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The Email Marketing Show

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Sep 15, 2021 • 25min

Is Email Marketing Dead?

Is email marketing dead? We hear this quite a bit. And it's understandable. People might be thinking email marketing dead, dying, or at least limping. We've got all these social media platforms, Messenger marketing, SMS, push notifications in apps all fighting for attention. So where does email fit it? Well, let's find out - shall we?SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (2:55) People don't open emails because most emails are shit. (4:26) It's not about the words you use in your emails - it's about the intention behind them.(6:02) Why you should switch the focus of your emails. (11:15) Email marketing and algorithms.(13:13) Social media cannot replace email! (16:53) Value-led email marketing isn't dead! (17:43) Email is just another content channel. (20:04) Nothing can replace the emotional impact and relationship building you can achieve via email. (21:42) The faster you can master email marketing, the faster you can supercharge your business. (23:10) Subject line of the week. People don't open emails because most emails are shitThat's right. Let's not beat around the bush. It's the truth, and you know it. Most emails are shit.As a consumer, you may have signed up to someone's list only to receive their emails once in a while. And then when you do get them, they're all about selling you something. So there's no reason for you to actually open those emails - not if you're not interested in buying that product or service anyway. And not if you're not interested right now. And while we're on the topic, let's be clear about something. You don't have to be an amazing writer to be able to create emails that aren't shit. It's not about how your emails are written. It's about the purpose, the use, and the intent behind the emails you send. If you send an email every day that is a variation of, "Here's why you should buy this thing," you can't expect great results. Because there's no intent behind your emails other than asking people to buy from you. It's not about the words - it's about the intention behind themYou see, we strongly believe that your emails should never be transactional - not even your transaction emails! But the words don't matter - it's the intention behind your emails that matters. Let's bring this to life with an example from a brick-and-mortar shop. You know when you walk into a shop and find yourself looking around, browsing the shelves, and someone comes up to you and asks, "Can I help you?" They're not using the actual words, but they're trying to sell you something. More often than not, you'll say, "No, thanks" just for someone else in a different part of the store to approach you again! Now, let's look at someone who doesn't do that. Apple. Whether you're an Apple fan or not, you can't deny that the shopping experience is different there. What Apple figured out (and that's something most brands haven't!) is that creating an enjoyable environment where customers can spend some time engaging with their gadgets without anyone bothering them makes people want to do just that - go in, check out their cool stuff, and buy it! And that happens without anyone hovering by your side asking if they can help! This is a great way to think about your email marketing too. People don't open your emails to read a variation of, "Hey, can I sell you something?" They open your emails to check out the cool stuff that's inside. And that's the value that's packed in your emails. If there's no value in your emails, there's no reason for your subscribers to open them! The old way of doing email marketing has been dead for years. But value-led email marketing is your biggest opportunity to stand out in people's inboxes. Switch the focus of your emailsWait. Does this mean you can't sell stuff in your emails?Of course not!You can sell stuff in 100% of your emails! But that can't be the only purpose of them. There has to be an offer in there for people who want to take what you said and do something more with it. Your email has to have value.And we're lucky that our customers and subscribers tell us this all the time! We have people who take the time out of their day to tell us how happy they are that our emails land in their (and we quote) 'crowded inbox'!How cool would that be for your business if you were to send out emails that your customers and subscribers want to talk about publicly? Compliment on social media?Awesome, right? Well, it happens to us. And not because we're not selling in our emails. But simply because we switched the focus and the highlight of our content. Let's talk about email marketing and algorithmsWe all know that social media platforms use algorithms. We don't need to understand how they work, technically. But in a nutshell, all social media platforms use algorithms to decide what content and features they want to promote and prioritise. So when Facebook wanted to promote Facebook lives, we'd all get notifications as soon as someone we vaguely followed started a Facebook live. And that means that if you're not out there on social media producing the type of content their algorithms like, you're potentially not going to reach a lot of people. But email marketing is different. And what you really need to focus on is to make sure you have a clean list and aren't doing things that are considered spam. Sure, algorithms play a part in email marketing too, but as long as you're not doing crappy emails, then you are going to land under people's noses! Social media cannot replace email!If email marketing is dead, are we all going to forget about emails and only use social media then? Well, hang on. Let's not forget that social media rely on you having an email address. Because in order for you to create an account on any social media platform, you need an email address. And that social media platform is going to use that email address to keep in touch with you and invite you to check out more of their content. Because that's exactly what happens when a friend tags you in a photo on Facebook, and you get an email to say exactly that! So actually, even the big players - the huge social media platforms - rely on email. And you should do the same - be everywhere you're going to be online but use every opportunity you get to grow your email list.Do you speak on stage? Great. Invite people to join your email list.Do you do the most awesome Facebook lives? Fantastic. Invite people to join your email list.Do you host the best podcast show? Brilliant. Invite people to join your email list.Take your audience - your followers, your customers, your listeners, your subscribers - and move them around your infrastructure. Move your people from social media to email and vice versa. Become 3D - surround your audience in the marketplace by being everywhere. Value-lead email marketing isn't deadIf you're taking one thing away from this episode let it be this - value-led email marketing isn't dead. If you do email marketing in the content-driven way we teach, you'll stand out from everyone else. So many more people are going to love your emails that you will make more sales! The key thing is to move away from emailing when you want to sell to emailing so that when your subscribers are ready to buy, you're right there in front of them. Email is just another content channelWe've said this before, but you've got to think about things from your customers' perspectives. Most people check their emails on their phones. The mobile usage of email is increasing, so just see this as another channel of content, snuggled in there between TikTok and Instagram. Think about it. If you can share some words on Facebook, why can't you share them in an email? It's just content on the internet. Whether it pops up in an email or a tweet, what's the difference? If anything, you've got so much more space and freedom to articulate your thoughts in an email because you don't have that annoying character limitation. Email isn't inherently annoying - it can be incredibly useful sometimes. So focus on making your emails good - so good that people want to get them in their inbox. Nothing can replace the emotional impact and relationship building you can achieve via emailYou know, the truth is, there are so many other content channels you can use. Just listen to any of the marketing experts out there - they'll have a method to teach you to help you become great at Facebook lives, Facebook groups, TikTok, Pinterest - you name it! You can build your audience and your business on any of those platforms and in any of those ways.But email is unique. There's nothing like it. Because SMS is irritating if you receive too many of them. Plus they have a character limit too, and it's not practical or easy to read and digest stuff on an SMS - you just can't build much of a relationship with an SMS. Then there's Messenger, but with people trying to spend less and less time on social media, that's also not a good place to be. The truth is that there's nothing that replaces the emotional impact and relationship building you can achieve by delivering content through email. If you want to make sales, it's still an essential bit for your business.So the faster you start mastering and enjoying email marketing, the faster you're going to be able to supercharge the other elements of your business. Subject line of the week This week's subject line of the week is "Why we stopped being sexy". First of all, it's a lie, isn't it? We were never sexy to start with! Haha. (Feel free to contradict us, here, by the way).But it worked because it has a bit of a provocative word in it. You're not going to get anything from your bank that has the word 'sexy' in it, are you? That gets your attention. And if you follow our work at all, you know we don't take ourselves too seriously - we like to mess about and have self-deprecating humour. But the interesting thing about this email is that we split tested two different email opt-ins - one was about receiving a shiny lead magnet, and the other one was about receiving our emails daily. And guess what? The one that was just about getting our emails every day got us a 59% increase in subscribers! How cool is that? If anything, that just proves (once again) that email marketing isn't dead! Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodes7 Ways To Give Subscriber Value In Your Marketing Emails (So People Love Receiving Them).How To Grow Your Email List Using Facebook Pages (Without Ads) – Rachel Miller Moolah Style!What should I talk about in my emails? Email marketing content ideas you’ll use.FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketingIf you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. Join our FREE Facebook groupIf you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes, where we get to share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing by applying everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (and finally have the answer to the question, "Is email marketing dead?") and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review of the show on your favourite podcast player.Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes and get discovered by more awesome people like you.
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Sep 8, 2021 • 29min

How to turn data into amazing outcomes - learn about Measuring Marketing with Chris Mercer

