The McMethod Email Marketing Podcast

  In this episode, you’ll discover: 00:40 – how you’re likely overcomplicating your marketing 00:56 – one system you NEED to catch more qualified leads 01:07 – the best email marketing client for payment processing 01:20 – the one decision you need to stop putting off 01:33 – how to easily back-track if you choose the wrong email software 01:47 – what you SHOULD be focusing on in your biz 01:55 – one action you must take within 15 minutes of watching this 02:09 – the 2 EASIEST email clients if you’re just getting started with email marketing Tweetables: You have what you need to improve your business. Don’t complicate it. You NEED some software to collect leads and send out autoresponders. Mentioned: Aweber MailChimp InfusionSoft GetResponse Constant Contact Office Autopilot Transcript: Download PDF transcript here. OK it’s John McIntyre here again, the Autoresponder Guy coming to you from themcmethod.com with an email marketing update. Today I want to talk about software. Alright, Aweber, Office Autopilot, InfusionSoft (nicknamed Confusion Soft). There are so many software platforms for you to send email that some people get into this and they’re like “Alright, I get it John, email marketing is the business when it comes to marketing, but I just don’t know where to start. I mean, there’s so much software out there, where do I begin? I mean, I’m not even a technical guy. Or girl.” OK? Now the thing is, most of the software will do what you need it to do, right? There are differences between them, but you can sign up to Aweber or MailChimp, and you’re going to get. Mostly, you’re going to have what you need to using my marketing to building your business. That’s the thing, don’t complicate it. I could tell you that Aweber is better than MailChimp or MailChimp is better than Aweber, or Office Autopilot is better than confusion soft. It doesn’t really matter, OK? You need some software. All of these things will allow you to collect leads, send out autoresponders, and so on. The only thing I would suggest, is if you want to do some advanced segmenting, maybe do payment processing, you want more of a CRM, go with Office Autopilot or InfusionSoft, because that’s what they’re more suited for. But if you just want to send emails, if you want a straight autoresponder, pick whatever looks good to you. Go to MailChimp.com and sign up for MailChimp. Do it with Aweber. Do it with one of these sites. Don’t confuse this. Just make a decision. Be a businessman and make that fast decision and just take action, OK? Far too many people get caught up thinking this is a major thing that they need to sort out. It’s not that big of a decision, OK? You can move your list around at a later date after you, you know, maybe you realize that you need more features. Alright, so you might want a normal autoresponder today, but in 6 months’ time you want something more advanced. You can switch from a simple software to a more advanced software. None of that matters, OK? None of that- you shouldn’t be focusing on that. You should be focusing on taking action, moving forward. Because that’s really, that’s what’s going to get you the results when it comes to email marketing. So, as a consequence of watching this video, go and sign up. Within 15 minutes of this video finishing, go and sign up to MailChimp if you haven’t already, or Aweber. Just pick one. If you haven’t started, I would go with one of those two just because they’re cheap and they’re really easy to get started. They make it very simple. Simple as that, OK? I’m John McIntyre, the Autoresponder Guy. You’re watching themcmethod.com email marketing update.   The post Aweber, MailChimp, GetResponse, Infusionsoft: How to Choose appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

In this episode, you’ll discover: 00:17 – the INSANE mistake most entrepreneurs make (andtwi your opportunity) 00:33 – why many businesses do email marketing BACKWARDS 00:48 – your #1 action today to start building your list 01:04 – a word-for-word script you can copy to write in your first email 01:22 – how to make subscribers CRAVE your emails 01:31 – a weird trick to stay out of the Gmail Promotions Tab 01:45 – a brain-dead SIMPLE email set up that will work in any niche 02:20 – my private resource for your next steps after the basics Tweetables: If you haven’t already, set up a pop up on your site! People WILL reply to your emails…and you’ll be so excited you’ll go do the rest. Transcript: Download PDF transcript here. OK, it’s John McIntyre here again, the Autoresponder Guy coming to you from themcmethod.com with another email marketing update. Now, given that I talk about email marketing all the freaking time, and I keep telling you that you need to do it, you should be doing it, and if you’re not doing it, then you are crazy. Like you need to get started as soon as possible, doing this email marketing thing if you have a website. So, in a lot of movies, and a lot of the other videos I’ve been doing, some people have been saying: “Well, how do I get started? What’s the first thing I should be doing?” And this is a great question, because most people get it wrong. Most people focus on the wrong things, OK? You think about it’s about writing- it’s about, you know…I guess having a whole thing that’s planned out. Writing everything first, then uploading it. But hey, here’s the thing: The first thing that I would do is I would, if you’re not already, set up a pop-up or some sort of form on your site. A pop-up is the easiest thing, is you can just drop a code, kind of like a JavaScript code, in the footer of your website, and that will just make the pop-up come up. You don’t have to mess around with it too much. And then you’ll start collecting leads, right? Then you’ve got leads, OK? Now it’s like well what do you send them? Well in email one, it’s the first email, it’s one of the most important emails that’s going to be in your auto-responder, in your email marketing. Because you don’t want to just say, “Hey, it’s so and so here, welcome to the family, got a couple quick questions for you…” Ask them about their problems and how much trouble they’ve had solving them. You get some valuable insights. Maybe say here’s what’s coming up in the next few weeks or the next few days, what I’m going to send you. And that’s that. Cheers. That’s email number one, OK? And you really just want to get them to reply to that email and that’s it. Right, and that’s how I would start. Just do that, alright? The rest will come later, you can learn all about how to do this at themcmethod.com, but right now just do that. Set up a pop-up form and set up one email that asks for a reply. Ask them a question like what’s the most important thing to you, or what’s the biggest question you have in relation to x, in relation to weight loss, in relation to email marketing, in relation to dating women. In relation to whatever niche or market you’re in, just do that. Because what you’re going to find is that people will reply to that email, and then you’re going to be so excited that you’re going to have to go and do all the other stuff. So I’m not going to overload you right now. Set up a pop-up, or a form, set up a pop-up, right, and set up one email that gets them to reply to it. Start there, and once you’ve done that, and you start getting excited about doing the rest of it, go to themcmethod.com, and check out the other videos, the resources there. You’ll find everything you need there to get started with email marketing. The post How to Get Started with Email Marketing appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

  In this episode, you’ll discover: 00:37 – a HUGE segment of paying customers you may be losing 00:55 – the enviable position email marketing gives a business owner 00:59 – how to profit WITHOUT coming off as sleazy 01:11 – the best way to stay on your customer’s radar 01:19 – why MOST of your potential market won’t buy from you…yet 01:42 – how your competitors might be STEALING your prospects (here’s how to beat them to it) 01:53 – how to become the preeminent AUTHORITY in your niche 02:10 – one stat that proves social media is OVERRATED Tweetables: Life – especially business – is about relationships. Most people are simply not ready to buy today.   Transcript: Download PDF transcript here. OK, John McIntyre here again, the Autoresponder Guy, coming to you from themcmethod.com with another email marketing update. Today I want to answer a question, or I want to talk about a question that I’ve gotten a lot sometimes, especially on podcasts and interviews of that type. And it is: “Why does email marketing work?” OK? Now you’re out there wondering this, if you’re- maybe you’re in the starting stages of doing your own marketing; maybe you’re a business owner who’s wondering if he should set up an email marketing campaign for their company, or hire someone like me to set it up for you, OK? Number one, I think about email marketing, the reason I think it works so well, is because life, especially business, is about relationships, OK? Now someone comes to your website; they take a look at your pages, your about page reports, whatever. It’s a very, you know, one-off kind of relationship, and if you don’t make that sale on the first go, they’re out of there. You’re never going to hear from them again. What email allows you to do is keep in touch with them, and build that relationship. Show them that you’re now just that sleazy business that’s just trying to make some money, that you actually care about them, you want to help them solve their problems, OK? So email marketing allows you to, you know, chime in in their inbox once a day, a couple times a week, once every week, however you want to do it. That allows you to just stay in touch and stay on their radar. Right, cause most people aren’t ready to buy today. Some people who come to your website, of course, they’re ready to buy, and they’re going pick up the phone to call you and order, or however it works, but most people are simply not ready to buy today. Alright, they might need a months- you know, for whatever reason maybe it’s just not the right time, maybe they don’t have the right money, maybe it’s not payday, maybe they’re just browsing. Maybe they’re looking for a house, but they’re thinking about buying a house in the next year or so. So if you don’t stay in touch with them over the next year, they’re going to some other broker, some other real estate agent who did take the time to stay in touch, OK? This is what email marketing allows you to do, and this is why it’s so effective. Because it allows you to stay top of mind, so that when people are finally ready to buy, you are the natural obvious choice. You become the pre-eminent authority, the leader in your niche. Ok…it…I was going to swear there. It craps all over social media, OK? The last study I read was saying that email marketing produces on average 3 times more per dollar spent than social media. So email marketing is way better than social media at making money and doing business. OK, that’s a whole new video. What I really wanted to get across today is that email marketing works. It’s extremely powerful, way more powerful than social media, and if you’re not doing it, then you should. You should go and check out my videos. Go to themcmethod.com, go through the archives, go through the podcasts, sign up for McMasters, and you will learn how to use email marketing to build your business, OK? I’m John McIntyre, the Autoresponder Guy, coming to you from themcmethod.com with another email marketing update.   The post Why Email Is Such A Potent Marketing Channel appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

