The Email Marketing Show cover image

The Email Marketing Show

Latest episodes

undefined
Dec 27, 2023 • 26min

B2B Vs B2C Email Marketing - What Are The Differences?

Is there a difference between B2B vs B2C email marketing? What works best? And can we take some of the best strategies from B2C and apply them to B2B?Let's have a big ol' email showdown and find out which type of email marketing wins!SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:29) Grab our amazing resource Click Tricks totally for FREE!(3:23) What do we mean by B2B, B2b, and B2C?(6:50) The difference between B2B and B2C email marketing.(9:46) What about the different sales cycles between B2B and B2C?(12:13) Who is sending your emails?(16:06) How do people join your list?(19:33) What can B2B learn from B2C email marketing?(24:20) Subject line of the week.[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]What do we mean by B2B, B2b, and B2C? We believe there are three categories of businesses when it comes to selling:B2B - business to BIG business.B2b - business to small business.And B2C - business to consumer, where you sell things to do with people's hobbies and lives.Most of the businesses we sell to are B2b, which means we sell to owner-run businesses or a one-person band. The owner may be working with a partner or a small team, but the business is small. And we consider ourselves one of those businesses too as unless you’re making more than $10 million a year, you're still a small business.The key here is that businesses in the B2b category behave like consumers. When buying products or services for their company, business owners tend to use their own money. So it's worth bearing in mind that at the end of your emails, there are human beings who expect to hear from you in a certain way.The difference between B2B and B2C email marketing Let's say you're a large government lobbying organisation to do with climate change. You'll be expected to show up in a way that's very different from the way we show up in people's inboxes, for example (i.e. with rude jokes full of innuendo and swear words!) The reason we act the way we do is because of our understanding of ourselves and our market. We show up in a way that’s acceptable by our market but that’s also different and makes us stand out.A large government lobbying organisation will communicate with its clients in a completely different way. They still have to build trust and authority, just like all of us do, but it’s done differently. If they started going off on a tangent about something silly (like we do in our emails), that wouldn’t give the right indicator for them as a company.And it’s not just about the words because those only contribute to a small percentage of the way someone may interpret that message. How you say something is what allows people to read between the lines and get the real essence of what you're like. You can build trust and authority by showing testimonials and social proof, but you can also do it through the tone in which you speak. If you get an email that reads as if a college professor wrote it, it'll have a different level of credibility than something jokey.The words aren’t that important. What matters the most are the campaign structures that you create, the stories you put together, and the tone you use. They can be ridiculous and funny (if you want to) for B2C but more authoritative and professional if your market is more serious. And the beauty of the campaigns we offer inside our membership The League is that you can take the emails and change the words without breaking the whole thing.What about the different sales cycles between B2B and B2C?Sales cycles may take a little longer for B2B compared to B2C. With B2C (and possibly B2b), you may find that consumers have the ability and the power to buy a little faster. And yet, they will still need your product to be presented through different offers before they buy.For example, in B2B, you could use different email sequences or email engines (as we call them) for different phases of the sales cycle to move your prospective clients through the cycles. We often talk about having three email engines:The lead or subscriber engine is designed to get leads to become first-time customers.Then you have the customer engine to get people to buy from you again.And then you have the winning customers back engine, aimed at the people who haven’t bought from you for a while.With B2B, you may even have multiple phases of a sales cycle. It could be that you've identified some leads, then booked an initial meeting, then maybe booked a demo, followed by a consultation period. After that, you may need to go through Ts&Cs and the specifics of the product the client is going to buy, and then finally you seal the deal. You may even have a maintenance package after that. So you might need a bunch of email campaigns to move people from one phase to the next. That’s what email marketing helps you do. It helps you move people from where they are to the next step until they’re ready to buy. It’s a bit like a game of rounders or baseball, where you need to focus on moving from one base to the next. Who is sending your emails?Something we recommend for B2B and B2b as well as B2C is to be consistent with who the email comes from. Because people buy from people. When you send an email with the objective to move someone from one stage of the buyer’s journey to the next, you want that email to be from a human being.That's why we recommend you use your name, the salesperson's name, or even a fictional character’s name if you want. Whatever you do, use an actual name, and you'll see your open rates go up. That's because the level and depth of your relationship with that person are going to increase. Relationships are established with people and things we can relate to. So both the person sending the email and the copy of the email itself have to be something that people can relate to.Think about it - on a day-to-day basis, we all get emails from a lot of institutions and organisations (such as banks or credit card companies), and they all tend to come from the company. But we think that should change - emails should come from a person. Because that allows us to establish deeper relationships and feel like we're communicating with actual humans.In the past, small companies would pretend they had several members of staff to make themselves look bigger. Faking having bigger operations was a thing! But it's not anymore, and small businesses embrace having that personal touch. The world has shifted, but big businesses continue to try and look like big businesses. Remember - there's power in being seen as an individual. In a world that's being taken over by robots and AI, you want to know that there's an actual human being behind the emails you receive. If all big businesses started doing that, it would be powerful.[thrive_leads id='8822']How do people join your list? What was your relationship with that person in the first place? If someone joins your newsletter with the expectation that John will be sending daily tips about DIY, make sure John sends daily tips about DIY! Don't have the emails suddenly come from a company people can't even recognise. Also, always remember you're sending emails to human beings. People in B2B or B2b might be buying your product because they're trying to help their business or the company they work with, but they’re also serving themselves. So how can your lead magnet, your email content, and the offers you make benefit the person directly? Can you save them time? Can you make them look better with their boss? Help them get a pay rise or a promotion?Think about serving the individual at the end of each email, even in B2B and B2b. We have a structure we teach our clients that is a way of extrapolating and communicating the benefits of something in a deep way that resonates with people. So if you're selling a solution that helps people grow their business, you can mention it'll get them more employees, or it'll afford them a better live streaming setup, for example. These are all business benefits. But because you're talking to the human being who’s running the business, you also want to mention the personal benefits to the individual.For instance, we may say that by building our SCORE email engine, you’ll be able to grow your business, but also for you personally, you’ll know that every new lead that comes in is being taken care of and always presented with the best possible offers and opportunities to buy without you having to be physically there. A great personal benefit is that you can be at home with your family and spend more time with them, for example. Your business will be growing, amplifying, and compounding the sales while you take the dog for a walk or your children swimming.What can B2B learn from B2C email marketing?Largely speaking, B2B needs more personification - we need to bring some elements of B2C email marketing into it. How? You can get creative and use a mascot or someone who works in your business and push them to the forefront of your marketing. You could even create characters to establish an emotional bond with your audience because that's essential to be able to relate to someone. And without a human being, there's no connection. How can you connect with a brand if you think of their company in terms of tall glass skyscrapers in the middle of some city? People in the UK will be familiar with comparethemarket.com, which have a meerkat as the character that’s front and centre of their marketing. They personified an insurance company, which is traditionally something very dry. And that's genius because the meerkat allows us to create an immediate emotional resonance with that brand. And that takes up more space in our brains than a company without a person behind it. Or think about gocompare.com, whose face is a Welsh opera singer. You may not want to go to these extremes, but whatever you do, show up as a person.You could do that by introducing people from your team and sharing something they said, for example. If you look at a lot of what comedians do, they share naturally funny stories inspired by their family or friends. All the comedian has to do is deliver the story in a way that doesn’t remove the funny aspect of it. So you could share things that your team or your customers say. They don’t have to be funny - it's just about using natural content from what’s around you. Because these are the things that build relationships with people. It’s about humanising your content because you’re human and your customers are humans! And it’s time to push a more H2H (human-to-human) type of communication in email marketing.[thrive_leads id='8854']Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line is “I’m spilling the tea…” which is a phrase that commonly refers to gossiping. But the story in the email was genuinely about Rob spilling a cup of tea on a plane! And this makes the subject line interesting. You take a commonly used phrase that means something, and you use it literally in your email. It doesn’t feel like a tricky subject line. But when you read the email, you find it goes in a different direction than where people expect. And that's what works well, so check it out!Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodes5 MAJOR Problems With Your B2B Email Marketing (And How To Easily Fix Them).EVERYTHING You Need To Know About Email Marketing And Storytelling To Write Emails That Sell Like Crazy.How To Send Personalised Email To All The Right People – Getting Friendly With Joe Fier.FREE list 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 B2B vs B2C 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. And please do tell us! If you don't spend time on email marketing, what do you really fill your working days with? We'd love to know!
undefined
Dec 20, 2023 • 30min