Do you want to learn how to turn some super simple data into amazing insights and even better outcomes? Today's episode teaches you everything you need to know about measuring marketing with Chris Mercer. If just hearing the mention of Google Analytics makes you break up in hives, this episode is for you. Because you might not see yourself as a number person, but you can still absolutely gather data that will help you make better decisions in your business.Ready for all the juicy stuff?SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (2:44) Does Chris Mercer really want to open a guitar shop when he retires?(4:51) Measuring marketing - why every business should start doing it.(5:50) What you should be tracking when it comes to email marketing.(6:41) Why digital marketers should start using Google Analytics.(7:21) How you can start using Google Analytics (even if you're not a number person!)(13:00) Why you should start using UTM parameters right now.(16:29) Recommended tools to build UTMs. (18:10) How time-consuming is measuring marketing?(22:21) How big does your email list need to be for you to start measuring marketing? (25:53) Subject line of the week with Chris Mercer.Measuring marketing - why every business should start doing itAre you one of those people who run their business on a wing and a prayer, hoping it will all work out? Are you trying (and struggling) to figure it all out as you go?We know that a lot of people use email marketing because it's a fantastic channel. But do you tap into the functionality offered by your email provider and measure the results of your email marketing campaigns? A lot of people don't.And that's not just in terms of sales but also in terms of the customer journey and how you're moving people through a conversation that eventually leads your subscribers to buy your products. If you don't do this - like many others - it's probably because you don't know you should and you don't know you can.And that's about to change. Because if you're a business owner, you absolutely can and should measure your customer journey.What should you be tracking when it comes to email marketing?The top two pieces of information every business should be measuring, Mercer says, are open rates and click-through rates. Open rates matter because they tell you how interesting your email might be for your marketplace. While click-through rates tell you how efficient your emails are at getting people to take the next step you want them to take.But once you've got your subscribers off their email app and onto your web page, the data from your email provider isn't enough anymore. You need tools like Google Analytics to help you tell another part of the story. What happens now that your subscriber is on your website?So let's say you had 100 people who opened your email. Ten of them clicked through the link, but only one bought from you. What happened to the other nine? Google Analytics can provide the information you need to close that gap.Should digital marketers start using Google Analytics? A lot of people think of Google Analytics as something confusing and overwhelming they can't make any sense of. So the first thing that needs to happen is a mindset change - you need to shift the way you look at it.Mercer explained this with an easy example. Let's imagine you've walked into a shoe shop. The sales assistant will walk up to you, ask you questions, direct you to the right product for your needs, and possibly even try and upsell you. That's a completely natural conversation that would be happening in this scenario and interaction.Let's now move back to the online world. The way that your customers interact with your web pages is the equivalent of the conversation that would take place in a physical store with an actual person. But unless you intentionally try and check what happens in that interaction (with a tool like Google Analytics) you have no idea of what would take place in that conversation.The greatest mindset shift is to realise that that you may be selling online, but that conversation is still there. Measuring marketing is how digital marketers listen to the interaction between their customers and their website. And you should absolutely do this because you'd never ignore a customer in the brick-and-mortar world, would you?How to make sense of Google AnalyticsOnce you set up Google Analytics, you get access to a lot of data. But this information is not stitched together - it's not in any organised shape or form. It's the equivalent of you picking up a storybook where a bunch of pages has been ripped up. You can totally still read the book because the fact it's missing pages doesn't mean you've suddenly lost the ability to read! But it won't make much sense as a story.The same happens with Google Analytics. Setting it up gives you access to lots of data, but that information isn't joined together and utilised properly. Investing the time to do it (i.e. embracing measuring marketing) allows you to respond to that information. So you can, for example, adjust email subject lines or change body copy to try and move the conversation the way we want it to go. And once you decide to start working with Google Analytics, you will see impressive results quite quickly.Why you should start using UTMsA tactic Mercer recommends you use is UTM parameters. So when you have UTM parameters set up and someone clicks on one of your emails, you can identify where that traffic came from, what type of traffic it was, and what the purpose of it was. So, as an example, you can use UTM code through your email provider and start looking at your customer journey. Because UTMs help you understand which path the person who clicked on a particular link came from and the route they took.You can look at information such as what the purpose of the email was. Was it to make someone aware of the product? Was it to engage them? Or to help them close and buy? Once you can pinpoint what emails are generating the type of actions you're interested in, you'll also know what works and what doesn't and be able to change things as a result. Recommended tools to build UTMsGoogle has its own UTM builder, which is a nice and neat browser extension. But Mercer also recommended two different tools to build UTMs. One is utm.io. The other one is the free UTM Builder that Mercer offers as part of his Traffic Tracking Toolkit on his website measuringmarketing.io, together with an eBook and a video to help you set it all up.How time-consuming is it to set your business up for measuring marketing?Setting Google Analytics up and getting started with UTMs and measuring marketing doesn't need to take long. Sure, Google Analytics can be complicated in terms of the data you can access through the tool. But, Mercer says, you can start things up and always improve at a later date.Setting up UTMs with your email provider will take minutes, and the payoff in terms of visibility into your customer journey is incredible, so there's no real excuse not to do it!After all, you can only read data at a later date if you've been collecting it in the first place. And once you get started and have measuring marketing set up, you can then focus on doing more of what works. In other words, stop trying to pull up the troughs and focus on the peaks instead!How big does your list need to be for you to be able to start with measuring marketing?Mercer says that the truth is in the trend and the power is in the pattern. If you're looking for a pattern or a trend, then 100 people on your list is a good number to get started because you can judge pretty quickly if an email is working or not.Of course, the more that number grows, the more you can rely on trends becoming more stable - the bigger the sample, the better. But that doesn't mean you can't embrace measuring marketing when your list is still on the small side. As long as you can see a consistent pattern over time, you're doing measuring marketing. Subject line of the week with Chris Mercer Mercer recently changed a measurement marketing certification they were offering to partners. So he sent out an email with the subject line: "Your certification..."This worked well for Mercer's business for a particular campaign in the context of changing the messaging around the certification. The subject line was successful because it made the recipients wonder what the content was all about - it used curiosity as a hook. It got a huge open rate and the format worked really well. Pretty cool stuff!Useful Episode ResourcesAbout MercerDid you enjoy this episode about measuring markeing with Chris Mercer? If you want to connect with the amazing Mercer, head over to his website measuringmarketing.io. Chris has a free membership called Toolbox membership that offers a lot of free tools to help you improve your marketing. Head over to measuringmarketing.io/emailmarketingshow/ to gain access to a range of tools to measure your traffic throughout the customer journey, guides and frameworks to improve your measurement system, and a free library of templates, scripts, resources, and awesome toolkits.And if you're a member of The League don't forget to go and check out the battle plan that Mercer did for us called Using Google Analytics to Measure your Email Tracking.Related episodesHow To Track Your Email Sales – UTM Tracking With Tatiana Belim.Increase Your Email Open-Rates: 13 Email Subject Line Tips to Stand Out in An Overcrowded Inbox #2018.Email AMP and the future of email marketing with Aweber CEO Tom Kulzer.FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketingWant to write better emails? Come up with better content? Influence and move your readers to click and buy? Well, you can do that with this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here.Join our FREE Facebook groupWe know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes, where we get to share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing by applying everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about measuring marketing with Chris Mercer) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review on your favourite podcast player.Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes and get discovered by more awesome people like you.
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Sep 1, 2021 • 32min

