Read a blog post -> Sign up for mailing list -> Get notified of a
new blog post -> read a blog post -> get notified of a new blog
post -> read a blog post. Repeat.
This is not very efficient. People are gonna get dizzy from all
the back-and-forth.

And more importantly – it won’t get them any closer to

becoming a paying customer.

Instead, make sure that your mailing list is an active part of

your marketing funnel: a step of a one-way journey to
becoming a paying customer.

People Won’t Remember Your Name

Right Away
It doesn’t matter if you have spent months crafting the
perfect “rememberable” startup name – people won’t
remember it right away.

(I am pretty sure a lot of people spelled Google as “Goggle”

during the first years if they remembered it at al)
It takes quite a few interactions for it to stick – when it comes
to startups as well as people.

The same goes for signing up for or buying something; it

usually doesn’t happen the first time someone hears about
you.

(It is widely talked about that it takes 6 to 7 interactions

before someone makes a purchase, but putting a number on
it is almost impossible in today’s world.)
On social media, you can never make sure that the person
who started following you today, will get your updates for
tomorrow (that algorithm a-hole, remember?)

But, with email, it is a completely different thing.

If you get someone to sign up on your mailing list, they have

given you permission to keep communicating with them(don’t
misuse this trust, that permission can as easily be taken
away).

This means you are able to keep in touch with them as often
as you want. Compare that to social media where the
algorithms will prevent your messages from reaching most of
your followers.
The first and most important task for any mailing list is to
capture the best leads and give its owner a way to continue
the customer journey.
BUILDING A MAILING
LIST THAT PEOPLE
WILL SIGN UP FOR
The most important thing to understand is that a successful
newsletter needs to be a content platform of itself.

Just like your blog, podcast or Instagram – copy/pasting from

one platform to another ain’t going to work.

The email platform is more than capable of acting as its own

home for content!

The Morning Brew is a news

company sending a daily email to its
subscribers – and that is their main
product!

They don’t have a website or blog to

send you to, to “read the rest of the
article” – it all lives in their emails.

Today, they have 1.9 million subscribers.

A mailing list can without a doubt be its own platform, with

its own content.
 Three simple guidelines for
successful email marketing
The most basic (and least efficient) way of doing “email
marketing”, is to slam a “Sign Up For Our Newsletter” at the
bottom of every page.

Companies seem to believe that if you just do that, people

will gladly add themselves and their mother to their list.

They won’t.

Because no-one cares about you, your company or what’s

“new!”.

And they certainly don’t want you to talk about it in their

inbox.

If you want to use email as an efficient marketing tool, you

need to build a system that is optimized to capture as many
of the leads as possible – if they leave without signing up,
they will most likely never come back.
Forget everything you think you know about email
marketing.

Follow these rules, and you’ll be ahead of 95% of the

competition.

1. Take Them Forward Step By Step

The worst thing you can do is trying to get people to buy
your product (or even reading your product page) the
moment they follow you on Twitter, or Google their way to
your website.

2 things need to happen before someone will buy something

or invest substantially in you in any way.

First, they must be aware of the fact that they have the
problem that your product will solve, and want to solve it
enough to invest in a solution.

Secondly, they need to trust your company enough to make

an investment.

Today, we are extremely wary about things we find online.

We know that every click is a potential hoax, virus or scheme.

Instead of taking them from “Hey, here we are and we make

this super awesome product” to “Send us your money!”,
make the step (and initial investment) smaller.
Offering something of value (remember, not “sign up for our
newsletter”) gives them the opportunity to make a small
investment in you – by giving you their email address.

If the first (and only) option you give someone is to sign up

or buy your product now, you will only get the few people to
sign up, that already know they have a problem
and already trust you.
And if they don’t, they most certainly won’t come back and
are lost to you.

But by offering something of interest to them – a PDF, video

or e-course that helps them solve a problem they are
struggling with or gives them value in terms of more money,
time or status – they can make an investment without almost
any investment.

Most importantly, now you have their email and they’ve given
you permission to keep on talking to them. Heck, if the PDF
you gave them was really good, they even want you to keep
talking to them!

2. Give As Few – And As Obvious –

Options As Possible
Treat your mailing list as a funnel – wherever the traffic
comes from, it should be poured into your mailing list.

When someone reads your blog post; don’t give them the
options to follow you on Twitter, read the next post, get in
touch via email etc.
 “The time it takes to make a decision
increases with the number and
complexity of choices.”
- Hick´s Law

When you’ve managed to get them to your website, your

only goal is to get them on your mailing list.

