Well hello there, Catherine Langman here, back with another episode of the Productpreneur Success Podcast. And today on the show, I want to talk about some email marketing strategies you can use between now and Christmas to help you to convert more sales from your existing email subscribers and customers without relying on paid advertising.
When I started my business, I spent hours and hours googling for tips on how to write for the web and how to craft the perfect email.
These days, we’re all bombarded by hundreds of emails and thousands of marketing messages a day, so it’s way harder as a business owner to cut through all that noise and really connect with your customers.
The thing is, email works really really well if you do it right. Even now, in 2020, email marketing still generates the highest ROI of 3800% – much higher than pretty much any other marketing strategy.
In fact, personalised emails that include the recipient’s name or company information in the subject line have 29% higher open rates, and when the content of the email is just as carefully personalized, click rates are 41% higher and email revenue jumps six times higher than emails that aren’t personalized.
Before we get into some specifics, I want to explain why I’m sharing this episode with you now, in November 2020.
Over the last few weeks, Facebook and Google have both been rolling out updates and changes to their algorithms, causing havoc for many advertisers.
Campaigns that were once highly successful and profitable, suddenly tanked. Traffic and sales for many people dropped off a cliff.
In fact, Facebook went on a massive ad account shutdown spree – ad accounts all over the globe were being shut down with no notice at all. It was all in error, some sort of bug apparently to do with their algorithm changes, but it still caused a lot of angst for many advertisers who had a very stressful day trying to reclaim their ad accounts and get their campaigns back up and running again.
And in the midst of all that, there’s the lost sales from that time without ads driving traffic to their websites.
So whilst there are a tonne of things we can do and are doing to get paid advertising traffic back on track and converting, which is definitely a topic for another day, my biggest piece of advice to ALL my clients and to all of you listeners is this:
Focusing consistent effort on building up your email list, and then learning how to write emails that sell, is absolutely crucial.
You OWN your email list. It’s such a valuable asset in your business. Whereas you don’t own your Facebook or Instagram audience – Mark Zuckerberg does. You will always be at the mercy of changes on those platforms, and of course they’re still valuable to your business, but you still need to have something you can rely on and that’s your email list.
So back onto the topic of today’s episode.
As the title says – I’m going to share some email marketing tweaks that made a $30,000 difference in my bottom line.
This happened at a time of year in my first business that was traditionally a sales trough. Christmas time when you don’t sell gift products can be tough! And in that business, I was selling modern cloth nappies, or diapers, at a time when that product category was still quite a new invention.
Now, going into the exercise I’ll share with you, I knew the change to my marketing emails would have an impact, but the size of that number surprised even me!
See, I knew there were aspects of my email marketing strategy that at the time needed a bit of a facelift.
I wanted more people to open my emails.
I wanted more people to take action from my emails – to click through to the website.
And I absolutely wanted to generate more revenue from my email marketing.
Whenever you want to reach a new goal, you know some parts of your marketing strategy are going to have to change.
The first thing that I decided to do was to create a theme around my marketing for December.
I know that the biggest frustration many people have with email marketing is – what to put in the emails?
I chose to run emails with an “Advent Calendar” theme to it, whereby each day ‘unlocked’ a different new product or offer or incentive.
I had a whole category set up on my website and had my graphic designer design the page to look like an advent calendar, and each day a new window would be open with details of the new offer. You could click on that and it’d add the deal to the shopping cart.
I was able to use all those graphics throughout the emails as well.
Now, being an advent calendar, this definitely meant I was emailing my list daily with each new deal. And in fact, I was emailing them a reminder at the end of each day as well, to make sure people didn’t miss out.
Now, you might be thinking, “EEK – that’s a lotta emails and I don’t want to annoy my customers!”
And yes, it might be, but quite frankly we are all receiving a tonne of emails right now – the volume always goes up significantly at this time of year.
There is simply no way at all that your customers will see every single email you send.
And the thing about a campaign like an ‘advent calendar’ type event is that you can make it a lot of fun on both social media as well as email. So it doesn’t come across as being just plain old spammy and annoying.
With that particular campaign, we even found customers bought multiple times during the campaign as well. Because we had something different on offer each day, and everyone knew that each offer was only available for a day so if it was something they really wanted they couldn’t wait to see if something better came along.
Another comment I want to make about the volume of emails, is that you need to remember that, as the business owner, the value of your list is only there if you do actually use it.
A mentor of mine once told me that if you’re not seeing anyone unsubscribe from your list, you’re just not sending enough emails.
The fact of the matter is that it IS possible to email your list frequently without being an annoying, spammy douche bag. And to get the most value from your audience, email is something you need to master.
But just simply sending emails to your list is rarely enough.
There are always ways to improve your game, right?
And in this case, with marketing emails, there are numerous ways to optimise and improve so you can increase your open rates, your click through rates, and your conversion rates, so that you ultimately make more revenue from your efforts.