Rob Walling is the host of the wildly popular podcast Startups for the Rest of Us. He’s also a serial entrepreneur and marketing BADASS who knows how to sell more with email. Rob’s latest company, Drip, is an email service that gives you autoresponder blueprints… …and makes boosting your conversions DEAD simple. His secret weapon? Opt-in “mini-courses.” Got a blog on your website? An e-book? KICK-ASS content you’ve ALREADY slaved over? Then pay attention: Because in this episode, Rob reveals a tested template for repurposing your content… …and building a “Crash Course” that sells more, hands-free. Think “Mad Libs” for autoreponders. It’s ’bout time to wipe off that dusty content. …and create a series that ignites your opt-ins and sales.  In this episode, you’ll discover: Rob’s tested # of emails to put in your mini-course some surprising data on images vs. text-based emails how to write mini-course subject lines that sell the “Mad Libs” approach to writing autoresponders in Drip how one Opt-In form headline hauls in a FIFTEEN-PERCENT opt-in rate the best-performing headline Rob has ever seen how to nab an ONGOING lift in your email conversions Mentioned: Drip HitTail Startups for the Rest of Us Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO Raw transcript: Download PDF transcript here. It’s John McIntyre here, the Autoresponder Guy. I’m here with Rob Walling, a serial entrepreneur. He’s been building web applications for 12 years and the latest is nifty piece of software called Drip, which actually makes creating autoresponder sequences super, super easy. We’re just talking about it and I was trying to understand how can we talk about this in a way that’s going to appeal the most to you the listener. It’s basically a Drip and the content, and what we’re going to get into in a minute. Is how to create email courses, how to take the content you have on your site that you’ve already created and turn that into an autoresponder that sells your products. So you don’t need to go and spend hours and hours and hours obsessing of the details and writing all sorts of stuff. I mean you’re going to create this yourself and go use the content on your site and you can attempt to Rob’s service, and they’ll do it for you. The idea today and what you’re going to get out of it by listening is that having an autoresponder that really sells stuff at your site is automatic sales machine. Doesn’t have to be hard, it can actually be really, really easy when you understand some of the principles that I’m sure Rob will share with us in just a minute. We’ll talk about that, how to put together an email mini course based on what they’ve learned with their customers. Also some of the trends they’re noticing in the industry which we haven’t talked about yet personally. I’m sure it will be very, I think that’s going to be really interesting. We’ll get into that. How are you going today, Rob?                    Rob: I’m doing great man, thanks for having me in the show. John: Absolutely man, it’s good to have you here. Tell me about Drip, let’s start there. Rob: All right as you said, Drip’s a piece of software it’s a web app and you might think about it like something similar to MailChimp or AWeber. Except for the angle that we took is that I wanted to make autoresponders our first class citizen. I wanted to make autoresponders as easy to setup as possible so we design it from the ground up with that in mind. Then we added stuff today, I was always kind of a pain in the butt for me and other services like we added split testing within sequences. I always want to split test subject lines of my autoresponder emails and no one seems to be able to do that, so we added that and we’re adding right now, we’re adding the split testing of opt in forms on the front end. Even if you have embedded html opt in forms, we use Java Script and we can swap out your headline and tell you which one’s working better for you. It’s that kind of stuff, it’s you know what marketers and analytics and optimizers perspective rather than like another tool that just sends generic and newsletters.     John: Okay. Now, I’m curious do you consider this being for beginners who just want to get a job done, real fast or could this be something that advance marketers could use to save time. Rob: I hate to use the generic answer but it’s working for both right now. We have a lot of beginners who came on early and we built their course from them, from their existing content. That’s working well. We’ve been working on Drip for about a year. We’ve been publicly launched for just about 60 days and the feature set is being driven by these marketers who really know what they want. that they haven’t been able to get in other tools. We are adding to be honest, that big reveal is that we’re basically adding a bit of marketing automation where you can move people from one sequence to the next space on tagging. Much like Infusionsoft and Office Autopilot do. We are in the middle of that now and it should be in the next two to four weeks, we’ll be re-launching that.   John: Okay, I think that’s going to become more and more prominent this all choose your intervention autoresponder sequence, there’s more and more people understands that relevance is really the most important thing or one of the most important things with marketing. This marketing automation and software like Drip kind of realize you to do that.     Rob: Right. John: All right. Let’s start write this email mini course, when you’re telling me that Drip does, let’s start out what is an email mini course look like? Rob: Yes so the idea of the email mini course, it’s been floating around for years of how do you A, encourage someone to give you their email. To one, opt in and then be how you engage them over an extended period of time without constantly being on a hamster wheel of creating new email. Right, having to create content every couple days and so the email mini course, it can run. I mean some people do month long email mini courses but what we focused on is this first step. I getting a five to seven day email mini course that is highly focused on educating someone and providing them with information that they can walk away from your service. They can use that information without buying anything from you. That’s the key thing I like to think about. Is like I’m coming on this podcast, I want people to be able to take information away from this and never have to use Drip and still be successful. Right? It’s the same thing when you’re building your course, its how are you going to educate and show people that you are an authority.    John: Okay. Rob: Like I said, the idea is five to seven day course. That’s the thing that we’ve seen working really well and its one time setup. This becomes a fly wheel because you can write it once, create it once and it perpetually runs, right? Because it’s always being sent as an autoresponder and what we found, where we have a lot of success with is as you said at the top of the show. It’s capitalizing on existing content that you already have. If you have an e-book or you have a white paper or you have a slew of blog posts, it’s really easy to take those and put them into a mini course, just break it up. By sub heading, if you have any e-book that’s 20 pages, it’s a slam dunk to pick out some of your top tips from that and put them into this autoresponder course. Not have to spend a bunch of time creating that yourself. John: Okay, I’m curious how you … Because I wonder with problems like this that actually if you will create a whole bunch of great content with there is on a site, they take it and put it into an autoresponder. Too much for your information, I find the tracks the wrong type of prospects and leads. In the sense that it attracts freeloaders, if you’re always giving away lots of free how to information it can discourage go from going ahead with your service. Is they just can do it yourself, it gets the wrong kind of people attracted. So how do you deal with this?    Rob: We do a couple of things, one is we escalate the call to action throughout the sequence. Like the first email it will just say, hey. Starts off with, “Hey, I’m Rob Walling. I’m the founder of whatever company and you signed up for this mini course. I’m going to be talking about this thing.” Then you go through it, you give them some information then at the bottom you say, “Tomorrow we’ll be covering this, but if you want to get ahead of the curve. Here’s our link, you can check out our free trial. Here’s a link and you can buy the whole e-book that discusses all of this.” Depending on what you’re selling. Then the second day, we start escalating that call to action. We just make a little more prominent and by the last day, the last installment we say, “All right, that’s it, that’s all you’re getting. To really move forward with this, we know you can go do it yourself but if your time is more valuable to you than money. Get way out of the pack.” Then you kind of do your pitch on that last day. I always include something that says, “I will be in touch in the future with updates or blah, blah, blah.” I really kind to try to make it … I put day five of five in the subject line, so they know that it’s the end of the line. If they kind of have to make a decision at this point on whether or not they’re going to move forward, that amount is going to continues and free info forever.    John: Okay and what would you suggest to someone who’s kind of starting to list all of that. Listing this podcast, they probably have about daily emails and that an autoresponder should be long and all that sort of stuff. What if someone, they’ve got five emails, they’re sending that. They’re working well but they’ve got all of these leads that they want to keep mailing, what do they do after that?    Rob: That’s a really good question now. Pretty common when we get, I’ve seen a couple of purchase this. The one that I like the most is that as I create new content. Let’s say you are a software company or a SAS company or maybe an info marketer and you have like a product blog that is … It’s not talking about your product but it is talking about stuff that would be interesting to them. You’re going to put it on the blog anyways, right? It’s not like you’re adding any extra time but you basically take a snippet of that, first couple of paragraphs of that blog post which is a teaser. You add it to the end of your autoresponder sequence. You don’t just send a broadcast. In my opinion broadcast should only be used for launches, for time sensitive things that are not perpetually ever great. I add it to the end of that sequence because I do like long sequences. The conversion rate drops over time obviously. If you have a sequence that’s a hundred long versus five, you’re going to get a higher conversion rate in that five then you will and say the next five or the last five. But there still is that long tail of conversion that happen. That’s how I’ve done it and that’s where I seen the most successes, adding to the end of your sequence based on content that you’re already producing.   