How to create and sell courses online that people actually want

There's nothing worse than spending time and energy into creating an online course and then finding out that nobody actually wants to buy it, right? We've been there and done that. So here are our best tips to help you create and sell courses online. The trick? You want to be sure that people in your audience will actually go out of their way to pay you money for the course you put together. Ready to find out how to do this thing? SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (5:06) Why you need to create a course about something you're passionate about. (7:44) Why you need to have an audience before you start selling a course. (9:55) Why you need to pay attention to the questions your audience asks you.(11:48) The difference between "problem aware" courses and "solution aware" courses. (15:15) Why you should always tell your audience about the price of your online course.(18:02) Why you need to get people involved into the creation of your course. (19:48) Why you need to ask questions and run surveys.(23:57) Why you're NOT your target market. (26:12) Why the value isn't in the quantity. (28:36) Subject line of the week. Why you need to create a course about something you're passionate about (but also think about profitability!)So you've created this online course and put it on the internet. You think everyone in your audience has seen it because of course people see 100% of our content online, don't they? (Or do they?!)But no one bought it. Why? Well, maybe you've created a course that nobody wants. Or maybe you just don't know how to get people interested in buying it. And you know what? We don't want this for you. We want you to be able to create and sell courses online like a pro. So how exactly are you going to do that? We all love sharing stuff we're passionate about, don't we? That's why we get excited about the stuff we teach. But just because we're passionate about the topic of a course we created, it doesn't mean we're going to easily sell that thing. The process of creating the course takes a lot of time and effort. But the key is to construct an offer and a sales process that will make people buy your course.Your passion will help you through all the hard work you need to do to bring your course into the world. But make sure you also strike the right balance between what you're passionate about and what's profitable. Why you need to have an audience before you create and sell courses onlineIt's really hard to create a course and sell it at scale if you don't already have some people who might be interested in buying it. Ideally, you want some kind of audience already in place that will pay attention to what you sell. So build an audience first. You can start on social media, but make sure you then move them onto your email list.And if you're worried about not having a product to sell to your list just yet, you can be an affiliate for someone else. Or you can simply point your subscribers to your flagship content. This could be your podcast, your blog posts, your YouTube channel, or the content in your Facebook group - whatever it might be. But first things first, build a list of people who are your perfect customers. Why you need to pay attention to the questions your audience asks youOnce you've got an audience, you need to pay attention to the questions they ask you. Because those will give you insight into the minds of your customers and fuel the content of your online course. And that's much better (in our opinion) than focusing on customer avatars! Because it's less about the car your people drive, the newspaper they read, or the cereal they eat in the morning, than it is about their mindset. What matters is where your customers are at. Are they ready to buy this thing you're selling?So pay attention to the trends amongst the people who become your best customers. Those are the ones who buy your products and give you the least hassle. Focus on their mindset and the belief they hold. And then start crafting your courses to serve those particular kinds of markets. Create and sell courses online for people who are "problem aware" vs "solution aware" Another decision you need to make when you want to create and sell courses online is whether your course will address the problem that your ideal clients have or the solution that you offer. Some of your customers will be more "problem aware" while others will be "solution aware". Here's the difference with an example. Some of the members in our membership, The League, want to sell more courses online, for example. That's a problem they have - they have a thing they want to sell and want to find a way to sell more of it. These people are "problem aware". But we also help people who have figured out that the best way to sell more of their stuff is through email marketing. These members are "solution aware".In the same way, you'll have people in your audience who are "problem aware" and others who are "solution aware". And you'll want to create different types of courses for them, which you'll also market differently.  This is why we don't believe in customer avatars. Because knowing how to address the people in your audience who are "problem aware" vs the ones who are "solution aware" is much more important than what age bracket or demographic they're in. So instead of focusing on customer avatars, focus on the mindset of your ideal clients. Why you should tell your audience about the price of our courseAnother thing we suggest you do when you start to create and sell courses online is to reach out to your audience - either via social media or email - and tell them you're putting together a course. You also want to tell them the price of the course and ask if they want the link to it. Here's your formula: "I'm putting together a course about this thing. It's going to be this price. Who would like the link?"Telling your audience about the price is important because you want anyone who responds to your post or email to know there's a price for whatever you're offering - it's not free! And you don't want to attract people who are mildly or passively interested in your course. You want to attract people who will go out of their way to pay for the information you're offering.At this point, you haven't created the course yet. And if you don't get any replies (or not enough to make it worth your while), then guess what? You've just discovered there isn't enough interest in that course. But at least you haven't wasted any time, effort, and energy in creating something that wouldn't have sold well for you. Why you need to get people excited about your courseSo you told your audience about your course, you told them how much it's going to be, and you sent out the link to it. Now it's time to create some involvement and excitement by getting people to express their choices and "vote" on things like the name, the cover, the graphic, etc. Why? Because you want to make people emotionally involved in the process. This gives them a buy-in into the creation and the genesis of the whole course, and it's going to work wonders for you. We did the same to come up with a name for our membership, The League. We opened it up to our audience and asked for ideas. And yes, it meant we handed over some creative control, but we also got some fantastic suggestions and made our audience feel involved in the process from the very beginning.Why you need to ask questions and run surveysWe are big believers in running surveys. Because they help you find out what your audience's biggest and most frustrating problems are, what their objections are, and what they're trying to overcome. Asking people about them and their experiences is another thing that makes them emotionally buy into the process of discovery and creation of the course.Plus, when you pay attention to the things your audience says and the language they use, you'll know what content to create for your course. You know when you're walking down the street, and you hear someone shout your name? It might not be you they're after, but you automatically pay attention. This is the same thing. When your ideal clients hear you using the exact words and phrases they use to talk about their problems, their subconscious brain sits up and pays attention. And when you speak your customers' language, you're able to create a course with a name, a hook, and an offer that will make your audience sit up and pay attention. Why you need to check what ads people are runningAnother strategy that might come in handy before you go ahead and create your course is to check what adverts other people are already running on Facebook. You can see the Facebook Ads Library here as part of Facebook's transparency policy.Doing this bit of research gives you an idea of who's running which ads and what kind of things are popular. So think of competitors or someone who's in your space and look at what ads they're running. Pay particular attention to what wording they're using to make sure there's an opportunity and an audience out there for the course you're about to create. Why you're not your target marketOne of the things we've been guilty of in the past is to fall into the trap of thinking that we are our own target market. But we're not. Even if you used to be in the position of the people you're now selling to, you are not anymore. You are not your target market.The minute you become the course creator, you're no longer in the same place you were before. We say this a lot - you are not typical. So when thinking about the topic or content of your course don't pay too much attention to what you want or what you used to want because the world changes fast, and you're just not you're target market  anymore. Why the value isn't in the quantityAnd last but not least, another thing to bear in mind when you create and sell courses online is that the value of your course isn't in the length or quantity of your content. Because people want to get rid of their 'pain' - of their problem - as quickly as possible and with the least amount of effort. And they'll actually pay more for that privilege because we're all busy and happy to pay a premium to solve our problems in less time. Here's something worth remembering - the quantity of something isn't the value. The transformation is the value. Subject line of the week This week's subject line of the week is, "Invite! (Short notice)" and it's something we sent out to tell our subscribers about a last-minute webinar we were running. You see, normally, we'd start promoting a webinar 3 to 5 days in advance. But in this case, it was super short notice. So we wanted to get as many people as possible onto it. So with this subject line, we used the word "invite". We do a variation of this every time we run an event and might use words like "invitation" or "RSVP" in the subject line. But what this subject line also did very well was creating some sort of urgency. A lot of good subject lines are about generating curiosity, but the words "short notice" triggered urgency too. And while the amount of people who signed up for this webinar isn't the most we've ever had, the rate of registrants to attendees was the highest. This means that the majority of people who registered actually attended. And that's great! Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesBottomless Email Content To Promote Your Courses And Programs.How To Sell Without Price Cutting or Pushing with Mike Montague from Sandler Training.Add This Unusual Step to Your Checklist for Product Launch to Make More Sales After The Cart Closes with Marley Jaxx.FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketingIf you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. Join our FREE Facebook groupIf you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about how to create and sell courses online) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review of the show on your favourite podcast player.Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes so more awesome people like you can discover the podcast. 
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Aug 25, 2021 • 25min

How to amplify email campaigns, Clate Mask from Keap spills the beans

We all want to increase the open rates in our email campaigns. But how do we do it? How do you make your subscribers drop what they're doing to go and read your email and yours only? If only, right? Well, it's possible. And today we find out how to amplify email campaigns - Clate Mask style. So, are you ready to have your mind completely blown by what Clate, CEO and co-founder of the amazing software company Keap has to share with us? Then listen on or read on (whatever takes your fancy)!SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (2:45) Is there really another Clate Mask at Keap?(4:57) Why omnichannel marketing works.(7:26) Can solopreneurs embrace omnichannel marketing?(8:50) How to use a specific channel to amplify your email campaigns.(11:19) How a simple text message can prompt your subscribers to check your emails.(12:03) How creating an 'environment of zero competition' increases your open rates.(15:30) The powerful pshychology behind sending a text message to your subscribers. (17:45) How to get your subscribers' mobile number. (20:57) Subject line of the week with Clate Mask. (23:36) Bonus! Why Infusionsoft is now called Keap.Why omnichannel marketing worksIt's been called 'integrated marketing' or 'multi-channel marketing'. Today we're referring to it as 'omnichannel marketing', and it's something that Clate Mask's company Keap has been a pioneer of. But whatever you want to call it, it's this idea of having multiple touchpoints with your audience - to surround people with your messages.Back when Clate Mask started Keap (then called Infusionsoft), the mediums were email, phone call, direct mail, and even fax - would you believe it?! Keap is what enables businesses across the world to communicate with customers in multiple ways.And you know what happens to businesses that choose this omnichannel approach to get in touch with their customers? Their open rates increase. Multi-channel marketing is simply more effective, but as a business owner, you have to be disciplined. In Clate's words, "you can't be lazy". You've got to be serious about it and keen to orchestrate your messages and your campaigns. As we always say, just because someone is on your email list, it doesn't mean they see everything you send out - people are busy, and inboxes are cluttered. But the good news is that (as long as you're active there) they also see your business on social media, they might listen to your podcast if you have one, or interact with you in your Facebook group. If you embrace the approach of surrounding your customers in the market and then apply it to structured email campaigns with specific goals of moving prospects to customers and existing customers to repeat customers, this method becomes really powerful.Does omnichannel marketing work for solopreneurs? The short answer is YES!It's easy to think that if you want to message your customers in many different ways, you need a big machine. And only big businesses have big operations, right? Well, not quite. Because Clate has seen a lot of marketers use omnichannel marketing to their advantage as one-person companies or solopreneurs. So the good news is that you can, too!But what you do need to have, Clate says, is an understanding of how effective this approach can be. Otherwise, you'll fall into the trap of thinking the work is repetitive and just a duplication of what you've already been doing. The most common mistake we make as business owners is to think that we've told our subscribers something once, and everybody got the message. It just doesn't work that way. And savvy marketers know otherwise. Of course, bigger companies have bigger resources and are more likely to adopt a multi-channel approach for their marketing, but nothing stops you from embracing this if you're a solopreneur.How to use a particular channel to amplify email campaigns (Clate Mask style)So let's say you have a new offer. Or you're launching a course or a membership. You've got something to promote, and you've decided to put some real effort behind your next email marketing campaign. How do you go about it?Here's the simple answer. Combine text and emails. Keap has recently introduced text messaging (both in broadcast form or by one-to-one), and they've seen how effective it is to use text messages as a separate step in email marketing campaigns. Know how? By following up one of your emails with a quick text message that says, "Hey, just wanted to let you know that I dropped an email in your inbox with some really important stuff. You want to make sure you get that, so check it out right away." The key is to keep it short and use a personal, conversational tone because that's what people are used to and expect when we receive text messages, right?How a simple text message can prompt your subscribers to check your emailsThe simple step of following your email with a text message amplifies and heightens the importance of the email you just sent. Because, Clate explains, it's not about using the text message as a repetition of the content that's in your email. That's actually a common mistake that marketers make.It's not even about the idea of sending two messages instead of one. When it comes to multi-channel marketing, there's no such thing as one plus one equals two, Clate says. It's one plus one equals three if ever there was that! (Powerful, right??!) Because by adding another medium, you amplify the message of your primary communication.And of course, your subscribers know you didn't personally send the message - they know it's probably part of an automation. But their conditioned response as human beings after receiving your text is to go and check their inbox. And not for any email. They're going to check their inbox and look for your email.How creating an 'environment of zero competition' increases your open ratesAnd as if by magic, you have successfully created what we loviongly call the 'environment of zero competition'. Your email is not competing for attention in someone's inbox anymore. You're asking your subscriber to look for your name in their inbox. And the effect of that is huge! It dramatically increase open rates.Smart communicators and marketers realise that being able to send a text message isn't about repeating the content of the email you just sent. It's about either prompting them to go and open that email. Clever, right? The powerful psychology behind sending a text message to your subscribersIf you've been following us at all, you know we're all about the psychology of email. And getting a text from someone to say, "Hey, check out my email" triggers an unconscious response to go and do just that. But there's also something else at play here. You're asking your subscriber to take action, and you're getting an extra level of commitment when they do.This is clever because you're not bombarding your audience. You're asking your subscribers to do something for you. They're now in what we call 'an active state' - they're no longer just scrolling through emails to decide what to delete. They're looking for one in particular - yours. And that's a really important psychological factor.So the thing to remember here is that text message isn't about selling.  In fact, you shouldn't sell in that text message at all! Because people are used to a very personal, very short piece of content that's asking them to take some sort of action. Most people don't want to receive long text messages. And that's what you should be aiming for too.So you put all your meaty content into your email and make the text message reminder just that - personal, short, and direct. Get out of their lives quickly because that's what they expect from that medium. And it will still beautifully serve the purpose to elevate the importance of your message and amplify email campaigns (Clate Mask promises!)How to get your subscribers' mobile numbers So how do we get our subscribers' mobile numbers? How easy is it to do?Clate's tip is to create a two-step opt-in. Design your email capture forms by asking for the email address on the first screen and then get additional information in the second one, including first name, last name, and their mobile number. The proven psychology behind it is that it's much easier to input the phone number once they've already shared their email address, rather than having to do it all at once. It's a bit like saying, "Ok, we need your email address. But if you want, you can also give us this..."Hope you all wrote that down. We certainly did!Subject line of the week with Clate Mask Clate's subject line is just genius, and it's this: "Help my kids see Shamu".The idea behind this is that Clate's company had big quarterly sales goals they wanted to hit, and Clate had promised his family that if the company hit their goal, he'd take his kids to SeaWorld in San Diego. Of course, the children were rooting and cheering for Dad's company. But with a few days to go, they were still a bit short. So Clate sent this email out. He wrote a very open and transparent email about his kids, their ages, and what he'd hope to accomplish in his family vacation. He explained the trip would only happen if the company hit its sales targets. And then he flipped things around to explain why this was important to his audience, too - because he was now making this crazy sepcial offer at the end of the quarter in order to hit their sales goals. And it was a smash hit! Not only they blew away their goals in the last few days, but they also had lots of people reply and ask about their vacation and taking a personal interest in his family.Why did it work so well? Because it was a personal and transparent email. It was about something that mattered to Clate and his family. And when you connect to people on a personal level you get to establish real connections with your audience.Super cool, right??Useful Episode ResourcesAbout ClateIf you want to connect with Clate Mask, check out Keap.com.Related episodesSubscriber-Centric Email Marketing with Kath Pay, author of Holistic Email Marketing.The Big Question – Should You Sell In Every Email?How To Use Email In Your Content Marketing Strategy.FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketingToday we told you all about how to amplify email campaigns (Clate Mask style). Now, do you want to find out how to write better emails? Come up with better content? Influence and move your readers to click and buy? Well, you can do that with this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here.Join our FREE Facebook groupWe know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes, where we get to share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing by applying everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about how to amplify email campaigns - Clate Mask style) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review on your favourite podcast player.Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes and get discovered by more awesome people like you.
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Aug 18, 2021 • 30min