How To Create AWESOME Landing Pages For Lead Generation

Ever come across the terms landing pages or squeeze pages? Interesting phrase, don't you think? So let's shed some light on this - what are landing pages for lead generation? How can you create an awesome landing page to get more people on your email list? What should and shouldn't go on there? Let's find out! SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:23) Grab our amazing resource Click Tricks totally for FREE!(5:10) Do you really need a landing page to collect leads?(7:59) Why offer a lead magnet on your landing page?(12:31) Why do you need to put so much effort into something free?(13:53) Don't call it a FREE anything!(17:15) What should you include on your landing page for lead generation?(22:05) Tell them they're joining your email list!(24:52) Add social proof.(26:54) Time to start sending out email campaigns.(28:53) Subject line of the week.[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]Do you really need a landing page to collect leads? The short answer is yes. But first, let's go over what landing pages do. To us, landing pages are lead-generation tools that help business owners and email marketers capture email addresses. Some people talk about sales pages as landing pages, but we find that super confusing (and our students do too!) Let's think about this for a second - your sales pages are what you're sending people links to in your emails. And if you're emailing people, you already have their email address! So for the sake of clarity, what we're talking about here are opt-in pages, where the only thing someone can do is to put their details into a form to either register for something or grab a thing for free.The reason why you want to collect someone's email address can be wide and varied - it could be a free class, a webinar, a master class, a report, or a lead magnet. Ultimately, a landing page is a lead-generation tool.So you do need one.Because otherwise, how are you going to collect email addresses? Why offer a lead magnet on your landing page? If someone comes into your world, you want to get them on your email list, right? And that’s what lead magnets are for. You give them to people at the start of their journey with you. Once they’re on your list, if you create new lead magnets, you don’t need to send them to your existing subscribers.The only exception is if you’re doing a product launch and want to create a waiting list by asking your existing subscribers to qualify their interest for that product in advance. You're essentially asking them to raise their hands. This is useful for segmentation, or if you’re having a slight change of direction and want people to pre-qualify for something.For example, we could use a PDF or Google Doc to help us pre-qualify some of our existing subscribers for our Accelerator programme, which is a higher-ticket, more intensive, high-calibre programme. We could create a document that outlines what’s involved in the programme, and ask people to tell us they're interested so we can inform them when the doors open again. That particular lead magnet would serve a marketing collateral purpose. But we wouldn't it to our whole list. Lead generation pages are also useful to send people to a specific location. If you're doing a talk or a podcast interview, you don’t want to send people to your website. Because that’s full of information that will get them distracted. Instead, you send them to a landing page where all they can do is give you their email address.Why do you need to put so much effort into something free?Creating a lead magnet (and an opt-in page to go with it) is a lot of work. But you do need to put that work in because you want your lead magnet to appear valuable. You want to convince people that it can do something for them.  Let's not forget that an email address is a form of currency! You may be giving something away 'for free' (i.e. no money is exchanged), but people's email address does have a value attached to them. You're asking for something precious in the form of personal data. It’s a way for you to communicate directly with that person.More often than not, people read their emails on their phones, so you practically get access to that! And that's valuable, especially as you might also start sending them emails every day from now on. And they don’t know you yet - they don't know they can trust you. Believe it or not, there are people out there who make it very hard for subscribers to leave their lists. And that’s not the way to do email marketing, but it happens. Don't call it a FREE anything! A tip we’d like to share when it comes to creating the copy for your lead magnet is to never call it a “free” PDF, workbook, eBook, or whatever it might be. Instead, say something along the lines of “Get your totally free copy”. It’s a slight shift, and it makes a difference because the implication is that you created something of value, which is not free, but you’re giving it to people for free. This is an important distinction from a copywriting perspective – it makes people want your lead magnet more. Even with our resource, Click Tricks, we don't tend to say it's free. Instead, we say we're giving it to people for free. And that implies that it has high value. If you can, it’d be great for you to sell the same thing elsewhere and give people proof that you're selling it for money. What should you include on your landing page for lead generation? First of all, let's mention something you shouldn't do. Don't put your massive company logo at the top of the page. Because when it comes to opt-in pages, the message is more important. So if you want your logo on the page, have it on top but just a bit smaller. You want the thing that grabs people’s attention to be the headline – the promise that your lead magnet is going to deliver. When you design your page, don't add too many things that compete for your audience's attention. Focus on one thing and make it the most prominent - the biggest and boldest.Then, make what people are getting with your lead magnet super clear. What is it exactly? You can talk about the benefits but also the medium. Is it a PDF? Is it an instant download? Or a series of videos? Be as specific as you can be about what you’re giving them. Specificity and proof are super important. So you’ll want to say it’s a “26-page instant download”, for example, or a “12 minute and 32 seconds video training”. Build a true picture of the thing you’re going to give them so people can decide if it’s for them.Also, another objection people have to downloading something (and giving you their email address) may have to do with its quality. Especially if it’s a free thing, is it going to be good enough? Tell them how long it’s going to take for them to see results after using your resource. For example, we have a product called Batch It Crazy, which is a batching method for writing lots of emails. And we promise that by the end of 90 minutes, you’ll have 365 ideas for your emails. So make sure you tell people what outcome you can promise them and be specific about what it can do for them.[thrive_leads id='8822']Tell them they're joining your email list! A very important thing to do from the very beginning of your relationship with your subscribers is to set up the belief that they’re joining a newsletter. Be honest with people and let them know you’re giving them something for free in exchange for their email address to join your newsletter.So either say something along the lines of: “Join my newsletter and get a free copy of my thing” or “Get a free copy of my thing when you join my newsletter”. And then have some copy or a sub-heading above the opt-in box that tells people that when they give you their email address, they'll start receiving a daily hint, tip, story idea, or piece of information to help with whatever you do.Why do this? Because the days of tricking people onto your email list are long gone! If you’re clinging to that because you’re worried that people won’t want to join your newsletter, you need to have more belief in what you offer. People always have the choice to unsubscribe if they no longer want what you send out, so be upfront. They're joining your email list - make that clear and transparent.And if you get fewer people opting in as a result, be sure that the ones who do join will be higher-quality subscribers. You’ll have an easier time not having to filter them out of your list later on because they don’t engage and clog your deliverability. Just make it obvious on the page that they’re going to be added to your email list and sell them the benefit of joining – tell them how you’re going to be solving their problem even faster.Even with the design of your landing page, don’t hide anything. Make it bright and visible – do whatever you need to do to draw everyone’s eyes onto the button. Add social proofBelow the fold, you can also add social proof. Do you have testimonials? Help people decide if they want your lead magnet by showing them what others think about it. This builds on the belief that your lead magnet is a good thing, and people are getting value from it.You could even use one of the tools in our Automate Hero suite (Scarcity Hero) to tell your audience they’re joining X amount of other people who have also subscribed to your newsletter. So when people land on your opt-in page, they can see how many other people have also downloaded your lead magnet.And if you're worried that that number may be small, it doesn't matter. People will see and interpret numbers in different ways. Even if you have a small list or you’re just starting, people might view a small number as a sign they're getting more personalised attention or something unique. They’re joining a rather intimate group of people where they’re perhaps not just a number. And to them, that's a great thing!Time to start sending out email campaignsSo what do you do next? Once people have opted in, you can offer them what's often referred to as a tripwire offer. If you're already inside our membership The League, you'll know we have an email sequence called the Encore campaign, which uses reverse psychology because it involves not selling things straightaway and foreshadowing the sale.One last thing to remember is to only ask people for the information you need to be able to send them your lead magnet. For example, if you’re sending a digital download, don’t ask for their physical address. If you don’t need it, don’t ask for their phone number or gender. There needs to be a good reason for the information you request in the opt-in form. Make it congruent and ask for as little information as possible.  [thrive_leads id='8854']Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line is “Quick. Hide the sweets” and is about Rob’s hatred for Halloween and children who go around trick or treating asking for sweets. Rob just can’t be bothered with it – he’s the bah-humbug! of Halloween. And that was the story in the email that inspired the subject line. So check it out!Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesCold Email Outreach – Is The Technique Sleazy or Super Effective?Fix Your Traffic Problem For Good, With Todd Brown.How To Create THE Most Successful Re-Engagement Email Campaign (And Smash Your Sales Targets).FREE list 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 landing pages for lead generation) 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. And please do tell us! If you don't spend time on email marketing, what do you really fill your working days with? We'd love to know!
undefined
Dec 13, 2023 • 34min

