Posted on: Jan 28, 2021
4 Ways to Make Email Marketing Work for You

Have you ever heard the phrase, the fortune is in the follow-up?

The truth is that most people fail miserably at following up, especially when they’re starting a new venture like selling products and services.

What does this have to do with email marketing? I’ll get to that in a minute.

It’s not that business owners don’t want to follow up, normally they don’t know how. Or they think that it’s a numbers game so they approach as many people as possible with a business opportunity and speed right past people as soon as they say no.

Most no’s aren’t no forever. It simply means, “not right now.”

I remember when I was selling real estate I expected to hear no. I worked for a home builder and it was pretty common for someone not to make a $250,000 purchase as soon as they walked into my sales office. Although there were times that someone wanted to buy immediately and they wrote me a check on the spot.

BUT when it comes to online purchases or anything that’s less than $500 bucks, some entrepreneurs feel like someone should make a decision to buy immediately because of the price. Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way.

Email marketing is used to gently follow up with your potential customers and past customers who didn’t decide to buy right away. Email marketing is how you algorithm proof your business and get people to know, like, and trust you.

People love to buy, they don’t like to be sold.

No one likes a pushy salesperson. Have you ever walked into a store and immediately someone walks up to you and starts into a sales pitch? Even though we’ve barely heard what they have to say, don’t we cringe a little and tell them we’re just looking?

And this happens even if we’re almost ready to buy. But as soon as we’re ready to make the purchase, doesn’t it seem like nobody is around to help us? People like to feel in control of their purchase decisions and NOT like they’re being forced or pushed into something.

I once had a lady come into my sales office after visiting me a few times to tell me just how much she appreciated that I wasn’t an aggressive salesperson who made her anxious about buying. Even though I was in a commission-only environment, I believe people can smell “commission breath” from a mile away. LOL!

So how do you get someone excited about buying?

How do you make someone feel in control of the situation and make them feel comfortable about their buying decision? The secret is…

People want to do business with someone who is real, relatable, and authentic. This is especially important online because there’s so much hype on the interwebs. People are turned off by anyone or anything that looks fake or insincere.

And if you’re like most people, you’ve probably been burned once or twice by a bad online purchase. That’s why building trust is so important.

Bottom line: Your potential customers should know, like and trust you.

It doesn’t matter what shiny object or strategy you try to implement, people will never buy from you if they don’t trust you. This is why it’s important to build trust and rapport with your potential customers as soon as possible. But this doesn’t happen overnight.

Trust takes time.

Think about the people in your life that you trust. I’m sure those relationships took time to develop.

When I was selling real estate, I had to gain the trust of buyers and real estate agents who brought their clients to me to buy a home. But since they were coming to my sales office and meeting with me face-to-face it shortened the amount of time they needed to trust me.

What’s the best way to build trust with your potential customers?

In my opinion it’s with… email marketing.

Emails allow you to consistently communicate with your prospects, build a relationship, and start developing “all the feels” about you. But just because you’re sending emails doesn’t mean people are going to read them.

AND just because they read some of your emails, it doesn’t mean they’re going to take action or that you’ll build any kind of relationship with them. I’ll admit that my inbox is full of emails. Most of them are completely ignored. If you’re like me your inbox is probably the same.

However I have a few newsletters that I LOVE reading! Some of them are so good I make it a point to save them to my “swipe file” for future reference. Yep, I’m super nerdy about studying good email copy.

You have to write your emails in a way that gets people excited about reading them. Email marketing is one of my favorite topics and worth a full study but I’ll give you 4 things to implement today.

1.Write to one person

The first thing you should focus on is making your writing dedicated to one person. Even though your emails are going to dozens, hundreds or thousands of people; you’re still writing to one person.

They need to feel that. Your emails should feel like you’re talking to them personally. Remember that one person is reading your email at that moment in time. Most likely they’re sitting down at their computer or opening your email on their phone. 

Don’t address them like you’re being formal or speaking to a crowd of people. It should feel like you’re having a one-to-one conversation. This brings me to my next point…

2. Create a Conversation

Your email is basically a relaxed conversation you’re having with that one person. Imagine sitting across from your perfect prospect and sitting down for coffee or tea to have a conversation. This is super important.

If you write like you’re creating a college essay, nobody wants to read that. Remember you’re not composing a thesis, you’re having a conversation.

