This is the internet dream: setting up an autoresponder that generates sales for you 24/7, even while you’re sleeping, on vacation, or doing something else away from your keyboard.
It really is possible. You’ve been learning about some of the strategies required to automate your follow up marketing inside these guides, such as creating email sequences to promote different products. Now inside this guide you’ll learn even more tips for making follow-up marketing faster, easier and more effective.
Let’s get started…
1. Use Templates
If you’re like most people, you’re short on time. That’s why you’ll want to make use of templates whenever possible. Here are three types of templates you can put to use:
#1. Opt-in templates.
Many email service providers (ESPs) give you templates to make it “point and click” easy to create your opt-in forms – no coding experience required!
#2. Email design/layout templates.
Many ESPs also offer email templates so you can create beautiful layouts, even if you don’t know a thing about HTML or design. Just be sure to use responsive layouts so that mobile users can view them.
#3. Text templates.
Finally, as you start constructing emails, you’ll want to create your own templates for particular kinds of emails you send on a regular basis (such as transactional emails, confirmation emails, and welcome emails).
2. Make Use of Automation/Workflows
Another shortcut for busy marketers is to choose an ESP that allows for automation and workflows. In many cases, you can set up “If ___, then ____” triggers to make it easy to manage your mailing list.
For example, you can set up a trigger that removes a new buyer from your prospect list and puts them on a buyer list, being sure to segment according to the product they purchased. They’d then receive a follow up onboarding sequence.
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Another example: if someone clicks through to a blog post on a particular topic, that click can trigger a follow-up email sequence that sends them additional content and offers on the same topic.
3. Create Accessible Campaigns
Depending on your niche, there’s a good chance that about 15% of your audience has some sort of disability, such as low vision. Your goal is to create accessible email campaigns. Check out these tips:
Create content for screen readers. This includes alt-image text on images, as well as using header tags (such as H1 and H2 tags) to format content.
Use black text on white backgrounds. This provides good contrast for those with low vision.
Choose easily readable fonts. It may look stylish to use tiny, obscure fonts. But if a part of your audience can’t read these fonts, then your conversion rates will suffer. Stick with easily readable fonts in standard 12-pt font size instead, such as Times New Roman, Arial, and similar.
Next…
4. Be Aware of Image Blocking
Many email clients block images and remote content. If you send an email that shares the main message via images, a good chunk of your audience won’t see it. Be sure to share the most important parts of your email in plain text, and use alt-image tags to describe images.
5. Humanize Content
Most of the people on your list are well aware that your emails are automated. However, people don’t want to read content that looks like it came from a bot. That’s why you’ll want to humanize your emails, including transaction and confirmation emails.
For example:
- Personalize emails using the recipient’s name.
- Include a picture of your self at the bottom of the email.
- Offer your contact info and encourage people to get in touch if they have questions.
- Share personal tidbits about your life from time to time.
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6. 3 Tips for Creating Evergreen Content
Elsewhere in these guides I’ve mentioned that you need to create evergreen content for your autoresponder messages. Let me share with you three tips:
- Don’t reference anything that will date the content. This includes referencing seasons, days of the week, months, years, holidays, or other events that may date the content.
- Don’t refer to anything as “new.” For example, don’t say you’re promoting a “brand new diet guide.” That may be true when you’re writing it, but it won’t be “new” six months down the road.
- Don’t promote fads. Even if the fad is really popular now, it may suddenly lose favor and date your content.
Here’s one more idea: ask a friend to read your email. Then ask them to guess when you wrote the message. If they can tell when you wrote it, then you need to go back and rewrite the part that’s dating the content.
7. Connect Your Emails
Even if your current email isn’t part of a series, you should still remind subscribers of what was in your last email. You can even link to previous emails, which will help boost conversions from people who didn’t see it (e.g., they saved it for later and never got around to opening it).
You’ll also want to build anticipation at the end of each email by telling subscribers what benefits to expect in the next email, and when they can expect to receive it. E.G., “On Friday you’ll get a full months’ worth of delicious, fat-burning meal plans and recipes – you won’t want to miss it, so keep an eye out!
8. Use Redirect Links
If you’re promoting an affiliate offer, use a redirect link that runs through a domain that you control. That way, if the affiliate product goes off the market or you don’t want to promote that product for any reason, you can change the link on your end to a similar offer. That way, you won’t have dead links sitting in your audience’s inboxes.