Who should not join The League of email marketing heroes

Who should NOT join our community - The League of email marketing heroes? Because (news flash) The League isn't for everyone. Ready to find out who The League is perfect for and who isn't a good fit for our membership?  Let's go!SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (4:26) What types of businesses can join The League? (5:22) The League isn't for you if you're not ready to work on your email marketing.(10:18) The League isn't for you if you don't have a good product. (11:36) The difference between a product and an offer (and why you need both).(14:16) The League isn't for you unless you're prepared to be a student of email marketing for life. (16:14) The League isn't for you unless you're ready to work hard and make stuff work. (19:02) The League isn't for you if you're not making any sales yet.(20:07) The League isn't for you if you don't think email marketing is a key strategy in your business.(21:58) The League isn't for you if you're still obsessing about growing your email list. (26:44) Subject line of the week. What types of businesses can join The League of email marketing heroes?First thing first, you might be pleased to find out that the type of business you run has nothing to do with whether you're right for The League or not. It doesn't matter whether you're a B2C or a B2B business. It doesn't matter what you sell or who you sell it to. We've got members in all sorts of areas - some who sell courses online or run coaching businesses, all the way through photographers, and people who sell bonsai tree goodies.What you sell doesn't matter. Nothing that you sell can rule you out from being the perfect fit for The League.But other things can... The League isn't for you if you're not ready to work on your email marketingIf you're not ready to invest time and effort to focus on making email marketing work for your business, then The League isn't for you. Because email marketing isn't a quick fix.That's why we make The League a monthly commitment. So we can give you strategies you can start using as soon as you join to make email marketing into something of value for your business.To get the best results out of email marketing, we recommend you look at your business and ask yourself where you want to be in 12, 18, 24 months from now and understand how to use email to get you there. If you come in with the mindset that email marketing is going to solve everything really quickly, then The League isn't going to work for you. Truth is - there aren't many things in business that you can do once and will work forever. You need to master a skill and do it continuously and consistently. The other reason why we make The League a regular commitment is because when that monthly amount leaves your account, it acts as a little nudge - a reminder to re-focus on your email marketing. Because it's way too easy to get off track. We're all busy, right? But that monthly bill reminds you to focus and pay attention to your email marketing. The League isn't for you if you don't have a good product We can help you make more sales, but we can't do that unless you already have a good product and a good offer. If you don't yet, then focus on that first, and then come and join The League, so we can help you sell more of the thing. We work our magic on the promotion - the marketing and the psychology of selling products that already exist. And this could be your own product or something you're selling for a commission or as an affiliate or partner.The difference between a product and an offerSo we talked about a product and an offer as two separate things. Want to know a bit about the difference?The product is the thing you're selling - your deliverable. The offer is everything that wraps around your product. It's how it's presented, how much it is, how people pay for it, the positioning of it, the unboxing experience, the bonuses you get with it, etc. It's all the stuff that sits around your product. Your offer is the premise and context with which you take your product and offer it to the market. There are really good products that aren't selling because businesses don't have a good offer for them. And if your product or your offer isn't right, then no amount of using email to lead qualified prospects to your sales pages will help you sell. Email marketing alone cannot fix that. If the thing you sell (the product) or the circumstances people get (the offer) aren't good, then you're going to struggle with any method of driving traffic. So if you have a great product but it's not selling, play around with your offer. Think of different ways of prsenting the product. The League isn't for you unless you're prepared to be a student of email marketing for lifeYou've got to be in for the long haul. Because email marketing is the way you directly communicate with your subscribers. They open your email on their laptops or their phones and read your mind through your words. They understand how you think, why you're making them think something, and how you're making them feel. That changes how human beings respond.Think about it. Everything around us changes - the competition, the types of products available, the technology. etc. So one of the things we can do is to make sure we're always on the cutting edge of understanding how humans are thinking right now - what their positive and negative biases are to make sure that our email marketing responds to all that. This is why you need to be studying marketing - and specifically email marketing - trends, and human behaviours. This is why you need to be a student for life. The League isn't for you unless you're willing to work hard and make stuff workIn email marketing, just like many other areas in our lives, not everything is going to work all of the time.Whenever we introduce new email marketing campaigns into The League, for example, we test them rigorously. It's only when we're sure they work that we share them with our members. We give you proven campaigns and then we help you apply them.And sometimes our members need to be willing to push through and try and try something again and again until it works. Sometimes stuff gets difficult - you might have technical or delivery problems, for example. And when that happens, you have to be willing to work hard and push through. You can jump on our weekly call, ask us questions, and we help you figure it out and come out the other end. After all, statistically, email marketing is the highest ROI activity that businesses of all stages and all sizes. The channel works. So you have to be persistent in trying to make it work for you - for your personality, you style, your products, and your offers.The League isn't for you if you're not making any sales yetIf you have a great product but you're not making any sales yet, then you might want to wait until you're making some sales before you join The League. You see - we help you amplify what works. We help you put your offer in front of more people, but you first need to be sure that your offer works.You want to be at the stage where you've proven that this thing you're selling is something people want. You want your tech to be set up, be sure that all the buttons work, that people can pay by credit card, etc. So first start making some sales, and then come over and join The League, and we'll welcome you with open arms. The League isn't for you if you don't think email marketing is a key strategy in your businessEmail marketing isn't a tactic - it's a key, irreplaceable strategy in your business. You've got to keep in touch with your existing customers, and the only good way to do that at scale is by email. There is nothing else that will allow you to communicate with your customers at the same scale and with the same results.All successful businesses are using email somewhere in their mix. And it's definitely not a tactic that you can pick up and drop whenever you feel like it. It's a critical strategy in your business, so you need to have a good email marketing strategy in place. The League isn't for you if you're still obsessing about growing your email listIf you think that all your problems will be solved the minute you have a bigger email list, then we're sorry to burst your bubble. The people who will get the best results from being part of our membership and really fit into our community are those who understand that your focus should be about maximising the sales in your business from the subscribers you already have. We say this all the time, but the reason we got good at email marketing is that we didn't have the resources to grow our email list. We had to learn to make the most out of the subscribers we already had. And sure, you'll find resources inside The League that help you grow your email list, but there's more to it than that. It's about maximising the relationship and the sales you make from your list. And once that's in place, there's a lot more you can do to also grow your email list. Want to join The League of email marketing heroes?If you tick all the right boxes, then check out The League. We are passionate about getting the right type of people inside our membership because it saves everyone involved a lot of heartache and trouble down the line. If someone's not the right fit for it, then we don't benefit from that customer much like they don't benefit from being part of our community. And we don't want that. We want to help people we're in the best position to help. When you do join, you are surrounded by a community of people who are all on the same path. Email marketing clicks for different people and different businesses at different points. But when it does, it's about amplifying, refining, and mastering that skill to keep it present and relevant. We don't have a minimum  commitment, but we really do want people to join The League thinking of it as a long-term investment because that's when you get to see the best results.Subject line of the week This week's subject line of the week (courtesy of Kennedy) is "Important milkshake-related question". In this email, Kennedy shared a story about the fact that his other half always orders different milkshakes when they go out. But Kennedy always orders a strawberry milkshake. No matter what and wherever he goes. (Just likes he always wears a white shirt because there are no mental calories burnt in doing that!) So there's your choice - you can have different things all the time or keep things simple and always go for the same thing. That's what the email was about. But why did the subject line work? Because Kennedy took a trivial thing (milkshakes) and put the word 'important' in front of it. What on earth can be so important about milkshakes, right? Those words make the sentence unusual. He mentioned he was asking a 'milkshake-related' question. What could that be? There's no way you would know what the email is about just by reading those 4 words. It's bizarre, and that's what made people open and read. Brilliant, right?  Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodes6 Lessons We Learned From Launching And Growing Our Membership Site.How To Improve Your Email Marketing – The 8 Unexpected Skills You Need.How To Grow Your Email List – 6 Unusual Lead Magnet Ideas.FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketingIf you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. Join our FREE Facebook groupIf you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join our membership - The League of email marketing heroesNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community - The League of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about The League of email marketing heroes) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review of the show on your favourite podcast player.Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes so more awesome people like you can discover the podcast. 
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Aug 11, 2021 • 20min

