Chapter Twenty-Seven

The Goal of Your Emails

What should be in your email?   And what is the purpose of your email?

Well, because of all the limitations and delivery hazards involved in email (which I’ve now described in some harrowing detail), my goal always is to keep my email messages super-simple.

The goal of most of my emails – especially to prospects – is to get them to “click through” or “go to” a page on my website – where they can then read, or hear, or watch my main presentation.

Your emails are how you generate repeat visits to your website from those on your opt-in subscriber list.  So your emails need to be intriguing enough to cause that to happen.  In other words, you want a high “click-through” rate.

But to get a high click-through rate, first you need a high “open rate” because if your email is not opened, it won’t be read.  Your open rate will be governed by three factors:

1)      Your reputation with your readers

2)      Your subject line

3)      How interesting your subject is to your readers

If you kill your reputation with your readers by delivering almost nothing but hard sales pitches, after a while it won’t matter what your subject line is or what your topic is, people will just stop opening your emails. 

That will happen after about three hard-offer, spam-type emails.

When you think about it, the #1 job of every email communication is to make sure it’s interesting enough and provides enough value that your readers will read your next email.

So your reputation is key. 

You must have a track-record of delivering fantastic emails, or emails that contain links that take readers who “click-through” to something worthwhile and hopefully tremendous.

Assuming your reputation is great with your readers and that you have developed a following for what you are saying, the next most important item is your subject line.

You want your subject line to be interesting and intriguing without giving away the entire message.  Subject lines should also be short, as general rule.

Here are some subject lines I have used with great success:

Here’s the #1 rule for success in business

Are we meeting in Manhattan on Tuesday?

We’ll start tonight at 9:00 p.m. sharp

It ends at 10:00 p.m.

Here’s your free book on “How to Write a Great Sales Letters”

Here’s something I thought your mom would like

Just 9 slots left

NEW ARTICLE: “The Most Persuasive Word in Sales”

NEW ARTICLE: “How to Give Yourself a 50% Pay Raise Today”

NEW ARTICLE: How to Mail 10,000 Direct Mail Letters a Week for Free”

There’s no reason to pay a website designer

Never pay for an ad again

Never make another sales call

I want you to fire your boss

Here’s how to turn your yearly pay into your daily pay

I apologize.

Oops, my mistake

Idea

Joe, I was thinking this might help you

Joe, does this describe your situation?

Do you see the pattern here?

The subject line needs to be intriguing.  And there should be some payoff, some kind of benefit to opening the email, even if its just to satisfy curiosity.

Your subject line should not give away the entire message.  It’s teaser and should create intrigue.

Notice on some how I say “NEW ARTICLE” . . . followed by the subject of the article.

I do that a lot because my audience likes articles.  I get a very high open rate when I say “NEW ARTICLE” in the subject line, especially if the subject of the article is on target with their interest.

I’m in the business of writing articles and books.  So most of my opt-in subscribers, clients and customers are interested when I say I have a NEW ARTICLE up on my site.

That always generates a very high click-through rate.

Now, remember what the primary purpose of your email is.

It’s to get your readers to click-through to your site . . . so that they can read the entire article, or get the entire sales or marketing presentation – or get the training video, or whatever.

The big benefit should be on your site.  Your email acts as more of teaser to get your readers to want to click through.

So that’s how 8 out of 10 of my marketing emails are structured.  Usually, they are just a few lines long.

I’ll give a few tid-bits of intriguing information in the email.  To get the rest of the story, you have to “click through” or “cut and paste” the link into your browser.

Once your reader goes to the URL on your site, you have many options for graphics and layout – including video and audio -- for making your razzle-dazzle presentation.

You have many more options for doing this on your site than in an email – which has many limitations.  So your website is usually your main selling machine.

Your email acts more like a carrier envelope in traditional direct mail marketing.

You want to create enough interest with your subject line to cause readers to want to open it.  And then you want to include a few lines of intriguing text to cause people to want to click through to get the full story, to see the entire article or the full-blown presentation with all the bells and whistles.

So that’s basically what I try to achieve with 80% of my emails.

But then there’s the other 20% or so.

This remaining 20% is an exception to what I just told you. This 20% usually involves some kind of specific offer right in the email message.

No intrigue.  I just say exactly what it is and what I want my reader to do – which is buy something or do something.

I actually make more outright sales with these emails.  I also get more “unsubscribes” and negative email back.

I also find that my sales will drop if I exceed this 20% ratio of hard-offer vs. soft-sell informational email.   So that’s about where I keep this ratio to maximize my sales – 20% or so hard-sell offers, right in the email . . . while 80% will just promote a new article on my site, a free teleseminar,  training call or something like that.

