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Email Marketing
Lead Generation Strategies System Part 2
OK, in the previous post we talked about the first step in the process of attracting leads to your business, namely the automation system, so you should’ve picked your autoresponder or CRM of choice and been experimenting with it.
Step Two: The Offer
Once you have chosen your automation system and set up your initial campaign, it’s time to think about creating your offer, which many people refer to as your “lead magnet”. It’s kind of like fishing, where your leads are the fish, and your lead magnet is the bait that lures them in.
Remember, this offer should appeal directly to your chosen demographic. You can’t expect to catch a catfish with a flashy lure meant for bass. While it’s possible, it’s not likely, and you’d stand a much better chance of catching a catfish with something that is known to appeal to them—such as chicken livers, or earthworms, or stink bait.
Try to think about what might appeal to your target audience. What would they be interested in learning that they don’t already know? What would they be interested in getting a discount on?
Most people create a special report as their lead magnet. It’s usually 10-20 pages, but may be up to 50 or so, depending on how much you want to say. Longer reports are more appropriate when you have a complex subject and aren’t selling information on the topic.
For example, if you’re in real estate and selling houses, you can give away a 50-page guide on how to find the perfect house, including information about stuff like zoning regulations, homeowners’ associations, utilities, road frontage, home inspections, etc.
But if you’re selling a course on SEO, a shorter report, say 20 pages, on a small segment of the topic would be much more appropriate, because you don’t want to give away all your information for free.
You can always outsource the creation of your lead magnet or purchase a high-quality PLR product that you can use. This will save you a lot of time.
If you are in the Internet marketing or B2B (business-to-business) fields, you might be interested in checking out these great PLR providers:
If you are in the self-help niche and want some high-quality PLR, then check out Tools For Motivation
Just be careful when using PLR as there is a lot of rubbish out there. If you stick with the vendors above you won’t go wrong. They aren’t the cheapest but they are the best and many of them have some great offers and sales from time to time so sign up for their emails to get notified of any specials they may be doing and grab a bargain 😊
You might also consider just offering a hefty discount coupon to leads, especially if you have a product that is in demand in your niche. This is especially useful if you have a recurring business model or a sales funnel with upsells that will allow you to use the initial sale as a loss leader and make more money on the back end later.
The key to any lead magnet is the ‘one problem, one solution’ approach to make it as specific as possible.
Although we mentioned special reports earlier, if you want to stand out you can be really creative when developing your lead magnet.
Checklists, cheat sheets and resource guides are popular as they are short and quick to consume.
What about turning that report into a short video or audiobook instead? This will make your lead magnet have a much higher perceived value and in turn this will encourage more readers to part with their valuable email address.
Another good lead magnet idea is a case study if you have access to any or you have any of your own. These are powerful because it shows people that what you are teaching actually works!
Also, if you have written a blog post that people are enjoying reading, you could expand upon it, or create a video about it and offer this as a ‘content upgrade’ as you know they are already interested because they are reading it!
This also works if you have written a long blog post or a series like this one, and yes, you can opt-in to get the full series in a handy report here! See, I practice what I preach! 😊
Once you have your lead magnet ready, you will need to upload it to your website so your subscribers can download it. If you are using WordPress as your site builder/CMS (Content Management System) you can simply login and go to ‘Add Media’ and drag and drop files from your PC to your website.
Alternatively, you can host your lead magnets elsewhere with something like Amazon S3 which is super cheap and really quick.
Once you have done this, you will now have your lead magnet live online and a link to access it.
Copy that link and add it to your autoresponder service as a follow-up after people opt-in. You don’t want to have to send all those freebies out manually! This will be the first email that they receive immediately after they have opted in.
Check your autoresponder’s help files to find out how to set up a follow-up email that contains a link to your lead magnet. The process will be slightly different for each service, but it’s not difficult. It’s about as easy as sending an email.
Don’t be tempted to send subscribers directly to the lead magnet after they have opted in because many will give you a false email address just to get the freebie. By forcing them to check their email for the link, you will know that the email address is a genuine one.
Once you have their genuine email address you can send them regular emails which will educate them, entertain them and offer them value. Doing this will make them trust you and when you do make them offers to buy either your products or an affiliate product they will be much more likely to take a look.
