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Chapter 20 - How to Build Great E-mail Campaigns

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You want visitors sent directly to your sales mini-site. How are you going to get them there? If you have been doing your homework up to this point you will have started to build a substantial list of e-mail addresses and contact information. You collected them when you gave away e-books, when they subscribed to your e-zine; when they asked to receive a free report or article from you. You provided valuable information to them, and they gave you their e-mail address. If you were really smart you have collected e-mail addresses from all of your business activities. Now you have a list of e-mail addresses, names and a field that tells you how you got the e-mail addresses.

You have a killer e-mail list organized in convenient common groups. If you have not done it yet, import the names into whatever e-mail client or auto responder tools you have decided on and get ready to start your e-mail campaigns.

Timing and Touches

How many e-mail should you send and how often?

This is probably the hardest question any Internet marketing has to answer. Too many e-mails sent too often will bring poor results and high a percentage of please remove messages. Not enough messages sent sporadically will not create the trust and top of mind awareness required to get sales flowing from your sites. What we do know from testing is that:

 - Any touch is better than no touch and that includes e-mail, phone, fax, face to face, trade shows.
 - You need to use a contact and campaign management system like GoldMine to coordinate your campaigns.
 - You should have a sleep campaign that maintains a minimum of 10-12 touches/yr./person.
 - To make the most of a campaigns system you need to architect or script the steps or flow of the e-mails before you start sending messages out.
 - Frequent contact/touching is key.
 - Your prospects will not buy or change without this constant touch
 - Campaigns apply to all selling situations and processes
 - Perpetual maintenance of your list is the goal. Your main theme site acquires the prospect, your e-mail campaigns develop the business relationships.

The bottom line is that you are going to test your list and your market to find out how many and how often are best for you. Use a different frequency with two of your lists. Ask your prospects and customers how many times are enough. Send messages, track results and evaluate.

Please respect the requests for inclusion or exclusion that your list makes.

Templates

Be consistent and use a template. Consistency within the message structure builds trust and familiarity. Using a template also reminds you to follow some proper e-mail marketing protocols. There are three common features that should always be included in every outbound marketing e-mail.

Mom Never Told Me!
That instead of writing each e-mail
I send I should create pre-
formatted templates!

1. Remind the reader how they got on the campaign or list. Remember you captured the visitor s e-mail address, name and an additional field that you included to remind yourself of how you got the e-mail address. The average American gets close to 20 e-mails a day according to eMarketer. Do you remember why you are getting them all? Why would a one-time visitor? Here is one that I received today.

   Hi James, (FIRST -- you're receiving this as a follow-up to the "Guaranteed Marketing" e-book you requested from me. If you don't want to receive further messages, please see the unsubscribe instructions at the end of this message. Otherwise, feel free to forward this to your friends in business. Thanks! -- Kevin Donlin)

2. Make all the links in your text message linkable. For e-mail addresses include mailto: directly in front of the address. For web pages, include http://. Do not forget the AOL users as well. The default e-mail client for AOL users requires that web page links include the HTML equivalent. You can do this by adding the HTML markup with the URL. For example <a href=http://www.yourdomain.com the text you want displayed here </a will display a clickable link.
3. At the end of your messages provide the reader with an option to remove themselves from your marketing campaigns. Either a direct link to a web page where they can unsubscribe or a mailto: link that removes their address from your active lists and campaigns.

E-mail Formats

Make sure that you format your e-mails so that they are no longer than 65 characters in length for each line of text. This maximum size ensures that no matter what e-mail client your prospect is using they will receive an e-mail that shows up in even paragraphs. As soon as you see this type of e-mail:

Yada, yada, yada, yada, yada,
Yada,
Yada, yada, yada, yada, yada,

If you get an e-mail that looks wanky you know that the sender is new to the game. If you use a text editor like windows notepad you can hit the enter key every 65 characters to make sure that the line spacing is right. The other key is to use a fixed width font like Courier.