If you read any of my emails, I break a lot of grammar rules and sometimes I have typos even after I’ve read them to myself a few times. That makes me human and real. Write like you talk and always remember to…

3. Put the Smack Down on Pitching a Sale in Every Email

You can’t pitch or sell something in every email. Recently I received an email from a marketer AFTER not hearing anything from her in over a year. Honestly I forgot I subscribed to her list. The email she sent was simply asking us to purchase an ebook she created.

DON’T DO THIS!!

Let me make this clear. I’m not saying it’s wrong to sell in your emails. After all, we are in business. And if you do it right, you can treat your email list like a cash register. But don’t send emails only asking for money AND definitely not to a list that has turned “stale” because they never hear from you.

Many people from the example above probably opened her email out of sheer curiosity, but only because it had been so long since we heard from her. I thought she was making a big announcement. But when I realized she was asking for money, I won’t be so quick to open any emails she sends in the future. Or I might unsubscribe altogether.

Would you be excited or interested in receiving emails from someone if they aren’t adding any value to your business and they only pitch things to you?

I would guesstimate that 90% of my emails don’t sound like pitches. After all, people are used to that from e-commerce stores. We’ve all seen “20% off everything in the store” and sorta glaze over those emails because they’re blatant pitches. However, I’m subscribed to a lot of email lists from e-commerce stores and some of them are doing email marketing right!

But if you want to stand out from the crowd you need to be different. This leads me to my fourth tip…

4. Inform and Entertain 

I believe the best way to engage your audience is to wrap your message in “infotainment” which is information + entertainment.

We love to be entertained. It’s one of the reasons I was able to grow an instagram account to 115,000 followers. My account was a comedy page and that was a source of entertainment for people for many years until my account was shut down.

As a matter of fact, this is why I’m so passionate about email marketing today. I overshot in the entertainment department and didn’t provide much information. That failed experiment taught me a huge lesson about why email marketing is so important.

We crave entertainment. It’s one of the reasons why we can say we’re busy and then fall down the internet rabbit hole only to get trapped watching videos instead. So when you send out emails that are entertaining, you’re almost guaranteed to have readers.

Every situation you find yourself in can be a funny story that teaches someone something or points to a product you believe in, but in a subtle way. This leads me to my next point…

Tell Stories

Most of my emails contain stories. When I say stories, I don’t mean a romance novel or play. If your stories are too long; work on shortening them. I have to admit, I have a problem with this sometimes. Most people don’t want to sit too long and read an extremely long story.

Some people are okay with it, but for the most part try to tell short stories.

Use your life as inspiration.

The reason stories work so well is because we’re hardwired to enjoy stories.

Here’s an example of an email I wrote with the subject line…

I Made a Pregnant Lady Cry

It was a true story about the time I made a pregnant lady cry when I was on a temporary job assignment. For whatever reason the pregnant lady felt like I was supposed to support her decision to refuse to do some work. I simply mentioned that we were told to do whatever the staff at our assignment asked of us. And no; it wasn’t manual labor. The whole thing snowballed quickly and the pregnant lady started crying. 

There’s a bit more to the story than I’m telling in this post, but needless to say there was a point to the story by the time I got to the end of the email. I basically asked for some referrals for my business so that I’m not out “in these streets” doing temporary assignments and making pregnant women cry.

What can your stories be about?

If you’re not already including stories in your emails, please start developing that skill now. You won’t start out writing amazing stories that engage all of your subscribers, but practice as much as you can. As a matter of fact, you should start writing each day and save some drafts of stories you might want to send to your email subscribers.

Take the challenge!

I want to challenge you to start writing for 30 days. Write an email to your list every single day. It doesn’t matter how big or small your list is. AND even if you don’t have a list of subscribers, write and save your emails on your computer. You can always use them later.

And if you’re in direct sales or network marketing I highly suggest that you learn this skill immediately. Not sure where to start? Sign up for this FREE 5 day online marketing bootcamp.

In this bootcamp, you’ll learn the skills to attract people who are already interested in what you have to offer – so you won’t have to nag, pressure, or chase anybody down to sell them anything EVER again.
This is the exact system that taught me how to attract a steady stream of leads online to grow my business fast. Click here to access the bootcamp today!

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Written by:Bianca Roberts

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