Add This Unusual Step to Your Checklist for Product Launch to Make More Sales After The Cart Closes with Marley Jaxx

You're doing a launch. The pressure is on. You've got it all planned out. You know what you're doing. Your subscribers are getting email reminders daily - hourly even. But then the launch is over. And... silence. What now? What do you send your subscribers now? Today, our awesome guest Marley Jaxx helps us add an unusual (but extremely clever) step to our checklist for product launch.It's one you haven't thought about...It's one you don't want to miss out on...So are you ready to find out what to do after the cart closes?Let's go and find out with Marley.SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (2:48) Did Marley once really load money to a Shark from TV shows Shark Tank?(4:20) What happens when you launch a new product?(6:01) The first reason why people don't buy from you.(6:38) The second reason why people don't buy from you.(7:22) A look into Marley's post-launch email sequence.(10:55) How to add a high-ticket item to your funnel.(12:06) How to price your high-ticket items. (14:01) Handling follow-up conversations with your subscribers.(16:27) Time-bound urgency vs scarcity. (17:44) Subject line of the week with Marley Jaxx.What happens when you launch a new productMarley Jaxx is really prolific at creating and launching new programmes, so we were quite chuffed when we managed to twist her arm and get her to talk to us about what to do in those eerie, terrifying moments and hours after you close the cart after a big launch - be it a membership, a coaching programme, a new product... anything you sell.So you've closed the cart. What's next on your checklist for product launch? What exactly are you supposed to say to your subscribers now?Marley likes to think of the value ladder in her business like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" course. So let's say you're doing a launch, and it closes on Friday night at midnight. Leading up to it, you're sending out all these countdown emails, encouraging people to buy, adding bonuses and scarcity and urgency. The worst thing you can do after the cart closes is to ghost them, right?So the next day Marley sends an email out to anyone who didn't buy...The first reason why people don't buy from youNow, in this email, Marley covers the two reasons why people didn't buy the product she just launched.The first reason is that they weren't ready. Financially or emotionally, they just weren't ready to take the leap and buy. Maybe they need a bit more time with your business. Maybe they want a little bit more support before they make a decision. And that's fair. So what Marley does is to offer another programme or point them to a different low-ticket item she's selling. And if that's not right, then she invites them to take one of her challenges again to help them get some quick results and fix the problem they're experiencing. Clever, right?But the best part is this...The second reason why people don't buy from you (and that's unexpected!)The second reason why people might not buy from you is that they want more help! Maybe they want a done-for-you solution or one-to-one coaching. So this is where Marley tells people about her high-ticket items - like spots on a specific programme, for example. And if people want more information, they're sent over to an application page where they can pop their details in to book a call.Isn't that mind-blowing?! And just so much better than sending them a hint or a handy tip a few days later and then ghosting that subscriber until you're ready to promote your next launch?You've got to admit - pointing them to something that's less commitment is one thing. But would you have thought about offering your subscribers something more expensive?Probably not, right?It's genius.And it makes perfect sense. Because people are either going to spend more money than time or more time than money on something - depending on where they are in their journey. Sometimes, when people want results faster, they're prepared to invest in done-for-you solutions and spend more to get it done.The post-launch email sequenceWe asked Marley how she spaces out her emails and how she structures her post-launch sequence, and she explained emails are sent out over a period of 3 days. These are upsell emails that invite people to check out her higher-ticket item. After 3 days of promoting the high-ticket offer, people are re-directed to the original challenge or a different low-ticket product.How to add a high-ticket item to your funnelSo what happens if you don't have a higher-ticket item in your funnel already? How difficult is it to create one?According to Marley, most business owners already have a high-ticket item available they can sell. Perhaps you made a course - now you can add a weekly coaching call or a Q&A session. Or maybe some templates. And you could even double or treble the price. Because if you're selling something that will teach people how to make $100k, for example, it's reasonable they will be prepared to pay a good amount for that.But let's delve into price a bit more...How to price your high-ticket itemsA lot of the time, Marley says, business owners don't have a high-ticket item in their funnel because they're lacking the courage to add one on. But people pay attention when you price yourself as expensively affordable.Often, as business owners, we make the mistake of setting a price too low because of fear. The common misconception is that keeping prices low will make our products more enticing. But if you think that pricing yourself cheap or even free can reach more people, the opposite is actually true - you'll reach more people by putting a $ sign in front of what you offer because when people pay more, they pay more attention. Plus, it's better to have a small handful of $10,000 clients who are invested and getting results than hundreds of $10 clients who aren't, right?Handling follow up conversations with your subscribersSo you've done your launch, and you closed the cart. You've emailed the people who didn't buy to point them to other low-ticket items or to your high-ticket product. What happens when people have questions?Marley confirmed that in her experience, low-ticket items don't lead to a lot of follow-up conversations - the purchase decision involved isn't huge, so if the offer is right, people tend to just go for it. But when people access the landing page for the high-ticket product then they have a chance to fill in an application and ask some questions over a phone call.Of course, all this can be part of an automated sequence that you put together when you first go through your checklist for product launch, so after you've sent a few emails promoting one thing, then you can kick off other campaigns that could, for example, talk about your evergreen products. Marley uses a tool called Deadline Funnel to have multiple automation sequences running side by side with offers expiring on certain dates. This allows her to put into place what she calls the "Choose Your Own Adventure" course, where her clients choose the product that fits their needs while she continues to successfully grow her business.Time-bound urgency vs scarcityWhen we asked Marley whether she adds time-bound urgency to her offers, she confirmed low-ticket item products are left fairly open as some of them are evergreen. But when it comes to high-ticket products, that's when urgency comes in in the shape of "we only have so many spots open". And that works a treat.Subject line of the week with Marley JaxxMarley's subject line of the week is "time is running out" but written with the help of emojis, like this: "🕒👏is 🏃👏out". And why did it work? Because it's different and sassy, and it shows personality and flavour. Another genius move by the awesome Marley.Useful Episode ResourcesAbout MarleyIf you want to connect with Marley and find out more about her work, you can find her on her YouTube channel, on Instagram, and on her website.Related episodesLaunch An Online Course the Non-Traditional Way with Chris Orzechowski.The Psychology Of A Successful Email Launch – Being Desirable With Abraham Kallon.6 Lessons We Learned From Launching And Growing Our Membership Site.FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketingToday we talked about your checklist for product launch, but do you want help to write better emails? Come up with better content? Influence and move your readers to click and buy? Well, you can do that with this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here.Join our FREE Facebook groupWe know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes, where we get to share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing by applying everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about adding an extra step to your checklist for product launch) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review on your favourite podcast player.Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes and get discovered by more awesome people like you.
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Aug 4, 2021 • 21min

How Will iOS 15 Change Email Marketing?

