In previous posts, I’ve talked about the fact that email marketing can increase the profit your business is making by increasing the lifetime value of your clients but today I want to go a little more in-depth when it comes to email marketing content so in this post we discuss…
- Why email marketing is something you should consider
- What you can do with your thank you page
- Thoughts on the frequency of emailing your content
- Building a relationship with your subscribers through content
- Creating a context for your emails by creating connecting sequences
- Options for the content of the emails itself
- How to properly offer products to your subscribers
Now let’s get into it!
Why you should consider email marketing
The moment you gain the trust of a potential buyer and you deliver, you gain their trust they’ll rather buy products from you than risk getting scammed by others which makes it a lot easier to sell them more products. In other words, increasing your customer retention rate is easier now than ever.
Email marketing makes it possible to create a simple backend for your business with which you can nurture your leads and keep selling them products without spending heaps of money on client acquisition.
While everybody might get one purchase out of a client through email marketing you can get 3 to 4 times that amount by retaining your customers and communicating with them.
Give email subscribers purpose with the Thank you page
Getting people to subscribe to your email list is nice, but what happens the moment they push that subscribe button. As I said before the moment they decide to take action based on trusting you its easier to make that second transaction because you already have their trust. So what actions do you want them to take next? The thank you page is the page on your website that directs your subscribers towards where you want them to go.
Examples can be…
- To direct their attention to future emails
- Follow you on social platforms
- Share your content on their social media pages
- Upsell a product
It all starts with your thank you page.
Personally, I like to frame my thank you page as a gateway to a secret community with the value other people don’t have access to. This way I emotionally spike the subscribers and get them to be more enthusiastic about opening my emails in the future.
It’s all up to you.
How often should you email your email list?
Just like the relationships in real life, you’re going to have to nurture the relationships you create with the people on your email list. The more they feel they know you, the more they trust you. This raises the question of how often should you sent emails to your subscribers?
There’s no absolute answer but in a lot of instances, it’s more than you think.
Most people I know try to minimalize how many emails they sent because they’re afraid people might see their emails as a nuisance and that it will reflect on the image of your business.
Here’s an article of a website that experimented with the frequency of their email marketing that might give you some insight in your own situation.
I can’t tell you exactly how often you should message your email subscribers, but I do know that the best way to find the optimal email frequency is to test it yourself.
Building A relationship with your email subscribers
Building Trust
In the end, trust comes down to how much value you provide your email list consistently. It’s like the psychological concept of “pacing and leading”. If you consistently over deliver every time you sent out an email what are they going to expect from the next email you’re going to send? Your subscribers will probably expect an email with just as much value as the previous ones. This is when trust kicks in.
Writing your emails in a way people can relate
Ever went to buy a car? If not let me tell you what car salesmen do ( at least the good ones ). Good salesmen try to meet you where you at when it comes to selling a car. If you’re a dog person they might show pictures of their dog and try to relate with you like that, If you’re very passionate about going to the gym they might talk about their own goals when it comes to health.
They know people like to be sold by people that are just like them. In most instances, this means keeping your writing style simple. Most people aren’t rocket scientists or constructional engineers so talk to them like they would talk to you.
This means for example not starting your emails with:
Dear John,
With the simplification of building websites and monetizing from it, the internet has become crowded which makes it infinitely harder to grab the attention of prospects looking for your services. This is why it’s highly advised to…. bla bla bla
instead, try this…
Hey John,
Aren’t you sick of people with little to no knowledge getting more website visitors than you? Then you should…
One sounds like a scientific article the other sounds like someone real on the other side of your screen is talking to you. Aim to be a person they can both relate to and trust.
“If people like you, they’ll listen to you, but if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.” — Zig Ziglar
Create Emails like they’re Storyboards for movies
This a snippet of the results of an experiment that was published in the journal of advertisement in 2015.
“…In an experimental setting, maximum attitude is reached at approximately ten exposures, while recall increases linearly and does not level off before the eighth exposure. Also, low and high involvement is taken into account…”
Reference: Schmidt, S., & Eisend, M. (2015). Advertising repetition: a Meta-analysis on effective frequency in advertising. Journal of Advertising, 44(4), 415-428.
Applying this to sales it means that for people to actually consider buying something they need to be exposed to it 8-10 times. So instead of trying to craft this amazing email that supposedly is going to convince all your email subscribers to buy your product start looking at it in a larger context.
How are you going to expose them multiple times to yourself and your offers?
What experienced email marketer do is create what they call email sequences. These are like a mini-series of emails all with the same theme but every mail continuous the story being told.
They do the same thing when creating a storyboard for a movie.
The easiest way to do this is deciding beforehand what you want to communicate in every email of the series and then just like a storyboard from a movie write them out all at the same time so you can connect their beginning and endings seamlessly.
Start looking at your emails as different scenes from one movie.
Email Marketing Content
So what do you put inside the emails you’re writing? I’d go with everything that provides value to your email subscribers.
Examples of this are:
- Compilation of your own blogs
In case people miss some updates on your blog, you can make it easier to keep up by sending them to your email list or maybe there’s a specific trend going on and you put together a compilation of previous posts that can help you take advantage of that trend. - Curated content
There are so many people in every niche writing about the same things you are but are doing it from their own perspective share that with your email list. - Behind the scene videos
Give them a peek at how you do your work. If they’re trying to achieve the same things you are, learning about things as your morning routine, your strategies to remain focused and productive can be a lot of help to them. - updates about what happens in your life
Hearing about your peers can give you motivation when frustration arises from things not going your way. I’ve had a lot of times when I felt hopeless and frustrated but knowing there were people close to me that dealt with the same things keeps you on your path. - Stories and casestudies
Just like your own updates talking about the journey of other peers can have the same effect and they can learn from it. - Advanced content
You might have a blog on which you post a lot of content. You could expand on that by for example going more in-depth in the emails you send to your subscribers.
There are so many ways to provide value to your email subscribers you’re just going to have to be creative.
Relationship building emails vs. Product launch emails
A friend of mine was really into writing Kindle books. He build a huge email list with the help of those books but he noticed the moment he tried to offer them products people would unsubscribe. He didn’t know what was needed to build trust and he also didn’t know how to offer products properly.
As I’ve said before, work with email sequences but don’t only do this to create trust also do this when you’re promoting offers. Use what we call product launch sequences. You use the first emails to build context when it comes to promoting your offer and “close” your email subscribers with the final email. You can also hype people up this way and soft close them before you do your main call to action.
Examples of elements you can include in these might be:
- A Sneak peek into the features of the product
- Interviews with the creator
- Stories from people who used the product ( Testimonials )
- Seeing the team in action working on the product
There’s so much more you can do with these product sequences but this should give you a few options.
Interested in learning how to use email marketing check out my review on autoresponder madness. It’s a course that teaches you email marketing and how to scale your business.
That’s all for now.
Hope to see you at my next post!
