There are hundreds of ways to drive traffic to your squeeze page and build your list. Throw a stone in the internet marketing community, and it will land on a course that will teach you exactly how to drive that traffic and get the conversions.
But once you’ve got subscribers joining your list, now what do you do?
Time and again I see marketers who are totally focused on how to build the list, but once they have those first subscribers, they’re clueless on what to do next.
Usually, they’ll send out a few emails that say, “BUY THIS PRODUCT!”
9 times out of 10 those emails end up in the spam folder. If they don’t, the prospect either doesn’t open the emails, or if they do, they don’t buy the product.
This is where the new marketer says, “Email marketing is dead.”
Or, the new marketer works hard to create amazing content for their list, sending all kinds of wonderful, helpful things for days and weeks.
When that marketer finally sends an email with an offer, they hear crickets. Why is that? That marketer probably says that email marketing is dead, too.
Yet, there are thousands, or more likely hundreds of thousands of marketers making a full time living with their email lists.
So, what is it that they’re doing right, and how can we copy that?
I’ve studied the losers and the winners in email marketing, and here’s what I’ve discovered:
1. Emails Have to Do at Least One of Three Things
Just like blog posts, articles, social media posts, reports and so forth, emails are content. And to get your emails open and read, every single one of them has to do one or more of the following:
Tell Stories
People will watch an entertaining 2 hour movie, but they won’t spend 30 seconds on a boring email.
You don’t have to make it a major production, but you do need to tell a story that captures your audience’s interest. The love of stories is hardwired into us, and done right, no one can resist a great story.
Teach
Your subscribers have goals, interests and curiosity. If you can help them to reach their goal, to educate them on their interests or to peak and satisfy their curiosity, then you’ve got a winning email.
Motivate
Everyone loves to feel inspired, and everyone needs a daily dose of inspiration to help them keep moving forward.
Think of motivation and inspiration as the sparks that start the fire. Sometimes it can be as simple as letting them know that yes, they can achieve their goals and dreams.
If every email you send out does at least one of these three things, then your readers will continue to open and read your emails.
2. Nearly Every Single Email You Send Should Have a BUY Link
Every email you send should have a link. Every. Single. One. You’re training your readers to click, and if there’s no link, then they can’t click.
And for 98% of your emails, that link should be a BUY link.
You built your list to make money. Yes, you might have other reasons, too, but let’s be honest: Your list is your business, and you need to treat it as a business.
As long as you are ONLY promoting GREAT products, you should be 100% confident in sending out a buy link in your emails.
In the handful of emails where you put a link to something free, there should be a buy link very close by. It might be inside the freebie or on the same page as the freebie, but it’s there.
Train your subscribers from DAY ONE to click your links.
3. Send Out an Email Every Single Day
Okay, if you absolutely, positively must take one day off each week, that’s okay. But ideally, you’ll be sending an email every single day.
Are you worried that people will unsubscribe because you email daily? Don’t.
First, worry is useless.
Second, some will unsubscribe. Some ALWAYS unsubscribe, no matter what you do or don’t do. It’s inevitable, and it means that you are not the right fit for them and they are not the right fit for you.
When you stop caring about unsubscribes, you stop being scared to do your job and send an email every day.
And the more emails you send, the more money you make.
Salespeople are taught to love hearing “No,” because it takes a certain number of “No’s” to get to a “Yes.”
In email marketing, it takes a certain number of unsubscribes to know that you are doing your job, which is to define your tribe and please your tribe. Not the whole world. Not your whole list. Just those people who best relate to you and your messages.
Learn to love the unsubscribes, because each one tells you that you are doing something RIGHT.
Remember this: One third of people will LOVE you. One third of people will DISLIKE you. And one third of people won’t give a darn either way.
It’s life. It’s business. It’s the way the world works. So don’t worry about – embrace it, because you can earn a literal FORTUNE from that one third of people who love you.
4. Resend to The Un-opens
Send out your daily email in the morning. Later in the day (afternoon or evening, your choice) go into your autoresponder and send out the same email to everyone who did not open the email from that morning. Change the subject line to something like, “Did you miss this notice about…” or whatever is appropriate.
By resending to those who did not open the first email, you will get more opens, which means more clicks and more sales.
If your autoresponder allows it, do this automatically so that you don’t have to manually do it each day. If your autoresponder does not allow you to resend to the un-opens, then get a new autoresponder.
This is a rough estimate, but approximately 20-25% of your sales will come from that second mailing each day. That is a LOT of money to lose by not taking this simple step.
There you have it. Now that wasn’t so difficult, was it?
Following these 4 steps while continuing to build your list can earn you a fortune. And never again will you let anyone tell you that email marketing is dead, because you will know better.
