As we head into the slow season, email marketing is going to be your biggest play. It is much easier—and much less expensive—to get a current customer to come back and spend more money than it is to acquire a brand-new customer who has no relationship with your business.
Today, we’re covering the foundations of email marketing. We need to solve the email problem once and for all so your emails actually reach the inbox, get opened, and get clicked.
The Domain: Your Street Address on the Internet
Think of a domain like a street address for your business, except instead of a physical location, it points people to your web presence, your funnels, and your emails. It’s what comes after the @ symbol in your email address and after the www in your website.
Before we write a single email, we have to make sure it actually reaches the inbox. Getting your emails opened is an art in itself. Inside Momentum HQ, my team handles all the technical records (like SPF and DKIM) so you don’t have to touch them.
The "Clean Domain" Strategy
Here is a massive warning: your primary business domain—the one listed on your Google My Business or Facebook page—may not even be connected to Momentum HQ. Why? Because domains with words like “gun,” “firearm,” “pistol,” or “shooting range” can create friction with platform approvals like Stripe, Facebook ads, or A2P texting.
Instead, we create a brand-new “clean domain” specifically for Momentum HQ. Often, we just add the word “join” to the front. If your primary site is centershotgun.com, your Momentum HQ domain will be joincentershot.com. This keeps your main site untouched while giving you a clean slate for marketing.
Root Domains vs. Subdomains
We never send emails from a root domain. We always use a dedicated subdomain built specifically for email traffic.
- Root Domain: The foundation (e.g., joincentershot.com)
- Subdomain: A prefix added to the front (e.g., lc.joincentershot.com)
The “lc” stands for Lead Connector. Everyone using Momentum HQ sends emails from an lc.yourdomain.com subdomain. This protects your root domain’s reputation.
Warming Up Your List
If you have a brand-new domain, you cannot just blast an email to 5,000 people at once. You have to warm it up. If you send emails to thousands of people who don’t open them, Google will immediately flag you as spam.
Here is the exact warmup sequence:
- Bring over contacts who have opened an email from you in the last 30 days. Send them three emails a week.
- Once you hit a 60% open rate with that group, bring in the people who opened in the last 60 days.
- Once you hit a 30% open rate with both groups, bring in the people who opened in the last 90 days.
Do not bring in leads who haven’t opened an email in a year. You want Google to see that your emails are valuable and wanted.
The Give-Ask Ratio
I want you sending at least three emails a week using the “give, give, give, ask” ratio. That means three free pieces of valuable content for every one sales pitch.
To keep your list healthy and avoid unsubscribes, we can put a button at the top of the email allowing people to opt out of specific types of emails rather than unsubscribing completely. This keeps your open rates high and your audience engaged.
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