How Cheryl Increased Her Membership Conversion Rate By 84%

Can email marketing help grow your business and make more money? What if you have a membership? And what if you help people in teaching and education? Yes, yes, and yes! So let's hear it from our client Cheryl Hatch from Preschool Plan It, who implemented only two of our email campaigns and increased her membership conversion rate by a whopping 84%!And there's a lot more to come for Cheryl. Want to get the full story?Let's go. SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:22) Join our FREE Facebook group. (3:13) Who is Cheryl Hatch?(5:58) When did Cheryl get started with email marketing?(7:37) What was Cheryl's biggest barrier with email marketing? (9:16) What are some of the changes Cheryl made when she came into our world?(14:07) Implementing her first automated campaigns.(18:30) What results did Cheryl get with her email marketing?(22:50) What does this increase in conversion rate mean for Cheryl?(26:12) How does Cheryl feel about her email marketing now?(28:13) What's the one action that had the most impact on Cheryl's email marketing?(30:10) Subject lines of the week.[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]Who is Cheryl Hatch?Cheryl serves preschool teachers who work with 3 and 4-year-olds in a group setting. With two decades of experience in the education space, Cheryl launched a website jam-packed with awesome resources back in 2010 to help preschool teachers create their lesson plans. She managed to grow her audience by adding ads and affiliate links to her website. Online traffic went crazy (those were the days!), and the teachers in her audience started asking for more resources. That's why, in 2016, she turned her website into a monthly recurring membership, complete with lesson plans and professional development training.When did Cheryl get started with email marketing?When she first started her email marketing, Cheryl didn't have a lead magnet. She'd simply ask her website visitors to join her newsletter. For a long time, her email marketing consisted of sending out a monthly newsletter packed with lots and lots of information. Around 2015, Cheryl started doing more research on how she could give her audience more and perhaps launch a business.Although she had no product yet, she realised she had so much information in her newsletter that she could send it twice a month instead. That would give her a better chance to drive people back to her blog for ads and affiliates.What was Cheryl's biggest barrier with email marketing?Was that a comfortable transition for Cheryl? Not at all. Increasing the frequency of her emails was a true barrier for Cheryl - she was quite worried about annoying her audience. After all, she'd promised them a once-a-month newsletter when they first signed up, and she felt she was breaking a promise.It took her a long time to change her mindset and understand she wasn’t sending emails for the sake of sending them. She was sending emails because she could help people! And by sharing more bite-sized information, she was also giving her audience a chance to go and implement her tips in the classroom and make a difference. But until she truly realised that, emailing more frequently was her barrier.What are some of the changes Cheryl made when she came into our world?The first thing Cheryl did when she came into our world was to re-write her welcome sequence by implementing our 4-day Getting to Know You sequence. Because of the psychological tips that are at the basis of all our campaigns, Cheryl managed to increase her engagement. People started responding to her emails and telling her how much they agreed with what she was sharing. While that didn’t increase her conversions just yet, it improved her deliverability rate. Cheryl also created a lead magnet in the shape of a PDF download with some activities to help teachers create a week-long lesson plan. Her lead magnet is something that Cheryl sends out at the start of every month with inspiration for the month ahead. Another change that Cheryl made when she joined our world (courtesy of Rob) was to increase the frequency of her emails. She thought about it for 6 months, but eventually, Cheryl started sending out a second email every week on a Thursday. Because that's the point in the week when teachers feel burnt out and could do with some inspiration. So Cheryl sends out a quote and an image to wish her teachers a great rest of the week.She also added a Super Signature at the bottom of all her emails, which directs people to her website or her membership offer. There’s no call to action in the email as such – just the Super Signature. And Cheryl still gets a lot of replies from the teachers in her audience acknowledging how much they needed the encouragement.Implementing her first automated campaignsCheryl also started looking at the campaigns we offer inside our membership The League intending to increase her membership conversion rate. After becoming familiar with the idea of using a SCORE engine of email campaigns (where the acronym stands for Sales, Content-led, Objection handling, Risk reversal, and Engagement), Cheryl got to work. Because she already had the Engagement piece covered with her value-packed newsletter, she started focusing on the S (sales) and the C (content-led) campaigns first.Rather than feeling like she's bombarding people with requests to buy, Cheryl was pleased with our approach, which helps you outline what you have to offer and how it can benefit the people in your audience. This is one of the main things Cheryl learnt from us, she said. And it's this idea of talking about your product in a way that doesn't just focus on features and benefits. Instead, she's telling her audience how they can use her products to become awesome preschool teachers.As a result, Cheryl doesn’t feel salesy anymore. She knows she sells a product that helps people. And that's changed how she feels about talking about her membership. Her resources are exactly what every preschool teacher needs! So she's not scared about doing a call-to-action to her membership in her newsletter, for example. It's easy to let people know how the membership can truly help. What results did Cheryl get with her email marketing?In the 3 months between May and July 2022, Cheryl's membership conversion rate (i.e. people joining her membership from her email list) was just under 2.5%. This is when all Cheryl had in place were her lead magnet, her newsletter, and our Getting to Know You sequence.Cheryl set herself a goal to increase her membership conversion rate to 5%. So she revamped her Getting to Know You sequence and added a sales campaign to her email engine - i.e. our 6-day Overture campaign, which Cheryl chose to send out every other day instead of daily. She also put a 3-day content-led campaign in place (our Daisy Chain campaign) with pre-recorded videos that people can watch at their own pace.Now, instead of receiving 'welcome' emails for 4 days and then going into her newsletter, Cheryl’s new subscribers go through about 21 days of emails. When Cheryl looked at the same 3-month period for this year (May to July 2023), she noticed that the percentage of people joining her membership from her list is just under 4.6%, which takes her super close to an amazing conversion rate of 5%! And that’s with only two new email campaigns in place – she’s not even done yet![thrive_leads id='8822']What does this increase in conversion rate mean for Cheryl?Cheryl is now communicating how she helps people in a much better way because she's able to understand what they need. While she doesn't run live activities with her audience (because of different time zones), her emails feel ‘real’ – this is Cheryl’s voice. And people feel like they know her. What's interesting is that when looking at the conversion rates of the individual campaigns, Cheryl said, the sales aren’t immediate. They’re small numbers. But over time, she achieved a huge increase in conversion because the campaigns she implemented solidified the know, like, and trust factor for her audience. By the time people start receiving her newsletter, they already know they can trust Cheryl. And that’s when the sales happen.This is important because a lot of email marketers expect to run campaigns and make sales instantly. And to an extent, that happens. But these automations are also building the beliefs, information, context, and understanding of what someone’s offer is. The sales campaigns that are part of our SCORE email engine build the context you need for future campaigns. Our sales campaign shares the information about the offer that people need before they move on to the content-led campaign.So while you can (and should) expect to make sales in each campaign, what also matters is the knock-on effect - it’s about the bigger picture. And that's how the email campaigns, when linked together, make a real difference.How does Cheryl feel about her email marketing now?Cheryl feels great about her email marketing now, and she’s excited about the campaigns she’s created. At the time of our chat, Cheryl was putting her subscribers through her newly created objection-handling campaign. And she's looking forward to working through the finishing touches of her risk reversal campaign, which will offer a low-dollar ticket item to show people what they can get in the membership. What’s the one action that had the most impact on Cheryl’s email marketing?Cheryl thinks the one action that made the most difference was changing her mindset around why she was doing email marketing. Yes, she wants to make sales. But above all, she wants to help make a change for her audience. By keeping that in mind, Cheryl can create better campaigns to promote her membership. Suddenly, she feels she's being of service. And if people unsubscribe as a result, that’s okay - there are enough people out there for everyone. So it’s about switching your mindset and understanding that you email people because you know you can serve them. And if you talk to them like a real person (and not like some sort of sales machine), doing email marketing becomes a lot easier. [thrive_leads id='8854']Subject line of the weekThis week (courtesy of Cheryl), we're sharing not one but three subject lines that had great open rates: “He looked perplexed. What did she say?” This one plays on that curiosity we always talk about. People want to know who looked perplexed. And what did she say? And who is she anyway? And the story was about teaching preschool math!“Spiders: creepy or fascinating?” This subject line was used to promote one of Cheryl’s low-dollar one-off products. It sounds like a poll, but the email talks about the fact that some children find spiders creepy while others think they're fascinating. The email was about promoting the resource with some great activities to do with children in class so they can learn more about spiders.And “It’s like a game of whack-a-mole.” This game can certainly create anxiety in some people - you hit a mole, and another one pops up. And the challenge gets harder and harder because the moles pop out faster. This email was about the feeling teachers can get in preschool when you're helping a child over here, and something else that needs your attention happens over there! The story proceeds to prove how teachers don’t have the time in their week to create lesson plans.Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesLearn How To Keep Your Members Forever And Ever With THE BEST Email Marketing Membership Retention Strategies On The Planet.What Emails Should You Send Your Paying Members? with Mike and Callie from Membership Geeks.How A League Member Made Over $10k With Just ONE Email Campaign – Case Study With Aidan O’Sullivan.FREE list 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 our client Cheryl Hatch increased her membership conversion rate by 84%) 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. And please do tell us! If you don't spend time on email marketing, what do you really fill your working days with? We'd love to know!
undefined
Dec 6, 2023 • 34min

What The Heck Are Cross-selling And Upselling?