For example, sometimes people put hobby-related emails to the side to read later. Maybe the link was intact when you sent it, but a week later it’s no longer good when the recipient sits down to read your email. No problem, because you can switch the links via your domain.
9. Plan Your Follow Ups
As mentioned elsewhere in these guides, you can send follow up messages to people who didn’t open or click on your last email. However, be careful with this strategy. For example, if you send an email on Friday and then follow up on Monday, your prospects may feel overwhelmed if they don’t tend to check emails too much over the weekend.
In other words, give your recipient’s a chance to open the email (perhaps up to a week) before sending a follow up.
10. Create Honest Openers
Get right to the point when you create an email, and be sure your opener isn’t dishonest. For example, if you start your email with “Just checking in,” you need to ask yourself if that’s true or if you have another agenda in mind. If you have another goal in mind, then start there. This shows respect for your reader and their time, plus keeps your emails and the reader focused on the overall goal of your email.
11. Don’t Make Assumptions
One of the keys to creating content that resonates with your audience is to profile them so you can use language that connects them. Part of this means you shouldn’t make any assumptions about your audience.
For example, don’t say, “As you know, I got married last week…”
Or, “You all know my feelings on crate training…”
If someone didn’t read your emails last week, then they DON’T know. Or if someone is new to your list, then no, they don’t know. Stop making these sorts of assumptions or you’ll create a disconnect with your audience.
12. Use Multimedia
Incorporate or link to multimedia such as infographics, photos, audios and videos. Different people like to learn things in different ways, so offering content in different formats helps connect with a larger number of your subscribers.
13. Link to Examples
Typically, your follow up emails include a strong call to action and a button or link (as discussed elsewhere in these guides). However, you can also use soft-sell means of linking to a product. For example, if you’re teaching people about copywriting, then link to one of your copywriting product sales pages and point out a specific part of it as an example. E.G., “For a good example of how to justify the price, check out this sales page…”
This strategy doesn’t directly sell an offer, but it’s an inobtrusive way of getting people to look at a sales page.
14. Understand Your Audience’s Pain Points
As mentioned, you need to understand your audience in order to connect with them. One of the big issues is that you need to understand their pain points, and then create follow up emails that directly address these pain points.
For example, perhaps you serve a weight-loss niche for women. You understand the overall pain point is that the women are tired of being overweight and tired of diets that don’t work. However, you need to understand their secondary pain points as well in order to promote the right solutions.
For instance, perhaps many of these women have tried diets with foods that their kids won’t eat. The mom ends up cooking one meal for the family and a separate meal for herself. End result? She quits the diet because she’s busy enough without doubling her nightly cooking work.
The solution? Connect to this secondary pain point by sharing recipes and meal plans that the whole family will love.
15. Get Your Foot in the Door
Imagine for a moment if someone you didn’t know asked you for a big favor, like helping them move. Chances are, you’d say no. But what if they asked you for the time? That’s easy enough to do, so you’d oblige them.
Your prospects behave in a similar way. When they join your list, they don’t know you or trust you. As such, coming at them with a big favor (such as buying your core offer) may get you a few sales, but mostly you’re going to get a lot of “no” responses.
So, here’s what you do: get your food in the door (and start developing a relationship) by asking for small favors first. For example, promote your low-cost tripwire offer first, and it will be easier next week to sell that same person your higher-cost offers.
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16. Gather Additional Information
When your prospects first join your list, you probably collect their first name and their email address. Collecting much more than that would likely dampen your conversion rate. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t collect additional information later.
For example, you might want to collect mailing addresses and/or cell phone numbers. Even if you don’t have any texting or postcard campaigns planned, you’ll at least have the option if you collect this information.
Here’s the key: collect it at a later date, perhaps as part of your welcome series. Once people are starting to get to know you, like you and trust you, they’ll be much more open to offering that additional information to you. This is especially true if you offer an incentive, such as giving folks access to a valuable freemium in exchange for the extra information.
17. Study Copywriting
If your goal is to start generating more sales with your mailing list, then one of the best skills you can develop is the art and science of writing good sales copy.
Where to start? You can go to Amazon to pick up classic copywriting books from the masters, such as Victor Schwab, David Ogilvy, Joseph Sugarman and John Caples.
Conclusion
If you put these tips to use, along with the other tips you’ve discovered in the Emailcome guides, then you’ll have a follow up marketing system that delivers great results for you!
Keep Reading: 17 Ways To Make People Love You And Your Business Through Email
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