Will iOS 15 change email marketing? Is it all doom and gloom for people like us who rely on making sales from sending emails to our subscribers? In today's episode, we talk about the latest Apple update - iOS 15 - and a new product called iCloud Plus that comes with that release. We walk you through the changes, what they mean for you as an email marketer, and share exactly what you need to do to protect yourself. The good news is... as long as you follow our tips, it's not doom and gloom at all! Want to find out how to get ready for these changes?   Let's go!SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (2:48) Why Apple iOS 15 is tackling users' privacy. (5:04) iOS 14 and its impact on Facebook advertising (and Kennedy's feed).(6:42) What is Apple iOS 15 and how does it affect you? (8:30) Why you shouldn't rely on open rate reporting.(10:50) Why your click-through rate matters more than your open rate.(12:55) Why you should look at your Earning Per Subscriber Per Month (EPSPM)(14:23) What is iCloud Plus? (17:12) How does iCloud Plus impact email marketers?(18:26) Why you need to start paying attention to your engagement rate. (19:32) Subject line of the week. What is Apple iOS 15 and how does it affect you? iOS 15 is the latest Apple update, and it's big on privacy. It follows iOS 14, which changed how businesses run Facebook ads. And probably not in the best way, considering Kennedy receives all sorts of ads that aren't at all targeted. (Thoroughly recommend you listen to the episode to find out more about boyfriends and eye patches).So when the much-anticipated iOS 15 comes into play, open rate tracking is going to be proactively blocked. Now, open rate tracking works through a tiny 1x1 pixel (an invisible transparent picture) that sits in our emails. And when that pixel loads on someone's device, the email is considered open. This is how email service providers track open rates. However, with iOS 15, it's no longer going to be possible to track open rates. Either emails are going to be shown as being automatically opened or not opened at all. So it's going to be impossible for us to know whether people using Apple Mail app have opened our emails.Not great. But there's good news about this - open rate reporting was never reliable in the first place! Why you shouldn't rely on open rate reportingThe thing is, most Android mail apps already block the ability for email marketing platforms to track open rates, and some people automatically open emails without reading them. So your open rate has always been under-reported. Truth is - your open rates are probably slightly higher than what your email marketing platform is telling you. So please stop making decisions based on your open rate!There's something else you should be paying attention to instead. And that's your click-through rate. Why your click-through rate matters more than your open rateClick-through rates are going to be a lot harder for most platforms to block, and the reality is that it's much easier and more accurate for any email marketing platform to measure click rates. And it always has been. But the other reason why we, as email marketers, should be looking at click-through rates is that it's linked to something else - engagement. Think about it. When someone opens one of your emails, scrolls through it, and then deletes it, that email is marked as read. Right now, your email marketing platform classes that email as open. But is that subscriber really engaged? Probably not. But when it comes to click-through rates, things are very different. If whatever you said in your email was so compelling, so interesting, and so on-point that it made that subscriber want to click on a link you included in your email, then you know they're engaged. So instead of looking at open rates, train your subscribers to click. Because if you're not, then you're training them out of clicking. Your job as an email marketer is to build the behaviours that get people to click. Why you should look at your Earning Per Subscriber Per Month (EPSPM)Another metric we suggest you look at is what we call EPSPM - Earning Per Subscriber Per Month. To calculate this, you simply look at how much money you've made from your email marketing in a month and divide it by the number of subscribers on your list in that month (it could be the number at the beginning, in the middle, or the end - whatever you choose, just make it consistent). So for example, if you made $1,000 this month and you have 1,000 subscribers on your list, each subscriber is currently earning you $1 per month. Why is that good? Because it's trackable and comparable over time. It works when you have 100 subscribers and when you have 1 million people on your list. But if you look at open rates (or even click-through rates), as your list increases, these metrics will inevitably go down. Looking at how much money you're making per subscriber tells you how efficient and effective your email marketing is. What is iCloud Plus?  So will iOS 15 change email marketing? The short answer is yes, but there's something else we need to talk about, and that's a product called iCloud Plus. This is going to have a brand new feature called 'Hide My Email', and the way it works is by allowing Apple users to 'hide their email' when signing up to someone's email list, for example. So when someone signs up to your list, they'll do so with what we call a 'burner email address' (one full of random letters and numbers). Your emails are then forwarded from that burner email address to the subscriber's real email address, but your email marketing platform does not hold that subscriber's real address - only the burner one. How does iCloud Plus impact email marketers?iCloud Plus aims to stop businesses from sharing our data with third parties, so it's a good thing. But what it means for us as email marketers is that when a user decides to unsubscribe, their burner email address will disappear - become inactive. While the user unsubscribed, what we're going to see is a bounce. And that's problematic.So this is where you need to start to pay close attention to how engaged your subscribers are. We are quite strict on this in our business. If someone reaches 30 days without opening an email or clicking on a link from us, we count that person as disengaged and put them through our subscriber revival sequence. That gives them a chance to 'wake up' over the following 14 days. If that happens, they continue receiving our emails. If it doesn't, we remove them from our list.After the launch of iCloud Plus, doing this with your list becomes even more important. Because you're going to have all these 'burner email addresses' that could disappear and negatively impact the deliverability of your emails. So the solution is simple - keep an eye on your engagement rate, which you can monitor through clicks. This is how you'll be able to easily identify and remove people who have disabled their burner email addresses. So that's it. If you were asking yourself, "Will iOS 15 change email marketing?" now you know the answer. But you also know exactly what you can do to protect yourself. Subject line of the week This week's subject line of the week is, "Bringing home (too much) bacon". Rob used this line after opening a packet of bacon that should have had 10 rashes in there but actually had 13. He turned that into a lesson about what we think value means and the fact that having too much of something doesn't necessarily equate to value.The reason why the subject line worked so well? Because "bringing home the bacon" is a saying we all know. But Rob put a spin on it - he talked about having too much bacon (and added an emoji for good measure). By moving away from the saying a little, he triggered curiosity. And the email got opened! Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesIncrease Your Email Open-Rates: 13 Email Subject Line Tips to Stand Out in An Overcrowded Inbox #2018. Email CTR: How to Boss Your Click Through Rate.How to Email Your Abandoned Email List.FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketingIf you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. Join our FREE Facebook groupIf you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes. We share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing. Best news yet? You can apply everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (will iOS 15 change email marketing?) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review of the show on your favourite podcast player.Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes so more awesome people like you can discover the podcast. 
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Jul 28, 2021 • 23min

Testimonials - how to write and collect them automatically to bring in more sales with Monica Snyder

Testimonials. How to write them? How to ask for them in the first place? Do testimonials and email marketing go together? Is there even a way to automate the whole thing?!You see - we're rubbish at asking for testimonials. It makes us feel grubby. So we don't do it enough. But we should, and we've finally convinced the awesome Monica Snyder, CEO and Founder of Birdsong.co to come and share her secrets with us.You're going to want to take some notes here because Monica gives us the exact questions you need to ask your customers to collect testimonials on autopilot so you can make more sales in your business.Ready?SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (2:59) Did Monica throw up in a helicopter or did Kennedy make that up?(5:09) Why do testimonials even matter?(5:54) When should we ask for testimonials?(8:10) What are the triggers for requesting testimonials?(9:49) How to ask for a testimonial as part of an automated email sequence.(11:39) How to ask your customers for permission to share their story.(13:37) How to deal with negative feedback and turn your customers into raving fans. (15:48) The 7 questions you should ask to get awesome testimonials.(17:57) So they gave you a testimonial. What's next? (20:08) Subject line of the week with Monica Snyder.Why do testimonials even matter?We all know testimonials are important. They are social proof. Most of us think we can rock up, create a product, put it on sale, have a bunch of people buying it, and then come back and rave about how awesome you are. But by now you probably know it just doesn't work like that. Truth is, people are more likely to say something about your product if they're unhappy and want to complain. They rarely come forward with the good, juicy stuff. Unless you ask them.But, as Monica says, it's our job as course creators to collect social proof. And testimonials are the strongest proof. So we've got to find ways to engineer a process that will give us awesome testimonials from our raving customers.When should we ask for testimonials? So let's say you've created a course. When's a good time to ask for a testimonial? At the end, right?Wrong.Because let's face it - sadly, a lot of people don't even make it to the end of the course!But Monica has another way. A much better way!And it's this. You've got to engineer some sort of win early on in the course. It doesn't have to be the final big hurray - it could just be a moment of clarity or a small win. As soon as people get that dopamine hit when they get their first result from your course, that's when they're happy to leave you a great testimonial. So make sure you build some sort of accomplishment early on in your course, celebrate it, and then ask for the testimonial.But how do we do it?Ask your customers to give you feedbackInteresting thing is, Monica doesn't actually call them testimonials. She asks her customers for feedback. Once her customers experience their first win, she sends an email out as part of her welcoming sequence to explain how to use the course to ask them to leave feedback.People get then taken to a landing page with a smiley face and a sad face, just like at the airport! If they click on the happy face, they're invited to share their story. If they click on the sad face, there's where they have a chance to leave their feedback. And Monica has a chance to take that on board and fix it. Simple, right? How to ask your customers if you can share their storyBut what happens when it's time for Monica to re-write and craft those answers into a testimonial that she can share? How does she ask for permission to share it? Does that take long? Can that be automated?Hell, yeah!So the clever way Monica does this is by asking her customers - in the same email where she asks for the feedback - to provide a link to their business or a headshot and logo to go out with the testimonial. So they don't just give her their permission - they actually get a bit of self-promotion out of it!Isn't this just pure gold?!How to deal with negative feedbackOkay, smiley faces and happy stories are what we're after here. But what about negative feedback? What if someone clicks on that sad face? Is everything lost?No way José.In fact, Monica says, bad feedback can also turn into a testimonial if you handle it well. Negative feedback is where you have the opportunity to turn an unsatisfied customer into a raving fan. And you can do that by simply taking the feedback on board and dealing with it.Sometimes it's just a matter of putting your hands up and admitting you missed the mark. Sometimes it's a matter of going ahead with a small fix. And sometimes it's a matter of working out how you can solve the problem that your customer had before they joined your course. Because if they're unhappy with it, then they still have that original problem that made them buy from you, right?So when you focus on fixing your customers' problems, you can turn negative feedback into raving, lifelong fans. The 7 questions to ask your customers to get awesome testimonialsNow, what kind of questions should we ask to get awesome testimonials that work? Because you know what? "The course is awesome" isn't really what you're after. It doesn't do much in convincing someone who's on the fence about buying your course to finally make that leap of faith and go for it. It sounds positive, but it doesn't work.So here are the 7 questions Monica asks. It starts easy, with:"What your name?"And "What's the name of your business?" Or, if it's a B2C course, "Where do you live?"Then you go into the juicy stuff, and you ask:"What was your biggest problem before buying my product?" This is where you're trying to get an idea of what life looked like before. You want to build the hero journey or the epiphany bridge.Then "What changed after you used the product?""What's one specific result you were able to achieve after using the product?" This is where you get those numbers and metrics that are so powerful in a testimonial.Then you ask, "What would you say to someone who is thinking about buying the product but is on the fence right now?"And finally the wide-open question, "Is there anything else you think is worth sharing or that you want to share but haven't been able to yet?" This question, Monica says, is always full of golden nuggets, so don't shy away from asking it!And that's it. These are the exact 7 questions Monica asks to get feedback from her customers. She then creates a handy headline and has a nice before and after story of how her product rocked someone's world.And isn't this great? Because we started off talking about asking for testimonials as something that feels grabby. But this is all about your customers. It's about them. It's about their journey. Their wins. And it's a lot more than just you bragging about your wins on your web pages!So they gave you a testimonial. What next?Because Monica does all this as part of her email sequences, it's all automated! She gets testimonials coming in without having to go out of her way and ask for them. And isn't this a great testament to the usefulness of email marketing as something that stops you from doing what Monica calls 'busy work'?Once the testimonial is in, Monica waits a couple of days, and then, if relevant and appropriate, she sends out the start of her new product launch series. Just. Like. That.Subject line of the week with Monica SnyderMonica's subject line of the week is "An $11,000 walk to the playground". And guess what? The email was exactly about that. About the fact that Monica took an hour out of her day to walk her kids to the playground, and in that hour, she made two phone calls and closed $11,000 worth of sales. Wow!And why did the subject line work? For a few reasons, actually. Because it had a number, and a number in subject lines is always good. Because it had an emoji. And because it triggered curiosity. Because making money and walking to the playground aren't usually things that go together. But in Monica's world, they do. Because that's exactly what she teaches - that making money and relationship building go hand-in-hand.Isn't this all levels of awesome guys?!Useful Episode ResourcesAbout MonicaWant to connect with Monica? You can find her on her website.Related episodesHow To Turn Customer Feedback Questions Into More Sales With Email.Turn Customer Feedback Emails Into Sales [Part 1].Turn Customer Feedback Emails Into Sales [Part 2].FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketingWant to write better emails? Come up with better content? Influence and move your readers to click and buy? Well, you can do that with this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here.Join our FREE Facebook groupWe know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes, where we get to share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing by applying everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about testimonials and how to write them) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review on your favourite podcast player.Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes and get discovered by more awesome people like you.
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Jul 21, 2021 • 24min