Ever heard the terms cross-selling and upselling and wondered what they have to do with email marketing? Aren't these 'marketing things' that happen at checkout? Can you even do cross-selling and upselling with email marketing?Oh yes, you can.And when you use these strategies in the right way in your business, you'll start making loads more sales.So let's find out how, shall we?SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:11) Want a FREE resource to get more clicks on your emails? Check out Click Tricks.(4:05) What's the difference between cross-selling and upselling?(7:23) How we do cross-selling and upselling in our business. (12:33) Sell fast - turn subscribers into customers.(18:10) Maximise the value of your customers (quickly).(21:32) The biggest mistakes people make with cross-selling and upselling.(27:44) Putting together your cross-sell and upsell offers.(30:47) Create systems to turn customers into repeat customers.(32:46) Subject line of the week.[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]What's the difference between cross-selling and upselling?When it comes to the difference between cross-selling and upselling, in our business, we use the terms fairly interchangeably. And that probably upsets a lot of people in the marketing world. So here are some definitions for you:Upselling is about selling someone a perceivably larger thing – something more expensive or of higher commitment.Cross-selling means selling people other things that are around the same hierarchy as what they already bought (or maybe even lower value). And this can also mean different offers of the same product. For example, you could sell a full-price membership but also a lower-rung type product for people who don't want to pay the full price. They pay less but also get less content or value. Fair, right?How we do cross-selling and upselling in our businessSo let’s talk about what cross-selling and upselling look like in our business. When people come into our world, we want to sell them our core product, which is our membership The League. We then upsell our members one of two things.The first product is our Accelerator programme, which is a higher-ticket, a cohort-driven programme with limited capacity we run live a few times a year.The second product is our Agency - limited capacity and much higher ticket price. But in all honesty, terminology doesn’t matter that much to us. It’s more about maximising how much someone is able to spend with you. So if people are in a transaction, you want to encourage them to upgrade their order and spend more money with you than they’d originally anticipated (in a totally ethical way, of course). That’s an upsell. But if the transaction is complete, and you’re offering this customer other products over time, that’s cross-selling territory.What we think makes a difference is that we built a business that's sustainably profitable and manageable where we don't have to create new products all the time. We have a good ecosystem whereby people join our email list (either free or paid) and go through a sequence of emails that maximise their ability to buy something. And then we upsell them to increase their customer value. That’s why we haven’t created anything new (other than for the fun of it) for ages – we don’t need to. What we have is sustainable.So if you're going to engage in activities such as teaching or speaking (we do because we love it), make sure you do it in such a way that enables you to sell more of what you already offer. The practicalities of cross-selling and upsellingSell fast - turn subscribers into customersThe first thing we recommend is that you never hold off going live with your product or service because you don’t have an upsell or cross-sell offering just yet. If you don't launch, you won't know if you can convert your front-end offer. It's tempting to wait until you've created a bigger funnel, especially if you're losing money on ads. But you're better off spending time tweaking your core offer until you find one that resonates with your audience. Cross-sell and upsell offers are great for making the economics work, but they’re part of the second phase. The first phase is to ensure you are converting your core offer. Because if you're not, you're wasting your time and money. Even if you're selling your core product at a loss at first, at least you know you can sell it. And then you can add cross-sell and upsell propositions to maximise your return on costs. In other words, sell fast. That's what we do. When subscribers come into our world, for 60 days, they go through an automated system of emails that will turn them into customers. And then in the following 90 days, they get emails that will maximise their value to our business.And it's all automated! We don't have to be in the trenches on a daily basis wondering where the next dollar is coming from. We’re out there preaching to get people in the system at the front end. But once the wheels are turning, our automated system is taking care of the rest.Maximise the value of your customers (quickly) Something that isn't hugely talked about is that a lot of us business owners end up being out of pocket because of ad spend. Acquiring subscribers has a cost, and it can be hard to get to a point where your core offer fully covers your ad spend. But the good news is that once people are in your world, with the right systems, you can make that money back. And you want to do it quickly!That's what we're really good at - getting people to buy from us fast and then maximising the value of that customer really quickly. We don't wait around - we want to get people to buy now. Our automated email engine turns subscribers into customers fast so we get our ROI. That's why we have a series of offers designed to get our customers to spend more money with us - we simply can't afford to be out of pocket!And the good thing is that it happens predictably because our system is automated. We don’t have to remember to run a promotion - our email campaigns go out automatically, even when we’re busy doing something else. We’re confident and happy to go and speak at events to bring people into the front end because we know our back-end system is predictable. Every single person who comes through our front door will go through that same system. There’s no choice - it's a chain of events (we call it a customer engine) that turns your subscribers into customers.The biggest mistakes people make with cross-selling and upsellingA mistake we often see business owners make is to present a customer with a lot of different offers at checkout, one after the other. As a rule of thumb, if someone says no twice, that's enough. Let them buy the product they want without having a never-ending chain of offers. As a customer, you don’t want to say no to something just to be offered something else and then another thing and another thing!Something else we recommend you don't do is to make offers that are not related. We're quite strict with our cross-sell and upsell offers - we want them to be tightly related, congruent, and relevant to the main product. So don't go completely off-piste and end up offering something unrelated. It's really not about shoving stuff into your funnel to make it bigger!Also, make sure you're not one of those people who are so focused on creating new products that you forget to create a system around what you already have. Instead, build an automated email marketing system that you set up once and runs forever (and makes you lots of money).Once you've done that, coming up with new products is great. But only do it when you have the freedom and bandwidth to do so - not when you don't yet have a team or automation in place. Build a system around your existing offers first and then focus on new products. There's nothing wrong with pivoting if and when your business has changed. But don't do that every few months! Because otherwise you'll hit a ceiling and won't be able to scale your business. [thrive_leads id='8822']Putting together your cross-sell and upsell offersWe think it’s important to create some sort of congruence with the offers you put together. So for example, let's say your front-end product is a series of videos for $67. You'll need a lot of positioning, marketing, and copywriting to convince people on their checkout journey to spend, say, $97 for an eBook. It’s not impossible because it always depends on how you frame it. But if your core product has more perceived value, the upsell itself will make your core product appear even more valuable. People often forget that the actual product you sell is part of the marketing - it needs to have perceived value in itself. So when pricing your upsell offers, think about the perceived increased value that it gives to your core product. If your product is $67, your upsell doesn’t have to go incrementally up. We’ve seen successful funnels where the front end might be $300, but the upsell is cheaper at $47. And that converts like crazy because of the price anchoring that’s offered by the front-end product people already bought. The other thing you can do is to go dramatically higher. So your product might be $67, but your upsell is $1,000, for example. That works too.Be careful when offering your time as an upsell! When putting together your upsell offers, we recommend you don't offer your time (such as a coaching call) as an upsell. It’s a really tempting thing to do when creating a funnel if you don't have any other products ready. But offering your time doesn’t always work. In fact, you might find it hurts your conversion because not everyone wants to talk to someone they’ve never met – some people may find that intimidating or like to be left alone!Create systems to turn customers into repeat customersCross-selling and upselling fit in your business in two places. The first place is at checkout, where you want to present your customers with congruent, well-thought-out bump offers. The second place is within your email marketing. That's the place where you use your email engine to turn those customers into repeat customers!Your job as a business owner is to maximise the value of every customer. So always look at how can scale your business and make it more profitable, rather than only focusing on the front end. When people come into your world, try to sell to them immediately. Use ongoing email automation to maximise that person’s value to your business. Because launching something new all the time isn't sustainable!  [thrive_leads id='8854']Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line is “Ruining your day”. It’s a bit like that subject line you may have seen that says “bad news.” These are similar because they make people want to know what the bad news is. And subject lines like those tend to have a high click-through rate. So check it out!Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesHow To Create A Member Onboarding Sequence That Your Members Will Love.Best Email Marketing Campaign To Get Your Customers To Buy Again (And Again)Super Cool Member Growth Strategies To Attract New Customers With Email Marketing.FREE list 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 cross-selling and upselling and how to do it right) 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. And please do tell us! If you don't spend time on email marketing, what do you really fill your working days with? We'd love to know!
undefined
Nov 29, 2023 • 31min

How Do You Create The BEST Sales Email Campaign?