Why would you use notepad instead of a word processor like Microsoft Word? When you use a word processor like Word, a lot of special formatting goes on behind the scenes. Often special characters get inserted into the text of the message. Guess what happens when you cut and paste your message from Word to your e-mail client? Some of those special characters have been embedded in the message without you knowing. The message looks fine on your end. It is a mess on your customers. Do not take chances. Use notepad.

E-mail Addresses

When you send e-mail out in any campaign, send it from a real person address. If you get e-mails from james@jamesmaduk.com or 89ddkkl90_ioidj@xyzlist.com, which one are you more comfortable opening? Trust, credibility, real people talking to real people! Send and use real e-mail addresses when you send any e-mails in a campaign or otherwise.

This does not mean you have to use your personal address as your main newsletter or marketing campaign e-mail. Create an e-mail alias like
newsletter@.....com
editor@.....com
specialnews@.....com
specialoffers@....com,
newreleases@......com

Mom Never Told Me!
That how I format my outbound
e-mail is almost as important as
what text goes into them!

Mom Never Told Me! That how I format my outbound e-mail is almost as important as what text goes into them!

These e-mail addresses can be used to identify each campaign and allow the recipient to reply to the mail. Even though you may include detailed instructions and links to other e-mail address in the body of the e-mail message, more often than not the average user will just use the reply button to send a message back to whomever sent the message.

Subject

A great e-mail subject line is the key to getting your e-mails opened. The wrong subject line may even get you mail automatically blocked as spam or filtered by e-mail rules set up by your prospect.

Rules are made to be broken, right? Not these rules. Your customers have set them so you have to play by them.

Try setting and using the e-mail filter rules in your e-mail client. How do you set yours up? Are your customers doing the same? Send some e-mail to yourself and find out if they get filtered. Look for simple things like using ALLCAPS, the word Free in the subject.

Subject lines may be the only things that are getting read in any of your e-mails. Assuming that is true, what tried and tested direct marketing strategy could you use?

1. You could put the entire offer in the subject line. Is this applicable to your campaign? Can you boil the offer down to 60 characters? An offer in the subject is direct and bold.

   Eg. 50 Online Sales Training Courses, Only $19 Save 33%

2. You can also put the call to action in the subject. If you really want the reader to go to a mini-site, send them there in the subject line. Some of readers will follow the link others will need the added incentive to find out why they should check it out. Either way they end up at your mini-site.

   Eg. Check out http://www.webmarketingforsmallbusiness.com

3. With existing customers, members or newsletter subscribers you can personalize the subject line. Include their name in a subject line that looks like a personal message.

   Eg. Bill, Check out http://www.minisite.com it s great, James

4. The how-to approach still works. You can follow it with just about any benefit your product or service will provide and even disguise it with some power words beforehand.

   Eg. Discover How To Turn Any Business Opportunity into a Comfortable Conversation.

5. The question approach. This is an approach that I picked up from direct marketer, Bob Serling. It has two components. First, you have to know what your customer s biggest problem is and then to build a question that causes them to remember the pain associated with the problem. The more pain the quicker the reader will act. An example might be:

   Are You Great At Providing Your Service - But Still Not Earning as Much As You Should Be?

6. The personal Story Headline is an approach used by Joe Vitale of Hypnotic Marketing fame. His approach utilizes the promise of a personal story and the mystery of a missing link.

   Eg. I didn t feel comfortable closing sales until I found out how to turn a sales call into a Sales Conversation

Mom Never Told Me!
That the subject line of my
outbound e-mails makes or
breaks my sales efforts!

You can combine strategies and test, which works best for your contacts. These are powerful headlines that immediately capture the reader s attention and build a deep interest in the product or service that you provide.

Personalize the Messages

In every case, use the contact information that you have available in your list database to personalize each message. Use the reader s first name when appropriate in the body of the messages and in the subject line.

Types of Messages to Use in Your Campaign

What should you actually put into the body of the message? We will review four strategies here that can be used effectively.

1. The Direct Bribe message includes an added incentive to get the prospect to visit the mini-site. If you visit now you will get&& this added bonus. You can also use time or volume incentives as a bribe. Make the offer expire on a set date or sell a limited number of items. This type of incentive works well with price sensitive customers and can complement the Bonus Pile On approach used in your sales letter.

   a. Follow up your first e-mail with a Review of the Direct Bribe and add an additional bonus. This e-mail simply reviews what was offered and updates the reader on the initial response to the first e-mail. This is a great way to introduce testimonials to the reader who needs a little more information before visiting your mini-site.

