Go Solo - some great tips! - Day 16
30 Days To Crush Email Marketing!
Day 16
Go Solo - some great tips!
Hello and welcome WA'rs to Day 16 of my 30 Day Email Marketing Challenge!
It's Monday...and a fresh new week in each of our online journeys..to build our businesses - I'm excited, hoping you are too :)
In yesterday’s post we talked about making offers within solo emails vs. sending content emails with an offer worked in.
And No, I'm not referring to the famous Hope Solo, the USA women goal keeper. when talking about Solo emails :) But please forgive me, I really liked the picture!
To digress slightly, I actually attended Wembley Statium in London in 2012 with my family to see the Women's Olympic football final between USA and Japan...which the USA went onto win 2-1
Coincidentally, my daughter Louise's role model growing up has been Abby Wambach who has played such a pivotal role in the success of USA's team over recent times.
For those of you in the know regarding the early years of women's football and in particular the USA team...I have also been lucky enough in the past to have met Mia Hamm before she retired from the world stage in 2004..and I can also let you in on a little secret...I had a little crush on her when I was growing up and she has been one of my hero's.
If you're interested I highly recommend you check out the documentary "Dare to Dream" free on YouTube...it is quite an inspirational story!
Sorry, I digress...back to reality :) so yesterday we established that while we don’t want to send solo emails all the time, there are times when they will work well and we should get into the habit of using them regularly.
Solo emails are perfect when we're about to launch a new product (it could be your own - how exciting, or someone else's), or anytime when there’s a supply and demand shortfall and we can fill the gap! At these times we need our readers’ full attention and thus our email needs to directly offer the product / solution to our customer.
Again, I would mention that the quicker you get into the habit of selling to your audience the better you will become at writing the necessary copy...and copy that coverts well.
So how do I go about writing a solo email?
I work backwards!
You may remember from earlier posts I have talked about "reverse engineering". Get used to hearing this term because I use it a lot both in my past when I was an engineer and more recently in my online world.
Before I even consider writing a solo email, my first port of call is to take a close look at the offer I am about to share with my readers.
This is a suitable point in this process to firmly establish what kind of marker it is that you want to be. Examine your ethics, your integrity and honesty. You may be wondering why I mention this, but believe me when I tell you...it can often be all to easy to lose site of what you stand for when money is thrown into the mix.
I am sure that we've all been burnt by unscrupulous marketers at sometime in the past and have bought shoddy and worthless products not fit for purpose. Take a minute to remember how that made you feel. I promised myself that I would never go down this road as a marketer..no matter how tempting or indeed how dire my financial situation ever became.
So back to the topic in hand...I make sure that the product that I'm about to offer is a good one. I make sure that it is great value and that my readers will benefit greatly from it.
Each of my readers form part of my little community, my tribe and I want to look after their interests at all times.
I get them excited!
Just like every other aspect of advertising and marketing..whether that be online or off..we all know about "the tease". As soon as I know I am looking to offer my readers some kind of product or service...I will want to tease them a little with it prior to me sending out the actual offer.
This is equally important if the product or service is not my own...actually I would go as far to say that it is even more important. Again, I take steps to ensure that the person I am dealing with shares the same ethics as myself. I then go on to ensure I trust their product...by actually purchasing and using it myself. Once I am satisfied that the product ticks all my required boxes I will start by introducing him or her to my audience reinforcing them as an expert and someone that I trust.
This a lone will help overcome a lot of the objections that you may otherwise come up against when it comes time to closing the sale.
Attention grabbing hook..attached to my line.
Always remember that it doesn’t matter how great the offer is, if your readers don't feel compelled by your subject line to ever open the email...you are never going to make the sale. I will always dedicate some serious time on getting this just right..and this is a good time to have a look through your swipe folder for a little added inspiration if needed.
Don't be shy...ask for that sale!
Last of all it's time to write the body of your email. As you get further involved with the mechanics of the selling process you will see that the whole thing is made up of separate components.
On there own these components make no sense or serve no particular purpose...but when they are put together in a certain sequence they take a potential customer by the hand and lead them through to sale.
Believe it or not, it is not your job to make the sale in the body of your offer email...because that is the job of your sales page (and this is something we will look into in a later post).
Your actual job in the offer email is simply to convince your readers to click the link that sends them to that very sales page with an open mind about making the purchase.
*IMPORTANT Don’t be afraid to be direct.
Recapping, you have already got them excited, tweaked their interest and have convinced them that this is something that will benefit them...
Tell them to click the link and ask them to buy the product...
You will make that sale!