How do you run the perfect sales email campaign? Should you try and sell in every email you send? When do you send live, broadcast emails and when do you create automated campaigns?These are only some of the questions we answer for you today.And we're willing to bet you can't wait to get all the awesome sauce on this.So let's just get into this, shall we? Let's go!SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:09) Join our FREE Facebook group.(3:59) How often should you sell in your emails?(7:40) When should you send out an email sales campaign?(12:54) What kind of emails should you include in your sales campaign?(16:50) What should you talk about in the emails inside your campaigns?(20:51) What if people unsubscribe from your sales emails?(23:31) What results should you expect from your sales emails?(24:33) How to create an 'email engine' of sales campaigns.(28:59) Join us for a FREE web class!(29:41) Subject line of the week.[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]How often should you sell in your emails? We have a controversial answer to this question. Because email marketing has a cost – every time you send an email, some people will unsubscribe. You may not be selling directly in an email, but you always have to direct people to something they can buy. Because if you're not doing that, you might be losing people through unsubscribes and not making sales!But also, if you’re not selling or directing people towards your product, you’re adding more overwhelm and distraction to that person’s world. And no one needs more of that! What you want to do is to stay in your lane. You have a specialism, so take everybody on your list and on your social media through the beliefs and understandings they need to buy from you. Anything you do and say outside of selling is just more shiny object syndrome. The person is going to get distracted from what you’re talking about, which doesn’t serve you or them.Remember that the people on your list have made the decision to share their email addresses based on something they saw from you. They know you have a solution, and they're interested. So make sure that in all your emails, you send them information that moves them towards buying.  Email isn't the same as social media!The big misunderstanding is that every time you send an email you’re bothering someone - they're going to get annoyed. But even if you're selling to people (or moving people towards buying) in every single email you send, you have to remember email isn’t the same as social media. Social media platforms are a great place to teach people, and not traditionally a place where you sell.Email is different. It's designed for short, useful communication that nudges people in the right direction. It's not the place to be putting long articles or to be referring people to free content all the time. Because people are on your list to solve a problem. And the faster you can help them to get to a solution to that problem, the better.When should you send out an email sales campaign? Our daily emailsLet’s talk about the differences between day-to-day email marketing and sales campaigns. Fundamentally, our business is based on the idea that we email our subscribers every day of the year. We send a short email every day with a few hundred words in it. And it’s usually (although not always) some sort of story from day-to-day life with some kind of lesson (like a teaching moment or some inspiration) that segues into an offer. Sometimes we might ask people to go and listen to a podcast episode, for example. But generally speaking, we sell every day.And even when we don't sell, all of our emails have our Super Signature at the bottom, which has a menu of things that you might be interested in. If, on that day and at that exact moment, you’re looking to take the next steps, you have all the links to go and do that. In fact, our Super Signature makes sales every single week for us.Automated sales campaignsBut we also have sales campaigns. These are full sequences of emails where all the emails work together – they’re not standalone bite-sized pieces. If you send an email today, one tomorrow, and one the day after, it’s like throwing snowballs at someone. It’s a bit like going to watch the sequel to a movie where it doesn’t really matter if you’ve seen the first movie or not because the second movie will still make sense on its own. Daily emails work like that. Because they don’t act together.But with a sales campaign (while each email still needs to make sense on its own) they’re all part of a bigger picture. They’re not standalone. There’s an endpoint because the offer you talk about in the campaign is going to end. So all emails in that campaign lead to a specific destination. That means you have to communicate everything about this offer between the start and end date of the campaign. All the emails you send need to help you build the case, the beliefs, the excitement, the desire, and the proof for someone to go and buy from you.Plus, there needs to be a consequence at the end of this campaign. For example, the bonus ends, and the offer is gone. Or you're going to stop talking about this for a while. Let’s say you were selling an affiliate offer - that product might still be available via someone else, but you’re no longer offering it. You created a sales event out of it, and now the offer is over. Just remember that every email in your campaign needs to build up to an endpoint. A sales campaign has a specific structure – we use the acronym SVVC (which stands for Seed, Validate, Verify, and Close) to teach the various jobs that the emails in a sequence have to do. What kinds of emails should you include in your sales campaign?Send emails to sell!Why do you want to follow a specific structure? Because you don't want to show up in someone’s inbox pretending you’re a friend and then suddenly try to sell them something – that’s aggressive. It’s a surprising flip, and people won’t like that. What you want to do from the beginning of your relationship with each subscriber, is to train them to buy. Show them that you're selling to them regularly. Because you can't start doing it all of a sudden. In fact, one of the things we see over and over is email marketers nurturing their subscribers to death and to the point where people no longer read their emails. They get to a point when they’re not even considering buying from you anymore – you’re just a friend who shows up!We don’t believe in the method of giving loads and loads, hoping that people will eventually buy. Most of us don’t have the luxury of financial backing or playing the long game – we don’t have deep enough pockets! What our types of businesses need instead is an ROI – a return on investments. And a quick one at that! Because if we’ve invested money (on ads, for example) to get people on our email list, we need to make that money back.And the only way we can do that is by having sales campaigns early in our subscriber’s journey instead of nurturing people to death. We don’t want people to go and buy the solution from someone else because we haven’t offered them anything, do we? A major part of selling is amplifying and putting a focused spotlight on the pain, and that doesn’t work if we do it to death.Have good reasons for sending emails! You want every email you send to have its own specific reason. In a campaign, you have enough room to go into detail on one specific thing about you, your product, the audience, the beliefs, the social proof, etc.In fact, one of the worst mistakes we see people make is to tell their audience everything they possibly want to say in one email. Doing that is a mistake! Because it means you have no more points to make in your other emails. Also, if you bury all your valuable points (such as overcoming objections or building beliefs) all in one email, people might miss it! You have to address these points in a way that’s noticeable. What should you talk about in the emails inside your sales campaign? Here are things that you can each put in individual emails. And please don't ask the question in the subject line and then answer it in the email. This is important because the underlying hook, strategy, or angle will ultimately make up at least 80% of the success of your email campaign, so you want to get this right.Here are some ideas for topics (each one is one separate email):Explain who your product is for.Explain the specific problem and transformation people are going to get.Go through the success other people have experienced with this product. (You can share more than one case study in different emails).Talk about why your product or solution is unique or better than what people may have already tried.Send an email based on personal urgency – why should someone fix this problem now? Why is this problem personally urgent?Or, instead, give everyone a fixed reason why they need to buy now. For example, that could be because your offer is going away, and after that, the price will be going up.And on that last point, if you have actual urgency because the offer is closing, then send a few emails the day before and on the last day to remind people that they’re going to miss out if they don’t buy right now. Why so many emails? You’re effectively looking for reasons to send more emails. And if you put all the above information in just one email, then you literally have nothing more to say. We even send an email after the cart has closed to let people know that the offer is gone, and they’ve missed out. And we do that because it’s important to prove to people that when you say something, it really does happen. We call it the SIPI method – say it, prove it. You can even ask people to join a waiting list to be notified when that offer may become available again in the future.So why so many emails? Because your sales campaigns help you create the right beliefs. It's not just about selling - it's also about showing people that when you say something, you deliver on that promise. And they’ll know for next time.As long as you have a good reason for sending emails, there’s no such thing as sending too many emails. That only happens when you repeat yourself or send emails for no reason. If you see people unsubscribe because of that, that’s fair enough. But as long as you’re answering questions that people actually have, they’ll be invested. And that means you won’t lose as many subscribers.What if people unsubscribe from your sales emails?  We treat unsubscribes differently depending on what people are unsubscribing from. If you're running a sales email campaign around your core offer (which we call your Rome because all roads lead to Rome), you want everyone to get that product. And if people unsubscribe at the back of the emails that talk about your core product, let them go. If they’re never going to be interested in buying your main product, you probably don’t want them on your list anyway.However, if you’re sending a campaign about something that’s not your Rome offer, you can do something we call granular unsubscribe. For example, we run a campaign a few times a year that only goes out to people who bought from us in the past but aren’t our existing customers. It doesn’t go out to our main list – only to a specific segment. And that’s an invitation to join our Email Engine Accelerator, which isn't our main offer. It’s a phenomenal, limited, small-group programme with a strict ceiling on how many people can get in.So we send out an email campaign to invite people to join this programme and include a manual link at the bottom so people can remove themselves from that segment if they're not interested in that product. We add a specific tag to those people in our system, but we don't remove them from our list entirely. That’s what we call granular unsubscribe, and it allows people to remove themselves from a particular segment that’s not related to our Rome offer.[thrive_leads id='8822']What results should you expect from your sales emails?When you send out sales email campaigns, you can expect two things – sales and unsubscribes. And of course, the sales will help counteract and balance your unsubscribes. This is the reason why you have to make offers in all your emails – because every time you send an email, some people are going to unsubscribe. And to counterbalance that, you need to get sales.This isn’t a game of list building – it’s a game of customer acquisition! How many of the subscribers on your list can you turn into paying customers?How to create an 'email engine' of sales campaignsLet's do a quick overview of how our system works as a whole. First of all, people join our email list, opt in, and get our lead magnet. Then they go through what we call our email engine. That is a sequence of well-thought-through email campaigns.We have:A sales campaign,A content-led sales campaign,An objection-handling sales campaign,And a risk-reversal sales campaign.All our subscribers go through these campaigns after our welcome sequence (the Get To Know You sequence), which is engagement-driven. When people receive these campaigns, the emails look and feel like the daily emails we promised them when they first signed up. They roughly follow a daily cadence, even though sometimes they’re more frequent.About 80% of the people who ever buy from us do so within 60 days of joining our list and while going through the automated campaigns of our email engine. After that, they start receiving our real, live, daily emails, which are being sent to everyone who’s already completed the engine. Those emails are designed to keep people warm, engaged, and clicking and replying to our emails.Running additional sales campaigns Every now and then, we run sporadic sales campaigns. These might be about the same things we offer in our daily emails, but also promote specific bonuses or discounts, for example. Inside our membership The League, we have campaigns specifically designed for this (with a strong risk-reversal element), such as our Bribe campaign or our Golden Cloak campaign.Or, we might pick a big objection as to why people haven’t bought from us yet and run an objection-handling campaign instead. Other times, we might decide to run a campaign because we’ve launched a new product. Or we might offer an affiliate product so we can earn commissions on sales.When those ad-hoc campaigns end, we go back to daily emails for as long as we want to or need to. Of course, for you, if you don’t send daily emails, these are the live, broadcast emails you send regularly to your list at whatever frequency you set.   And then finally, we have silent campaigns that are waiting in the wings to be deployed and specifically target people's levels of engagement. If we see people who are very engaged and looking at a specific product, we send them the Tell Me More campaign to try and sell this thing they’re interested in. On the flip side, if someone’s become super disengaged (i.e. they haven’t clicked on a link in 60 days), we put them through our LOL Revival campaign. We give them a chance to re-engage, and if they don’t, we remove them from our list.Join us for a FREE web class!If you want to understand how this all fits together, we have a brand new free web class where we’re going to show you exactly how we do it, and how it all works together. Simply head over to this link and access our FREE web class.[thrive_leads id='8854']Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line is just the word “Timewaster.” This is great because, on the surface, this subject line may seem accusatory. You see it in your inbox, and you might think you’ve done something wrong, and you’re going to get in trouble. So you open the email to check, and you find out it’s really nothing, which is a lovely, relaxing feeling of relief. So check it out!Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesHow To Run A Smashing Flash Sale With One of The Best Email Marketing Campaigns In The World.Template For Email Marketing Campaigns.How To Create THE Most Successful Re-Engagement Email Campaign (And Smash Your Sales Targets)FREE list 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...
undefined
Nov 22, 2023 • 24min

