Get Started with Email Marketing for TPT Sellers
Every TPTer says to start an email list, right?
“An email list is a must have for TPTers.”
“It will solve alllll your problems and help you make a bajillion dollars.”
“You’re not taking your biz seriously unless you have a list.”
‘Round here, those are the rumors.
An email list can make you a lot of money. But it can also be a com-PLETE waste of time and money. There are layers upon layers to email marketing strategy.
It’s a lot of work. And 75% of what you hear from other TPTers is either wrong or wrong for you getting started.
So here’s almost everything you need to know before you start an email list.
A Big or Small Commitment to Email Marketing
Before you type in, "Mailchimp vs ConvertKit" or "Should I start with Flodesk?" into Google or your favorite Facebook group—STOP.
You're not going to be able to pick the right best perfect email service provider at the start of learning email marketing. Just like you weren't able to pick the right font, best cover template, or perfect strategy on day one of your TPT store.
If you're unsure of how serious you're going to take email marketing, choose an email service provider with a free plan.
If you're all in, go ahead and pick a paid provider.
And while we’re on the topic, as you’re researching different email service providers, remember that many TPTers are affiliates for Flodesk and ConvertKit.
Notttt… that there’s anything wrong with that. But you need to be aware that the number of recommendations is influenced by affiliate marketing. Like a rigged popularity contest.
For example, Flodesk and Mailchimp are very similar. Notice no one is touting Mailchimp to TPTers getting started.
Just sayin’...
The Right Question to Ask Before Email Marketing
EVE-RY-one starts email marketing with the wrong question.
“Which email service provider is best?”
Email marketing shouldn’t start by asking "Flodesk vs ConvertKit for TPT".
It should start with:
“How do I write really good emails teachers want to read?”
It’s important to learn how to write emails.
It’s important to know how to use email to help teachers.
It’s important to know how you will use email to sell to teachers.
Those are the decisions you need to make before starting your list.
Because both ConvertKit and Mailchimp can send the email. You need help with the right words. Not the right platform. (And—spoiler alert—the perfect platform doesn't exist.)
If you want to learn the right words, the right emails, and the way to enjoy your email list, Teacherpreneur Email and More is where you can learn the right words.
But if you're not quite ready to start paying for an email list. You have options.
Start Using Note to Followers as You Begin Email Marketing
As you're learning and researching, go find the Note to Followers button in your TPT store.
It's the perfect first step to email marketing. You don't have to sign up for an email service provider. You don't have to create a lead magnet. And you don't have to start by emailing your mom. (Wait. Huh...? Just me?)
Your Note to Followers is preloaded with buyers who like your stuff. Use that to start sending weekly emails. Once teachers realize that you have powerful and helpful emails, they'll join your list as soon as you start one.
TPTers Should Send These Types of Emails
Ready to jump into email marketing?
It's time to make foundational decisions that will set—Your— emails apart from other emails.
Then pick the reasons you want email. Yes, you're selling your products. But go beyond selling. Are you telling funny stories? Are you giving step by step tutorials? Are you giving classroom tech tips?
Knowing your 3 purposes will help you decide on types of emails you are sending. (Which leads you to write emails faster.)
Story Emails
Use Stories to Illustrate a Point: In email, a story should teach a lesson without you having to say what the lesson is. Most email stories are terrible. You can use these story templates here. (A mini course is coming soon eventually errr…depends on my toddlers.)
Use Stories to Increase Replies: Some stories are written to get replies. Not sell. Knowing these types is the difference in higher conversion rates and no one buying.
Promotional Emails
TPT Sale Emails: TPT sale emails are super fun and memorable when you don't give everything away in the title. Also theme TPT sale emails so you have a "reason" to email. You can see examples of this in my site wide sale funnels and the Back After Break Emails. <———One of my favorites
New Blog/Podcast Posts: First, a Public Service Calming Announcement. You DO NOT need a blog to have somewhere to send teachers on your list. If you have a blog, you can send readers to your blog. But most of the time? Remember your list is the content, not the content delivery system.
Educational Emails
Show How to Use a Product: Teachers can teach your lesson. But you might teach it differently and give them a new idea. Send a “How to…” email every once in a while.
Explain Common Problems: Teachers get on Pinterest and TPT to solve or prevent an issue. So imagine their joy when you send an email with a problem they are experiencing and the solution to it.
What Makes a Good Email from a TPTer?
Putting you in an email is hard.
YOU, you, yOu, You, you, Y.O.U.—you—youuuu!
