Sometimes when I’m meeting a business owner for the first time they’ll ask me, “which email marketing platform do you recommend?”
I’ll usually ask what their plans are for it. Sometimes I get an answer. Sometimes I get a blank look followed by, “well, to email my future list.”
Okay, let’s back up.
I’m in the far western suburbs of Chicago (stay with me, I promise this will make sense). If I decide to go to Chicago, I can hop in my car and head east. I’ll probably get there. But which neighborhood? It’s helpful to have a destination and a plan. Technically, I can end up at O’Hare and be IN Chicago, but I’m not going to see Lake Michigan from there.
The tool doesn’t matter as much as the plan.
Before you pick a platform, map out what you actually need it to do. How are you building that list? Is there a funnel, a launch workflow, an onboarding sequence? What needs to happen first, second, third?
When you have the plan, things go faster, are easier to maintain, and you spend a lot less time fixing things that were set up wrong from the start.
What’s one thing you wish you’d mapped out before you started building?