How To Create An Awesome Holiday Email Campaign

Is it a good idea to launch a holiday email campaign to acknowledge Black Friday, Christmas, New Year's, Easter, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Back to School, and any other holiday or occasion you can think of? It could even be Tacos Tuesday if you want! Yes, indeed it is. So let's talk about holiday email marketing campaigns. Because you want to do these right. Ready to find out how to get your subscribers to buy like crazy when you launch your next holiday offer? SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:08) Join our FREE Facebook group.(3:32) Why are holidays a good time for email marketing?(6:40) The psychology behind deals and promotions.(9:20) Why holidays are a tricky time for email marketing?(10:55) Create a dedicated offer for that specific holiday.(14:40) Prep people for the offer in advance.(17:13) Launch your holiday offer and surround the market.(20:24) Running a successful holiday email marketing campaign.(21:00) Get people to click on the links in your emails - check out Click Tricks!(22:24) Subject line of the week.[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]Why are holidays a good time for email marketing? Psychologically speaking, when you launch a promotion or a special offer to mark or acknowledge a holiday, you're creating momentum and giving people a reason to buy. A lot of copywriting advice emphasises the importance of using the word “because” in your copy. And we often talk about that too. If you're running a discount or a special offer, give people a reason why you're doing it. It could be anything, but make sure to have a reason. And a holiday is a reason in itself!A great example of this is Prime Day. Amazon went and created their own time of year and reason for having a sale! And it’s no coincidence that they run it in October, which is typically a quieter time for retail. They've effectively manufactured a holiday! Another example is Boxing Day, which is big in the UK but not everywhere in the world. A lot of people will wait until just after Christmas to buy discounted goods in the Boxing Day sale. And why wouldn't they?The psychology behind deals and promotionsSo why are holidays so good? Because people are in proactive, spending mode. It’s the actual opposite of when they’re scrolling on social media, and they suddenly see an ad – this is called interruption marketing. When a holiday is coming up, we're all out there looking for deals. And a holiday promotion (or a sale) is giving your customers an excuse to buy and justify to themselves why they’re buying something.Think about 3 for 2 deals, for example. When we see those types of promotions, we end up buying 3 products instead of the one we originally wanted! So spend more money but still feel like we got a great deal. We got something for free, right? Would we have spent that much money in the first place? Probably not! This shows the promotion worked - we spent more and feel great about it, too. It's because of the self-justification that happens when people grab a deal. And as business owners, we can tap into that. Holidays are the perfect opportunity to get customers to feel good about their purchases. And that’s not in a scammy, unethical, or dodgy way. Because you’re definitely selling them something worthwhile, and they feel happy with that purchase. Why holidays are a tricky time for email marketing? Obviously, holidays are busy times when it comes to people's inboxes. As a consumer, you must have noticed the increase in email volume. Because everyone is doing a promotion! Think of all the emails we get about Black Friday deals in November, for example. There's definitely a lot of noise, and if you're doing your own promotion and sending emails about it, you're competing for people's attention. Your job at this point is to try and stand out. And you want to do that by making sure that in the run-up to your holiday promotion, your deliverability is good.For example, if you only email your list once a year on Black Friday, chances are that a lot of your emails won't be delivered on that day. Email platforms like Gmail, on those days specifically, know that there’s going to be a higher volume of emails. And because of the increased security, a lot of them won't even make it to someone's inbox. So you need to make sure your sender's reputation is great by working on it all year round.Create a dedicated offer for that specific holidaySo how do you stand out with your holiday email marketing campaigns? The first thing you can do is to put together a dedicated offer specifically for that holiday. That means you should avoid rolling the same thing out every year. Don't use every holiday opportunity to sell things from the same angle. If you use the same discount or offer, you're acting like the furniture store where the sale never ends! (You know the one).In this time and age, you definitely want to be more thoughtful about the offers you create. So think about a way to tie your promotion to the specific holiday, rather than offering the same promotion again and again.If you are the type of business that can do that, try and relate your offer to the occasion. A restaurant, for example, could have mums eating for free on Mother’s Day. We understand that’s not always possible or applicable to your business, but definitely keep it different and fresh every time. If you sell courses, for example, you could bundle a couple of them together, and then change that combination up for your next holiday promotion.  Prep people for the offer in advanceAnother tip we can give you is to prime people in advance of your promotion. Don’t just spring the offer on your list at the last minute! Instead, let them know a bit earlier. Tease them and build them up to the offer. You could do that by showcasing what's going on behind the scenes, for example. Build up their excitement so they're queued, primed, and ready for the day.For example, a couple of days before the offer goes live you could run a piece of Facebook ad. Talk about something interesting that has to do with your niche (not your offer, necessarily), and try to build an audience around that. You just want people to get interested in what you do, so you can send them to a waiting list and ask them to opt in to hear more about your sale.When you're ready, you start emailing the people on the waiting list and your usual subscribers, too. You could build excitement by showing the behind-the-scenes of what your offer is. That can be as simple as recording a video showing them what's in the sale but without telling them the price. You share when it’s going live, what they’re going to get, and how much it’s worth. But you don't tell them how much they can get it for.This way, you build up the hype so that people are ready and waiting for you. You effectively give them the heads up. You’re telling them that there is going to be a sale for that particular holiday, and they can soon take advantage of it. [thrive_leads id='8822']Launch your holiday offerThe next step is to launch the offer. To build up the anticipation for it, you send a few emails saying that the sale is coming. You can do a preview or some teasing to add anticipation and curiosity. You could even have people guessing what’s going to be included in your offer and ask them to hit reply to get some engagement out of it.You then send a bunch of emails about it (and probably more than you normally would), and that campaign will culminate with the announcement that the offer is finally here. You might feel uncomfortable with the amount of emails it takes to build anticipation and excitement for this promotion. But we guarantee you won’t be uncomfortable with the amount of sales it generates and how much you put in the bank because of it! That’s a good trade-off, don’t you think?To give you an idea, you might send a couple of emails every day in the lead-up to the launch and then even 3 emails on the day when the promotion closes. The last email on the last day is the final warning to say that the cart is about to close, and you’d hate for people to miss out and have to pay full price. So be comfortable with sending lots of emails to drive people towards your offer!Surround the marketWe use a strategy that we call surrounding the market. All it means is that you want to tell people everywhere about your promotion. So as you’re building your waiting list of people, keep running ads to those who watched your videos and showed interest in your product, for example.You want to create what we call an environment of zero competition through your email list and on your social media. In other words, wherever people look, they'll see your offer because that's all you're talking about at the moment. And the great news is that you don't need a huge budget for that - just a bit of forethought.Running a successful holiday email marketing campaignBy now, we hope we convinced you that you don't want to wake up on the morning of a holiday and decide to run a promotion just because everyone else is. That’s probably not going to be hugely effective for you. You missed the boat! If that's the case, just consider it a lesson learnt and get ready to launch a campaign for the next holiday. Start preparing, planning, and writing the material, and go out all guns blazing on the next campaign.Not sure where to start? Pretty much all of the email marketing campaigns inside our membership The League will work for this. We have a dedicated Black Friday campaign, but this can be applied to any other holiday or period. And once you tie your offer with the work you're doing on other platforms (social media, ads, etc.) you've got the recipe for a successful holiday email campaign. Get people to click on the links in your emails! Obviously, to get people to see your offer, you first need to make sure they open your emails and click on the links inside to go check out the sales page. And in order to do that, you'll want to maximise your chances by training your subscribers to click on the links inside your emails. Because if they don’t, they'll never get to the stage where they can enter their credit card information and buy from you! So don’t let your audience become blind to the links in your emails and scroll past them simply because they always look the same.That’s why we created a FREE resource with 12 different ways of dressing up the links in your emails. It helps you capture people's attention and makes them want to click and go check out your offers. If you want to get your mitts onto this lovely free piece of content, go grab Click Tricks.[thrive_leads id='8854']Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line is “We’ve kept this secret (from you).” And it’s an interesting idea because it sounds like we’re building up to a surprise. But then because we added the bit “from you” in brackets, it makes the subject line sound almost sinister. It’s like we didn’t tell you, specifically, about this thing. Does it mean everyone else knows? No one wants to be the butt of a joke, right? So people will open the email driven by curiosity to find out what that’s all about. Check it out!Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesHow To Run A Smashing Flash Sale With One of The Best Email Marketing Campaigns In The World.How To Get Back On The Email Wagon When You Fall Off (Back To School Edition)The 2 Best Times Of Day To Send Promotional Emails – Making Bank With Paul Counts.FREE list 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 run a super successful holiday email campaign over and over) 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. And please do tell us! If you don't spend time on email marketing, what do you really fill your working days with? We'd love to know!
undefined
Nov 15, 2023 • 37min

How Jeri Launched A Brand New Business And Made $27k

Want to hear the story of how our client Jeri Anderson from West Texas Weight Loss launched a brand new business and used email marketing to make $27,000 in month ONE while being on vacation for a third of that time? We bet you do. Let's get into it, then. SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:13) Want a FREE resource to get more clicks on your emails? Check out Click Tricks.(3:46) Who is Jeri Anderson and what does she do?(7:24) When did Jeri start to use email marketing in her business?(12:59) What were some of the barriers Jeri faced when she started email marketing?(19:41) Starting with ZERO contacts on their email list!(20:51) What was the first thing that Jeri did when she started email marketing?(24:16) Driving people to discovery calls. (29:18) How Jeri finds out the level of motivation from their prospective clients.(31:59) Is Jeri running loads of sales campaigns?(35:31) Subject line of the week.[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]Who is Jeri Anderson and what does she do?Jeri is a long-time customer and friend of ours. Based in Texas, together with her business partner Darci, she offers a virtual 4-month weight loss programme that uses nutraceuticals and an eating plan. It's a fantastic product that enables people to lose 10-15% of their body weight in the first 60 days and gives them all the tools to keep the weight off and maintain what they've achieved. Jeri and Darci's clients use an online portal where they receive daily emails. The content is used to educate people and move them through the programme but also teach them about health and nutrition, so they have all the information they need once the programme is over. Jeri and Darci also run one-on-one coaching calls once a week for the first two months of the programme and then every two weeks after that, so it's a fairly high-touch and effective programme. When did Jeri start using email marketing in her business?Jeri had followed us for a number of years before she started using email marketing. Before launching their weight loss business, Jeri and Darci had been running a very successful and established chiropractor clinic where they treated patients for chronic pain. They noticed their clients' pain was often perpetuated by an overloaded frame, so they started looking for ways to help their clients with weight loss too. After offering the service through their clinic for 5 years, they started being approached by more and more people who wanted help with weight loss but didn't need chiropractic services. That's when they made the decision to launch a brand new business and start offering weight loss separately from the chiropractic practice. They dropped their licenses to be able to operate as coaches and made a clean separation between the two businesses. And that's when email marketing came into play. That was also the time when Jeri was diagnosed with cancer, and as a result of her treatment, she decided to step back from client-facing work and focus on the backend, operational tasks within the practice. Introducing email marketing at that point felt like a natural transition, especially as the weight loss business (being virtual and not in person) needed a new method for driving traffic to it. The chiropractor practice had been established for 30 years, so there wasn't a huge need for marketing. But the weight loss business was brand new and started from zero - Jeri and Darci had no contacts on their email list whatsoever.What were some of the barriers Jeri faced when she started email marketing?Jeri admits there were hundreds of barriers initially. The first obstacle was to find a CRM. In their chiropractic practice, Jeri and Darci had been using specialised management software, so Jeri struggled to pick a suitable CRM before she eventually settled on Keap. She then had to learn how to write emails correctly and get different pieces of technology working together, like Keap and ResponseSuite, for example.Jeri also had to learn how to build campaigns and automations, and all this had to happen really quickly. To put things into context, Jeri did all this while going through her cancer treatment, which was intense and challenging. She has to make regular long trips for her treatment, and that means she can't work for a few days a month. She told us she's probably working at about 50% capacity compared to how much she used to be able to do before her diagnosis.And yet, Jeri works around it. In fact, her story is so poignant because it really shows that if she could learn email marketing while launching a brand new business while having cancer treatment, anyone can. While we think it’s a real testament to her character, Jeri shares that all it takes is the ability to look at email marketing methodically. Do one thing at a time and understand you have nothing to lose. Her advice is to set aside most of the things that clog your brain and push on with what you need to do. When you’re feeling overwhelmed with your to-do list, just start with one thing, and that will naturally lead to another. Over time, everything will get done - that's how it happened for Jeri. And eventually, with that approach, she was ready to launch.Starting with ZERO contacts on their email list!It's also worth mentioning that another barrier that Jeri faced is that they started from zero with their email list. Because Jeri and Darci wanted to create a clear delineation between the two businesses to preserve the integrity of the chiropractor practice, they went stone cold with the new business. They started driving traffic to the weight loss business through TV and radio ads and Facebook marketing. But they initially had zero contacts on their email list. What was the first thing that Jeri did when she started email marketing?The first thing Jeri did when she launched her brand new business and started using email marketing was to build campaigns in order to be able to scale their business. After doing some research in the market, Jeri and Darci started running TV ads in their local area. They invested an initial $6,750 in their TV and radio ads campaign. And they did that despite knowing that competitors in their industry were spending in the region of $12-30k per month to drive traffic to their websites!But Jeri had been following us for years. So she launched this business believing both in the quality of their product as well as in the effectiveness of email marketing. She knew this was going to work! And she was right. Because in their first month, Jeri and Darci made $27,000 from their initial spend. And Jeri was on vacation for 10 days out of that month! It definitely worked and paid off, but part of the reason why Jeri didn't want to throw loads more money into ads to start with was that they wanted to make sure that everything worked and was set up correctly.Driving people to discovery callsJeri knew it was simply a matter of nailing the quality of their message and how they were delivering it. So she started bringing brand new contacts into their email engine with the intention of getting more information from them. For example, Jeri and Darci were interested in finding out how old people were, how much weight they wanted to lose, what their activity levels were, etc.To obtain that information, Jeri started directing people to discovery calls. Their show rate for the calls was at a sky-high 93% compared to around 70-75% for their competitors. So this told Jeri that people were resonating with the language and the message within the emails. And as a result, they felt excited to join the programme.[thrive_leads id='8822']How Jeri finds out the level of motivation of their prospective clientsJeri also did something quite interesting with the landing page of their website. People find out about the weight loss programme via TV ads and social media and head over to the website. On the signup page, they find the following three options:“Do you want more information?”“I want to book a discovery call.”“I want to start now.”If someone wants more information, all they have to do is to provide their name and email address. But the other two options are really just the same thing – they both take people through the process of booking a discovery call. The only difference between the two is the person's motivation level.People who just want more information are still wary. Those who want to book a discovery call are interested in taking a look at the programme. But you also have people who are ready to start. And by the time they jump on a discovery call, Jeri and Darci will know how motivated they are.Is Jeri running loads of sales campaigns? Another thing that’s absolutely mind-blowing is that Jeri only has one sales campaign running at the moment. She has two more in the queue that she’s finishing up. But there's no doubt she's been able to build momentum so far. At the time of our chat, Jeri was only 5 days into their second month in business. She told us that the number of discovery calls booked was already double how many they had in the first month.According to Jeri, this is down to the fact that the longer people stay in the engine, the better qualified they are when they jump on the discovery call. A lot of people tend to book the discovery call on the last email of the Overture campaign, which is one of the campaigns we teach inside our membership The League. Jeri feels that the quality of the conversation they have with subscribers on their list is tenfold what they get with prospective clients who come straight from ads. Not bad, right? [thrive_leads id='8854']Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line is “I’m now allowed to tell you this… ;-)”. The winky face at the end suggests that Rob wasn’t being too serious about the fact he’s not allowed to tell. With this subject line, he created a lot of compound curiosity. What is he not allowed to tell? Why is he not allowed to tell? And why is he being cheeky about it with the winky face at the end? So check it out!Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesHow Our Client Hillary-Marie Made $16k With ONE Email Marketing Campaign (And Then Did It Again!)How Brad 10x’d His Ad Spend In One Month – A Case Study.And How Kronda Adair Made $86,500 From A Small Email List.FREE list 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 Jeri used email marketing to launch a brand new business) 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. And please do tell us! If you don't spend time on email marketing, what do you really fill your working days with? We'd love to know!
undefined
Nov 8, 2023 • 30min

