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Laura Nicole: 00:02

Welcome to Your Virtual Assistant Coach, the podcast for moms who want to make money from home on their own terms. I'm your host, Laura Nicole, a successful six-figure earning VA and coach who replaced my college professor's salary in just five months back in 2020 after my daughter was born, and I have never looked back. I'm here to help you build a profitable, flexible VA business that fits into your family's lives so you no longer feel like you're living just to work. Let's dive in. 

Laura Nicole: 00:34

When I say that you can offer email marketing support as a beginner VA, you probably are immediately thinking, well, I don't know how to write sales emails, Laura. So I can't offer that. But here's the thing: you don't have to write the emails to get paid to help a client with them. There's a whole piece of the process that happens after your client writes the copy for the emails, and it is a super practical service that you can offer. So here's what this service actually is. Your client is going to write the email copy. They're going to write it from beginning to end and then give it to you. Your job is to take that copy from the Google Doc that they put it on and take the steps to get it into their email lists inbox. So the way that it typically works is that your client will send you a Google Doc that will have the email copy, it'll have the subject line, it'll have the preview text, it'll have any images or graphics that they want included in the email. It'll have any links that they need you to be hyperlinking inside of the email copy. And it's going to tell you who the email needs to go to, so which segments of their list they want to receive this email and when they want it sent. Then you handle actually getting it ready inside of their email software and getting it scheduled. 

Laura Nicole: 02:03

Then you handle actually getting it ready and scheduled inside of their email platform. These could be platforms like Flowdesk, Kit, MailChimp, Kajabi. And before you start spiraling, remember that your client will show you how their system works. Okay, so you do not have to know them all to offer this service. Because again, I can hear you in your brain saying, Laura, I don't even know what the fuck those are. That's fine. That's fine. Okay. Don't let that stop you from offering this as a service. And what you're actually doing inside of this email software, again, it's gonna look probably a little bit different from client to client because they'll have different preferences on how they like theirs done. But this is like kind of the overarching most common workflow of what you would be doing for a client. You are first going to take the copy from the Google Doc, copy and paste that writing into their email platform. Then once you've copied it in, you're gonna format it so it looks clean and it matches the style and the format of their typical emails. Again, they'll show you this. Then you're gonna add in any of the graphics or photos that they wanted in, any gifts, any buttons that are links to things, whatever extras they told you they want included. And you're gonna type in the subject line and the preview text. 

Laura Nicole: 03:33

Once all those are in, you'll also be setting the correct date and time. You will be selecting which groups and which parts of their audience on their email list it was that they want this email to go to. And then you're going to schedule the email. But very importantly, we are not just copying, pasting, and hitting schedule. Quality analysis, making sure that it looks good, that everything works in it, that the links actually take them where they should, et cetera, is a big, big, probably the biggest part of offering this service. Because before these emails get sent out to hundreds or thousands, or in some clients' cases, hundreds of thousands of people on their email list, you're checking it. So you've got everything set up in the email. You're then going to preview the entire email on your desktop and your mobile by emailing it to yourself. All of these platforms have a preview option. You're going to make sure that the formatting looks good. It didn't get funky. It doesn't look great on desktop and terrible on mobile. And if it does, you're going to go in and modify it so it does look good, right? You're going to click every link. Make sure that the buttons and the links go where they're supposed to. Check that the images are loading and displaying correctly. 

Laura Nicole: 04:57

Double check the subject and the preview line. Does the subject fit in on both desktop and mobile for what people are initially seeing when they see the email, or does that maybe need to be modified? And then you're also in the actual scheduling portion going to double check, maybe triple check, and confirm that you're sending it to the right people on the list and also that the date and time to send it is correct. Essentially, you are the final set of eyes on that email before it is sent to your client's audience. So why would your client pay you to do this, though? Right? Like obviously, again, this is not rocket science. I say all the time, y'all, the work that we do as VAs is not hard. It's not complicated. But imagine being a business owner who's sending three to five emails a week, right? Some people send one a week, some people send seven a week and anywhere in between. And they might love the writing part. They might want their emails to sound like them. They want ownership of that aspect. But once they've written the copy, that is the part that was required to be done by them. But they don't necessarily want, and they definitely don't need to spend another 20 to 30 minutes of their time uploading it, formatting it, adding links, testing everything, and scheduling it. And so that is where you come in. Because just like a lot of other great VA services that we've talked about on this podcast, the services aren't things that clients can't do. Obviously, they're perfectly capable of scheduling these emails. 

Laura Nicole: 06:37

They're things that your client just simply doesn't need to be spending their time on anymore and they don't have the capacity for it. And this is just a perfect example, again, of why a client is happy to pay you for this because it's reducing their mental load. It's another way that we are saving their sanity. And this service is a great option for you to add to your service list if you are extremely detail oriented, because you definitely have to be for this. You're comfortable enough on computers to learn the software. And again, this is very basic. So you're comfortable learning new software on the computer. Again, as long as the client is showing you, they will. They'll tell you exactly what buttons to click to create the email, etc. It's also a great option if you're good at following directions and you're someone who catches little mistakes because we also are kind of proofreaders for our clients as we are copying and pasting everything into the email because they're human, right? And they might miss something completely that we can correct for them before it goes out to the masses. And once you learn one email platform, learning another feels much less intimidating because they essentially all follow the exact same steps. 

Laura Nicole: 07:50

Their buttons just might be in different places. And you can definitely offer this as a piece of just like your broader general admin offer set, service set. You don't need to become an email marketing expert, right? This is email marketing support. We are doing the admin. We are executing the actual physical steps of getting the email marketing out that our client wrote. So if you're listening to this and thinking, like, wait, that's something that someone would actually pay me to do. Yes. And hopefully you're also now thinking, wait, this is something I could totally do. Whereas at the top of this episode, you were like, Laura, you're crazy. That's not something I could offer. It's really one of the things that I try to reiterate because I want y'all to see as I give you these episodes about specific services, is that you don't need to have one massive, super complicated skill that makes you worth hiring to clients. There are so, so many practical ways that you can support a business owner with the skills that you already have and then enhancing those by being willing and able to learn. 

Laura Nicole: 09:00

And if you're wondering how a service like this could actually turn into really meaningful income for your family, I want you to come hang out with me on October 15th. I'm teaching a free 30-minute masterclass on how busy moms can make $1,000 a month as a virtual assistant working around one hour a day. I'll show you what that can actually look like, how the math works, and how you can start building it around the life that you already have. And how you can start building it within your super busy mom life. Grab your free seat through the link in the show notes, and I'll see you there. 

Laura Nicole: 09:34

Thanks for hanging out with me today on your virtual assistant coach. If you love this episode, be sure to share it with your best friend, your sister, or even your favorite coworker who you know wants to start making a flexible income. I'll see you all next time.