You are a real life, 3D teacher, not meant to be copy and pasted onto text. Text can seem flat and boring. But, is black and white boring? Can text be iNTeREsTiNG? Can you take allll the limitations on email and make it fun? Even if there are no images, no videos, and no glitter?
Yes.
Write Intriguing Subject Lines
Headlines should contain a promise of what you readers will find in the email. Do not trick your audience into clicking to open your email. This includes the ever popular
"I have a secret…"
headline that everyone looooves to use for TPT sale days. They don't have a secret. And readers will remember it if you trick them into opening without an actual secret. Also, your open rates will decrease over time if your email doesn’t live up to your content.
Put Your Content—IN—the Email
Wanna annoy your subscribers?
Only email when you want them to click to read a blog or podcast. That will get old. If they open your email, they want to get something out of it.
They gave you their email address in hopes you'd help them, give tips, or entertain them. They’ve changed diapers, told students no, and been patient all day long. They don't have ONE click of patience or interest left for your email.
Unless it helps them. Give your readers the content, then let them decide if it's worth clicking to read more.
Stand Out With Your Style
Do you bold the words you want to emphasize?
Or italicize words that'd make you raise your eyebrows? Or do you—emphasize—with em dashes? Do you use CAPS to say "outta con-TROL"?
These are not right or wrong things. These are ways that you can be Y.O.U. in black and white.
Just as important as it is for you to show your style, it's just as important for you to contrast your style against the OTHER WAY.
Are you positioning yourself against a textbook? If so, you want to appear casual and real life. Are you contrasting yourself against student behavior? Then you want to appear more professional and be sure to use slang in the student text.
Once you have your style down, then you can start figuring out how to get teachers on your teacher author email list.
Get Teachers on Your TPT Email List
Teachers get 451 emails a day.
Or it feels like that. So they don't want to give out their email address.
They especially don’t want to give it out to someone who’s just going to spam them with their latest TPT products.
To get a teacher's email, you need an incentive along with helpful emails. This incentive is called an opt-in, lead magnet, or teacher email bribery. Just kidding.
Plainly? It's like a freebie you'd put in your TPT store. That's it.
Lead Magnet Ideas for TPT Sellers
Product Line Sampler: Offer a few pages from your most popular product lines.
Exclusive Resource: Show how teachers on your list get spoiled with products no one else can get.
Planner: Teachers love planners, so if you teach classroom managment, or other organizational habits, create this.
Organizational Cheat Sheet: If you can help teachers organize something fast or creatively, they will hand over their email address.
Teaching Guide: New teachers love tips and help on teaching. It'd be extra tempting if the guide was on a difficult topic that teachers hate to teach.
Product From Your Store: Give subscribers early access to sales or new products.
Where to Put Your Opt-in
Social Media: Put your lead magnet in your Instagram bio
Within Products: The last page of your product could be a page incentivizing those who loved your product to get an upgrade or additional product free.
In Blog Posts: Write a post explaining how to teach a difficult topic and then have teachers opt in to get the related worksheets. If you don't have a blog, write a post on Medium.com
Website Footer and Header: Lots of teachers look for things here, so place your lead magnet in the header or footer.
Your About Page: One of your most visited pages is your about page. So put your email address bribery here.
Email it to Your List: Seriously. Don't forget to email it to your list and ask them to share it with anyone wanting a good freebie. We spoil our lists, right?
And when you are ready to start your email list, send your opt-in to your note to followers. Since they've been reading your notes, they're going to want to follow you. Let them know about your email list.
After you get teachers on your list you might wonder how often you should email them.
How Often Should You Email Your List?
As often as you want.
You can email weekly, monthly, or even daily. Or anything in between. Just pick a schedule and stick to it.
And don't apologize for sending emails. EVER.
You're not annoying subscribers when you email. Unless you are saying, "I'm sorry, I'll make this quick since I know you're getting a lot of emails today..."
That's annoying.
Your readers gave you their email because your information was worth it. Don't make them regret that decision and unsubscribe.
You don't need to apologize if your emails are packed with entertainment, information, or helpful tips.
When is the Best Time to Email Your List?
Just because one TPTer sends emails on Tuesday at 9AM, and has 197,000K subscribers, doesn't mean that Tuesday at 9AM is the best time.
When you check your email, do you only open the last few emails sent? Or do you scroll through all the emails you were sent and open the most interesting ones?
You open the interesting ones.
No matter what time they were sent.
Sure, test out different times, but it's not going to make that much of a difference since your email list is made up of people all over the world.