Understanding Customer Profiling - Get To Know Your Audience

The hosts discuss the importance of customer profiling for email marketing and provide creative ways to get more clicks. They talk about the different types of people on a subscriber list and the challenges of keeping in touch with segmented audiences. They emphasize the importance of analyzing customer data to avoid unconscious biases and generate ideas for ads and emails. The hosts also introduce their own survey platform, response suite.com, and invite listeners to try it for free.
undefined
Nov 1, 2023 • 19min

Latest Gmail Update (Dec 2023) - The End Of Email Marketing?

Is the latest Gmail update (December 2023) going to kill your email marketing for good? Everyone's reacting to this update like it's the big apocalypse of email marketing. But is that true? Let's talk about whether this update does or doesn't affect you, and how you can go about it. Ready to find out the honest truth about this? Let's go!SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:15) Want a FREE resource to get more clicks on your emails? Check out Click Tricks.(4:09) The latest Google update - what is it all about?(7:50) Let's talk about your email deliverability.(8:49) Hard bounces and your sender's reputation.(11:01) What can we do about the latest Google update?(12:35) Don't make any decisions based on your open rates.(14:27) Google isn't trying to kill your email marketing!(15:59) It's all about those clicks!(17:53) Subject line of the week.[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]The latest Google update - what is it all about? Gmail is making a technical change, which, on the surface, is going to be the death of email marketing. Again! There’s going to be a lot of email marketing chaos at the back of this Gmail policy that's to be enforced from the 1st of December 2023. Google rolled it out into their new terms in July 2023, when they announced that any Gmail account that hasn’t been logged into for two years will be deleted.So what does this mean? First thing first, the impact of this change might not be as big as you think because “logged in” could also mean that people are using their Google Calendar or Google Drive, for example. And as long as they are, even if they're not accessing their Gmail, their accounts will stay. Only truly dormant accounts will be deleted.And that’s fair enough because these could be email addresses that people created for a particular project or business venture and then either never used them, or they stopped checking them at some point. Why are they being deleted? Because all these accounts take up a lot of space on Google servers, so a clean-up exercise is now in order. You can imagine that renting space out for free to people on the Internet is expensive, so Google is cutting some costs and trying to become more efficient. And that's not a bad thing!Let's talk about your email deliverabilitySo let's talk about why this could be an issue for some people. If you've been in our world for a while, you'll know that one of the things we always talk about is that the technical side of email deliverability is not all that important. It's not weighted that heavily when it comes to most of us day-to-day – not for marketers who have email lists of the size we or our clients have.What truly matters when it comes to email deliverability is engagement management, which has to do with making sure you’re not emailing people who aren’t real accounts or who haven’t opened or engaged with your emails in some time.Hard bounces and your sender's reputationWhen the Google update kicks in in December, if you're still sending emails to accounts that Google has now deleted, your emails will hard bounce. Your email platform is going to send emails out to these deleted addresses, and your emails are going to hit a stone wall and bounce back again. And that's bad for your sender's reputation, yes.But it's only bad if you've been emailing these accounts all along regardless of the fact these people weren't engaging with your emails! If these people were on your list and hadn't used their Gmail in two years, surely they hadn't been clicking on the links in your email for a long time (if ever).So when it comes to your sender's reputation, this was already a bad scenario for you. But from now on, with these addresses completely deleted, you're going to see a much stronger message coming back to your domain reputation. Once the update kicks in in December, if you keep emailing these accounts, you'll hit a brick wall.But the truth is that this isn't affecting the number of people you're actually reaching with your email marketing - your reach is no different! All that’s happening is that you’re going to see the people who don’t exist anymore in a much firmer and more solid way. But even before the Google update, these people weren’t listening. So if you think about the goal of getting your message through to people, you simply weren’t!What can we do about the latest Google update?So how can we all prepare for these changes? If you’ve been in any of our programmes or followed our work, you’ll know about our engagement monitoring method. We talk about it more in the episode called How To Create THE Most Successful Re-Engagement Email Campaign (And Smash Your Sales Targets).If someone’s not clicked on a link in the last 60 days, we’re going to put them through a 14-day re-engagement campaign called the LOL Revival sequence. And if people don't re-engage with our emails during that period by clicking on one of our links, we stop sending them emails altogether. We remove the tag they’re under and take them out of the segment they’re in. We take them out of our list.Before we even do that, we tend to watch new subscribers closely, especially in the first 14 days of joining our list. Because if they don't engage or click any of the links in your emails, we don't even put them into a revival sequence. We don't even give them a second chance! Don't make any decisions based on your open ratesIt's worth pointing out here that the decision to stop emailing someone and remove them from our list entirely is based on clicks - not on open rates. Why? Because as we keep saying, open rate data is incorrect and inconsistent. It's dependent on the device, the browser, the email client and service, what spam protection and firewalls people have on their system, etc. There are many variables that can show that emails are being opened when they're not and vice versa. So we make decisions based on whether people click on the links in our emails. And if someone hasn't clicked on a link for over 60 days, we put them through our LOL Revival re-engagement sequence.This means we’re already taking care of the hygiene of our email list, and when Google deletes accounts that have had no activity for two years, we’ll have already identified them on the basis of 60 days of not clicking on the links in our emails. We’re ahead of the curve because we make sure we have the best engagement and the best deliverability to our audience.This means the latest Google update isn't going to affect us. And it's not going to affect any of our students either - because they're following the same process. We don't need to worry about this at all - we're making zero changes to our business because we already have a strong engagement monitoring protocol in place. And so do the members of The League. [thrive_leads id='8822']Google isn't trying to kill your email marketing! It’s easy to look at the latest Google update out of context and start panicking. On the surface, it may seem like Google is trying to make email marketing difficult for people. But they’re not! They're trying to make it better for the people sending emails and for those receiving them. And so are we! We're all on the same page here.They’re trying to create a better customer experience for their users. Ultimately what they want (and what other email platforms want) is to make sure people continue to use them. So they're not trying to make it hard for marketers to send emails - they just want it done in the right way. They want you to email the right email addresses, and you should want that too! That’s definitely what we want. So we're all going in the same direction here.And the people who are moaning and whining about these updates are those who do email marketing the lazy way. They’re building a list of people and bashing them over the head regardless of who these people are and what they’re doing. They’re using dirty tactics to grow their lists, and that's exactly what we’re trying to eliminate.It's all about those clicks! So the big thing you have to do in light of the latest Gmail update is to monitor the clicks on the links in your emails. Of course, you can only do that if you include enough links in your emails in the first place. If you're not, start now. Because if you don't include enough links, you're not giving people the opportunity to click and engage. So increase the frequency of your emails and make sure there’s something people can click on because that's critical for engagement monitoring.Also, find different ways to dress up the links in your emails. If you always use the traditional “click here”, people will soon develop what we call link blindness. They'll stop seeing and reading certain things in your emails because they always look the same. So always try interesting, quirky, novel, and attention-grabbing ways of dressing up your links and call-to-actions.That’s the exact reason why we put together our resource Click Tricks, which is about interesting ways of dressing up the links in your emails to make sure more people are clicking and engaging. In turn, that will keep your deliverability monitoring really high. So go and grab Click Tricks for free![thrive_leads id='8854']Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line is “[First Name] and Goliath.” So if your name was Karen, your subject line would be “Karen and Goliath.” We think this is a really interesting subject line. You can take any traditional story, or a film name here (something that’s well-known) and change it over to something that’s relevant to the person you're sending the email to, such as their first name. So check it out!Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesHow To Increase Your Open Rates (They’re Wrong But…)Get Your Emails Opened Using NLP – With Jon Benson.Stop Landing In The Spam Folder & Immediately Skyrocket Your Email Deliverability – With Brian Minick.FREE list 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 the latest Gmail update of December 2023) 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. And please do tell us! If you don't spend time on email marketing, what do you really fill your working days with? We'd love to know!
undefined
Oct 25, 2023 • 18min

Best Email Marketing Campaigns? Grab The Paparazzi Flash Sale!