John: Okay, that makes it simple. You’re doing much like selling it rather than just sending out blog posts and saying go check this out. Judy might say … I don’t know if you’re a my list or something like Ben Settles where there’s basically a story and then a pitch. I’m sure you’ve seen this kind of stuff. Rob: Yup, absolutely. John: But where there’s some sort of interesting, catchy hook, some sort of story. It’s usually a class copywriting thing. Rob: Yup. John: Then they slide into a pitch, what’s your opinion on that style? Rob: I think that style works great and especially works great when your marketing information. If you’re selling e-books or courses or services, those are all, that’s the ideal pitch I would use for that. If you’re selling software or software as a service you tend to have to be a little more subtle with it or a little more nurturing and it takes a little more time. I do think that you should have pitches or some type of pretty hard call to action about every three to four emails, if you’re doing software stuff. The interesting thing is if you’re sending blog posts and you just send the first two paragraphs, then you send them a link to get him to the blog. Now the blog should have a strong call to action to then get them to sign up for your trial. You don’t necessarily have to include it in the email when you’re taking that approach.   John: Okay. The way I would probably do it is so you can either setup a site to the opt in and then the opt in then finals to the product. Or you can have site kind of funnel to the opt in or the product and then you can redirect pure from the email back to the site. Then if they want to take the next step and go to the product it’s very obvious that they can take the next step. Rob: Exactly, hopefully that’s what I communicated. That’s how I would do it as well. John: Yeah, yeah, okay, interesting. What about the format, I’m curious about this. When you talk about subject lines, hence if you have like a lesson one out of five or lesson one out of seven and then how you structuring this emails. Are you linking to a lesson on a website or you’re having the lesson in the email with some sort of here are your action steps for today. Go and do them, I’ll see you tomorrow. Rob: Yeah. In the mini course I include all the content in the email. Included certain couple images, try to get people to click that view images button. Although I guess in Gmail, it doesn’t really matter anymore, does it? I structure, I include all the content in that first five to seven days. I don’t really want people have to come and click out and go to a website, especially because so many people are opening on mobile now, 33 to 45% or whatever it is. That first course I want to provide value without them having to click out. It’s after that, that I start and I should take that back. When I do the call to action course, it’s come to the site and buy something. But when I’m just doing the education, I try to fit everything into the email. If there’s a video then of course I’ll have an image of the video they can click through and watch it. But that’s how we’re structuring them.   John: Okay, interesting and it sounds a good start, text based emails for blogs. Rob: That’s right and yup. I don’t know what your thoughts are on it but I’ve just had overwhelming success compared to when I use the fancy fixed whipped templates, I never get as good a results as just a personal plain text looking. Even if it’s html, but a plain text looking email that looks like it’s a personal email from the founder. John: Right, right, right. I actually had a really interesting experience maybe seven or eight months ago. I was working with a startup and I actually messed up because I went into the thing, into the climb relationship thinking well, only text email all the way, it’s going to be great, it always works better. What I didn’t know at that time is that this startup, something like six or seven or eight different copywriters to test against everyone. I’ve gone into it thinking what we’re going to do is, is we’re going to do like a subject line and then a bit of a story or something. 200 word, 300 word email, it’s all going to be text and then it will be signed off with someone in the company. My email is that I wrote roughly the worst performing out of all the copy of everyone they tested. The emails that won because this was a startup and a very popular startup right now actually, the emails that won were basically two lines of something like “We haven’t seen you in a while, click here to go and do this.” Then I signed off from the founder and it also had company logo, it was small. It wasn’t a fancy html email but it was still obviously, it still was branded. It was a branded email that’s usually I would say a no, no for most people. In this case, it seemed to work much, much, much better than the classic kind of text email. I think there’s something there where when you’re a big company, when you’re seen as a brand and not a one person or one man show. People need to know that you’re a brand and when they open your email or they’re going to think that it’s some sort of spam.    Rob: Indeed, that’s a really good point. Actually I’ve seen subtle brandings, if you go to hittail.com and you sign up for our seven day email course it’s powered by Drip but I own HitTail and Drip, but I use Drip on HitTail. If you go to hittail.com, sign up for that, you’ll get the course. You’ll see we have subtle branding. It’s plain text but there is a header at the top with a  logo and it’s still a personal letter or semi-personal letter from me, “This is Rob Walling. Owner of HitTail,” or whatever, but we never test it against straight, plain text. I like subtle branding. I think it comes back to that info marketing kind of if you’re a one person show like you said, I would always lean towards plain text. Even when I go to corporate, I would never, we don’t build email courses that have more than just a logo at the top and maybe some images in their first. We don’t do fix with and we don’t do any kind of catalog magazine looking, loose letter looking like all that stuff. In my experience and in my opinion this doesn’t work. John: Right, okay. Last night I was reading your blog post and I just switched on my phone actually in bed. As I was scrolling through it there’s probably an image every hundred words or something. Say it was like that, and this parts was long, one or 2,000 words, it was a very long thing, it took a while to read. But I noticed I was reading all the words and every time I’d go to an image I’d barely look at it before scrolling on to the next part of the words. It just reminded me that we’re on the internet, if you take out the words there’s pretty much nothing there. If you’re a photographer or you’re into design and all that, you’d probably still have it, you’d be very interested in it. The average person, the images illustrate what the words were already saying. The words, especially in the case of email which is just communication to all that images just on that big of a deal, it’s really what can you say is going to make a difference.        Rob: Yeah, I’d agree with that but I had a lot of success when I was launching Drip. I built in an email list with a few thousand people and I sent, I did split test of emails of just sending pure text and then sending with images which were screenshots of the app which is what people wanted to see before I launched. The screenshots of the app got a lot more clicks because I linked all the screenshots up to click through to what just to a, like a tour page. The app wasn’t available. I mean that’s just one case. You can argue either way that all texts versus a lot of images could be successful. I think it’s pretty easy to go, over do with the images. An image every hundred words sounds like a lot to me. I typically go over four or five hundred words. If your email’s only four or five hundred, having one image in there, and an image is not required obviously. If the image actually helps the process, if it’s a graph or if it’s truly a screenshot, there are certain things that you just can’t describe well enough in words that I do think that an image helps.   John: Absolutely I mean the answer here is that’s why there’s a classic gains to that like marketing things, it’s like it depends. Because depending on the copy and the product and it’s really about the context. You don’t understand the context that’s going on in that email and going on inside this lead or this prospect head. Then understand maybe an image would support what you’re already saying, maybe it wouldn’t. There’s no one size fits all answer to the question. Rob: Yeah that’s exactly right. It’s exactly right and then there’s complexity because it’s not just an image like in a blog post. It’s an image in an email, and so then you have to say, okay is this image going to fit a mobile format, is the image going to appear in Gmail or they can have to click the link that makes it appear, and how it look, how is that different and all that stuff. There are definitely things to think about and that’s of course what we try to just bake in to the product. That’s what we try to bake into Drip. Is that when you add an image, it’s just going to be the right size, it’s going to format into the right size and then it’s going to work as best as it can in an email.    John: Okay. I’m really curious, heading towards the end soon. I’m really curious to know can you give me a rundown of what one of your emails look like. Either maybe read through an email or just kind of outline the basic format of email number one, or email number whatever. Just so the listener can see what exactly this type of emails look like. Rob: Yeah, sure. What we did in Drip is if people, if someone comes and signs up and they already have existing content. We basically give them these blueprints and we call them sequence blueprints. We have like a five day email mini course blueprint which is five email templates. They’re all baked into the app and you just click a button and poof, you get five subject lines that just have you fill in this. They just have you fill in the subject line. There’s really not much there. The body of the email starts off and it’s just “Thanks for checking out my five day crash course on,” and then there’s a fill in things, it’s topic of the course. It’s kind of like Mad Libs. You remember that old game Mad Libs where you had to just shout out a noun or a verb or something. Then the next sentence is “I’m” insert name, “the founder of company. My goal for this course is to provide you with new techniques and approaches for,” and then you fill in the stuff.       