Remove all links, share buttons, menu choices and ads that
aren’t necessary.

Don’t make them think. Don’t give them lot’s of next steps.
There’s only one next step – get on the mailing list.

3. Always Offer A Chance To Get Even

More Value
Sending an email when a new blog post is up is not adding
any value. It is just reminding then of the value that is
already there.

If they are reading a blog post on how to Launch on Product

Hunt – ask them if they want “The Step-by-Step Guide to
Product of The Day on Product Hunt?”
If they click “Yes”, show the opt-in box for your mailing list
(I’ll show you how do do this in a sec).

Now, it doesn’t stop here.

Keep adding value, giving people the opportunity to invest

more and to get more out of it
Whatever you do; don’t start sending pushy sales emails right
away:

Allright, enough theory. Let’s get going creating an awesome

mailing list system – crafted for your audience!
 THE ANATOMY OF
GREAT EMAIL
MARKETING

As we already talked about; your mailing list is an important

part of your customer journey – not just a way to send offers
or previews of blog posts.

Here’s an explanation of the entire process – and where your

mailing list plays its part.

1. Reach out on social media

Social media is great for reaching a lot of people (if you put a
lot of work into it, on a regular basis).

But as we already talked about, you can never be sure if

people will continue to see and interact with what you
publish there.

Use Twitter, Linked, Facebook and other social platforms as a

place to get in touch with people in your audience.
Talk about the things they like or struggle with. Talk about
things that interest them.

Imagine it as a huge cocktail party, where people are just

mingling with each other. When you find someone that
shares your interests (or you think might be able to help you
out) you’ll hang around that guy.

Soon, more people will start gathering around. After a while,

an entire crowd will have amassed around that first person.
Just because she was talking about stuff they were interested
in.

Depending on the platform, share snippets of text, visuals or

videos that make people interact.

If you don’t yet know what these topics are; social media is
also a great place to get to know your audience better.

Listen to what people resonate with the most and talk more
about that!
 2. Offer more value with
evergreen content
Now, you want to get your followers and fans off the social
media and onto a platform you own and control as soon as
possible.

Great content.

Content that helps people in your target market solve

problems, be inspired or entertained.

While social media needs constant attention and input (if you
stop posting on Twitter, people will stop seeing you in their
feed almost instantly), content created for”searchable”
platforms like blogs, Youtube, a podcast or your website will
continue to work for you even if you stop producing new
stuff.

These platforms also offer a way to go more in-depth on a

subject – thanks to being more long-form and “slower” than
social media.

By sharing links to your long-form content on social media,

you’ll get the people most interested in those topics – i.e.
your perfect target market – to invest more time in your
content.

More people will click a link to a blog post than they would if
you were linking to your product page – if they don’t want to
solve the problem right now, why would they be interested in
reading about a product solving that problem?

Creating Content That Attracts The Right

People
Not only will great content attract people to your company –
but it will also attract the right people.

The content you create should help people solve the same
problem (or part of the problem) that your product is solving.

Imagine you are offering a To-Do app. By using that app, the
user can make lists of things they need to be done.

But when they searched for and downloaded your app, their
problem wasn’t a lack of a to-do app.

The app is a way to try to solve their real problem:

• Not getting things done
• Being unable to structure their workday
• Bad at organizing
• Not enough time

This is an example of an external problem (“I need a to-do

app”) and the real internal problem (“I suck at getting things
done”).

Our days consist of small and big problems. We are all trying
to become more efficient, faster, healthier, richer.
By talking about the internal problems your product solves,
you will attract the people with an urge to solve those
problems – i.e. those willing to invest something to make that
problem go away.

But, should I really give away the solution for free? Then
they don’t need to buy my product?

Yes, I hear you.

But here’s the thing; some people will never buy your
product.

No matter how many offers you send their way or how many
awesome videos you create – they won’t convert.

But a small group of people will invest in your product for

two reasons:
One: You’ve built trust by sharing your knowledge and by
showing them that you know what you talk about.

Two: You position your product as a shortcut to solving their

problem!
 Bram Kanstein positions the course NoCode MVP as a shortcut to
giving the students all the knowledge they need to start building
and launching their own no-code products.

Your product page is the very last step before buying your
product – and people won’t even consider handing over their
credit card information unless they trust that they will get
something equally valuable back.
 3. Get their email address with
content upgrades
Now, you’ve taken them off social media, and on to your blog
(or Youtube channel or podcast….) by offering them even
more value.