Instead of trying to find the right time, focus on finding the right message.
Choose the Right Email Marketing Tools for TPTers
Find your purpose and your voice.
Not your email service provider.
Choosing between Mailchimp vs. ConvertKit vs. Flodesk isn't that big of a deal. Plus, with so many TPTers being affliates, it's hard to get straight facts. (Spoiler alert—there isn't a best tool.)
No one is lying, but with so many voices being paid to promote certain email providers, it makes you wonder if there really is a best tool for TPTers.
Which is kind of why I wrote "The Monkey Article." All of these platforms send emails really well. It's more about personal preference.
Mailchimp
OG TPTers started with the chimp because they had a free plan up until they had 2000 subscribers. Mailchimp doesn't do that anymore.
Among email marketers, Mailchimp is the service provider everyone starts on because it's for beginners. TPTers tend to not like it because it's designed for a more techy persona who doesn't need an easy user interface.
Also, the sequences take much more effort than other platforms. (But beginners shouldn't focus on sequences and funnels, anyway.)
Flodesk
This is the new TPT beginner favorite.
It has an easy to use interface. It also requires less clicks to set things up than Mailchimp.
It's currently the cheapest option, making it appeal to beginners with a small audience.
The data is hard to read because you have to look at each email individually. No A/B headline testing, so you have to pick a headline and stick with it. It’s basic, but provides what you need to learn email marketing.
It has a strong affiliate program. Affiliates earn 50% of the commission and $19 when each person joins.
ConvertKit
TPTers who have a lot of content, blogs, etc, choose ConvertKit because it makes tagging subscribers easy.
You can look at headlines and open rates for lots of emails at once. That makes data easy to read so you can make improvements. You can do A/B testing with email headlines to see what your audience will open.
But beginners need to learn how to write emails. Not how to write funnels. So all these extra functions are useless at first.
ConvertKit also has a strong affiliate program. They pay 30% in commission to each person that joins through an affilate link.
Notice how none of these cons effect you learning to write weekly emails. The most important thing when you are beginning is learning to write emails.
The cons are optimization issues and convenience issues. It won’t be a mistake to use any of them. But there are other big mistakes you could make if you aren’t aware of them.
Email Marketing Mistakes TPTers Should Avoid
There are a lot of email marketing “tips” that are wrong.
These “tips” are based on misunderstood copywriting principles.
Let me explain.
If someone bought an email course with one tiny lesson on copywriting in it, they might think they’ve learned copywriting. But many copywriting principles are complicated and take time to learn. So lots of the ideas get misused.
So you’ll see mistakes listed below that some will tell you are best practice. Research the idea for yourself.
Selling in Your Newsletter
Your email list has to make you money. Because you are paying to email your audience.
You should sell. But you don’t need to be salesy.
What if someone on your list has bought EVERYTHING you've created? You need to write emails that will continue to support that person while still selling. (Because you’re probably going to create new products, right?)
Not ditch them now that they've bought.
One of the reasons to have an email list is to develop relationships with your audience. So sell, but be EnTerTaiNinG. Be educational. Be jaw-droppingly helpful.
Lots of teacher authors say that. But, are their emails entertaining, educational, and helpful while they sell?
Some sellers emails are amazing. Some are pitchfests.
(So why don’tcha join my list to see how I sell, help, and hang with my list.<——— Timely plug)
If you are just pitching product after product to your list, that is not building a relationship. That’s going to burn your list out. There are teacher authors with programs that do this and call it nurturing their audience. It’s not.
You might think a suggested products section could help you sell. Especially since so many teacherpreneurs’ have that section.
It might not be a bad idea, but don't sell random products in your email. Curate them.
Then look at the click rate after you send the email. Did they buy? If not it's a waste of email space.
Most of the time, the suggested or featured product section doesn't get clicked.
Headline Lies
Another common mistake is revealing too much the whole email in the headline. If a TPTer writes a headline that says
"25% off my store for the TPT sale today."
I'm not wasting my time opening that email because they summed the whole email up in 9 words. There is no magic number of words to write in a headline.
That's ridiculous.
If someone tells you this, they don’t know anything about copywriting.
The headline should hint at what's inside the email and create curiousity. Learning how to do that takes time. And maaaaybe my mini course on headlines, if you want to learn faster or increase your open rates.
Segmenting
Over-segmenting will cause you more work.
If you have products for 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade, then you should probably segment your email list.
But if you teach high school history and you are segmenting teachers that are interested in black history month, King Henry the 8th, and Winston Churchhill...you're making more work for yourself.