John: Yeah. Rob: That’s how it starts off and “Today we’re going to start looking at topic today’s email.” Then it says insert your content here. It’s kind of the scaffolding around that’s day one basically. Each day basically says, yesterday we talked about this, today we’re going to talk about this and then as I said they’re call to actions baked into the bottom of each one. Talk about if you’re head of the curve, feel free to learn about product name here and you can insert a link. That’s the gist. There is an arc, I do see a pretty good. I do see click through rates early on. Open rates of the first email are always the highest, where have always been. Then we’re looking at hundreds of courses now that we’ve seen go. As you would expect them interested peaks at the highest, I’m sorry at the front. Then it slowly, open rates drop over time and then the last email or especially if you put day five of five or day seven of seven, that one picks back up. If you don’t put that of seven people don’t know it’s the last one. They don’t tend to open it as much. You can actually get this curve, yeah, it’s interesting. The same with clicks, I mean getting your click through rate up is an hour on to itself. We’ll probably do a whole podcast on it but I’ve see that including images, if you have any type of image that is your product, that you have to link that to your sight. Because people just naturally want to click on images just to see what’s there. Linking images is a big deal but not requiring them to see the image. Because remember that in some email clients it’s kind of cumbersome, so that’s that. Out of five emails, we have two that have PSs. We don’t want to overdo the PS, we know it’s an overused copywriting thing but it still works. I think its email to and email for, both have PSs at the end that talk a little about the product, give you a little extra tidbit and then link out.      John: Okay. Rob: Yeah, so those are the best practices that we found and are really kind of baking into the product.    John: Right, right, right. What sort of opt in rates? I’m sure that you probably have all these data with your track. Rob: Yup. John: What sort of opt in rates you seeing people get with these courses? Rob: Yeah, so what we’re seeing Drip offers a bunch of different ways to opt in. It’s not just having a static, you can do a static embeddable html form. But a real sweet spot is if you add Java Script, if you add our little snippet to every page at your site you instantly get this little pop up Drip widget that goes everywhere. Then the nice part about that is that you don’t have to go through and modify all the pages or you don’t have to go through and add a widget to a side bar. It’s kind of like one of those chat pop ups and it appears everywhere. You can move it around, you can move it to the left side, right side, you can move it to the top whatever. What we’re seeing so, it’s a little less so it’s not, the optimum rates are not as high as a light box. It doesn’t block your view, it doesn’t keep you from seeing the site. It just kind of has a little bit of motion in the lower right. We’re seeing the entire range, we’re seeing as low as 2% of visitors who see the pop up, will opt in and as high as about 15%. The inner range, the more tight range where most people are sitting is between three and 8% of the traffic. For something that isn’t obstructing views at all, I’m pretty pleased with that. Because it’s a base, it’s a list that you’re building without detracting from the site or without attracting from the experience of the site. John: Right, absolutely. Okay, okay. I’m curious with the 15% is or with the upper ends, what are they doing definitely to the 2%? Is it just more focused traffic? Rob: It’s couple things, one is the traffic is more focused, the second thing is, they have better headlines. The headlines are just that much better. The rewards tend to be, but you know some people are giving away like a PDF, like a tools list but most people are doing a mini course. The rewards are kind of the same across the board but it’s how you frame that and how you title that reward, that can be a huge swing in that opt in rate. John: Okay, what’s an example then of a good headline that would work, that works really well? And then the one that hasn’t. Rob: Yup, sure. One that’s worked really well is “Seven day long tail SEO crash course.” John: Okay. Rob: That’s what I use on HitTail and it’s one of the better performing headlines that we see in Drip. One that was really terrible the other day was “Twitter for business.” I saw that, that was actually the headline. I was like, “No,” and I went in and I emailed the customer. I said, “Look, I think I can probably double your opt in rate.” Because it’s an app for twitter, it’s kind of like a hood sweet type thing and it’s for businesses but it doesn’t talk about any benefits. It doesn’t talk about it, even the topic, so I changed it to something like “Dominate Twitter for your business.” It was better written than that but I use the word dominate or like own or something like that. You got to get that emotion in there and I’ve already seen an uptick in his opt in rate.     John: Okay, that’s awesome. What about conversion rates? I don’t know if this is revise more events tracking, but you have any idea if this crash course is … Rob: Yup, we do have that. John: Okay. Rob: Yup so that’s the thing. Again I build Drip for me. I got validation that other people needed it before I built it but I was always miffed by the fact that I could never see the soup to nuts. What I wanted to see was someone so hit your website from this traffic source, they signed up for your mini course, they receive these emails, they open these ones, they click these ones. Here they convert it to a trial, that’s what I want to see. That’s why I built Drip to do. If you install the Java Script then you get conversion traffic so I can actually see that. We’re seeing a range of depending on what you’re selling and of course it gets … Someone did a launch last week and then sold an e-book. That conversion rate was really high because it’s a onetime thing and you’re doing a time limited discount and all that stuff. That aside we are seeing conversion rates from mini course opt ins to some kind of purchase and sometimes that’s a $20 e-book. Sometimes that’s a $50 a month SAS SAP, so there’s a big range. Between 1% and 10% and a tighter range is about 2 to 5, 2 to 6% of people on the list are making some kind of purchase over the course of the five to seven days. John: Okay. Rob: It’s not a huge amount. I mean we’re not talking about 50% purchase rates but this isn’t a launch list, this isn’t a time sensitive thing. It’s something that you literally do want and it’s a perpetual lift to your conversion rates. It just perpetually does that, it just runs in the background. Even if you’re not adding emails to the end of this, it just runs and continues to that.   John: Let’s talk about one of these marketing hacks where you can add revenue the bottom line without spending any more money on advertising or marketing. You just add, you spend a little money on creating your responder and then it just sits there and it runs, it’s amazing. Rob: Exactly. That’s what we did with HitTail. I don’t want to pump it up too much but the reason I started building Drip is because we did this with HitTail. We built it manually, everything I’m describing we built in code on HitTail as a one off and it increased our conversion rate from visitor to trial by 30%. That’s a big deal for us.   John: Okay. Rob: Because we’re dealing in fur figures of customers. It was a big amount, everyone doesn’t get 30%, I don’t want to claim that but we are seeing no brain or people getting 10% increase in visitor to trial and visitor to purchase conversion rates. People getting up into the 30s as well, so definitely that’s the thing I like about is, I like since I’m basically a two person company. I like things that you can do once and don’t have to maintain them forever. You can kind of set it and forget it as much as you can with anything. John: Right. I’m curious have you ever tested a different like have you tried, say more direct sales or more direct content or like if you tested different autoresponder approaches? Or just a crash course style? Rob: To date, we’ve only done the crash course style. We have it on our feature list. Basically add more blueprints. I need to craft some more, hire someone or craft some more blueprints. The direct sales model I think could work really well. I’ll tell you what else we have, so I have a five day mini course blueprint. I have a four week email mini course blue print. I have a follow up sequence that’s after a post demo, and it starts up with saying “Hey, you saw a demo over software. Just checking in blah, blah, blah.” It’s pretty generic because how much can you really put in there but I think it’s a three email sequence. Then we also have a follow up after they downloaded a sample report. Those are the basic blueprints. I’m intrigued at the thought of creating a direct sales one but to date have not and haven’t tested against it.      John: Okay, because it would be really interesting, like I’m starting to find that every market has a different style that works for it. No matter if a crash course and wanting to mean e-commerce is a whole new ball game with the betterment, email sequences and all sorts of stuff. Then you get information marketing which is where you can talk all about, you can have a lot of fun with it. In different strategies, it sounds like SAS and startups, they need another style or another strategy and title as well. Rob: Indeed, yeah that’s right. John: Cool, okay this been great. I think the list has probably got an action plan right in front of them right now. They can do the setup, this crash course themselves or they can go to let’s getdrip.com, right? Rob: That’s correct. John: If people want to hear more about you, where should they go? Rob: If folks like to listen to podcast I have my own, it’s a weekly podcast called Startups For The Rest Of Us. You can find it in iTunes or startupsfortherestofus.com. I talk about the stuff, I talk about launching Drip and other software products once a week on Tuesday mornings. It’s probably the best way to catch up with me. John: Okay so you’re main thing is software products SAS and all that stuff, right? Rob: That’s right, yup. John: Okay, but then you touch on the marketing. You’re a bit of a marketing guy. Buddy of mine said that he thinks you’re an amazing marketer. This could be because you got the text side and then you have the marketing chops to back all that stuff up. Rob: Wow, that’s very kind of him. Yeah, in my opinion one of the most dangerous things in the business world is a developer with marketing skills. When I see them, I know that they’re going to be pretty bad ass. Because mixing the two is a challenge because it’s different from parts of your brain and so people who know both I think have an advantage for sure.    