So that’s my formula – 80% valuable information and soft-sell, 20% hard-sell.  My hard-sell offers will always include a deadline and a reason for the deadline.  That’s what hard-sell offers do.

I sell more with hard-sell.  But the price my audience makes me pay to let me deliver my 20% hard-sell messages is that I must deliver 80% valuable, meaty information – true money-making information that’s of intense interest to my readers.

Really, the ratio is no different from any other  marketing medium.

You would stop watching television if 80 percent were ads and only 20 percent good programming.

You watch television to see the shows and programs you like.  You put up with the ads.  But if there are too many ads, you start to tune out completely.  In fact, that’s what people are doing.

People subscribe to HBO and the movie channels precisely so they do not need to put up with ads.  People are increasingly will to pay a subscription to Serius so they don’t have their radio programs interrupted by ads.  People are willing to pay a lot not to be interrupted all the time by ads.

So think of your Internet marketing program that way.

Think of your website as a media property – as providing all kinds of free benefits to your visitors, regardless of whether they buy anything from you.  The benefits might be great information on the subject they are interested in.  It might even be entertainment.  The purpose of your website will depend on what your business is and what your audience is.

But you and your website need to deliver 80 percent great free benefits to your visitors just for visiting.  If you do that, your audience will put up with the 20% of your communications that are sales pitches.

Now your ratio of hard-sell to soft-sell, and also your frequency of email contact will also depend on what you are selling.

Let’s say you are a local office supply store or a car wash.

Most people are probably not expecting a lot of great information and valuable articles to show up in their email in-box from Staples or Office Depot or a car wash.

When these emails show up, you are expecting some kind of commercial offer, some kind of sales pitch.  So, how do you get people to open these kinds of emails?

You do it with your “ethical bribe.”

You do it with free money offers.  You do it with coupons that save your reader money – coupons they can just print off from the email or from the web page you take them to with a link in the email – exactly like the coupons that show up in your Sunday newspaper.

The goal with your coupon emails, of course, is to generate store traffic for your local store.  Maybe the coupons are nicely laid out in HTML.  Or maybe it’s a text email that includes a code the reader can print off and bring in.

So if you are running this kind of a business – a local retail business – you would not want to send one of these kinds of emails out everyday, or they would lose their impact.

Once a week for a coupon offer would probably be the max.

But let’s say you are a church or a religious organization.   You could easily send out an email once a day – say with an inspirational passage from the Bible.

Or if you are an information marketer – let’s say, a financial advisor -- you can easily send out a daily tip or daily insight.  Or if you a running a news site, you can send out a daily email, or even more than one per day, alerting your readers to important breaking news.

So your frequency of email and type of email all depends on what you are selling.

As with all your marketing, you should only send out a communication when you have something interesting and noteworthy to say. Don’t send out an email just because you think it’s time to send one out.  Send out an email only when you have something worth saying.

Now here’s a question I am often asked.

Should email copy be long or short?

My answer on this is always the same.  It depends.

If you have been reading my books or articles, you know that long sales letters usually work better than short sales letters.  All testing shows this.

But lead generation letters are usually short.

That’s because lead generation letters usually offer something of obvious value for free to those who respond.  Not a whole lot of explanation is needed.

Plus, cost is an issue for your lead generation program. Usually you are trying to collect leads as cheaply as you possibly can.  So the cost of your mailing is a factor.

But when the job of the letter is to make the entire sale, it usually needs to be longer because it has a lot more work to do.  Not only will a full-blown sales letter include a letter – often four pages, eight pages and sometimes even 16 pages long.  It will also include supporting enclosures – a testimonial sheet, perhaps a prospectus and other supporting documents.

Now the length of your email all depends on the job you want it to do.

Most of my emails are like teaser – kind of like headlines and classified ads.  It’s not designed to sell, just create intrigue and interest.

What I want my reader to do is click-through to the main presentation on my site.

But sometimes (perhaps 20% of the time) I want to make the full sales pitch right in the email.

If the sales pitch is simple and straight forward, you can do that in a email – especially with coupon offers and simple offers like that. 

You will certainly make more sales if you can put your entire sales pitch in the email because whenever you require a click-through, you do lose people.

But just understand all the limitations of email.

You want, first and foremost, to get your email through all the spam filters.  And very often, you want to bring traffic through your site where you can put on a much more elaborate presentation – perhaps have your people see a video.

If your product or service is at all complex, getting them into your site is usually the way to go. 

But if all you want to do is offer your “ethical bribe” – for example, coupons to get people to come into your physical retail store -- then the entire offer can be made in the email.  For example:

“I’ll mow your lawn for $1.”

Now that’s an email almost anyone who has a lawn would open and act on.

A simple offer that is clear, irresistible and straight-forward can be made entirely with an email.

