Your Subscribers Like Your Emails… So Why Don't They Buy?

[00:00] Your subscribers open your emails. They read them. Maybe they even reply and tell you how much they love them. Your open rates look great. Your list is engaged. So why aren't they buying? Having an engaged email list and having an email list that buys are not necessarily the same thing.

And if you've spent months, maybe years, getting really good at nurturing your audience, but sales feel weirdly inconsistent, I don't necessarily think you have an engagement problem. I think there might be a missing piece between "I like getting her emails" and "I wanna buy this from her." So let's talk about what that piece is.

Hey, hey, my loves. Welcome back to The Email Growth Show. We're keeping this one relatively short and sweet today because it is school holidays here. I'm recording this at ten to seven at night while Nick and I tag-team before the kids go to bed. But this is something I've been thinking about a lot in my own business recently, and honestly, it's something I've been noticing with other business owners and students too.

[01:00] We've talked so much on this podcast this year about audience growth, getting discovered, growing your email list, bringing more of the right people into your world, and I stand by absolutely all of it. Because if nobody is finding you, everything downstream gets harder. You can't nurture people who haven't found you yet. You can't sell to people who don't know you exist.

But let's say you've done that part. You have an audience, you've built the list, and you're emailing them consistently. Gold star for you, my loves, because we know that is half the f*cking battle. And your emails aren't bombing, right? People are opening them, they're clicking, they're replying. Maybe you've even got people saying, "Oh my gosh, I love your emails," which is lovely. I love getting messages like that. But they're not necessarily buying. What then? Because I think this is a very different problem.

Now, this might be slightly uncomfortable to think about, but I think we need to say it. People enjoying your content doesn't automatically mean they're gonna buy from you. Those are two different behaviours, and [02:00] I think sometimes we lump them together. We think, "My open rate is good. People reply, therefore my email marketing is working." And from an engagement perspective, abso-f*cking-lutely, those are really great signs.

But if one of the jobs of your email marketing is to generate revenue for your business, which it should be for all of us, we also need to look at: are people buying? Because somebody can absolutely adore your emails for three years and never give you a cent. They can think you're hilarious. They can learn from you. They can reply to you. They can recommend your podcast. They can forward your emails to their friends. All really wonderful things, but none of those things necessarily mean they understand: what do you sell? Why would I want it? And why should I buy it now? That's the gap I wanna talk to you about today.

I think we've over-corrected on nurture. Part of this comes from the way we've been taught email marketing, especially in the online business space. We're told, "Don't sell too much. Give value. Nurture your audience. Build [03:00] trust. Don't annoy people. Don't make every email a sales email." And none of that advice is inherently bad. Of course I want you to build trust. I talk about that nonstop here. Of course I want your emails to be useful. Of course I don't want every email to sound like, "Buy my thing, buy my thing. Have you bought my thing yet?"

But I think some of us have over-corrected so far in the other direction that we're doing a fabulous job of nurturing and we're barely selling. We might send a helpful tip, a story, something I learned, the podcast, a free resource, another helpful thing, and then every six weeks we suddenly go, "Surprise! Would you like to buy something?" And then we wonder why people don't move.

One thing I wanna point out here is that your sales emails shouldn't feel like a personality transplant. This is one of the biggest signs to me. If your nurture emails sound like you, but the second you sell something you suddenly sound like a late night infomercial, there's too much separation between your nurture and your sales. Your reader shouldn't feel like, [04:00] "Oh, Kylie has stopped emailing me, and sales Kylie has arrived." It should all feel like the same conversation, because selling doesn't need to be a completely separate activity that happens once every two months.

Your emails should naturally help people understand: here's what I believe, here's the problem I help solve, here's how I think about it, here's what you can do yourself, and hey, if you want my help doing it, here's the thing I have for that. That is not aggressive, my loves. That is useful. That is making an invitation in a way that still sounds like you.

I've mentioned this recently, but we need to remember that our email list might not genuinely know what we sell. I know this sounds ridiculous, because you think, surely they know. I've talked about it. I've mentioned it. I've emailed about it. Have you? Have you recently? Clearly? This is something I'm constantly reminding myself of too. We massively overestimate how closely people are following our businesses.

[05:00] You know every offer you have because you built the thing. You've spent hours looking at the sales page. You've written the emails. You've built the checkout. You've taught the thing. Your subscriber has a job, and kids, and 84 unread emails, and dinner to make, and something happening at school tomorrow that they forgot about until 7:47pm. They are not maintaining a mental catalogue of your product suite.

So if I asked one of your engaged subscribers right now, "Hey, what can Sarah help you with?" or "What's the next paid step with Sarah?" (let's say your name is Sarah), would they know? Because if they don't, that is not necessarily an offer problem. That's a communication problem.

And this connects to something I've been working on. I've been looking at this inside my own business recently, because I have subscribers who engage with my work but have never bought a thing. And rather than immediately thinking, "I need a new offer" (because apparently we've established that as my favourite coping mechanism), I've been thinking, "Do I actually give these people enough opportunities to buy the things I already have?" And the answer, [06:00] honestly, is probably not.

I can nurture, I can teach, I can write stories, I can invite people to events, I can grow an audience, but I also need a consistent rhythm where I'm saying, "Hey, this is something I sell. Here's why you might want it." And not just when I'm in launch mode. Not because I've just created something brand new. This should be happening every single week.