John: That’s interesting so you have coding skills that sounds you can go and do some PHP and hack around the press and do all that stuff. But you’ve also got an understanding of marketing strategies, it sounds like a bit of copywriting and all that stuff mixed in together. Rob: Yeah and that came out a necessity because I started as a developer and then I wanted to launch my own products and of course you build something and launch it and no one gives a crap. You have to learn how to market it. You either learn or you fail. I’m not one that really failed lately. I read all the copywriting books you have on your shelf, I bet I have them on my shelf too. All that, that Ultimate Sales Letter and you have Dan Kennedy and all the guys, I forget their names all the time but I’ve read them and that’s how I learned it. I also hand wrote sales letters just like you’re told to do.    John: Nice. Rob: I’ve done exact thing. John: I’m impressed, it’s cool man. Rob: I came through that, it’s only about six or seven years back that I did it. I know guys like you and other have been doing it for longer but yeah, I think that’s the ticket man, is you got to know one or the other. Either tech or marketing but I think knowing both is a pretty good ticket. John: I’d say absolutely man. I’ll ask you to execute a whole lot faster as well where I can, not really code it but I can get inside WordPress and do all sorts of html and CSS stuff and some basic PHP and allows me to test stuff and just add up my own sites so much faster. Saves so much time that I would spend go on Odesk, go messing around with developers that I have no idea how they work, all sorts of stuff.    Rob: Yeah absolutely and it allows you to evaluate people, developers a lot easier. Because you at least have a sense of how long it should take someone to do something. John: Yeah like get a bit of a feel for how to, I guess development coding is kind of like very different mindset instead of marketing. Marketing is very, I guess creative in a way. Coding can be creative too but there’s a difference kind of the way the brain works when you start setting up the code.   Rob: Absolutely, yeah. John: Cool, all right man we’re right at the end. Thank you for coming over to talk about the crash courses and Drip. Rob: I had a great time John, thanks for having me. John: Hi everybody, thanks for listening. If you want to discover more insider tips, tricks and secrets about writing sales with email marketing, sign up for daily email tips from Autoresponder Guy. Go to dropdeadcopy.com/podcast, sign up, confirm your email address and I’ll send you daily emails on how to recruit your email marketing and make more sales via email. You’ll find out why open rates don’t matter and the seven letter word that underlies all effective marketing, and much more. The post Episode #46 – Rob Walling on Email “Mini-Courses” that Skyrocket Your Conversions appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

  In this episode, you’ll discover: 00:17 – why one simple tweak can put your email marketing miles ahead of most companies 00:25 – the most overlooked step in mailing your list 00:33 – how to get your list to click “Open” just by seeing your name in their inbox 01:14 – a mindset shift that will make your list LOYAL instead of annoyed by your messages 01:28 – the psychological principle that makes people WANT to talk to your business 01:37 – some overdue good news about writing subject lines (stop pulling your hair out!) Tweetables: Take that “From” name and use YOUR name. Make it more personal. People do business with people, not companies. Transcript: Download PDF transcript here. Hi, John McIntyre here again, the Autoresponder guy, coming to you from themcmethod.com with another email marketing update. Today I want to talk about something that’s very under-looked in the world of email marketing. OK, and a lot of companies get this wrong, big time, OK? Now what is it? It’s the from name. So what is the from name? When an email hits the inbox, OK, you’ve got the subject line, and right next to the subject line, there’s also a from name. So it might say, from your mom, it might say your mom’s full name, and then it has the subject line next to it. If you received one of my emails in your inbox, it would say John McIntyre, and then the subject line, OK? So you see who it’s from, and then you see the subject line, OK? So this is the from name. OK, now what do a lot of companies do? Well, what they do is this: they use the from name to put their business name. Problem is, is how many businesses are, you know, what sort of business sends a personal email? So this is why the person, receiving your business name, they assume it’s a kind of promotion, or offer, or something like that. They don’t really- it’s harder to build a relationship to a business than it is to a person. So here’s what I suggest you do. Take that from name, and use your name. If you use your- use someone in the company’s name. Or you can use, say, John, comma, company name. Something like that. Make it more personal. If you want people to build a relationship with you, or someone in your company…alright, because people do business with people, OK? And what’s going to happen, like I said, I’ve said this in other videos, that over time as people enjoy your emails and build a relationship with you, they’re going to open your emails just because they’re your emails. So this is another easy, straight-forward way that’s very over-looked, and rarely talked about. It’s a way to get people to recognize your emails as soon as they get in them. It’s like “Oh, it’s, I got an email from John McIntyre from the McMethod.” OK, that’s it for today. I’m John McIntyre, the Autoresponder Guy from themcmethod.com with another email marketing update.   The post Are You Making This DUMBO Mistake In Email? appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

  In this episode, you’ll discover: 00:36 – how to get prospects SALIVATING for your next email like Pavlov’s dog 0045 – the “special sauce” I add to every subject line (that you can steal) 00:48 – how to develop your own SECRET CODE that makes readers feel INCLUDED 01:25 – the one “catch” to using this trick – why it ONLY works if you add value 01:35 – why subject lines are NOT the “be-all-end-all” of email copy Tweetables: Once people become bonded to you as a personality, they’re more likely to open your emails People will WANT to open your emails – just because they’re from you Transcript: Download PDF transcript here. Okay, it’s John McIntyre here again, the Autoresponder Guy, coming to you from themcmethod.com for another email marketing update. In this video I want to talk about a really easy, simple, straightforward way anyone, including you, I do this, you can use to make your emails more recognizable in the inbox. What this is going to do is, once people become bonded to you as a personality, the person in their inbox, they’re much more likely to open your email. What you want to do is you want to make it easy for them to notice which emails are yours, because then, assuming that they enjoy receiving your emails and you send them valuable content, they’re going to want to open them. Here’s what I do. Of course you’ve got the “From” line. I talk about that in another video, but what I want to talk about today is, basically you can add a little code at the front of each subject line. For me, that means there’s a bit of a bracket like this, either side, and then I have the code for my site. In my case it’s “MM” for McMethod. Okay? This means that when the email turns up in the inbox, subject line has, bracket, M M, bracket, and then the actual subject line. Like I said, this makes the email more recognizable so when it comes to people wanting to open my emails, just because they’re from me, I’m giving them an easy way to know the email’s from me. This is just something you can try. I haven’t heavily tested this but I have a feeling that it does boost response, especially if you’re sending them valuable information. I don’t think it will do much for spammers because spammers don’t have a relationship with their audience, but if you intend on building a relationship with your market people are going to end up opening your emails just because they’re your emails. The subject line is still important but it’s not the be all and end all. Okay? That’s it for today. I’m John McIntyre, coming to you from themcmethod.com as the Autoresponder Guy. I’ll see you next time for another email marketing update. The post One Simple Trick To Make Your Emails Recognizable appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

  In this episode, you’ll discover: 00:57 –  how to tell if your emails are a pain the ass for your readers 01:10 – what studies reveal about copy that SELLS 01:20 – the head-scratching reason sales pages are so thin 02:07 – a tiny piece of code you can use to improve your emails…even if HTML gives you a headache Tweetables: Studies have shown that really long lines are harder to read – people won’t read them. Mentioned: Go into your email software’s HTML editor and add the following code to your emails: At the VERY top, insert: <div style=”max-width:400px;”> At the VERY bottom, insert: </div> Transcript: Download PDF transcript here. Hey, it’s John McIntyre here again. The Autoresponder Guy coming to you from themcmethod.com with another email marketing update. Today I want to talk about how wide your emails should be. This seems a bit random, so I’m going to use a bit of a quick story to explain the point, to make a point. If you go to Gmail or your email client right now, like Outlook or one of those things, and you open an email from someone, sometimes, usually, it’s going to have a really long line. Really long lines. Let’s say you’ve got a widescreen. A lot of people have widescreens these days. You’ve got something that’s maybe a foot, maybe a foot and a half wide. 50 centimeters, half a meter, whatever. When someone writes an email to you, could be a friend or a family member, could be a business, if they don’t know what they’re doing, and the email goes the full width of the screen, so when you open the email to read, you’ve got to read from one side of the screen to the other. This is a pain in the arse, right? I don’t know if you’ve noticed before, but this is hard to read. When you try and read emails like this, you have to really concentrate to make it from one side to the other, and when you go back to the other side of the email, to go to the next line, you have to really concentrate and focus to get to the next line. It’s ridiculous. As far as I know, studies have shown the really, really long lines, they’re actually harder to read, and makes people less likely to consume the content, whether it’s a sales letter or an email. This is why, when you see sales letters, the columns might be a 600 pixel width. It’s a very thin page. It’s not a full width page. Okay? To apply this to your emails, every email client’s going to have a HTML section. It’s really, really simple. All you do is you add a div tag. You might need to look up what a div tag is online, but basically you would add a div. (See “mentioned” at www.themcmethod.com/use-this-code for instructions on the code): Basically what this is going to do is it’s going to wrap your email in a 400 pixel div tag. I’m John McIntyre, the Autoresponder Guy. I’ll see you next time for another email marketing update. The post Copywriters: Use This Piece of Code! appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

