214. Why you should build an email list for your coworking business
Resources Mentioned in this Podcast:
Everything Coworking Featured Resources:
Masterclass: 3 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets to Opening a Coworking Space
Creative Coworking Partnerships: How to negotiate and structure management agreements from the landlord and operator perspective
TRANSCRIPTION
214. Why you should build an email list for your coworking business
00:00:01 Welcome to the everything co-working podcast, where you learn what you need to know about how the world wants to work. And now your host coworking space owner and trend expert. Jamie Russo, Welcome to episode number 214 of the everything coworking podcast. Thank you for joining me. So we're going to dive right in today and talk about why you should build your email list.
00:00:44 We've done two recent trainings on this topic for our community manager university. We do a live training every single month. So one month we talked about how to grow your email list, which is specifically your marketing email list. We know you have a member list, but that's easy. And then once you have that list, what content to include in your marketing newsletters.
00:01:08 So that prompted me to want to share some of these concepts with everyone, not just our community manager, university members, although they got all the details. And step-by-step, so I'm going to give you some thought provoking ideas about what you can do with a marketing email list that you may not have thought of. And some of you listening, I know our email marketing pros,
00:01:33 so you can probably add some ideas to this list. I would love for you to share your thoughts about what kind of success you're having with your email or what your marketing approaches or relationship building approaches in our Facebook group. You can join us at everything. Coworking club.com. That'll take you right to the Facebook group. Okay? So three things you can do with a marketing email list.
00:01:58 The first one is pretty straight forward. Use it as a sales funnel tool. So we've been talking a lot recently about how to market to the folks that aren't immediate joiners, right? So in the training that I did for our community manager university folks, I talked about the idea that there are the active search enjoin members. I know I need a coworking space.
00:02:22 I'm going to Google. I'm going to look at my options. I'm going to tour. I'm going to join one of them, right? Those folks, you know, probably don't go pass through your marketing list. They found you on Google. They came in for a tour. They joined, they went straight to your member list, but then there's the rest of the folks that came in for a tour and didn't join,
00:02:44 or the folks that are somehow exposed to your business, but haven't booked a tour, but maybe you can get them on your email list. Because as we've talked about in prior episodes, the sale to folks who aren't the Searchie enjoy members is long, is a longer effort, right? So the sales funnel, it's amazing. When you can move somebody from,
00:03:07 you know, the top of your funnel hits the website or hits your Google, my business listing and drops pretty quickly through booking a tour comes in for a tour and joined. But what about those folks that are stuck somewhere in the middle? How do we keep them engaged? How do we continue to move them at their pace, through the sales funnel?
00:03:26 And one way to do this is to help them overcome their questions or their objections. Maybe they wouldn't word them as objections, but in a, in the sort of marketing term, that's what it is. So the folks who aren't immediately joining are wondering, what's the ROI of joining, you know, are there people that I admire and want to spend time with in this space?
00:03:50 Who are the members of the space? Do I want to belong to that group? What happens in a coworking space? Is it productive? Is it busy? Are people, you know, or are there events that I wanted to attend? They want to know more. And so if you can sort of get a sense of what it is that people want to know.
00:04:07 And I think these few are pretty common. One might just be like, what's the vibe in this space it's super buttoned up and professional. Is it loud? Is it, you know, library? Like, is it fun? Is it, you know, what's it like, and you can help folks learn more about your positioning, your brand, what you offer your experience through a marketing newsletter.
00:04:33 So the first way to use your marketing email list is simply as a sales funnel tool. So to nurture those folks and drip out, you know, over time, the information that they want to know and hope that eventually you sort of overcome those objections and stay top of mind, and then they join. There's no downside to doing this right? But there is a big downside to just letting people leave your funnel completely,
00:04:57 which is what will happen if they're not on your email list, we'll talk about social media in a minute. The second way you might use your marketing email list is direct sales. So you might announce that you have an office that's open. You might run a BOGO, which is a buy one, get one. You might sell event tickets. So you might use that list as a way to get to folks who are interested in what you're offering and want to join,
00:05:25 but we're waiting for an office, but didn't tell you didn't get on the waiting list or might be interested in trial. So running a BOGO. And if you listened to me on my podcast over time, you know, I'm not crazy about discounts, but some of our flight crew members have had good results running BOGOs for the summer. And I won't,
00:05:48 you know, give away their names. But I know one mentioned, she hits her email list and she gets a bunch of people who, who take her up on the BOGO on the last day when she sets that deadline. And that email goes out, and this is for a summer BOGO, for example. So buy one, get one coworking, try it for the summer.