How to Say 'No' to Extending An Expired Offer

Limited-time offers, also known as urgency-bound or scarcity-bound offers. We all know what they are. A flash sale, a bundle, an offer with a discount, something that expires at a particular time... Deals like these are all around us - they come in all shapes and sizes. But what do you do when someone gets in touch to say they've missed the deal and asks you to honour it? The only right answer here is NO!Want to know why? And want to know how to say no without damaging your relationship with your customers? Let's get stuck in then! SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (3:33) Extending an offer that's expired is illegal!(7:28) How hounouring an expired offer can lead your customers to start doubting you. (8:10) If you lose your customers' trust, they won't buy from you again. (10:00) What happened when we asked a company to honour an expired deal.(12:00) When you should still honour an expired deal. (13:59) When it's okay to offer your customers something different. (15:51) How honouring your expired offers impacts your relationship with your affiliates.(18:40) How to say no to expired offers while maintaining and strenghtening relationships.(20:10) How saying no helps you 'train' your customers for future sales. (22:15) Subject line of the week. Extending expired limited-time offers is illegalIf a deal ended on Friday night at 10 pm, then it ended on Friday night at 10 pm. You can't and shouldn't extend it.  Why?Well, first of all, it's not legal to state the terms of limited-time offers and then extend  your deal beyond those terms. Similarly, if you say a certain deal is going to be available for the first 100 people who buy it (that's a scarcity-bound deal), then you can't sell it to more than 100 people.It's as simple as that. Because the minute you start to change the terms, it becomes false and misleading advertising. Not. Legal.If you lose your customers' trust, they won't buy from you again!When you're using time-bound or scarcity-bound urgency to promote and sell your limited-time offers, it comes at the cost of saying no to anyone who asks for that deal once it's over. We talked about the fact that honouring an expired offer isn't legal. But it's not ethical either. Plus, saying no helps you 'train' your customers when it comes to future sales. Because the minute you change your mind and honour an offer that's expired, they're going to start wondering (subconsciously if not consciously) whether they should believe you or not. And next time you say that a limited-time offer or a deal will expire on a certain date, they might not believe you! They won't trust that what you say is true. And what happens when the trust is gone? None of us can make any sales.As business owners, we all have to build trust with our prospective customers. If people don't trust us - and don't believe they can get the results we're promising - they won't buy from us! We become dishonourable to the sale.So the minute we say yes to a limited-time offer that's already expired, we damage our future sales. Because people will stop trusting us.Think about it. They won't even bother rushing to get the deal before it expires. Because they know they can just drop you an email at any time and get it anyway. And when that happens, you have completely slaughtered your ability to ever use urgency with that customer. And you don't want to lose the ability to use urgency with your customers. That time when we asked a company to honour an expired deal...We have an example of this as customers. A while ago, we found out about this piece of software. They were running a great offer where they were selling their product at a discounted price. We didn't find out until after the deal had expired, but we still got in touch and asked to get the offer anyway. If you don't ask you don't get, right?And as consumers, of course you'd want to ask. That goes without saying! Know what? The company said yes. Hurray for us! So we got their product at a discounted rate, and the company got an extra sale they wouldn't have otherwise got. They were probably patting themselves on the back, but we, as their customers, have so little trust for them as a brand now that the next time they run a deal, we're not going to be in any hurry to go and grab it. Can you see how that doesn't work out in your interest in the end? When you should honour an expired dealSo, you don't honour an expired deal. That's the rule. But every rule has an exception, right? There are cases when you should honour an expired deal. And that's when you can see that your customer genuinely tried to get your offer but couldn't, because of circumstances outside their control. Obviously you don't just take their word for it. You go and check. You might be able to see that they tried to pay, but their card failed twice. Or that there was a problem with their bank. Or your website was down. Whatever.If they couldn't get the deal because of circumstances beyond their control, you should honour it. If it was genuinely not their fault and the purchase failed, then it's fair enough. Technology isn't perfect. And by saying yes to giving them the offer, you're not breaking their trust. But you still don't honour the deal if they dilly-dallied and stayed on the fence until the last minute. Or if your customer blatantly tells you they only found out about the deal after it had expired. That's when you say no and stay firm! When it's okay to offer your customers something else insteadSometimes you can still offer your customer the product you were selling at the discounted price, but that's only if you're selling that product already elsewhere, as part of another evergreen bundle or offer. For example, you may have had a limited-time offer that sold Product A at a certain price, as long as you bought Product A within a certain time frame. This means that once the time frame has expired, you can't sell Product A at that price anymore. The offer's gone.However, let's say you have another deal on your website. Let's say Product A is for sale on your website at that same price, but only if bought in conjunction with Product B. And that's an evergreen offer. In which case, it's perfectly acceptable and totally ethical to point your customer to that particular offer, which is an upsell at a discount. Because they could have found it on your website anyway. And this isn't the same as saying yes to a limited-time offer that's already expired. Can you see the difference? How honouring expired limited-time offers impacts your relationship with your affiliatesAnother good reason for saying no to honouring expired limited-time offers (as if we haven't given you enough already), is that it impacts your relationship with your affiliates (if you have any). So let's say you have affiliates who helped you promote your deal. If you say that your offer ends on a certain day at a certain time and then you honour the deal once the deadline has passed, most affiliates who are worth their salt won't promote your products ever again. Put yourself in their shoes. If you found out that someone you promoted did some shenanigans with false urgency or false scarcity, how would you feel? Would you promote them again? Becaus you, as the affiliate, could get into hot waters too, you know? But it goes both ways. If you have affiliates, then you need to be clear on what they are doing. You want to make sure they're not honouring expired offers either. Or equally, if you're selling an evergreen offer, and an affiliate makes it sound like it's a one-time-only or time-bound deal, well that's not right! You might end up having to give refunds and suffer from reputational damage, which isn't cool. So keep a close eye on what other people are doing with your offers!How to say no while maintaining and strenghtening your relationship with your customersSo hopefully by now we've convinced you you've got to say no to expired offers. But how do you do that wihtout damaging the relationship with your customer?Well, first of all you want to say you're sorry that they missed out on the discount. But while you'd love to be able to offer them the deal at the same price, you hope they understand that in order to be fair to everyone who bought on time, you can't do that. Otherwise, you'd be misleading all those people who grabbed your offer while it was valid. Plus, you want to mention that you'd be at risk of false advertising. This works for a few reasons. First of all, you've given them an emotional reason as to why you're saying no. You've asked them to put themselves in the shoes of the people who did buy the deal within the dealine. If that was them, wouldn't they be annoyed? And then you give them the legal reason too. Delivering the message in this way allows you to say no (in a nice way), but also lets you 'train' your customer and helps them understand that next time you have a limited-time offer that will expire on a certain day and time, you mean it. And next time they'll make sure they don't miss out on that discount! The urgency has just become more real for that person because they've now experienced the consequences of missing out on the deal within the deadline. When you stand by your limited-time offers (urgency-bound or scarcity-bound deals), your customers will become more responsive and more profitable as a result. Subject line of the week This week's subject line of the week (courtesy of Rob) is, "We can't be friends". Rob here was talking about the fact that when Facebook first became a thing, you'd become friends with just anyone. But now we're all a bit more protective of who we connect with on social media, and we're trying to strip down. So in this email, Rob was talking about his method of removing people he doesn't actually know on Facebook. Intriguing, right? Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesDress up your discount like this to make more sales with John Hutchison.How To Sell Without Price Cutting or Pushing with Mike Montague from Sandler Training.How To Sell To The Right People At The Right Time – With Steve Rosenbaum.FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketingDid you know that the 8 skills to improve your email marketing we talked about today come from books we've read and studied? If you want to write better emails, come up with better content, and move your readers to click and buy, here's how. We put together this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here. Join our FREE Facebook groupIf you want to chat about how you can maximise the value of your email list and make more money from every subscriber, we can help! We know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes, where we get to share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing by applying everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about limited-time offers and how to say NO) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review of the show on your favourite podcast player.Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes and get discovered by more awesome people like you.
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Jul 14, 2021 • 25min