  [ptwitowerpress] In this episode, you’ll discover: 00:24 – one condition you  MUST meet to use this hack 00:37 – a little-known app that makes writing simple 01:00 – the REAL root cause of exhausting writer’s block 01:21 – why having your back against the wall will SILENCE your “inner critic” 01:29 – how you can adjust this trick to write your sales pages 01:57 – your new 2-step creative process to writing SIZZLE-HOT copy Tweetables: It’s as simple as setting that timer and putting pen to paper. Write first. Edit later. Mentioned: Bookmark these links for writing your next email! Egg Timer: 15 minutes Egg Timer: 25 minutes Transcript: Download PDF transcript here. John McIntyre here again. The Autoresponder Guy, coming to you from themcmethod.com. Today I want to talk about writer’s block, because this is something that goes so many copywriters down. So many people who want to write emails, who want to write sales copy, who want to make more money with their words. Gets them down, and it doesn’t need to. Here’s my secret. Here’s what I do. This is how you can overcome writer’s block any time. Okay? Obviously you need a bit of discipline and a bit of willpower, but if you’ve got that, if you can bring that to the table, what I’m going to give you right now is going to be a really easy hack, and it will seem remarkably simple as a way to beat writer’s block. Here it is. Go to e.ggtimer.com. This will be in the show notes at themcmethod.com, by the way. Go to that site; set a timer for 15 minutes. It’s pretty self-explanatory when you get to this site, and then try to write an email in that 15 minutes. Don’t edit. The idea here is to get rid of your editor. We all have that voice inside of us that wants to edit as we go. What this timer does is it eliminates that editor because you don’t have time to edit it. You just have to focus. You have to sit down and write that email as fast as you can without thinking too much, without worrying about it, without getting into cure about it. That’s what this timer does. That’s my hack. That’s one of the best ways to do writer’s block. Same goes for sales copy. Maybe you don’t want to do 15 minutes. Maybe do 25 minute blocks, and the goal is, when you sit down for that 25 minutes you are writing non-stop for 25 minutes. Okay? Now after that, you can come back later, you can edit that stuff, okay? The timer forces you, forces your brain to switch off that editor part and just go balls to the wall writing, and then you can come back and edit it. This is “write first, edit later.” That’s the quote. Don’t remember who said it; it’s very true. Write first, edit later. This is how to overcome writer’s block. It’s not some big, evil demon. Okay? Especially when it comes to emails. Maybe when you’re writing a book it’s different, but with emails it’s as simple as just setting that timer and putting pen to paper, okay? I’m John McIntyre, coming to you from themcmethod.com, as the Autoresponder Guy. I’ll see you next time. The post An Easy Hack to Destroy Writer’s Block appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

Zach Grove is a FAST-rising email copywriter. He writes SIZZLING hot autoresponders. His emails impress clients. …how do I know? ‘Cause he learned from the best ; ) Zach applied to write copy for me in late 2013. Back then, I thought I needed a few emails… …Turns out, the McMethod is growing faster than ever. And there’s a LOT to get done. Since December, Zach has become my right-hand man and go-to executioner. He’s worked behind the scenes with me on: building my Email for Ecommerce sales funnel launch of the McMasters paid community leading 30+ McMasters as the community manager writing launch autoresponders for clients …and in this episode, Zach pulls the curtain on 4 tricks learned on the journey. Here’s your VIP Insider’s Pass to The Autoresponder Guy HQ. Grab a coffee. Take out a sheet of paper and a pen. And get ready to convert more prospects in your funnel. In this episode, you’ll discover: the DAP formula to make your squeeze and sales pages flow – every time the discovery author Kurt Vonnegut called his life’s greatest work (add this to your swipe file) how simple “Story Shapes” can help you craft GRABBING parables in email how to write an FAQ email that DESTROYS objections and gets sales why marketing is NEVER about your product the weird path Zach and John both took to go from ZERO copy chops to writing for 6-figure clients in months what a random email about napkin math and Einstein can teach you about “framing” your emails to CAPTIVATE readers Mentioned: Jay Abraham’s 3 ways to grow a business the Universal Shapes of Stories via Kurt Vonnegut CopyHour (hand-copying sales letters) EmailforEcommerce DAP-format landing page Vishen Lakhiani on the Email Marketing Podcast re. FAQ emails Perry Marshall’s Traffic/Conversions/Economics triangle Intro and outro backing music: Forever More by CREO Raw transcript: Download PDF transcript here. John: It’s John McIntyre here, the Autoresponder Guy.  I’m here with Zach Grove.  You might not have heard of Zach Grove before.  Zach Grove is an up-and-coming copywriter.  He’s actually is one of the copywriters who applied to write copy for me, write emails, way back in December.  That was two months ago.  In December I put out a blog post and said I was looking for someone to come and write some emails for me.  That’s all I thought it would be.  Zach was one of the people who applied.  I was really impressed. Now what’s happened…He started just by writing a few emails for me.  Now, I guess I would say he is pretty much growing into that role of right-hand man.  He’s writing emails.  He helps me with a sales funnel for an ecommerce product – a product-as-a-service that we’ve got.  We’ve done product launch autoresponders.  We’ve just launched McMasters.  He’s helping the members in there, replying to questions, helping them all out with advice, all that sort of stuff.  Now he’s also doing the videos and podcasts. I guess he came in as an email copywriter, and now he’s a get-things-done, get-shit-done, kind of guy, which is really cool.  I’ve been really impressed so far.  What I wanted to do was get him on the podcast, so that I could introduce him to you, the listener, because maybe you’re in McMasters, maybe you’re on the daily email list.  If you’re in the Autoresponder Guy scene, if you’re in this group, you’re going to run into Zach sooner or later, either on a video or in a podcast or in an email.  You’re going to see he has worked around somewhere, even if you don’t know it’s his just by looking at it.  That’s what this podcast is about. Zach’s got some cool stuff to share.  He put together a, basically a podcast.  I asked him to bring together a few tricks, so we’ve got that and we’ll get into that in just a minute.  First I thought I would ask Zach how he’s doing, and then find out … get him to introduce himself.  Zach, how are you doing today? Zach: I’m doing well, John.  How are you doing? John: I’m doing really good, man, really good.  Before we get into the content that you’ve prepared today, tell the listener a bit about who are you and what do you do? Zach: Sure.  I’m Zach Grove.  I am an up-and-coming email copywriter.  I hit up John a couple of months ago, as I was copying out sales letters and things that I had heard … other copywriters that I look up to like Derek Johanson and Andre Chaperon.  I really wanted to work with John.  I just tried to add value as much as I could.  For about six months now I’ve had my own clients as a freelancer.  I write for a lot of Kickstarter-funded startups doing email crash courses and things like that.  I really just wanted to get in the room with John and mastermind and write some autoresponders. John: Cool.  Cool.  You’re crushing it.  Absolutely crushing it.  Let’s start …  Tell us, what have you prepared for us today? Zach: Today, I just wanted to tell the listener about four sales funnel tricks that I learned writing for the autoresponder guy.  I obviously learned a lot of tricks of the trade from you, John.  I got four that stuck out, so shall we dive in? John: Let’s dive in.  Let’s do it. Zach: All right.  Number One is tell-to-sell.  Anyone on John’s list has heard of the power of stories and telling via parables and metaphors.  One thing you may not have heard is something from the author, Kurt Vonnegut. Really interesting thing that popped up in the McMasters community via Rob Hanly who posted an infographic from the work of Kurt Vonnegut.  Vonnegut outlines various story arcs that come up in different cultures.  It doesn’t matter if it’s the east or the west or what language they speak, there are these same story arcs.  It’s also called the monomyth, the hero’s journey, that pop up everywhere.  I thought this was really interesting.  Looking at especially how John applies these story arcs. Let me throw out a couple here.  One of them is the man in the hole.  In this story arc, you can apply this in your email copy and you’ll find that it resonates with people.  It’s just a universal human story where the main character gets into trouble, and then gets out of it again, and ends up better off for the experience.  One example, if you’re on John’s list, is you may have seen the Rocky, the guy with the email marketing, about the movie where Rocky Balboa fights against all odds and then achieves his goal. This can be quite helpful when you’re writing emails because you can position your product as the solution that will help your prospect end up better. John: Okay.  Cool.  What I really love about this is it just reminds me of …  I think it’s just evidence that we, as people, we communicate through stories.  A lot of people are getting into content marketing and email marketing, just copywriters, just marketing in general, thinking that they’re going to go around.  They’re not going to tell stories.  They’re not even thinking about that.  They’re just going to give that how-to tips and that’s going to convince people.  They’re going to give away all this how-to information which is always so valuable.  Then that’s going to be how, why people trust them. That works to a point, but I think what this forgets is that people love stories.  We communicate through stories.  If you can communicate with someone with a story, you’re going to be a much better teacher.  Therefore, your how-to information is going to be much more powerful if you can teach it under a guise of a story, which means people are going to get better results from it. They’re going to connect with them more.  They’re going to have more light bulb moments which is going to create more trust.  I just think this is …  To me it’s just incredible what you can do with it.  It’s hardwired into us. Zach: Yeah, and that’s what I thought was interesting is that all cultures resonate with these same story arcs.  The reality is that people buy based on emotion and then justify it with logic.  If you can write a powerful story or a parable that really connects with your prospect emotionally and you empathize with them, the rest will follow. John: Okay.  One thing I’m curious about …  I know how to do it, but I’d like to hear your perspective on it.  Someone’s listening to this …  A listener might be listening going, “That’s great.  I get it.  I want to tell stories, but how do I come up with stuff to talk about?  