00:06:06 Or maybe you have shul event coming up and you're trying to sell tickets. So there are direct sales reasons to have a marketing list, because if you don't have that email list, you don't really have a channel to get those opportunities in front of potential members or potential ticket buyers, potential office members, et cetera. We have social media, but again,
00:06:30 we'll talk about the downside of social media in a minute here. The third reason you might want to have an email list is not for everyone, but there are lots of coworking spaces who, you know, really play a significant role in the community. They have a broad network, they are sort of placemaking for the entrepreneurial community in their market. And so if that's,
00:06:57 you, you might look at your email list as sort of indirect sales. So you might be doing things like affiliate revenue. You might be promoting services or products from a partner that's in your community. That makes sense for your members. You might be selling memberships that aren't attached to your physical space. We've had Jessica Bommarito on the podcast and I'm dying to have her back on to see what they're up to.
00:07:24 She and her husband owned a physical space, but we're also shifting into an online digital community for entrepreneurs with a specific mindset. So if you have an audience and you have an engaged email list, then there are opportunities for revenue streams that simply don't exist. If you don't have an email list at all. So those are three reasons. You might want to have an email list.
00:07:50 Again, that's not a member list. It's a marketing email list. And a quick note about why email is better than social media. In my experience, I would recommend spending 80% of it, your time on building your email list and 20% on social media. And this is simply because you don't control your social media platform, right? You can see who your followers are and you can post to your platforms,
00:08:18 but you can't directly get to them. And when your posts go up, if it's an organic post, it reaches 10% of your followers. So if you have a thousand followers on Instagram, any post is going to reach 100 of them. If you send an email to your email list and you have a thousand people on that list, assuming you're using a good platform and you have good deliverability,
00:08:42 that email is going to end up in the inbox of all 1000 people, not 100. So the simple deliverability, the ability to actually get in front of your followers is 10% on free social media. And it's a hundred percent in email. Now, of course, then there's the open rate, right? So not everyone's going to open your email, but they're going to see that email in your inbox.
00:09:06 And you will at least be top of mind in terms of open rates. We would hope from probably realistically 20 to 30%. Again, if you play a unique role in your community and you are a community leader, people are more likely to open your emails that may be higher, but you want it to at least be 20%. And we'll talk about a couple of ways to get to that open rate tools to use.
00:09:30 So if you're totally new to email marketing, you're going to want to set yourself up on an email service provider. Most of our members, not our members, but our, I guess, our broader community based on our tech and tools survey for 2021 use HubSpot MailChimp is another popular email service provider and active campaign is another one and active campaign and HubSpot both combined with CRM.
00:09:56 So they're kind of a combo tool, which is great. And those will allow you to do many of the things that you need to do to grow your email list, to send emails, to set up automations, all of those things, which we won't go too into here. Those are more detailed trainings. So important note about how to get people on your email list.
00:10:20 You want to be careful not to spam people. I get spammed in my personal account and even my business account all the time. And I delete those messages immediately. And sometimes I send nasty replies because it's so offensive, right? Your email inbox is your email inbox, and you should have ownership over it. And outside of the U S and Canada,
00:10:41 the UK Australia, there is a, if you want to call it a rule, a guideline it's called, it's not, it's more than a guideline. It's more of a rule, which is probably not quite the right phrase for it, but it's called GDPR. And I don't actually know what that stands for, but it's basically an anti-spam law. So you need to be very careful about how you get folks opted into your email list,
00:11:03 but you just have to be consistent and ask folks and give them a reason to get on your email list. So ask your, make sure you're, you're asking your tours. If you could opt them into the marketing list in the us, a lot of folks would just do that automatically. You have to be careful. Technically you're supposed to get them to opt into your email list because just because they've signed up for a tour,
00:11:24 doesn't mean they want marketing emails. You can ask them so you can ask them when they come in, you can ask them in the email sequences that you use event attendees. If you have folks in your space, we talk about this in our groups and our membership groups or community manager groups all the time. If you're having events, those are such important marketing opportunities.
00:11:47 Make sure that folks know when they come into your space, that you're a coworking space and make sure you give them the opportunity to get on your marketing list, to learn more. And you might give them an incentive to do that such as, you know, Winfrey meeting room or win a free event post, or when a week of, of coworking.