The usual next step is to put a few “Sign up for the mailing
list so you won’t miss the next blog post!” sign-up boxes in
and after you post.

This sucks.

Always give people an option to invest more in you – by

offering more value.

A piece of content that tell people how to solve a problem is

very actionable – this is the optimal opportunity to offer
more.

In my post about How to Build an Audience Before Launch, I

offer a Notion template that will help the reader concretize
who their audience (and potential customers) are.

If a piece of content describes how to solve a problem, offer

a way to help to put that knowledge into action!

When someone is fired up about something – keep that

momentum! Don’t make them wait until “the next blog post
comes out”.
Take them to the next step!

Always offer a content upgrade – a next step – to any piece

of public content.

For blog posts, add a signup box that lets them enter their
email address.

In videos and podcasts, you can put a link in the description

to a separate sign up page (like this for my workshop on
How to Generate Clients on Autopilot.)

Use Multiple Opt-In Options!

Your goal is to get people on your mailing list.

Don’t be subtle. Don’t half-ass this.

Add sign-up boxes in multiple places and offer different
incentives to get people on it.

But! It is extremely important to show it to the visitor at the

right time – offer the option or upgrade when they are the
most receptive to it:

Pop-ups, for example, can be really, really efficient.

But most companies are showing them at the wrong

moment; as soon as you arrive at their site.

Imagine this: You just clicked a link on Twitter, promising to

show you ”how to set up the perfect workflow for on-boarding
customers”.

What do you want? Well, know how to set that system up of

course!

So when you are shown a huge popup the second you get to
the site, offering a 20% discount if you sign up now – you
don’t care.

You click to close it without even reading it.

You are there to learn how to make the on-boarding process

easier for your business – that’s the only thing you are
interested in.

But what if you in the middle of that blog post, were

presented with an offer to download a step-by-step checklist
that would help you to set this new system in place? Would
you be interested?

Probably.

Make sure you show the signup boxes at the right time, in the
right context and with the right upgrades!

The question is shouldn’t be “How can I get people to sign up

for our mailing list?” but “What upgrade can I offer them, to
give them even more value?”

What is the next, natural step if you want to make them

invest more (time and effort) into your brand?

People don’t give a sh*t about your company or your mailing

list. They only care about what’s valuable to them!

Make It Easy With The Right Tool

There’s no blueprint for this. Creating an efficient mailing list
machine requires a lot of trial-and-error.

Use different types of opt-in forms:

• Popups (at the right moment)
• Landing pages (that you can link to from social media
and other platforms)
• Banners (that lives at the top of your page)
• Quizzes (Like the one Ramit Sethi is using on his
front page)
• Opt-in boxes within your content
Make sure you have an easy way to keep track of how they
perform.

I’ve tried all kinds of tools – free and premium – and I’ve
reached one conclusion: it is worth paying a few bucks a
month to get it done faster and easier.

After trying about 10 different tools, I ended up choosing

the Thrive Themes lead generation tool.

(This is an affiliate link. If you click it and end up buying their

service, I will get a small kickback. It won’t cost you anything.)

The price is way lower their closest competitor OptinMonster,

and it has all the features you need.

It will let you build and design your opt-in forms exactly in
the way you want it – and it also comes with a great A/B
testing feature.

If you are serious about building a strong mailing list – pay

some money for a service that will make it easy for you!

Don’t Ask For The Email Right Away

Even though it is a small investment, people are careful about
giving away their email addresses to companies they don’t
know.
Using the step-by-step approach we talked about before is a
great idea even here.

If you ask them to sign-up with their email, they ask

themselves “Is this worth my email address?”.
They will weigh the pros and cons before doing it.

A better way is to use a 2-step process. Start by giving them

the opportunity to get your valuable content upgrade:

They just need to decide if they want the value the upgrade is
offering.

When they click the button, ask them where they want you to
send the files!
Using a two-step opt-in is great when you need to collect
more information than just the email. The more information
they need to enter, the fewer people will do it.

By using a two-step technique, they’ve already made a small

investment (the decision that they want the thing and clicked
the button) – and now they just need to let you know where
to send it!

Don’t Waste The Opportunity To Get To

Know Your Audience
With every new piece of information (first name, last name,
company etc) you force your subscribers to give you, the
chance of them completing the sign-up process diminishes.

Only ask for the information you really need; the email
adress.

That being said, you do want to get to know every person

that signs up as well as possible.

Using tags and categories is a great way to do this. Always

make sure that you know which of your content upgrades
someone has downloaded.

