A perfect tool for building your side hustle's audience

Rise and grind culture has gained increasing popularity in recent years. More and more people are tapping into side hustles for good reason. Side gigs are a great way to earn extra income, pursue a passion, or launch a new business in your spare time. Whatever your reason for pursuing a side gig, email marketing is the most lucrative of marketing channels for gaining new customers or clients. Email continues to be the preferred way businesses communicate with their audiences because of its effectiveness in brand growth with low effort making it perfect for your side hustle. 

Brand Building 

Side gigs can be fun if you are pursuing a passion. Just because you decided to earn a little extra cash doesn’t mean your work is amateurish. You want to be seen as professional in prospects' eyes since you appear more like a brand than an individual. Creating an email newsletter is a great way to come off as an established brand. Producing consistent email newsletter content builds a connection with customers and shows that you take your craft seriously; in return, they will take you seriously. One way to do so is to include testimonials from prior customers who enjoyed your product and customer service to entice subscribers to spread the word about your budding online shop.

Email Sequencing

Many people are drawn to the gig economy because of its flexibility and little effort needed to produce a significant return on investment. With many people following the freelancer route, time is money. Every minute you spend creating quality email content takes away from your freelance work. Email scheduling is a life-saving email marketing feature for freelance workers juggling many projects. Implementing scheduled emails saves you valuable time and takes a task off your to-do list. If you are between projects, do a solid for your future self by planning. Click it and forget it.

Automation

With technology like marketing automation, it’s possible to build an automated secondary income stream where you can earn money while you sleep. A dream side job (pun intended)! For example, once you reach your first client milestone, simply go into your email marketing software and tag the client’s email address to trigger a pre-written update that assures them the project is coming along well. 

As any gig worker can attest, it’s crucial to continue cultivating relationships with clients, especially if your goal is to transform your side hustle into your main hustle. Real connections are the key to success which is why automation tools like trigger emails are highly recommended. One example is to assign a final “thank you”  trigger email and add them to a “former clients” automation. Another example is a “check-in” trigger email for periodically checking in on past clients to keep in contact and stay in the back of their minds for future opportunities. Small actions such as those can build lasting relationships and, eventually, elevate your side hustle into a full-time dream job. 

Analytics

With a side hustle, it’s best to base your next moves on measurable facts. It will make your email campaigns stronger. Take advantage of advanced email reports to gain even deeper insights into your subscribers’ behavior. Some good behavioral metrics to monitor are:

• Devices, email providers, or browsers used
• Geographical data
• Key performance insights (open, read, and click-through rates)

As you analyze metrics, you can see what content performs the best. If you are a dog walker and you notice a trend like email subject lines with dog emojis get higher open rates than not. That's a good sign to add emojis to every newsletter subject line. Or maybe, your pup-loving subscribers are more prone to open emails that include a lighter informal tone, rather than a formal straight-to-business tone. You want to keep their tail wagging! Examining your metrics will help improve your overall strategy–– the best way for your side hustle to thrive.

Whether you're starting a side hustle to make extra income or to transition out of a job, one of the best ways to grow it is through an email list. Email marketing can be tedious but with the right email marketing platform, it can be an enjoyable journey for you and your subscribers. Buttondown provides powerful core email marketing tools that can boost engagement, build client relationships, and increase revenue. With plans starting at 9/mo, you can follow your passion or make extra income without breaking the bank.

Buttondown is trusted by many successful side-project-ers (is that a word?) like:

• Jeremy Singer-Vine, NYC-based data journalist, who publishes Data Is Plural, a "weekly journal of useful/curious datasets". He left his day job to go freelance. He went on to start the Data Liberation Project — an initiative to identify, obtain, reformat, clean, document, publish, and disseminate government datasets of public interest. 
• Tim Van Damme (aka MVKB), Designer who, during the COVID-19 lockdown, picked up the hobby of building custom mechanical keyboards. From this hobby, he launched and grew his side hustle, Max Voltar Keyboards, into a treasured resource for keyboard enthusiasts. His keyboard projects have now become a known name in the keyboard community.