What do you mean tell stories?  How do I …  Where do I start?”  What helped you when you were writing some of the emails when it came to writing stories? Zach: You know, man, everyone is different.  You might get ideas from reading a lot or from just watching the TV.  The way I look at it, you can really turn anything into a story as long as you slide it into a pitch.  I can throw out an example where I wrote an email yesterday.  It was based on a YouTube video that my girlfriend shared with me.  It’s this cheesy video about a cheetah that was injured in the wild, and then it became friends with a dog at this animal shelter. At first the dog was really friendly, but this new foreign cheetah wasn’t really sure about the dog and didn’t really want to go near it.  Then, as they hung out every day, the cheetah got used to seeing the dog every day.  Now they’re best friends. What does this have to do with my prospect?  The email I was writing the story about was about email marketing and the power of autoresponders.  The morale was, you need to use autoresponders in your business to get in front of your prospects on a daily basis so that they come to know and trust you and want to buy from you. I really think you could throw out any topic, anything that you see on TV or on the Internet or if you’re reading a lot.  Something that your friend mentions to you.  As long as you slide it into a pitch, I really think anything can be a story. John: Okay.  What you meant with that cheetah story was that what made the cheetah become friends with the dog in the end was that the dog just kept persisting.  Over time, by staying in contact, the dog is like…He used the autoresponder strategy.  He just kept going up to the cheetah, you know, “What’s up man?”  He did it everyday, I don’t know, thirty days for example.  Then one day the cheetah goes, “All right.  Screw it.  I’m going to be friends with you. You sound like a nice dog.”  They became friends.  This is that slide that we’ve kind of talked about.  Just like email marketing.  You stay on top of them, you keep emailing them, sooner or later they’re going to come around.  Just like that cheetah who fell in love with the dog, or at least they became friends, you’re prospects are going to become friends with you. Zach: That’s right. John: All right.  That’s that.  Now what’s next? Zach: Number Two.  We have the DAP formula.  This is a great framework that that you taught me, John, for writing any kind of landing page, so that’s an opt-in page, or trying to get somebody’s email address, or a sales page where you’re trying to get the purchase.  Here’s what DAP stands for.  D is describe the problem.  A is agitate the pain.  P is present your solution. So how would you use this?  First you want to describe the problem.  Let’s say as an example that you and I worked on, John, emailforecommerce.  If you guys go to emailforecommerce.com, you’ll see there’s a DAP landing page in action. The problem that we first described is you’re an ecommerce store entrepreneur, and you have this store, but you don’t have your email marketing all set up.  You know that you’re leaving money on the table.  Right?  You’re losing money every month because you’re not collecting email addresses.  That’s a description of the problem. The next part is agitate.  A-agitate the pain.  You really want to kind of pour salt on the wound.  In this page we say, let’s do some math.  Suppose you have a hundred thousand dollar store.  If you’re losing 15% because you don’t have email marketing setup, you could potentially be losing fifteen thousand dollars.  That really sucks.  You need to get that figured out.  You want to agitate it so that ethically you can provide your solution to their problem. That’s the final step in DAP.  P-present the solution.  That’s where you say, that’s where my product comes in, emailforecommerce.  We’ll take care of everything for you. John: Okay. Okay.  I love that.  I love that.  I love how simple it is.  You just explained it.  To be honest, it’s not actually my formula.  I don’t even know who invented it.  Perry Marshall talks about it.  Dan Kennedy talks about it.  It’s just this idea that marketing is just about solving problems.  If you can convince someone that you can solve his problem, it’s a natural sell.  You’re not convincing them to do anything. I guess that’s one thing that’s worth mentioning.  Selling something to someone is not about convincing him to do something.  You want to solve his problem.  What you have to do is tap into what his problem is, and I guess make that slippery slope for him to take action and solve that.  It’s really …  Everyone has limiting beliefs, right?  Let’s say I want to go and get ripped.  There’s a product out there that’s going to help me get ripped, but I’m like, “Well, I could never do it.  I don’t have enough motivation.”  Right?  “I don’t have enough money.”  “I don’t have enough willpower.”  “I don’t have enough time.” These are all objections, or maybe this guy, “This product probably won’t work.”  All these things …  If someone could come along with a sales letter and remove each of those objections, then I’m going to buy that product, because I have a problems and the product solves my problem.  If you can just remove those barriers, I will slide down that slippery slope and buy that product.  It’s the most natural thing in the world. Zach: Yes.  Exactly. John: So that’s DAP.  What’s …  We’ve got Number Three. Zach: Yeah, so speaking of objections.  Point Number Three is address objections in an FAQ email.  I first got this idea from a previous episode, John, that you gave with Vishen Lakhiani of Mindvalley.  I really just want to emphasize for the listener.  If you have an autoresponder sequence and you haven’t gotten around to putting an FAQ email in the sequence, go do that today.  It really works.  Just like you were talking about, John, where people have objections.  They have limiting beliefs.  They think, “I want to get ripped, but genetically I can’t do that. I don’t have the money to buy the food that I need to be eating.” Make a list of your prospect’s objections.  Just get out a piece of paper, and then write your response to each of the objections.  Then you can arrange an autoresponder using all the principles that you and I talked about, John, and just systematically go through and get rid of those barriers. John: Absolutely.  I’ve seen the instinct, and worth pointing out here is that some people think about FAQ, they think about all the boring stuff.  Just stuff like how is it delivered?  Does it come in a box?  Is it labeled?  What’s the shipping times?  What’s your refund policy?  That’s important, but it’s not that important.  What the FAQ is for, especially a FAQ email like this … There’s is a place for all that, fine print details, all that boring stuff.  That’s just the boring details.  What this FAQ email is for is not that stuff.  It’s for like these objections, all the reasons why someone wouldn’t buy.  You explain why that objection isn’t really an objection. You can explain this here.  We did this with Jamie’s emails.  Tell me about some of the objections that we overcame in that email. Zach: You and I collaborated on a sixteen email autoresponder for a product launch with the client, Jamie.  She has a really interesting product where she’s selling Facebook marketing solutions for personal trainers who want to get more clients.  One of the objections that a personal trainer would have to spending money on a Facebook marketing program is, they might say, “I already have a Facebook page set up.  I already have people liking the page.  Why do I need to pay you to teach me how to run my Facebook marketing?”  That’s their objection. The way we got around that is one of the FAQ emails, we said …  You basically put the question, “Do I need this if I already have a Facebook page?”  Then you go through and you show why it solves their problem.  Then we explained the details of how, if you have a lot of likes on Facebook, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re connecting and getting new clients, because of Facebook organic reach, things like that.  Then we used the analogy about … I have the email open right here.  I can read it.  We said something like, ” How to do game the system like Moneyball and end up with way more clients than the other guys?  It all has to do with your organic reach.  Here’s what’s great.  When you sign up for the Fitness Facebook Blueprint, you’ll learn all about getting clients for free.”  Just like you said, John, it’s all about positioning your product as the solution to their problem. John: Absolutely.  I think a lot of this stuff is common sense.  I remember thinking about why someone wouldn’t buy that product.  Another objection is that, “I don’t have enough money to spend on ads.”  If you’re selling, especially like a how to use Facebook for marketing program, one of the objections is going to be from people who don’t have any money to spend on ads.  A lot of people just don’t like spending money.  Right?  They did advertising is an expense.  That’s a whole other issue.  In a FAQ email, one of the questions is just, and we did this as well, was, “I don’t have enough money to spend on ads,” or “I don’t want to spend any money on ads.” Then, it’s like, “Well, that’s fine.  What’s great is that module one, two, and three you don’t need any money.  This is all free stuff.  This is all strategies and tactics that you can use without spending a cent on Facebook ads.  It’s going to get you fans.  It’s going to get you referrals, and blah, blah, blah, blah.”  We’re just trying to emphasize that the idea that they don’t have …  Even if they don’t have enough money to spend on ads, it’s absolutely fine. Zach: So, what’s an objection, John, I’m curious, that people have when you use the McIntyre method of launch? John: I would say that one of the most common ones I get is what’s the difference between the McIntyre method and any other product out there.  It could be Autoresponder Madness.  There’s a lot of other products that teach people how to do email marketing out there.  There are couple of the main ones that I run into a lot.  That’s a common question.  The classic one was with autoresponder Madness.  That was kind of where the McIntyre method came from actually. I wanted a product, and I thought a great way to kick it off and get things started would be to go into a JB with someone like Andre, which is exacting what happened.  That might seem crazy because essentially I have a product that’s competing with Andre in a sense.  The way I framed it up was that Andre’s program is great.  It’s really in-depth.  This is Autoresponder Madness by the way.  You get a ton of information.  He sends you so much interesting- Zach: Yeah.  It’s a great program. John: Yeah.  It’s incredible.  I spoke to a number of people …  I had people come to me saying they had bought the product and they had been through it, but they still had no idea how to get started.  They couldn’t take action.  It’s kind of like he gives you so much information, and it’s great stuff, but you don’t really have a road map for creating that autoresponder in the typical business.  