OK, you now have your email automation ready to go and a sexy new lead magnet to entice readers to sign up for it.
Now it’s time to create the squeeze page to promote it and we’ll look at that in part 3…
Remember, if you want to know more about building your list of leads, check out the featured resource below where you can get a free report about simple list building to expand your knowledge further. If you do download it, please read it and take action and good luck 😊
Lead Generation Strategies System Part 1
If you have an online business, you’re selling something. It might be a product of your own, a service you provide, an affiliate product (or most likely multiple affiliate products), etc. Whatever it is you’re selling, you need leads.
In fact, in most major industries the average cost of a single lead is $20 or more! They’re THAT valuable. But you won’t have to pay that kind of money, because you’re about to learn exactly how to position yourself so you can easily connect with an unlimited amount of high-quality leads without breaking the bank!
So, what exactly is a lead?
A lead is a potential buyer. And more importantly, a qualified prospect that has been proven to be interested in your products or services. potential customer or client. A lead isn’t guaranteed to buy, but they are far more likely to because they’ve shown interest in your niche market.
How does one go about generating qualified leads?
You need to entice them to offer their contact information in exchange for something of value. It might be a free report, a training video, a discount or coupon, or something else—but it should be something they would be interested in only if they would also likely be interested in whatever you’re selling.
In other words, offering a discount coupon for a coffee shop is NOT going to get you qualified leads if you’re selling model cars. A guide on how to lose weight is NOT going to get you qualified leads if you’re offering a graphics design service.
Sure, a few of those people might be interested in what you’re selling, but you want people who have clearly demonstrated some level of interest in the types of products or services you are offering.
Here is a simple example:
If you’re offering dog walking services, you might offer a free report on training your dog, or how to get bargains on pet supplies, or even a coupon for 50% off the customer’s first walking session.
To begin, there are four main elements to generating leads:
- The automation system
- The lead magnet (offer)
- The squeeze page/entry funnel
- Traffic
We are going to devote a post to each of these four elements, so you will learn more about how to start generating leads as you move through this series. By the end of this mini series, you’ll be ready to start connecting with red-hot prospects in your niche market so you can instantly maximize your income and expand your outreach.
So, let’s get started!
Step One: The Automation System
The first thing you absolutely must do if you want to generate leads is to sign up for a service that will allow you to build a database of leads through a web form.
Most people simply use an autoresponder service such as Aweber, GetResponse, but there are also services that will let you collect, store, manage, and search many different types of information if you need more details from your leads.
If all you need to collect is name and email, which is fine for most online marketing purposes, you can just use a simple autoresponder system.
Here is a list of some of the most popular autoresponder services. Each of these services is widely respected and most have similar features and pricing.
If you’re just getting started Aweber has a free version you can use for a while. My personal favourite is Active Campaign because it has many features associated with much more expensive CRM (customer relationship management) solutions but for a fraction of the price.
AWeber: warr.us/Aweber
GetResponse: warr.us/GetResponse
Active Campaign: warr.us/ActiveCampaign
If you’re looking to collect more in-depth information, you might want to go with a full CRM solution. This type of software has in-depth information collection and management, allowing you to build a database of customer information that you can use for marketing purposes.
Agile CRM: warr.us/AgileCRM
Agile CRM is one of the most popular and powerful CRM systems out there, and you can start with a FREE account to give it a try. You can have up to 10 users with the trial, and you don’t have to enter any credit card information to get started.
Agile will let you set up autoresponder campaigns, perform A/B split testing, segment your lists, and even predict customer behavior in the future!
Best of all, Agile CRM has some of the Brest pricing in the industry, with plans starting at just $8.99 per month after the trial.
Keap (formerly Infusionsoft): warr.us/Keap
Keap is one of the most well-known CRM systems out there. They have a hugely powerful suite of features, including syncing with over 200 other services from Gmail to BigCommerce, Shopify to Woocommerce.
Keap has extremely powerful analytics, a full-fledged sales pipeline built in, and much more.
The biggest drawback to Infusionsoft is pricing, which starts as $199 and scales upward. It’s a very powerful software, but the price may be a bit high if you’re just getting started.
Salesforce: warr.us/Salesforce
Salesforce is another very well-known CRM. They have a huge arsenal of tools available, including
They have plans starting at just $25 per month for lead generation alone, so they are affordable for smaller companies who won’t have a lot of users accessing the software. If you don’t need the advanced features, you can make do with the cheapest plan just for generating leads.