Same goes if you have something to sell – make sure you

record this for each subscriber on your list.

Set up your mailing list system to tag people as soon as they

do anything new.
Another way is to simply ask people questions. But, make
sure to do it after they’ve signed up.

Growth Design is doing a really good job with this. After

you’ve entered your email address you’ll get one of these
prompts:
This is a perfect way to gather information without risking
people not signing up in the first place because you ask too
much of them.

Keep The Momentum!

Another great example from Growth Design is how they keep
people investing more and more.

When you’ve entered your email and your preferences –

there’s one last prompt: Follow us on Twitter.

If you would’ve given the opportunity to sign up for your

mailing list or to follow you on Twitter from the very start – a
lot of people would’ve skipped out on both.

But by giving them a clear, step-by-step path to take – where

they only have one option at any given moment – you
drastically improve the interactions you get.
 4. Build Trust with Automated
Sequences
After going through all this hassle to get people on your list;
the worst thing you can do is to leave it to chance.

If you don’t make sure to keep interacting with your fresh

subscriber, they will forget about you.

Set up an automated sequence of emails, that starts to send

immediately after someone signs up.

Sending 5 emails over five to ten days is a great start.

The goal? Making your name stick and to build trust.

 GETTING YOUR
EMAILS OPENED

Even if almost everyone on your mailing list will receive each

email you send, far from everyone will open it.

This is totally normal. Some emails will get stuck in spam

filters and a lot of them will be left unread.

What is a normal email

opening rate in the tech
business?
An opening rate above 20% is good. Over 40% is great.

This is one of the reasons why you need to send emails

regularly. If someone doesn’t open one email, they might
open then next one.
 Write magnetic subject lines
You can improve the opening rates by doing one
thing; writing kick-ass subject lines.

The subject line has one job; to get people to click the email
to open it.

It doesn’t matter how good the content is if it’s not getting

opened.

Writing good subject lines is an art form itself. It takes time to

master.

There’s been a lot of articles written in this specific subject –

dive in if you are interested!

Your mailing list service will most certainly offer the ability to
A/B test your emails. By using that, you can write several
different subject lines, and send each to a small percentage of
your subscribers.

The one getting the most opens, will then be sent to the rest
of your list.
 Don’t leave the preview to
chance

Most email clients will give you a preview of the content of

the email.

And most mailing list services will allow you to decide what
this excerpt should be. Do that!

If you leave this blank, your subscribers will most certainly

see something like “Read This Email In You Browser”. That
doesn’t improve the chances of them opening it.

The preview works as a second chance to make people

interested.
 GETTING YOUR
EMAIL READ

A way-too-big percentage of the people opening your email

won’t read to the end.

The “email marketing gurus” will often tell you to write as

short emails as possible. This is to get people to click the links
in the email to get to the offer, blog post or whatever they are
trying to push.

This is not what we are trying to do.

We are using our mailing lists as a way to create a stronger

bond with the audience and to build trust.

When the mailing list is its own content platform, you want
as many people as possible to read the entire thing.

I’ve written monsters of emails containing 3000+ words –

and they’ve worked better than those under 400 words.

There’s no magic number. You want people to get to the end

feeling that they want more, not stop in the middle because
they are bored.
As with everywhere online; people have a very short
attention span when reading emails.

Use pattern breaks, to organize your content and make it easy

for people to scan the content.

Pattern breaks is a way to change things up: if everything

looks the same, the reader might pretty quickly become
bored and stop reading.

Morning Brew is facilitating this in a great way, by adding

images, headlines, bold and underlined text as well as short
paragraphs.
 CONCLUSION
Using email as a marketing tool is one of the most efficient
ways to grow your audience and customer base.

No other platform comes close to reach or conversion

compared to email.

Building a qualitative email list should be the main focus of

any No code startup and maker – and you should start
yesterday.

Now you know that it is not your product you should be

talking about – but rather the problem it solves and the
things interesting to your target market.

You don’t need your product finished to start building your

email list.

An email list with a few thousand (or hundreds) of people on

it can make the difference between failure or success to any
launch.

Start building your most valuable sales channel today.


 THANK YOU!
You’ve made it through! Congrats! :)

Now, the only thing left is to get in touch and let me know
what you thought. I reply to every message I get!

Here’s the best ways to reach me:

Email: hello@jenslennartson.com
Twitter @jenslennartsson

Waiting to hear from you.

Jens Lennartsson

PS. Whenever I update this book, you’ll get a notification to

the same email adress you used to sign up for this book!