How To Whisper Pitch Your Email List

As an entrepreneur, your email list is one of the most valuable assets that you possess. Yet so many of us are using it incorrectly and missing out on incredible opportunities to sell to (or at least build know, like, and trust with) our subscribers. Whether we’re too pushy, overly-friendly or never try at all, we simply don’t know how to make a good sales pitch.

Fortunately, Elizabeth Goddard, a U.K.-based online business strategist, has the solution to your lackluster list usage problem. “You have to entertain and engage your audience so much via email that the ask to buy is more like a whisper than a shout,” says Goddard, who has grown her business to multiple-six figures in the past five years teaching thousands of students unconventional business tactics. “I call it ‘Whisper Pitching’ and it makes your subscribers buy from you without even thinking about it. Plus it takes the pressure off of the whole selling process.”

Goddard has used this practice to skyrocket engagement and sales from her list—and it can do the same for yours. Break from the traditional email marketing rules and leverage your list by following her three best techniques for Whisper Pitching: 

1. You Don’t Have To Be Plain–Despite What Experts Are Telling You

We’re often told to send super plain emails—like the ones you dash off to your friends—so that your message doesn’t end up in your subscriber’s spam folder. So long, photos, gifs and emojis! That’s much better, right? Wrong, says Goddard who asks us to consider the trade off. “When your plain text, heartfelt email lands in their inbox, they open it, scroll to the bottom, and don’t even remember who you are,” she says. “Where’s your logo? Where are your brand colors? Where’s your personality?”

While it’s true that too many links and pictures can affect deliverability, so can a lot of other factors. “If you focus on deliverability instead of personality, you’ll only be hurting yourself with boring emails,” says Goddard. “What works best is sending an email that you feel good about. If your subscribers relate to your fun vibe, use of trending emojis, or relevant gifs, you’ll have engaged readers willing to dig you out of spam, should you land there. Focus on nailing your message and supporting it with all the visuals you want. Experiment with more and less ‘stuff’ and you’ll find the sweet spot that you and your subscribers both love.”

2. Include Multiple Calls To Action And Links In Your Email

Marketers always say too many calls to action in an email are confusing—and confused people don’t buy. But Goddard has a sneaky suspicion that audiences are actually smart enough to know what they want. “Your subscribers can handle multiple links without breaking down crying in the corner,” says Goddard. “Treat your email list as though they're smart enough to handle lots of links in one email, because they are. The more links you provide in your email, the more engagement, interest, conversion and action that you'll see.”

You might also notice fewer unsubscribes because you’ve just dramatically increased the chance that they're interested in something you mentioned in your email. “You give them plenty of nibbles to bite,” says Goddard who will send out emails with five different links to give herself five chances to engage with an individual subscriber. She suggests experimenting with a variety of links for people to engage with.

3. Consistency Isn’t Key After All

“People say if you're not sending a weekly email, come rain or shine, then you might as well close up shop, take off your entrepreneurial mask and go jump the lake of frauds and failures,” says Goddard. “With everyone following this silly rule, readers have more useless emails than ever cluttering up their inbox and you feel burnt out from it all.”

The issue with forcing yourself into a weekly email is that you email for the sake of emailing and contribute to the noise. We’re trying to be a whisper, remember? That’s the opposite of noise. If you only email when you have something good, new, or exciting to say, your audience will be trigger happy to open and read your email because there’s truly something in it for them.

Also beware of emailing your list every Tuesday about your new podcast, blog post, or YouTube video. When you’re too predictable, you don’t excite your readers and consequently harm your open and engagement rate. “You’re actually training your subscribers not to open your emails,” she says. “They’ll start to expect what’s inside and won’t see the value of opening them.” This is the opposite of the goal that consistency is supposed to achieve. “Shoot for emailing your list at least twice a month,” says Goddard, who advises never sending an email just for the sake of sending an email. “Always have something valuable to share.”