So, how do you create the perfect marketing email?
In an ideal world, we’d be able to say, ‘here’s my product, here’s why you should buy it’, and all the right people would who needed our product would click purchase.
But the thing is, this doesn’t work, and it doesn’t work for a few reasons:
>> We have to be more persuasive than this in order to capture AND keep people’s attention. We’re all confronted with so many different marketing messages every day, from the TV to social media to billboards along the side of the road to the radio and so on, that we’ve all learned to automatically tune them out.
>> Secondly, this tactic has zero value with your customers, they don’t care if you sell your widget, they care about their own problem or need that they want to solve. There’s plenty of brain science that tells us that almost all, if not all, of our decision-making happens in the emotional side of our brain. Sure we use the logical side of our brain to rationalise and support the decision we’ve already made. But you can’t appeal to this side first, it just won’t work.
So, how do we appeal to our customers and persuade them to buy with integrity?
We don’t want to be manipulative, because that’ll result in our customers regretting their buying decision later and we definitely don’t want that.
The number one key to writing effective marketing emails is you’ve really got to understand what your audience wants (your ideal customers).
Then you can write from the perspective of your customers, using the language and terminology your customers are familiar with.
I also like to see emails with a bit of personality. Use words, images and offers that are consistent with your brand identity and tone of voice, but that also appeal to your ideal customer. This will always perform better (and generate more sales). You especially don’t want to just copy what someone else does.
I always like to try and incorporate some sort of storytelling into my emails, whether that’s using words or images or video. Certainly some sort of visual element will capture attention and communicate the story and the value on offer faster than text alone.
If you don’t grab their attention with the right lead into the copy, they won’t read the rest of it.
Brain science – we make decisions in the emotional part of the brain, and then rationalise that decision with the logic side.
So if we write to our customers emotions, they’ll already trust and be invested in you having the solution to their problem. So if you can support the emotions they already have, they’ll make a buying decision. Don’t disrupt that emotional process by adding in all the hard-sell features/benefits logic stuff.
When writing your marketing emails – think about how you read and react to emails yourself. When you open your inbox you’ll automatically skip/delete a bunch of emails and they’ll be the hard sales-y ones.
We read the emails that feel like they’re from friends. Friends don’t send emails that look like a coupon or ad or catalogue.
How to write emails that aren’t salesy:
- Tell a story
- Give proof that it’s true
- Illustrate the principle of the story
- Then, by the way, if you want to have the same result as the story (add product)
This way, every email feels like valuable content, but what the story does is create DESIRE.
I like to use what we call the Buyer’s journey framework, but shaped as the “Hero’s journey”, where the hero is the buyer.
The ‘hero’s journey’ is a storytelling framework that, once you know what it is, you’ll see it everywhere, like in novels, TV shows and movies.
Think about Star Wars the movie as an example. Luke Skywalker, the hero in the story, is experiencing a disastrous ‘world is gonna end’ terrible situation. IE a massive pain point.
Luke joins the rebellion, whose collective dream is to see an end to the war, a utopian future where everyone is safe and happy and the bad guys are defeated and all is right with the world.
Things get worse before they start to get better, but eventually Luke meets a trusted guide – Yoda – who helps him in his quest to solve the problem.
And eventually he wins the day.
Yep I just told the Star Wars trilogy in about 30 seconds. No need to watch the movie now! Ha.
So the breakdown of this hero’s journey which we want to use as the storytelling framework for our emails is:
- Describe the existing situation (need, want, pain or desire)
- Describe the dream outcome or the ideal benefits.
- Identify the trusted guide and going on a quest to solve the problem. Give people the rationale to support the emotional decision they’ve already made.
- Present your unique solution (your product). Talk about the benefits here. (The benefits are what the customer experiences when they use or consume your product.)
- The offer – describe exactly what transformation you’re bringing to people. Write this first so you always have in mind the PROMISE you’re making to people. But the offer comes here at step 5 in the buyer’s framework.
- Present proof that it works. Customer testimonials.
- Offer value justification. Why is it worth you parting with your money to buy this product? Compare it to the cost of NOT taking action. What happens if you don’t buy this product?
- Take away the fear and risk. The biggest fear a buyer has is that you’re going to rip them off. Reassure them that you’re reliable and trustworthy – I love to use customer testimonials for this purpose.
- If you have them – offer tipping point bonuses. Whether it’s loyalty points, or a free gift with purchase, or free gift wrapping and gift card, or free express shipping.
- Invite them to make a (buying) decision. Don’t be pushy or manipulative in trying to get them to a yes, just ask them to make a decision. (Failure to make a decision is like procrastinating, you want people to decide yes or no.) Display authenticity that you genuinely have THEM in mind and want them to make a decision that is right for them.
Now, that sounds like a lot to fit into an email, but in reality you can tell these stories with very few words.
