How do you communicate with your email list?

Do you send them…

• excerpts from blog posts that link back to your website?
• announcements about upcoming products, programs or services?
• promotional emails from your affiliates?
• newsletter articles that include tips and strategies related to your expertise?

If you answered YES to any of the items above… that’s great, these are all appropriate ways to communicate with your list.

However there’s a big BUT and here it is:

If you do these things without ever getting personal, you’re missing a huge opportunity to build trust and connection with your subscribers.

Without trust and connection, you will lose hundreds, maybe even thousands of clients over time.

Your email list subscribers are the people who have gone out of their way to receive communication from you.

This means that they want to be connected with you, and just like any relationship, if you never open up and show them who you are, true connection will not be able to happen.

How to get personal with your list:

Getting personal isn’t easy for many people, including me. Even though I have a prominent presence in my town, and a growing presence online, I’m actually a fairly quiet and private person in my personal life.

I don’t like broadcasting every detail about what I ate for breakfast for the world to see.

The good news is that’s not what I’m suggesting… unless it had some important relevance to my business and I could connect the dots for my readers.

What I’m suggesting is that for every email newsletter you send, you include a personal message at the top. This personal message could be related to your business, or not; but if it’s unrelated to your business, you need to bring it back around to you business in the end.

Your business is ultimately why your subscribers are on your list after all.

For example, if your personal message is about how you create a vision board every new year’s eve, and you’re a nutrition coach, then you need to bring it back around to your business by explaining how your vision board helps you achieve your own nutrition goals throughout the year.

Or if your personal message is about your most recent family vacation, and you’re a business coach, you can connect the dots for your readers by sharing how vacation is important for your business because it helps you breathe new life into it when you return.

Can you ever get too personal?

Well, yes.

If all you ever sent your email list was stories about your dog, kids, relationship, travels, dinner, etc. and you never shared valuable resources in the form of articles, tips and strategies that position you as an expert on your topic - then you’d be getting too personal.

On the same account, you’ll need to use your judgement when it comes to sharing your personal opinions on sensitive subjects like politics and religion.

Personally, I believe that if you are a personal brand - meaning that what your clients are buying is a relationship with YOU, the more you can respectfully share where you stand on sensitive subjects the better.

Although this type of “getting personal” leaves you most vulnerable to criticism, it’s also the type of personal sharing that will create the deepest connection with your list subscribers. As well as the type of personal sharing that will weed out the people on your list who would not be the best fit, personality wise, to work with you anyway.

If you’re ready to build your brand following the right steps, in the right order, and create something that’s completely unique and authentic to you… then I invite you to check out the Impact Tribe! You get immediate access to a library of courses, bi-weekly coaching calls, templates for building your brand, and so much more. Check it out here!