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What business owner would ignore the power and pay-off of email marketing?
©istock.com/ilandi9
It’s really easy to take email marketing for granted because so much of it pours into our email inbox every day.
But why would any sane business owner ignore the profitable power of email marketing when you realise…
Yes, email marketing works. Email is far from dead, like so many critics suggest. Email is on the increase.
When compared to social media, direct mail and other marketing, email has the highest sales conversion rate of 66%
(the Data & Marketing Association)
Time to see email marketing as an important way to win more new customers, don’t you think?
If email marketing isn’t working for your business it’s because your emails aren’t working (not because email marketing doesn’t work).
Start with 4 helping hands here or read on for the full Bitesize Business Breakthrough. Use your device's back arrow to return to this point.
‘Game Of Thrones’ shows us the way to email success…
How come TV series like House Of Cards, Game Of Thrones, Breaking Bad and more have enjoyed great viewing success?
Because we love a great series.
These long running TV series are one of the main reasons Netflix (close to 100 million subscribers) and Amazon Prime (66 million) have been so successful.
But what’s this got to do with email marketing?
©istock.com/SI photography
Email marketing also works best when done as a SERIES
Individual marketing emails simply do not work as well.
See email marketing as a series of connected messages or hurdles and you focus on building a series of communications.
You’ll then experience the success of the great email marketers who get £34 back for every £1 they spend on email marketing. (Experian)
As an accountant,it seems to us that spending £1,000 and getting £34,000 back is a great result!
To get a 1 to 34 return on your marketing spend…
...fix the two missing links
Most businesses fail to make email marketing work for them for two reasons:
a. They don’t know how to build an email marketing series that works
b. They never get round to doing the work needed to make it work
It all starts with a commitment to relevance (not spam).
©istock.com/Antonio Guillem
RELEVANCE is your marketing best friend
We all grow to detest emails that aren’t relevant to us.
However, an email that appeals to what you’re interested in, an issue you have, or something you want, will get your attention. Relevance wins your willingness to read and has you ready to take action or even buy.
Here's the proven solution for you...
Use a coordinated series of emails rather than seeing email marketing as a single, one-off email every so often.
Email your deeply interested email subscribers more often and email your less interested email subscribers less.
So here’s how you tap into the power of relevance and increase your email marketing success. Start with your website…
Website and email marketing are ‘connected at the hip’
Over a period of 36 months Ryan Deiss (author and marketing entrepreneur) and his team invested over £10,000,000 on marketing tests, generated tens of millions of unique visitors to their websites and sent well over a billion emails.
Deiss is clear that a key way to make your email marketing series work, is to make your business website work better using lead magnets:
"A Lead Magnet is simply a small chunk of value (usually content) that solves a SPECIFIC problem for a SPECIFIC market that is offered in exchange for an opt-in email address”
Ryan Deiss - DigitalMarketer.com
For example, if you want to grow vegetables in your window boxes this specific lead magnet will work for you.
@Googleimages
When your website uses lead magnets in a smart and effective way:
Value obsessed marketing…
From the example above, can you see how you need to give something of value in return for their email address?
There are several ways to make your lead magnets valuable in this way:
• White paper special reports
• Case studies
• Short cuts or cheat sheets
• Free downloads
This Business Bitesize report is our example of a valuable report we can use in our lead magnets.
For further ideas you’ll find more lead magnet examples in the downloadable tools accompanying this edition of Business Bitesize – see back page.
STOP seeing marketing by email as single, one-off, isolated messages.
START writing a series of emails as a sequence of relevant messages, based on the interests of your subscribers.
Click here to get to the checklist for email marketing success...
Use your device's back arrow to return to this point.
Email relevance from list segmentation…
The specific subject of each lead magnet tells you what’s relevant to each email subscriber.
This subject must be used to segment your email list to make your email series relevant. You can use email technology to help you with this – more on this later.
Then you can, as Ryan Deiss suggests, start your email series with a warm welcome…
1. Welcome series of emails
The goal of these early 2 or 3 emails (hurdles) is to get your subscribers to know, like and trust you.
Their trust must be earned. Fail at this stage and all your future efforts at helping them buy from you will fail.
See some examples of great welcome emails you can use in this Bitesize report’s downloadable support tools using the button at the end of this report.