And then you're just going to put off emailing because you don't want to send 3 emails to each segment.
Sure. It'd be nice to only email those who are interested in a product. But we don't know. That's why we're emailing. Our emails need to be so good and helpful that if someone isn't buying, it still helps them.
You can learn more about segmenting your list in this mini course. In fact, I teach you a trick about how to segment…without any extra work.
Open Rates
Don't worry too much about your open rates at first.
When you have 12 people on your list your open rate is going to be really high. Like 75%. Then, it's going to decrease because you getting more of a customer base. So let's say 30%.
Then it's going to go back up because you're starting to get better with headlines and content.
There is a pattern. So keep an eye on your open rates, but don't worry about them. Until you start optimizing your list for sales.
When you get 200-500ish subscribers.
Content
Teachers gave you their email because they wanted to be entertained, educated, and inspired by you.
They did not want a TPT product shoved down their throat.
They did not want to be sent to a blog post every week.
Focus on learning to write emails. With great content that sells.
Find your purpose with emailing. Otherwise, you'll sound like everyone else. And no one will open your emails.
If you're going to have an email list, learn to write things teachers want to read.
Use Email Marketing to Increase TPT Sales
Traffic to Your Store
Don’t let your list sit unused. (Especially, not until it reaches a magic size.)
Your main email marketing goal is to send traffic to your TPT store. Even if it’s 5 extra people.
This doesn't mean every email should be a hard sell. You can send subscribers to your store to check out product lines, download freebies or…find more clipart to hoard. Kidding. Kidding.
This doesn't mean you should write an email that says,
"Hey teacher friend! Did you know it's national ice cream week? To celebrate, I posted an ice cream activity for you to buy that your students will scoop up…"
Yes, some teachers will click.
But it could be so much better. That email isn’t selling. Or telling a story. Or making me interested in the product.
It’s saying, “Here’s a new product. Buy it.” It’s also using cheesy puns that make readers roll their eyes.
What if you told a story about a company screwing ice cream up in a big way that costed thousands of dollars that could have been prevented if they would have understood freezing point depression, or saturation, or something else science related?
Then all through the story you link to your product that easily teaches freezing point depression through ice cream.
What if you talked about an attempt to market an ice cream that completely failed? Then link to your business lesson on marketing.
What if you talked about ways that ice cream is related to careers? Then link to your product about career poster sessions for high school seniors.
Each of these could be very interesting emails. Not, “Here. *Insert holiday* and buy my stuff because it’s kinda sorta related.
Make emails that have interesting content so your audience clicks and buys. Not clicks and snoops.
That’s how you drive traffic.
Spoil Your List
Subscribers should get first choice on all your freebies and special offers.
They gave your their email for a reason. So blow their minds with the first and best of everything.
Not only does this approach help build your list because more want to be on it. But it builds a sense of being part of an exclusive group.
Which means they're more likely to stay engaged in your emails.
How do you spoil them? Give them freebies no one else gets. Give them a coffee gift card along with a TPT gift card during a giveaway. Send them your latest freebies for new opt-ins. Let them know when your store is on sale. Give them a bonus when they purchase.
When you spoil your list, they will follow your links when you ask.
Educate Your List
Using your product isn't as obvious as you think.
Plus, there are several ways to use your product.
Show them one way to teach with your product one year.
Next year, show them a different way. As you educate them, this will put you in the position of authority.
Your audience will start to trust you and ask your opinion when they get stuck. When subscribers see you as a valuable resource, not just a TPT seller, they're more likely to turn to you when they're ready to buy.
Which is another way to drive traffic to your TPT store.
Entertain Your List
You must be EnTeRTAiNinG.
You don't have to be funny, just entertaining.
Write emails that are so engaging, informative, or amusing that subscribers look forward to receiving them—even if they've already purchased what you're selling.
Interest your list through storytelling, sharing behind-the-scenes, or funny stories. If you're entertaining, your readers are much more likely to follow your links.
This encourages immediate sales and creates loyal customers. (That keep clicking no matter where you’re sending them.)
Getting started with email marketing doesn’t have to be complicated.
And you don’t need a course. All you need is to start sending your Note to Followers regularly.
And after that? Define why you want to email. Then decide how you’re going to do that. Grow slowly and learn one thing at a time.
If you try to grow your skills or list too fast you’re going to get tired and frustrated.
Learn the craft and skill, and it’ll come easy to you.
You can always use Email Starters to get inspired and writing quickly.