2. The Mystery message never provides enough information for the reader to make a decision. In order to satisfy their curiosity, the reader visits the mini-site. The body of the message is a simple question with a link.

   a. For example: James, did you know about this? Http://www.jamesmaduk.com/seminars What was it that I did not tell you?
   b. You can also use the personal story approach in this type of mail. For e.g. I was afraid to ask for the order. I know my product and services are among the best in my industry but I just did not feel comfortable asking for money until I discovered these 5 simple steps. Click here to find out the steps

3. The Direct Sales Letter approach includes the entire or condensed content of your mini-site in the body of the e-mail. This approach is often used by affiliates who do not have their own websites. A well-done e-mail sales letter gets the job done without the required click to the mini-site. The down side is that the likelihood of your message being read to completion is determined entirely by the quality of the letter. Bad letter = low response.
4. The Personal Recommendation approach uses a personal or third party testimonial. In the middle of the testimonial links are inserted that direct the reader to click on the reason for the testimonial . If you have built up enough credibility, you can use this approach. If you have not built enough trust personally, use one of your testimonials from a trusted third party. Although you are sending the message, the text is written as if the trusted third party is speaking. As we learned earlier this approach can be quite powerful if done correctly.

I have included examples of each of these formats in the resources section.

Call to Action

What is the purpose of the e-mail? If you want to get your reader to the mini-site, make it their only option. Give them the option early and give it often. One of the easiest ways to do this is to include a specially formatted section within the body of your message with the direct command. Here are some examples from past e-mails I have sent.

 - Don t wonder where your sales career might have been if you would-a - could-a or should-a listened to James Maduk. Find out for certain right now. Visit http://www.salestrainingforsmallbusiness.com
 - To learn how James Maduk can increase your Sales Velocity visit www.jamesmaduk.com.
 - Save $100 on this limited time offer. http://www.virtualselling.com

Use a compelling reason and give the reader a direct command to click on the link or ask a question to which clicking the link will answer the question. Do not be afraid to use a combination of calls to action or multiple calls to action in your e-mails.

P.S.

Did you know that 60% of the readers of your campaign e-mail will actually read the end of the message first? That is right, the P.S. found at the bottom of many sales letters will probably get read before the body of your message.

Take advantage of this fact. Make your P.S. sell!

Here are a couple of things that you can use in your P.S. to improve the response rates of your outbound e-mail campaigns. Include a final call to action with:

 - Repeat the main offer.
 - Remind the reader of the limited time offer.
 - Restate your guarantee.
 - Add some bonuses to the offer.
 - Note additional celebrity referrals.
 - Include additional savings for buying now.

E-mail Link Tracking

How can you find out if your readers are actually clicking on the links in your e-mails? How do you know which subject line works best? Which of the four body message strategies creates the most traffic to your mini-site?

While the call to action - that direct command that tells the reader what to do is important, if you are not able to find out how effective it is over time you are leaving money on the table.

You want to track and test all your outbound e-mail, continually refining and improving your results. Tracking and testing is not limited to how many people clicked through. You need to know what your return on investment was for every campaign you run. How much did you spend on the campaign and how many sales did you make?

Mom Never Told Me!
That I could actually tell how
many people were really
responding to every call to action
that I included in every e-mail!

I use a free service called hyper-tracker which does exactly those things.

many people were really responding to every call to action that I included in every e-mail! What follows is a short report from a free service that gives you an idea of some of the information you can gather from a campaign. All you have to do is enter the mini-site web address that you are sending your customers too and any cost associated with the marketing campaign.

Hyper-tracker allows you to give the campaign a unique name and even tracks sub campaigns. This means that you can send out a single e-mail offer and include three different subject lines in the e-mail. Hyper-tracker keeps tabs on the total number of visitors that follow the link to your mini-site and also breaks down which subject line worked best.