You’ll see how these welcome emails:
- Make it personal (and friendly)
- Let them know what to expect
- Make the upside benefits of your emails blatantly obvious to them
- Ask them to take a small commitment or action
When you have received a positive response (subscriber has opened and/or clicked your welcome emails) you can then move onto…
2. Engagement email series
Your engagement email series (4 or more hurdles) makes offers and asks your subscriber to buy.
NB remember you don’t propose marriage on a first date. If you do you won’t get a second date! Remember this is an engagement email series.
Again, if your offer isn’t relevant, you won’t engage your audience. So your offer must be focused on the subject of the lead magnet they used to join your email list.
Find out more on the engagement email series from the downloadable tools section – see back page.
3. Ascension email series
As Ryan Deiss neatly points out:
“…while acquiring a buyer is good, acquiring a multi-buyer is where the real money is made”
Acquiring multi-buyers only works if you create a series of emails that offer additional buying opportunities.
The downloadable tools section will guide you how to write these emails.
4 helping hands for you…
Take email marketing seriously for a serious pay-off for your business. To elevate your email marketing:
1
Use specific lead magnets on your website to build a segmented email list
2
Create worthwhile content your target audience values and will happily exchange for their email address
3
Design a series of emails around each segment’s favoured subject to make your emails relevant
4
Automate your email series so your emails happen even when you sleep
Click here to read this whole Bitesize Business Breakthrough. Use your device's back arrow to return to this point.
TIME TO DISAGREE
“Email marketing is more complex than I thought – I don’t have time for all this, I’m running a business!”
Yes there’s more to email marketing than simply sending well-crafted emails to your email list.
We wish it were easier too.
However a competitive advantage goes to the business that masters the three components of email marketing:
- Website lead magnets
- Valuable relevant content
- Relevant email series
The big upside? When you commit to email marketing you give your business a big competitive edge.
Research proves email marketing pays off– see the statistics shared in the support tools for more proof.
“I can’t see how email marketing spam can get people to respond. It just makes my blood boil!”
You’re right to be sceptical. But don’t let your distaste for the endless flow of spam email warp your thinking.
Most email marketers blast messages about the same topic to the same list day after day. This is a big mistake.
Smart email marketers know that a successful email marketing strategy requires you to change the message you send to each segment of your list.
Your job is to use highly specific lead magnets on your website to then direct the relevant content of your follow up email series. Remember relevance is king.
“If I do all this email and website work I’ll have no time for anything else, including sleep!”
If you were to do it manually it would be a 24/7 role. However technology comes to your rescue.
MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, Infusionsoft and many other email systems do all the response work for you. Some are even free, check out MailChimp for a quick and easy start.
ULTIMATE ARGUMENT:
“How do I know that a series of emails will work for my business?”
Email marketing is proven to work in all types of industries – both business to business and business to consumer. So email marketing can work for your business too. You just need to do the work to make it work. And if it can generate £34 for every £1 you spend on email marketing, it’s got to be worth a serious test to prove it works.
Your 'Make It Happen' checklist:
Build an email marketing machine for a profitable pay-off for your business...
If email marketing can earn your business £34 for every £1 on email marketing, wouldn't it make sense to get your email marketing working better?
Start with a few small steps to improve your website, create some valuable content (e.g. white paper reports) and build a series of emails to get your just rewards:
1
Use specific lead magnets on your website to build a segmented email list by the specific subject of each lead magnet
- Check out the examples in the downloadable tools section of this Bitesize report
2
Create worthwhile content your target audience would value and happily exchange for their email address
- Start by using content you already have and upgrading it to work with your lead magnets to capture your subscribers’ data
3
Design a series of emails around each segment’s favoured subject to make your emails relevant
- Welcome emails so they get to know, like and trust you
- Engagement emails so they get to buy from you
- Ascension emails so they become repeating multi-buyers
4
Automate your email series so they happen even when you sleep
- Use easy-to-use technology (like MailChimp) so that your email process works automatically
Want to know more?
Invisible Selling Machine
Ryan Deiss
Want more? Get yourself a copy of this powerful and very practical book by Ryan Deiss. Also, check out his Digital Marketer website, it’s packed with free and valuable content. It’s an education just going through the process of signing up and watching what he does!
YOUR SUPPORT TOOLS ARE HERE:
Click the button below and you'll find a selection of practical support tools to help you get a deeper understanding and develop greater skills for email marketing success.
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