Wherever we go and whatever we do, we keep being asked about the BEST email marketing campaigns people can run to make tonnes of cash.Well, we have the perfect campaign for you. It's called the Paparazzi Flash Sale campaign, and our clients are seeing some amazing results with it right now. Wanna know more and get your mitts on it? Let's go. SOME EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: (0:12) Want a FREE resource to get more clicks on your emails? Check out Click Tricks.(2:41) What is the THE best email marketing campaign EVER?(4:08) What is the Paparazzi Flash Sale email campaign?(5:52) What do you need in order to launch your Flash Sale email campaign?(7:55) Add a countdown timer and bonuses!(9:28) How does our Flash Sale email campaign work?(12:15) Always have a strong reason why.(14:14) Why does the Paparazzi Flash Sale campaign work so well?(15:44) Go grab our flash sale campaign - join The League!(16:43) Subject line of the week.[podcast_subscribe id="7224"]What is THE best email marketing campaign EVER? This is a hard question to answer, especially as we have over 40 email marketing campaigns (and counting) inside our membership The League. But ONE campaign definitely that stands out (because our members can’t stop raving about it) is The Paparazzi Flash Sale campaign.We’re consistently seeing our clients use this campaign and getting incredible results. For example, Hillary-Marie ran two versions of this campaign at two separate times and made $16,000 on each one - with a 20-21% conversion rate.Brad joined our membership in February, ran this campaign straight after, and made $3,915 in sales. Plus, he also got a bunch of new sign-ups for his membership, which stacks up additional recurring income too! And then Marc ran the campaign and made over $1,000 selling $10-$30 low-ticket products. This campaign is a BEAST!What is the Paparazzi Flash Sale email campaign?The Paparazzi Flash Sale campaign is our take on the flash sale or fire sale (as it's sometimes referred to). It's a 4-day campaign that helps you sell a boatload of stuff at a discounted price and with an added bonus or two. But let's take a step back to understand how this helps you sell. Sticking a discount on something doesn't necessarily mean you're suddenly going to make lots of sales. That's why you need a well-thought-out email campaign structure behind it. You probably already know this from experience – a discount is no magic spell that makes people buy! Because you're never going to convert 100% of the people who see it. What you need is anticipation and moments in your campaign where you change direction. In other words, a campaign needs to have a flow to it. And the reason why our Paparazzi campaign works and is so successful is that it’s a really simple campaign to deploy. So let's break it down. What do you need in order to launch your flash sale email campaign? The first thing you need to have in place is a sales page that's converting. As you know, we're in the business of email marketing here – not sales pages. So we’re going to assume you’ve created a good sales page that’s already converting well.Once you have that page, you're going to duplicate it. You simply create a copy of it, which will become your flash sale version. Then you're going to make changes to that version only. So don’t go and tweak your actual sales page with the intention of changing it back once the flash sale is over. Instead, create a separate page for your flash sale. Once you've done that, you need to change the price of your product to the discounted price. But don't just delete the old price and replace it with the one one. Because if you do that, psychologically, people won’t know you’ve applied a discount! What you want to do instead is to cross out the full price and put the new price next to it. That shows people that, without a doubt, this is a sale. And you’re proving this. We like to say that a lot – if you’re going to say something, prove it.With the price sorted, make sure that all the buttons on your flash sale page point to a place where people can buy your offer at the discounted price. Add a countdown timer and bonuses!And finally, another thing you can do is to add a countdown timer to the page. This is animated and ticking down and shows how long people have left to take advantage of the discounted price before the flash sale ends. A countdown timer is important because it helps you add some urgency to your sale. It’s no longer just about the discount (and people love a discount!) – it’s also about making it high on people's priority list to go and grab that discount right now. If you want to make your discount even more effective, you can also add bonuses. And the reason this works is that you’re hitting a whole bunch of psychological triggers. Most importantly, all these factors combined have a compound effect - and that's what makes this campaign so powerful.How does our Flash Sale email campaign work?We run the Paparazzi campaign by sending 6 emails over 4 days - it's a very short, fast-paced campaign. We send an email a day for the first few days, and then on the last day, we send 3 emails to let people know that the flash sale is closing tonight. On that last day, we're really driving home the urgency of the fact that the sale is closing.As with all our campaigns, the key to being able to send emails over a period of 4 days is to find lots of different reasons to email. If you only send out one email at the start of your campaign and say everything you have to say (such as talk about all the features of the product, talk about the flash sale, share testimonials, etc.) you'll soon run out of things to email about. In other words, you peak too soon. And that means all you can do is to keep repeating the same things day after day, which is not very effective for anyone. That's why with all our email marketing campaigns, we follow a specific format called SVVC, which stands for Seed, Validate, Verify, and Close. If you’re a member of The League, you'll find full in-depth training about this format inside our membership, so go check it out.Our Paparazzi campaign is no different - it follows the same structure. So here it goes: The first email plans the seed and announces that something's happening. The second one talks about the discount - it validates the interest that the original announcement piqued. In the third email, you use social proof and share testimonials and case studies. In other words, you go and verify that everything you said is true. And then on the last day, with the fourth email, you send an email to say that the sale is closing tonight. That's the close of the SVVC acronym. On the last day, keep things simple!A key principle for us is that on the last day, we don't get clever with any of our emails. This isn’t the right time for people to be distracted by stories or lessons. This campaign is very direct – there’s no fluff, no stories, and nothing that distracts people from the main focus, which is to buy. And that’s especially important on the last day.[thrive_leads id='8822']Always have a strong reason whyOne of the things we recommend you do is to have a strong reason why. Why are you giving a discount? Why is there a flash sale? This could be any kind of why. Robert Cialdini in his book The Psychology of Persuasion talks about this technique and how powerful it is. You can pretty much say anything as long as you explain it by giving a reason. And that's because people will believe you more, or they're more likely to comply with what you say - simply because you've given them a reason for what you're doing.And the reason can be as bland or as honest as you want. It can be that you have a massive tax bill to pay, so you’re running a flash sale and discounting your course. It could be an offer you make to your new subscribers. Or it could be because it’s Email Marketing Wednesday! Or your birthday. You don’t have to wait for Black Friday or Christmas. Your reason can be anything, as long as you have one.Why does the Paparazzi Flash Sale campaign work so well? First of all, it works because of the structure of the campaign. It’s a 4-day campaign, but you’re sending more than 4 emails. And you have a very specific reason for sending each and every one of them. Your emails all drive people towards the call to action, which is to go and take advantage of the discount you've applied and the bonuses you've added to your product. And that’s what helps grease the wheels and get people buying.Plus, you can run this email live but also automate it, which is what we do. We have it running for all our new subscribers. The flash sale runs automatically within a certain amount of time of someone joining our email list. We use a countdown timer called Countdown Hero (available for free to members of The League), and that allows us to set a unique deadline for each subscriber. The Paparazzi Flash Sale campaign is definitely a powerful one to automate and run in this way. Why? Because it encourages your subscribers to buy from you as soon as they enter your world. And once they've bought something, they're more likely to buy more. We’ve seen this statistically proven again and again with our business and also with our clients.So the combination of all these factors – the fact you can automate the campaign, that you have a clear structure, that you’re offering a really good discount or some sort of bonus (or both) can result in creating a big surge of sales. Buying is urgent, so your audience needs to move this to the top of their priority list right now. It's what pushes people to get over the hill and buy.Go grab our Paparazzi Flash Sale campaign!If you want to try this for yourself, just head over to The League, and you’ll find everything you need in there. The Paparazzi Flash Sale campaign is one of the 40+ campaigns we have inside our membership, and you’ll be able to get full access and also get an overview of everything we’ve just described.Plus, you get full campaign workshop training, where we walk you through every single email - why we use the words we use and how you can put your own spin on the campaign to make it apply to your product, your business, your audience, and your personality. All you have to do is to grab the template and make some tweaks. You'll see - this is probably the one campaign out of all the ones we have that requires the least amount of changes. It's super easy to apply to your business! And once you’ve run this campaign successfully, you can move on and start working through all the others.If you're having FOMO right now, what are you waiting for? Join The League NOW and grab this campaign for yourself![thrive_leads id='8854']Subject line of the weekThis week’s subject line is the words “car thieves.” Rob wrote this in lowercase and with a full stop at the end. The story was about the fact there are two different types of people in the world – people like Rob’s girlfriend Rachel, who will leave her debit card on the dashboard of her car and other valuable stuff on show, and people like Rob’s dad, who’s one of the most security conscious people you’ll ever meet.The email was about two different attitudes to security, but the subject line wasn’t factual, obvious, or boring – it was interesting and generated curiosity.Useful Episode ResourcesRelated episodesHow Our Client Hillary-Marie Made $16k With ONE Email Marketing Campaign (And Then Did It Again!)How Brad 10x’d His Ad Spend In One Month – A Case Study.And How Brad Brown Made $90k By Automating Webinars.FREE list 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 what we think is one of the best email marketing campaigns ever) 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. And please do tell us! If you don't spend time on email marketing, what do you really fill your working days with? We'd love to know!

Get the Snipd
podcast app

Unlock the knowledge in podcasts with the podcast player of the future.
App store bannerPlay store banner

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode

Save any
moment

Hear something you like? Tap your headphones to save it with AI-generated key takeaways

Share
& Export

Send highlights to Twitter, WhatsApp or export them to Notion, Readwise & more

AI-powered
podcast player

Listen to all your favourite podcasts with AI-powered features

Discover
highlights

Listen to the best highlights from the podcasts you love and dive into the full episode