00:12:06 So give them kind of a reason to opt into your list, guests of members that come in, give them the opportunity to opt in, and these can be done by having a tablet at the front desk. If you're using a sign-in form that is either so physical causes problems, because handwriting is really hard to read. So electronic is always better. It doesn't have to be an iPad.
00:12:27 It can just be, you know, an inexpensive tablet with a simple Google form or a fancier email capture form that goes straight to your email list. And you can get folks opted in through that method. One other more advanced method would be to have an opt-in on your website. Now, what I love is when folks kind of go a step further,
00:12:48 of course, we all have the, you know, just opt in to stay in touch form, probably not as compelling as offering a free resource. The free resource though is an advanced move, right? You have to create the content. You have to turn it into a PDF. You have to figure out how to deliver it, you know, through your email service provider,
00:13:09 none of that is particularly complicated. So it just takes a little bit of time and focus. I'm going to link to a great example on, in the show notes for this episode, which is number two, 14 and long at Liberty lake coworking has a great free ebook on the homepage, right on the homepage of our website. And you'll see it when you go to her website.
00:13:30 So it's a compelling reason to give your email address and to log in. And she's giving out a free PDF. That is a resource guide for inland Northwest entrepreneurs. And she gives a little bullet list of what it includes and then a very simple name and email field to get folks to opt in. So again, you can get folks to opt in tours,
00:13:54 event, attendees, guests, or a free resource on your website. The key to list building is to be consistent. It's a marathon, not a sprint, but it's a KPI that you want to track. So you want that on your KPI document and you want to review it with your team and make sure that you're using these opportunities to get folks to opt in another opportunity.
00:14:18 Actually, this is a bonus one that I'm just adding. We just started doing this with our Instagram is when people opt into Instagram or Facebook, you can DM them and offer them your free resource. It's harder probably to DM them and just say, Hey, do you want to be on our email list? But if like, and you have this great ebook,
00:14:36 you could say, Hey, thanks for following us. If you're interested, we're offering this great free resource to our new followers. Here's the link. And it goes to the form where they, where they enter their email address and their name to get that resource. So not everyone will opt in, but it's a another great sort of channel to get folks onto your email list.
00:14:57 And then the next important point is to make sure that you're sending them something, at least at least monthly. So you want to make sure that as your list grows, you're being consistent and sending a marketing newsletter or whatever kind of content feels appropriate to you. A newsletter is a great place to start and do it very consistently. So folks get used to hearing from you and have just a simple template that allows you to deliver the content that we've talked about.
00:15:32 So there might be a section that is for new member features or testimonials. There might be a section that talks about recent events that you've had in the space. There might be a promo section where you can announce those new office openings or your BOGO or whatever it is. So get B get consistent with the content that you're delivering. And if you have that simple template,
00:15:56 it should be easy for you to be consistent. And this is something that a community manager can deliver. I think all of the community managers in our community manager university are doing the newsletters, those that are doing them, and we're, we're supporting and training the folks that are not doing that yet, as your list grows again, think about how to leverage that list,
00:16:18 make sure that you have set up an automation for tours that don't join. So in addition to your marketing newsletter, you might have a short automation that you deliver that sort of answers some of those objections for folks that do tour and don't join. Maybe you start planning in your promotional calendar, your marketing calendar, a quarterly email promotion like that BOGO that we talked about,
00:16:42 or maybe you're waiving a setup fee, or maybe you're doing a free week. There are lots of things you can offer that are kind of light promotions that are not necessarily price discounts. And then think about indirect revenue, affiliate marketing, promote a local partner. What are some opportunities that you might come up with if you give some thought to that? So those are your action items.
00:17:03 Make sure you have those email forms set up for tours, event, attendees, guests, and, and once you've got those down, create an opt-in on your website. You can look at Anne's example in the show notes and then get consistent with monthly content and start working with your team to think about how you leverage that email list. So hopefully that was helpful.
00:17:26 We'd love to hear what you're doing with your email list and your newsletter in the Facebook group. And if this is new to you and you're looking for step-by-step training, we train on newsletters. We train on lots of things, but two of the recent topics we've trained on are building your email list step-by-step and then creating monthly newsletters. What content should go in there,
00:17:49 et cetera. If you want to join our community manager university, you can go to everything co-working dot com forward slash community manager. And we will see you next week. We have an amazing slate of interviews coming up. So I've done a couple of solo episodes here, and we have a great lift of folks on the schedule for the next few weeks.
00:18:12 So we will see you back here. Same time, same place next week.
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