So personally, one of the things I'm building into my own email rhythm is a Friday sales email. And when I say sales email, I don't mean every Friday I'm gonna email, "Buy this, it's $27, click here." That would get boring for both of us. I mean Friday becomes a consistent opportunity to connect something happening in my audience's world to one of my paid solutions. Maybe I'm sharing a story. Maybe I'm sharing a customer result. Maybe it's an objection. Maybe it's, "Hey, if you're struggling with this, here's what I would do." Maybe it's something I noticed that week. Maybe it's a product I haven't talked about for three months. Maybe it's something seasonal. The format can change, the offer can [07:00] change. That doesn't really matter. It's the habit we wanna build: the habit of selling every single week, creating an opportunity for somebody to buy.

I think this is a piece so many businesses are missing, because people can't buy an offer that you don't make. That sounds embarrassingly obvious, but people can't buy an offer you don't make. They can't. And by make an offer, I don't mean technically having a checkout page somewhere on your website. I mean actually asking. Actually saying, "Hey, this is for you if... This solves X. Here's what you get when you buy Y. Here's why I made this. Here's what this could change. Here's the link."

We get scared of that last bit, right? We dance around it. "If this resonates, you might potentially like to maybe check this out." No. You can be kind and you can be direct at the same bloody time.

Now, I've made this Friday sales sequence. It's gonna be an evergreen sequence that I set up and just continually add to, and this Friday sales rhythm I'm gonna start to introduce [08:00] is made to solve the problem we just talked about. If you want it, you can get it here. That is what selling looks like.

And this might be the biggest thing I want you to take away today. I'm not saying you have to have a Friday sales email like I do, but I want you to remember that nurturing and selling are not actually separate. They're not opposites. Selling can nurture your subscriber too. A great sales email can teach somebody something. It can shift a belief. It can help them understand their problem differently. It can show them what's possible. It can answer a question. It can tell a great story, and at the end, it can invite them to buy. Some of my favourite emails to write are sales emails, because there's purpose behind them. We're going somewhere. There's direction.

And more than anything, my loves, I want us to stop treating selling like the thing we have to apologise for after we've given enough free value. You run a bloody business. You have things that can actually help people. You're allowed to tell them about those things regularly.

Now, I do wanna [09:00] add a caveat here, because simply emailing an offer every Friday isn't magically gonna fix everything. If nobody is buying, we need to look at the whole picture. We need to look at the offer. We need to look at the messaging. Maybe the price doesn't match the value they perceive. Maybe you're attracting the wrong people onto your list. Maybe there's friction in the buying process. Maybe they don't trust you enough yet. Maybe the problem isn't urgent enough. All of these things are possible. But before you rebuild your entire business because your subscribers aren't buying, I want you to ask the simple question first: how often am I actually giving them an opportunity to buy? Because if the answer is, "Well, I launched something in June," I think we need to start there.

The maths for this is also really simple. If we think about this over a year, if you currently actively sell something once a month, that's 12 intentional sales opportunities. If you create one every Friday, that's potentially 52. Now, I'm not saying you'll make a sale every Friday. You won't. Some [10:00] emails will work brilliantly, some won't. Some offers will resonate more than others. That's business. That's normal. That's what I'm expecting. But if we just look at the numbers, you've dramatically increased the number of opportunities for somebody to go from "I like her emails" to "Oh, actually I need to buy this."

And you've given yourself 52 pieces of data. You guys know I love data so much. What do people click? What stories are working? What problems create urgency? What offers do people want? What objections are coming up? What's actually selling? Now we get to learn.

And you get to train your audience too. This is another piece I think is really interesting, because your audience learns what to expect from you. If you never sell, then suddenly do a huge launch, the selling feels unusual. But if selling is simply part of the relationship, something you do every week, it becomes normal. Some weeks they'll buy, some weeks they won't. That's fine, but they're gonna keep on reading, and when the right [11:00] offer meets the right problem at the right time for them, there it is. That's what I want.

I don't want my subscribers shocked that Kylie Kelly, owner of a business, has attempted to sell them something. I want them to know Kylie sends useful emails, she shares what she's learning, she tells funny stories occasionally, she recommends things, and Kylie sells things that can help me. All of those things need to exist together.

So, my loves, here is your homework. I want you to go back through the last four weeks of emails you've sent and count how many emails you sent. Then count how many times you made a clear paid offer. Not a tiny PS, not a link buried somewhere, not just mentioning the name of your product, but how many times did you clearly say, "Here's something I have. Here's who it's for and the problem it solves. Here's why you might want it. Here's where you can buy it."

I honestly think you might be surprised. Because if people love your emails but aren't buying, it doesn't automatically mean you've built an audience of freebie seekers. I [12:00] personally hate it when people say that. It doesn't automatically mean your offer is bad. It doesn't automatically mean you need a bigger list. And please don't immediately go and create another product. We've talked about that enough. It might simply mean you've become really good at giving people reasons to read, and you need to get a bit better at giving them reasons to buy.

So that's what I'm experimenting with in my own business: a simple rhythm. Keep nurturing, keep teaching, keep being useful, keep growing the audience. But every Friday, I'll be making an offer. I'm gonna give something I already sell a moment. I'm gonna roll out the red carpet, tell people why it matters, connect it to the problem they're experiencing, and invite them to purchase.

Because the goal isn't to turn every subscriber into a customer immediately. That's not gonna happen. The goal is to make sure the people who would buy from you actually understand what you sell and are given enough opportunities to say yes.

So if your subscribers open your emails, if they click your links, if they reply occasionally, if they tell you they love hearing [13:00] from you, but sales are still quieter than you'd like, before you change your offer, your niche, your funnel, your entire freaking business, ask yourself: "Am I actually selling enough?" You might find the answer is much simpler than you thought.

All right, my loves, that is it from me this week. I'll be back in your earbuds next Friday, hopefully not just surviving but thriving at the end of our school holidays. I hope you found this useful. I love you so much, I appreciate you being here, and I'll see you next week. Bye for now.