Email marketing is one of the pillars of our communication with prospects. We have different email campaigns running in parallel for different sets of lists. We’ve already talked in detail about how we’ve gathered followers through our networking strategies on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. All of these followers have been added to their respective lists and into our email campaign categories.
Your email autoresponders are your conversation anchor. It’s like knocking on someone’s door and being listened to. If you don’t have the right words to answer the “who’s there” question, chances are they won’t open the door for you. Keeping this analogy in mind, if your email subject doesn’t catch the reader’s attention, they won’t open up the email to read it. The purpose of the subject is to get people to put their guards down and open the door for you.
You should always send a couple of consecutive emails when someone signs up by sharing valuable insight or content. Hook them in early and make sure the reader can see value from reading it in the first paragraph. I never sell, and always try and introduce a unique thought process that’s relevant to the list they just signed onto. Emails are my way of sharing ideas and thinking outside the box. It’s very powerful if done right, because, the most prevalent human drive after food and water is altering the state of one’s mind.
If you can gain the reader’s respect through the initial emails by opening their minds to new thoughts, they will probably keep following what you have to say and share. Later on you can scale back frequency to write emails setting up the sale, linking to blogs with comments to consolidate social proof, and all kinds of other tactics aimed at planting emotional triggers. None of the later happens if you do not hook prospects into the conversation at the beginning.
Marketing through e-mail is not simply sending mails to people. It needs to be carefully thought out and phased. To wrap it up:
- Your initial mail should be an ice-breaker. Introduce yourself in a way they can relate to. Find a common ground related to the eventual event that you’ll market but do it subtly. Engage them in a conversation by asking questions and their views by linking them to blog posts and asking for them to comment. By engaging them to participate you may lose people who don’t want to, every participant who engages in the conversation is worth 5 who don’t. These are your prospects that will grow into long term customers and evangelists.
- You should always follow-up with another email after 3-4 days.
- In the later emails, you may want to offer quality stuff -for free, e.g. to make them blend in; you can send a PDF containing all the responses you got. In the email, send a link to ‘opt-in for the free offer’.
- In the next phase, you can send out another interesting email with quotes of well-known people or authority figures regarding your product or service. This will build a sense of association. They need to feel that something big is coming. While doing so, send them links to the landing page again. Basically give them a feel of what to expect from the event.
- With the next email, send a link to a short demo video that highlights all the interesting aspects of your product/event. This will get them excited, feel exclusive and will invariably help in building hype.
- Always send an email every few days before the launch. Tell them how thrilled you are about the launch and that you are looking forward to their feedback. After this they shouldn’t want to miss the event/launch. Here you can show them another video clip to build social proof and enthusiasm.
- Email them on the launch day and keep them updated about availability of tickets etc. Send another email as soon as you launch to notify them that your launch site is live and they can get going.
- It’s vital to send an email afterwards telling them how cool the launch was and how it exceeded your expectations. Get their views as well and remember to thank them for their participation.