It doesn’t want some crazy advanced thing with product launches and segmenting and all that.  They just want a simple opt-in form on their website with some sort of autoresponder that might be ten emails, and that’s that.  They don’t want to mess around with all the advanced stuff.  They just want that. What I did, was I was like, “I’m going to keep things simple.”  Instead of trying to do what Andre’s doing and try to compete with him on that, which isn’t really my style …  He already owns that angle of the market.  I’m going to go after this idea of creating a step-by-step blueprint.  Instead of giving someone a whole bunch of stuff, I’m going to give them the minimum amount necessary to get them to take action.  Someone can sign up, follow the steps, do the homework assignments, and spend a couple of hours a week.  At the end of four weeks, they’ll have an autoresponder. It’s not the most advanced thing in the world.  This isn’t for pros or anything.  It’s for people who have bought other products like Autoresponder Madness.  This is how it’s overcoming that objection, “Why should I buy this?  I already have this other product?”  It’s like, “Well, have you actually done anything about it?  If not, the McIntyre method, which is now bundled into McMasters, will help you because it gives you a step-by-step plan.” Zach: Very interesting.  Basically, the way that you answered this objection of how is this program different?  There are already other email marketing programs?  You said, “Well.  This is the first one that gives you a step-by-step system.  Once you are done with the four modules, you will have your ten email autoresponder written.” John: Yeah.  The idea is I want to give people a result.  I’m not selling a product.  This is why a lot of people don’t understand it.  They think they’re selling a book or a video or something like that.  You’re selling results.  If you can convince someone that you can get them the results, they will buy the product.  It’s simple. Zach: Well said, man. John: All right. What’s this last one?  You’ve got one more point. Zach: Yeah, this is the last point.  By the way, guys, if you have not written a FAQ email, go put an FAQ in your autoresponder.  Sell some products. Number Four is keep it vivid.  This is huge.  I’ve got a quick example here.  I know we’re running out of time, John.  You and I had this situation where we were writing an autoresponder for ecommerce entrepreneurs.  We wanted to put an email where we would walk them through doing a little bit of napkin math  We basically said, “Get out a piece of paper and a calculator.  We’re going to run some numbers on your business, basically to demonstrate the LCV, the Lifetime Client Value, and why our product is in fact a good investment.  Each client is worth a lot to an ecommerce store. Rather than framing it up like, “Okay.  We’re going to do a bunch of math.”  That’s boring.  Nobody wants to read a textbook.  They want to be entertained.  The way we wrote this email is made it sort of like an adventure.  We said, “Okay, so …”  The subject line is “Einstein called this the most powerful force in the universe.”  The copy starts out, “Can you solve this riddle?  What is the most powerful force in the universe?  According to Albert Einstein, the greatest physicist who ever lived, it’s compound interest.  Huh?  Albert Einstein was impressed by the big results you can earn by making tiny improvements over time, so what can Einstein teach you about compounding your ecommerce revenue?” Then we go on to have them do this exercise with the math.  It’s fun.  It’s vivid.  It’s like the readers are going on a journey to discover the most powerful force in the universe and have the same epiphany that Einstein had using the actual numbers from their business revenue. I would encourage anybody listening to …  The next time you’re writing an email, think about how can you make it vivid.  How can you make your prospects reading this email not bored by a textbook?  How can you take them on an adventure, on a journey, and make them feel like they’re part of it? John: I love this one.  I think it’s …  I mentioned this on a podcast today.  I was doing a podcast this morning.  It’s an Oscar Wilde quote.  I mentioned it a few times on this podcast.  It’s that “Most people live lives of quiet desperation.”  Most people are bored out of their brains.  They do the same thing every week.  Maybe they’ve got a job. Entrepreneurs are a bit different, but the average person, they do the same thing every day, five days a week, they have a family.  Life is boring.  There is no excitement to it.  It’s pretty drab.  That’s how most people live.  It’s easy to forget that. This is just a classic example of it.  You can never get in there with, “Hell, let’s just run some numbers.”  You’ve got to go in there … It’s kind of like you’ve got to have a bit of theatrics to it.  You’ve got to go in there like you’re an actor, or like you’re a magician, or one of these kind of people.  You might have a trick that’s not really that interesting if you didn’t have any enthusiasm.  When you add all the theater, the slight of hands, and the stories, and all this other stuff, it just adds so much magic to it. Zach: Absolutely, man.  I think acting is a good metaphor.  Another one I was thinking about calling it is Cartoon Copy, but I ended up going with Keep It Vivid.  I think of it as like …  It’s got to be colorful.  You know what I mean?  You want to paint them a picture.  If you’re just giving them how-to information and facts about your product, you’re going to lose people and your sales funnel is not going to convert at the end of the day. John: It’s kind of like …  You mentioned Kurt Vonnegut’s stories frameworks that’s got all the different types of stories.  One way to pass that on to someone is to just go and get one of those stories and say something like …  I’ll bring it up right now.  We’ve got Manny Hall.  This is the idea, the main character gets into trouble, then gets out of it again, and ends up better off for the experience.  We could have an email that says that.  It could be like, “Hey.  I know a guy called Dave.  Dave got into trouble one day.  It was really bad, but one day he got out of it again, and he learned something.  He learned this.”  That’s a story with no theater.  It’s still a story.  It still follows that classic format, but there’s no theater to it.  There’s no magic to it.  You have to have that magic for it to be interesting. Zach: Yeah. John: Instead of saying that, you might say, “It was a quiet misty night.  It was midnight.  The rain was pouring down.  Dave sat down at his teakwood desk in his bedroom staring out the window into the rain.”  You’re creating this image in someone’s head, and they start imaging it.  They start getting involved in that story.  That’s really what creates those light bulb moments.  They go along on a journey.  I guess that’s another way of looking at it.  Your emails need to take people on a journey. Zach: Absolutely.  If you guys are not really sure how to go about that, you’re not a novelist, go read some fiction.  All of your copy inspiration should not just come from marketing materials and the Internet even.  Go pick up a paper book and see how good authors like Kurt Vonnegut build imagery into their stories.  I think it will make your copy a lot better. John: Absolutely.  Absolutely true, man.  It’s been great having you on the show for the first time.  I’m sure you’ll be back.  We’ll do this again.  We talked about doing this in a few weeks time after we’ve got some cool results from the people in McMasters. Zach: Sounds good, man.  Thanks for having me. John: Before we go, are there any final words of wisdom?  What’s one final thing you would like to tell people to do before we sign off for the night? Zach: If you’re running your business, I would say just go check out the show notes of this episode.  We’ll have everything up there.  Try and implement some of this stuff.  Go write your FAQ email.  Just keep doing it.  If you’re a beginner, go hand copy some sales letter, because I swear to god, it works. John: Hell yeah.  Hell yeah.  All right.  Cool, man.  You’re doing most of the writing of the emails right now, so if the listener wants an autoresponder sequence, they can contact me, John@themcmethod.com, and Zach can use some of what he shared right here to write an autoresponder sequence for you.  We’ll rock it. Zach: We’ll make it happen. John: Alright, man, let’s wrap it up.  Thanks for coming on the show. Zach: Thanks, John. The post Episode #45 – Zach Grove On 4 Sales Funnel Tricks Learned Writing for the Autoresponder Guy appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.

  In this episode, you’ll discover: 00:23 – the K.I.S.S. approach to writing email copy 00:50 – what my typical autoresponder looks like (and when it’s OK to break the rules) 00:58 – how to use SPEED as a weapon in your copy 01:07 – one factor that nearly FORCES prospects to click your sales links 01:15 – what “punch-y” copy can teach you about writing better blog posts 01:33 – how to delight readers with this simple change in your emails Tweetables: Make your copy conversational – it’ll make people enjoy your emails a LOT more. Sometimes my paragraphs are as short as 1 word. Transcript: Download PDF transcript here. It’s John McIntyre here again. The Autoresponder Guy, coming to you from themcmethod.com with another email marketing update. Today I want to talk about how to format your emails. Specifically what I want to talk about is, when you write your emails, some people have these huge, big, scary paragraphs. Paragraphs that no one wants to read because, let’s face it, reading a big, scary paragraph that’s 5 or 10 lines long is just a pain in the arse. It’s really hard. It’s intimidating, especially when it’s in email. Here’s what I do. I do really short paragraphs. When I say “short,” I mean sometimes my paragraphs are as short as 1 word. Okay? Sometimes 2 words. Sometimes 3. Of course I do have the occasional 2 line or 3 or 4 line paragraph, but the typical email here is just 1 really, really short paragraphs. All right? It’s really that simple. What this does is it makes your email easier to read. It makes it less intimidating and it means people scroll down the page faster, so it builds that momentum in terms of, they open that email and they have to keep scrolling down. This is good because it forces them to scroll down, and then they’re more likely to click on the link as well. Okay? When you’re writing your emails you want to format them like this. Don’t have one big paragraph. Don’t have 3 big, scary paragraphs. This is important for blog posts as well. You want to do these short paragraphs. Really, really short paragraphs. Short, punchy, to the point. In some of the other videos I’m going to talk about some of the other stuff you’re going to need to do with formatting your emails, but this is just a start. Try and do short paragraphs; make it really conversational, and it’s going to make people enjoy your emails a lot more. I’m John McIntyre, the Autoresponder Guy, coming to you from themcmethod.com with another email marketing update. The post How to Build Momentum Into Your Emails appeared first on Drop Dead Copy.