How to Earn Space in Somebody’s Inbox
What should you do once you get an email address?
The whole point of a lead generator is to get an email address. Remember, when potential customers gives you their email address you should consider them a hot lead.
Sending them regular, valuable emails is your best opportunity to continue building a relationship and selling them a product that will solve their problem.
While a few people will buy a product immediately, most will need to continue to learn more about your company before feeling a sense of trust.
Not following up with your customer after they download your PDF is like getting somebody’s phone number after asking them out and then never calling them back.
If somebody gave you their email address, they are expecting you to email them. You got those digits, now follow through!
In this section of the book, we are going to guide you through two kinds of email campaigns you can send. Both will grow your company.
The two types of email campaigns we recommend are:
1. Nurture campaigns. These are designed to keep in touch with a potential customer and earn trust over time.
2. Sales campaigns. These are designed to close the sale.
IMPORTANT QUESTIONS ABOUT EMAIL CAMPAIGNS
We get lots of questions about emails from our clients. Most people are a little nervous about sending emails because it feels like they are broadcasting to the world. The truth is you aren’t. You’re simply broadcasting to a group of people who have asked you to keep in touch.
Emails are pretty hard to mess up. Nevertheless, let’s cover some of the basics.
Question: How Many Emails Do I Send?
As many as you can while always adding value and staying interesting.
People often want to know what the “magic number” of emails is to send in an email sequence. But don’t get so focused on the number of emails that you forget the purpose of the sequence is to keep customers engaged. We recommend sending at least one email per week. However, if you have something interesting to say, you can send with greater frequency. I have a personal nurturing campaign at BusinessMadeSimple.com that offers a free business tip every single weekday. Even though that may sound like a lot of emails, I’ve had tens of thousands of people subscribe and very few unsubscribes. I just make sure to keep the videos short, topical, helpful, and never boring!
Question: How Do We Master the Art of Writing Email Copy?
Learn from others and practice, practice, practice.
First of all, we have to remember it’s not a mastery. You won’t get it all at once, and that’s okay. Just get a little bit better each day and you’ll be on your way. In Chapter 10 I will walk you through some more in-depth practices for writing great emails, but if you have no idea where to start, here are a few tips:
1. Read email subject lines you get from other companies. Which ones get your attention and why did you open them?
2. Read magazine headlines. If you look at the magazines on the stand as you’re checking out at the grocery store you will see what type of headlines get people’s attention.
3. Write in a conversational voice. Write the way you talk, the way you would write to a friend or family member
4. Always be thinking, “What problems can I help my reader overcome, what value can I add, and what empathy and authority can I show to my potential customer?”
And the final four pieces of advice I’ll just lift from Ernest Hemingway:
5. Use short words. By trying to sound smart and interesting, we often sound dumb and dull. There’s no reason to use big words. While the written and spoken word are different, reading your email out loud is a great way to test whether or not it is clear. Using big words, insider language, and complicated phrases is a great way to confuse your customers. Never forget: if you confuse, you’ll lose.
6. Use short sentences. When somebody clicks to open your email, they’re certainly willing to give you a little more time than if they were browsing your website. But don’t overdo it. Keep your sentences short so the email is easy to read. Long sentences require your reader to burn mental calories. At some point the reader will opt out if the calorie expenditure you’re requiring is too great.
7. Use short paragraphs. When somebody clicks to open your email, make sure the text that unfolds doesn’t look like a book. They didn’t sign up to read Tolstoy. By breaking up the text into short, separated paragraphs the email looks like it will not take them much time and so they’ll be more likely to read it.
8. Use active language. Active verbs make a sentence interesting. Instead of saying “we are having a sale” say “you’re going to want to barge through our door because we’ve walked through the shop and lowered prices on most of our products.” Words like “barge” and “walked” and “lowered” are interesting because they connote movement.
LET’S WRITE SOME EMAILS!
With those things in mind, let’s look specifically at how to write both nurture campaigns and sales campaigns that your customers will actually want to receive.