Facebook Groups Marketing, Content That Make Sales with Christina Jandali

Christina Jandali is a confidence-boosting, cash-creating Business Growth Strategist who helps coaches and course creators build a raving fan base and producing scalable profits through Facebook groups marketing.And today she shares her best tips on using a Facebook group to build your email list, so you can turn leads into buyers and make more sales in your business. We were scribbling down notes like mad, and you'll want to do that too - guaranteed!SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (2:27) Did Christina end up staying in the Caribbean for a month?(4:42) Do Facebook groups and email marketing work together?(5:50) What comes first - your Facebook group or your email list?(7:10) How do you sell in a Facebook group?(8:55) How do you generate 'purposeful engagement' in your Facebook group?(12:33) How long does it take to plan and create content for your Facebook group?(14:05) The type of content you can share in your Facebook group between launches. (16:11) What selling techniques work inside Facebook groups?(18:04) How do you sell evergreen products like memberships? (22:17) Subject line of the week with Christina Jandali.Do Facebook groups and email marketing work together?According to Christina, absolutely YES!As we all know, while we can leverage social media, we don't own those platforms. But email marketing is different. It's an asset we own, which is why it's important to market people in more than one location and use your Facebook group in conjunction with your email marketing.Facebook groups are awesome for creating deeper connections with your audience, so how do we use them as a tool for business growth?What comes first - your Facebook group or your email list? Should we populate our Facebook groups at the back of our email lists or start a Facebook group first to grow our email list? Chicken and egg situation, right?Well, they both work together, Christina says. And it all depends on where your primary source of traffic is. If you're using paid advertising, then you definitely want people to join your email list first. But if your traffic comes from somewhere else - like your podcast, for example - it's much easier for your audience to join your Facebook group. Because it doesn't take much effort for people at all.Plus, the more people join your Facebook group, the more Facebook introduces your group to more people, which can help you grow that audience even further. And once they're in there, you have plenty of opportunities to turn followers into email subscribers.But you always need to think about the two working together as two different entry points into your business. Your Facebook group should grow your email list, and your email list should grow your Facebook group.You can also create FOMO by telling people in your Facebook group what's happening in your email list and vice versa. It creates curiosity, so if you do this in your email list, you can get your subscribers to join your Facebook group. Generate FOMO in your Facebook group about your email list, and you'll get more people to subscribe. Genius!How do you sell in your Facebook group?Christina likes to think about using a Facebook group as a way to run campaigns. (Oh, and don't we love the sound of that?!)So when thinking about bringing people into your Facebook group, you need to come up with content that will lead to your offers. Use your content to attract, engage, and convert. Because the content in your Facebook group must evoke desire and demand for your paid offer.You don't want freebie seekers - you want leads that you can convert into buyers. So everything you do in your group needs to move people down that line of evoking desire and demand for your paid product or service.Makes sense, right?How do you generate the right type of engagement in your Facebook group?  So now that we've established that you don't just want anyone in your group - you want people who are interested in your paid offering - what can you do to nurture and deepen relationships with them?The key, Christina explains, is to stop focusing on 'mindless engagement'. You know, the type that comes from posts that ask people whether they're a tea or a coffee drinker. Or whether they prefer cats or dogs. If the answer to that question doesn't lead anywhere, don't ask it!What you want instead is 'purposeful engagement'. You want to ask questions that help you get in the minds of your ideal clients and move people towards your paid offers.So let's say you're planning a training session. You could start posting in your group and asking how people feel about that particular topic. What are people getting stuck with? What are their challenges? Allow people to share their frustrations and experiences - create the conversation around the topic, so you can use it later on.Because when you invite your audience to share their experience, you then have all this language (this copy) that you can use in your live streams, your emails, and whatever other type of content you're creating.How long does it take to plan and create content for your Facebook group? The majority of Christina's posts are one liners, so they don't take very long to plan and write at all!As business owners and marketers, we constantly feel under pressure to create lots of long content, but actually, that sometimes can kill engagement. So instead, Christina says, ask yourself what one question you can ask your audience that will start that conversation around what it is you're selling.She also suggests that you run at least one deep-dive core training a week inside your Facebook group. This can be around 10-20 minutes, but it needs to be value-packed. This is where you demonstrate your knowledge and evoke that need and desire for your paid product or service. So if you're planning for that content, you can jot down 3 bullet points for what you want to cover in that training, which is super quick.But the biggest mindset reframe that needs to happen, in Christina's opinion, is that you should aim to create community and connection with your Facebook members. To do that, let them speak to you, rather than you speaking to them all the time. And therefore your content should be 'fill-in-the-blanks' type of content, where you ask simple questions, break the ice, and invite your audience to speak about themselves.What content can you share in between launches? So this idea of creating campaigns and structuring your content around something you want to sell works really well when you're launching something new. But how do you keep your audience warm in between launches?Christina suggests you can still stick to just one value-based, deep dive post piece of content per week. And everything else should be conversational and connection-based - centered around the topic of your deep dive value post.So if you're not launching something new right now, what it is you want your audience to do? Listen to your podcast? Join your email list? Follow you on another social platform? What action do you want them to take next? It's important you give them one because you always want to invite your audience to take the next best action with you that moves people forward and closer to buying from you. You constantly need to train your subscribers to take some form of action, or they won't buy when you ask them to.What selling techniques work inside Facebook groups?When it comes to selling techniques, Facebook group owners take all sorts of approaches. Some use more direct pitches, while others employ more subtle techniques.Some business owners invite people to DM them. And that's powerful, because it allows you to have a one-to-one conversation with your leads, and if you're selling high-ticket items where a deeper enrollment conversation is necessary, then this strategy might work for you. But if you sell a lower-ticket item, can you really afford to spend your time answering DMs?What's important to take into account is how you want to present your offer. Then you can work backwards and figure out what sales technique is going to be most effective for your product. Should you sell through a webinar or a masterclass? A workshop? Look at the bigger picture and decide what sales sequence or strategy is going to work best for your offer.How do you sell evergreen products like memberships?We asked Christina for some tips on how to sell our membership - The League. It's always open, so how do we talk about it in our Facebook group without becoming boring?Christina suggests to always plant seeds. For example, you could say that a question came up inside the membership and you want to discuss it in the group. Or that you realised something as you were putting a piece of content together for your paying members. Plant seeds. Let people know about the thing you sell.But more than anything, use the content in your Facebook group to pitch the entry point to your sales sequence. Do you sell your membership via your email list? Then invite people to join your email list. Do you do a couple of larger, bigger-scale launches a year where you offer additional bonuses and bundles? Then point people to that.Subject line of the week with Christina JandaliChristina's subject line of the week is, "Hey!". It's one word, and it's soooo simple. Know why it works? Because that's exactly how you'd speak to a friend, and people can't help but want to open that email.It also works because it's super short, and it stands out compared to much longer subject lines that are perhaps sitting in people's inbox. So try it out for those conversational emails you send to your list.Useful Episode ResourcesAbout Christina Want to connect with Christina? You can find her on her website - Deliver your Genius.Christina also put together a wonderful bundle for our amazing podcast listeners. The resources Christina shared will help you find the perfect name for your Facebook group, write the best intro post, and then grow your Facebook group in 5 easy steps. You can get your paws on Christina's awesome bundle here.Related episodesBuild A Facebook Group To Build Your Email List With Arne Giske From Group Funnels.How To Grow Your Email List Using Facebook Pages (Without Ads) – Rachel Miller Moolah Style!How To Use Email Subject Lines To Do More Than Get Your Emails Opened.FREE list of the top 10 books to improve your email marketingWant to write better emails? Come up with better content? Influence and move your readers to click and buy? Well, you can do that with this list of our Top 10 most highly recommended books that will improve all areas of your email marketing (including some underground treasures that we happened upon, which have been game-changing for us). Grab your FREE list here.Join our FREE Facebook groupWe know your business is different, so come and hang out in our FREE Facebook group, the Email Marketing Show Community for Course Creators and Coaches. We share a lot of training and resources, and you can talk about what you're up to.Try ResponseSuite for $1This week's episode is sponsored by ResponseSuite.com, the survey quiz and application form tool that we created specifically for small businesses like you to integrate with your marketing systems to segment your subscribers and make more sales. Try it out for 14 days for just $1.Join The League MembershipNot sick of us yet? Every day we hang out in our amazing community of Email Marketing Heroes, where we get to share all of our training and campaigns and a whole bunch of other stuff. If you're looking to learn how to use psychology-driven marketing to level up your email campaigns, come and check out The League Membership. It's the number one place to hang out and grow your email marketing by applying everything we talk about in this show.Subscribe and review The Email Marketing Show podcastThanks so much for tuning into the podcast! If you enjoyed this episode (all about Facebook groups marketing) and love the show, we'd really appreciate you subscribing and leaving us a review on your favourite podcast player.Not only does it let us know you're out there listening, but your feedback helps us to keep creating the most useful episodes and get discovered by more awesome people like you.

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