Enough for today :) SO what comes next? All will be revealed in tomorrow's post!
I will leave you now with my thought of the day...
It could be the biggest decision of your life...
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Recent Comments
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How about when you get to day 50 Anthony. Gotta look for good emails in the most unlikely places!
Hi Mike, yes very true. It is a continual cycle of continuity. We need to be looking for inspiration anywhere and everywhere it can be found!
Thanks Rose, glad you liked it. Thanks so much for taking the time to leave a comment. Hope you are having a productive day so far.
Hi! Anthony,
Your post is well written and makes sense in stressing reality with honesty and integrity. To echo such, I would like to share my thoughts as follows: There is nothing wrong to be self-serving as long as achieving what you like, love, want, and need not through manipulating others' ignorance, fear, and anxiety with tactics of power and deception under hidden agenda. As a result, what you got is at the expense of others' pain, suffering, and loss; that is absolutely wrong. More on the related issues, welcome to http://www.formefirst.com/selfservice.html and other related titles inside http://www.formefirst.com.
So, keep on writing the good stuff to share. Did you lately look into my baby www.ebettercare.com yet? It is 3+ weeks old and needs any support to grow into its adolescence.
Cheers and best to health,
James
Hi James..or is it Chin-ti?..forgive me if I have got that wrong. Thanks for your comments. I have taken a look at your latest site and have some basic feedback for you. A very interesting subject..one that I see you have medical expertise within. I very much like your Wordpress theme..it is crisp and uncluttered which will serve your visitors well. Some basic things that stand out to me which if you agree can be easily remedied is firstly your choice of header image. It does not really pin point what your site is about so I think it is a lost opportunity to reassure your visitors. I would also recommend that you take a closer look at your current menus and navigation tabs as they could be better positioned and grouped. Overall, I really like your site...I wish you every success.
Hi! Anthony,
Appreciate your quick response! Thanks.
For building www.ebettercare.com, I provide the contents and my trusted partner handles the tech issues. I will relate your advice to his attention.
Besides, I would like to welcome you to give comment and suggestion on how I can monetize the contents and related products from www.formefirst.com and www.sick-ask.com.
More help and support will forge a faster growth for www.ebettercare.com.
Thanks and have a wonderful day!
James
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I'm going to try it. Need to work things out though. Do you have any recommendations for a simple email system that links to your CTA on your post?
Hi Sylvia, there are a number of ways to add your reader to your list from clicking your CTA..probably the simplest one is to direct your reader to a dedicated landing page where you collect their info which most autoresponder services now include as standard. It sounds much more complicated than it actually is. I will cover this in detail when I do the technical training next month. I myself use Getresponse..but I have heard good things about Mailchimp and they have a FREE starter plan which includes some nice features where you can get a feel for it.
Hi Anthony, I waded through mail chimp haphazardly last night in a sort of roundabout way hunting WP plugins. Then finally got to filling out an email template in mail chimp and by trial and error sort of begin a campaign @ 3am. Then went to bed because my eyelids were dropping.
Didn't get up till 10am - I have never ever slept that long in. When I was teaching at school I would work till 4am and still be at school for 7:30am this in Oz here, not UK. This afternoon I found a YouTube that took me through setting up the campaign properly, though it's a different version and I did my dummy run this evening. All good!!
My only problem now is the bad html text that's meaningless below my comment box. I found three people in WA in the past who had a similar prob but their solution of where to paste the said solution was gobblediduitch to me. I'm using simpleshift WP theme and googled them WP which gave more instruction to go into the theme editor and paste on the footer area or function php but I did it and nearly lost my website. Fortunately the WA support guys redeemed it magically.
So thank you for the nudge to email. I plan to post tomorrow on social media to hopefully attract visitors to my site. Though it does seem a bit premature with only three posts and one of them is about me. I do have a third one a book review but needs an hour to tidy.
I haven't got had a post looked at here yet but I haven't been able to get two sites/pages to review here yet. I must be looking at the wrong time. They are always empty.
Ok - I'm rambling. Thanks for the entertaining training. Sylvia
Rambling is compulsory :) It's the rule around here! It's how we learn and discover the good stuff. You persevered and job done..well done. Also, one thing I've learned over the years is don't pay too much attention to putting things neatly on a time scale..and what I mean by that is you don't need to wait until you have things all neat and tidy in their boxes before you are allowed to try new stuff out. It also doesn't need to look pretty. So what if you don't have much content up yet...it just means that when you do..you will already be well ahead of the game and your competition!
Ok, I'll do it. Thanks, Anthony.