So your decision about whether to make your offer in an email or to use email as enticement to encourage readers to click-through to your site depends on the complexity of what your are offering and selling.

As with all marketing tools at your disposal, your job as a master marketer is to select the right tool for the job at hand.  Sometimes you can fit your entire offer on a simple post card.  Other times a 16 page letter is needed.

How Important Are “Click-Through” Rates?

Click-through rates vary based on whether customers are being asked to click-through to make a purchase -- or simply to get more information, such as by reading an article in a newsletter.

A longer email that makes the entire sales pitch will get a low click-through rate.  In that case, there’s no real reason to click unless the reader wants to buy.  Plus, there is no mystery in this kind of email.

A short email with some intriguing copy will get a much higher click-through rate – often 10 times higher or more.  Both kinds of email messages have their purpose.

There’s no rule as to what constitutes a good click-through rate.  It depends on what you are trying to accomplish with your email.  The quality of your list is a big factor.  Are these people who know you well and like you?  That will have a dramatic impact on your click-through rate.

You can also increase click-through rates by offering multiple links sprinkled throughout your email, so customers don't have to read all your copy in order to move to the next step.

For hard-sell email solicitations, a clear “call-to-action” is essential and is largely responsible for a pass or fail click-through rate. Be sure to provide an incentive that adds value and gives your readers a reason to click-through – such as a valuable free BONUS GIFT for those who act today by 12:00 Midnight Eastern Time.

Maximize Sales With Specialized “Landing Pages”

Sales letters and ads perform best when they sell just one thing – and only one thing.

Ask your reader to do one thing at a time. Don’t give here many options to choose from.

Options and choices just confuse people.

So when you send out your email, decide its purpose and stick with that purpose.

If the purpose is to get your reader to click-through to your site, take your reader to a specific landing page that’s designed to sell your reader on doing one thing  Don’t take your reader into your general store first.  Take her to a specialized landing page, which is geared entirely toward persuading your reader to take a specific action – whether that’s to get a free report, buy a product, enroll in a seminar, or whatever it is you want your reader to do. 

Let’s take my business.

I run seminars.  But I do far better – exponentially better – if I sell just one seminar at a time than I do if I present my audience with a menu of seminars to choose from.  I promote one seminar, one book, one study course, one service at a time. And I have landing pages, each designed to sell that one product, seminar or service at a time.

This might seem like a small point.  But this tiny shift will increase your sales ten-fold.

Remember a big part of what makes an ad campaign work.

You are offering THE solution to your prospects problem, not one option among many.

“I have THE cure for your cold” is far stronger than “here are all our cold medicines.  You choose.”

The Power of the Auto-Responder

The auto-responder can be used a number of ways.

One way you have probably used it is when you are away from the office.  You can set up an auto-response message to be sent to anyone one who sends you an email.  The email comes in.  Your email then goes out in response, automatically, to let your emailer know you are out of the office for a period of time.

But the auto-responder is also be a powerful marketing tool and is a key feature offered by just about every email marketing service.

This is a mechanism that allows you to send out a series of emails in a pre-set sequence.

So if someone orders your free “special report” by filling out your sign-up form, they should instantly and automatically receive an email with the link to the special report you offered on your sign-up page.  And then your subscriber would be sent a series of scheduled emails, perhaps every other day, on the subject you know they are interested in -- which is the subject of the “special report” they ordered.

For those who order my free ebook, I have up to one year’s worth of emails written for them in a que, ready to be sent to them on the assigned day.  The assigned day is based on the day of the sign-up or purchase -- so they would receive an immediate email in response to their sign-up or purchase.  A pre-written email would then be sent on day 2, day 4, day 6, etc.  The emails are short, but always contain useful and valuable information on the subject my prospect is interested in.

This is how you stay a welcome guest and don’t become an annoying pest.

Remember, you want your prospects to look forward to the arrival of your email. 

You might have a title for your auto-response email series.  A series I send is titled “Ben’s Marketing Success Tips.”  Each email contains a valuable tip for those interested in improving their marketing.

Every now and then, you give your auto-response email list an opportunity to buy something from you.  Once someone buys something for the first time, they are immediately entered into a new auto-response series of email messages geared toward first-time buyers.

When they buy a second time from you, they are entered into yet another auto-response email program, with messages geared toward those who you know are more committed, more loyal.  This is how you move your prospects and customers up your buying ladder.  And it’s all done automatically, with a preset series of email messages scheduled to go out in sequence (every other day, starting with the date of the first inquiry or order). 

Once the name is in your system, it’s all automatic and robotic from then on. 

You don’t have to do too much, except check it every now and then. Your auto-response email system and computer do all your sorting and sifting of prospects and customers for you.  This is how you leverage your time.  Your computer now acts as your sales force.  This is “automatic marketing” at its finest.

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