Let’s say you sell skincare and you have a new exfoliating mask to sell.
Your headline within the email could be “Say Goodby To Dry Skin, Forever”.
Here, you’ve described the existing situation (the dry skin pain point) AND the desired outcome (no more dry skin), in one short catchy sentence.
Next, you might have a sentence or two of introductory text.
Like, “Your skin is your largest organ and needs to be taken care of. Our new exfoliating mask uses natural ingredients to remove dry skin, fade marks & hydrate, all at once.”
Then you can illustrate that further with a gorgeous image, where you’re showing the customer how your brand has created just such a result for others.
In this way, you’re presenting your brand as the ‘trusted guide’ and you’re presenting the solution to them, visually.
You can then include some customer testimonials as a way to give confidence that the product really works, and minimise any fears or perceived risks.
Next, you might add in an extra incentive, whether that’s a bonus free gift with purchase (for a facial mask, maybe a brush to apply it with?), or something else. If you do this step, make sure you put a time limit on that offer, which is designed to help the punter make a decision one way or another by that date – otherwise it’s easy for people to think they can do it later and then forget.
And then, invite them to make a purchase decision. This means – add in a Shop Now button that takes them directly to the product.
I like to then add in some more images or a video or animated gif as well, and then repeat the incentive or offer, and add another Shop Now button.
So hopefully this gives you a really easy example to illustrate how to write the contents of your marketing emails in a way that grabs the attention of the reader, elicits an emotional reaction, and prompts them to take action and buy.
But before you can get a subscriber to read the contents of the email, they actually need to open the email, right?
To influence more people to open your emails in the first place requires a really great subject line.
In fact, I believe the #1 most important element of your email is the subject line. It’s one of the first things that you see in your inbox, and if you find the subject line interesting you may click to see what’s inside, otherwise you’ll probably skip it or delete it without even opening it.
So you’ve basically got about 3 seconds to capture your reader’s attention and be enticing enough for them to decide whether to open your email or trash it!
So it’s not surprising that statistics show almost a third of email recipients open an email just because they liked the subject line.
How can you make your subject lines interesting?
- Keep it short – less than 50 characters.
- Don’t make false promises not supported by the content of the email (sometimes referred to as ‘click baiting’).
- Don’t use all capitals or exclamation marks (this comes across like you’re shouting).
- Avoid words that imply the recipient has to do something difficult (like reading a long report) – instead, use words that describe benefits.
- Try and use an emoji or two – you’d be surprised, even today in late 2020, you’ll still be in the minority of email senders using an emoji in the subject line, yet statistically it has been shown to improve open rates.
- Test different types of subject lines to find out what works for your audience. You can do this through your email marketing program, or by simply segmenting your list and sending out the same email (with a different subject line) and measuring the results.
I like to use the free ‘Email Subject Line Tester’ on the CoSchedule.com website – scroll down to the footer menu and you’ll find the link to their free tool.
Next – actually getting your email in the inbox or maybe the Promotions folder, rather than the Spam folder, is important if you want your emails to be seen, let alone opened. Let’s face it, none of us regularly looks at emails in our Spam folder, right?
Yet more than 20% of emails sent never make it to the subscriber’s inbox. They get caught by spam filters. Why does this happen?
It can often be caused because of the subject line – avoid using symbols, exclamation marks, words like ‘Free’, ‘Buy’, ‘Rich’. When mail servers find these in the subject line they may proactively move the emails to the spam folder.
Then, when a lot of people mark your email as spam this passes a negative signal to the spam filters and the end result is all your emails to end up in the spam folder even before people see them.
Too many links in the email content – This is another reason that can lower the integrity of your emails. Avoid having too many links in the content especially if they link to different products or pages. So – no old-style newsletters with links to heaps of different articles or products. I always say – have a ‘single minded proposition’ for your email rather than offering lots of content or different things to look at or consider.
On a side note – this issue of spammy or highly promotional content pushing emails into spam folders is another really important reason why you should work hard to learn how to do great marketing so that you don’t rely entirely on discounts to drive sales. If you’re always sending out discounts, your emails will become less and less effective over time as more spam filters filter them out of subscribers’ inboxes…
Ultimately, when it comes to your marketing emails – try to be quality. Remember, you’re building relationships. To achieve this, I like to write conversationally, not all corporate speak or like a TV advertisement.
OK guys – so that’s what I’ve got for you today!
If you’re looking for help with your email marketing, then by all means please get in contact with us. You can head to https://www.productpreneurmarketing.com if you’d like to book in for a free strategy session.
Otherwise, please make sure you join our free Rockstar Productpreneur community. I’ve got a bunch of free training materials in the group’s Units section, including a 5-part free training on how to get started with email marketing for eCommerce.
Just head to this podcast shownotes page, at http://www.catherinelangman.com/episode-44 and you’ll find the link to join our free community.