Your email list won't turn into subscribers automatically. When persuading somebody to become your customer, it's always a balance between earning (their trust, their money) and selling (outright asking them to spend money on you!). You'll want to post a mix of content that showcases your expertise, your personality, and consistently reminds people that they can become a paying subscriber at anytime.
Before we dive in, something important to keep in mind: the most important thing you can do, in order to convert people into paying subscribers, is to write good emails. That doesn't mean you have to be a professional writer. In fact, far from it. It means only that you need to be yourself, to write authentically and from the heart, and to find interesting and accessible ways to share your expertise with your email subscribers. Think of it this way: every free post you send is an opportunity to bring email subscribers into your world, and show them why what you do is worth putting their time and money into. You should use your emails to inspire curiosity, build relevance between your work and the real world, and just to... well... be yourself.
Nothing converts better.
The first rule of thumb when it comes to converting email subscribers into paying subscribers is simple: don't spam! You want to send emails only when you have something to say. Generally, you never want to send two emails right in a row. (Studies show that the number one reason people end up unsubscribing from email lists is because they feel like they're receiving too many emails.) For the majority of small business owners, sending one email a week is sufficient. If that sounds like too much, once a month is fine or even once every few weeks. How ever often you plan to send emails, though, just make sure you've set expectations with email subscribers.
[NOTE: More dedicated section on timing of emails and how to find that timing. We recommend starting at a week and then seeing how it goes.]
Every email you send should be useful or interesting. Each should convey either important information for your email subscribers to know (announcements, events, sales), or genuinely meaningful information or stories about your work and what makes your approach to it unique. If that sounds challenging, fear not. You have plenty of things to say about the work that you do, you may just not realize it yet. Consider some of the prompts below to get started.
[NOTE: When should you send these emails?! Send these three.. then see what happens. Then maybe these three, etc. Give them ACTION ITEMS to do and an order of operations.]