Their lead management system lets you keep track of all the stages of customer interaction and transactions.
FreeAgent: warr.us/FreeAgent
FreeAgent is a very affordable CRM system that has a wealth of features, including email tracking, outbound call tracking, sales activity tracking, real-time alerts and updates, mass email send, calendar syncing, and more.
Plans start at just $29 per month, making it a great option for new companies and those who aren’t doing enough business to support the price of one of the more expensive options.
Once you’ve decided which system you’re going to use and you’ve signed up for an account and familiarized yourself with how it works, it’s time to move on to the next step—the offer and we’ll look at that in the next post…
If you want to know more about building your list of leads, check out the featured resource below where you can get a free report about simple list building to expand your knowledge further. If you do download it, please read it and take action and good luck 😊
5 Ways To Make Your Email List Know, Like And Trust You
There is absolutely no doubt that having a huge email list can be very profitable, but building a list of subscribers is not the be-all and end-all of email marketing. In fact, if you do not establish a relationship with your list or make them feel like they have an intangible connection with you, your list will become unresponsive and die off.
You’ll notice that your emails get less opens and your unsubscribes will start increasing. Most marketers have no clue why this happens and usually there is only one reason. The people on the list just don’t like them or trust them.
It’s really just human nature at work here. If you get a phone call from someone you like, you immediately answer it. What happens if it’s someone you don’t care much for? In most cases, you’ll ignore the call and in some cases, you’ll even block the number.
That’s exactly what happens with emails too. People quickly and eagerly open emails that come from marketers whom they like… and for those they don’t…. it’s off to the trash or spam folder.
Your job as an online marketer is to make your list like and trust you. They’ll then look forward to your emails and be loyal subscribers. This article will give you 5 ways to achieve this goal. Adopt them and you’ll see a marked improvement in the response from your list.
Infotainment
People love to be entertained. Even if you’re in a niche that’s serious like diabetes, you can always include interesting stories in your emails to keep your readers hooked.
Too many marketers focus on conversions instead of rapport. They keep their emails brief with a call to action so that readers will click on the link and buy what they’re promoting. While this may work now and then, over time, your subscribers will get tired of your salesy emails and it’ll turn them off.
This is especially true if you’re in the make money online niche. Most list subscribers in this niche are inundated with emails and overwhelmed to the point where they just stop opening the emails.
You need to be entertaining and keep your emails helpful but lighthearted so that it’s not all about the selling.
Get Personal
It is a fact that the most visited page on most blogs is the ‘About Me’ page. The reason for this is that people are curious to know who the person behind the blog is. The same applies to your list. Your subscribers want to know who you are.
Share with them a few personal stories or incidents that may have happened to you. Do not worry about seeming irrelevant. You want to become a ‘friend’ to your subscribers… and people know personal stuff about their friends.
So, bring down your wall and be human. Share what makes you laugh and what annoys you… and whatever you think may be interesting.
Be Truthful
Above all else, be truthful to your list. Do not lie or resort to leaving out pertinent details just to get sales.
This is rampant in the online marketing industry today. Marketers recommend and praise products that they don’t have a clue about.
By making a mediocre product look like the next best thing since sliced bread, you may get the sale. However, once your subscriber purchases the product and sees what a letdown it is, they will not trust you in future.
Polarize
It is a fact that you cannot please everyone. No matter how good you are, there will be people on your list who ‘just don’t get you.’ Many marketers try to be politically correct and toe the line just so that their subscribers don’t leave.
This is wrong and it’s better to just be yourself and let your subscribers like you for who you really are. Say what you want to say without worry. Those who like you will stay on and those who don’t, will leave.
At the end of it all, what you will have is a list of people who truly want to be on your list. This is a ‘tribe’… and over time, there will be immense loyalty and you will truly enjoy interacting with your list.
Do note that it’s best to avoid discussing politics and religion unless you’re really good at being impartial in your writing… and even then, it’s a gamble. Anything else is fair game.
Be Generous
Generosity is so rare these days and it’s especially rare among marketers. The majority of marketers only send emails promoting products with very little else to go along with their promotions.
People like to buy but they don’t like being sold to. Most people join your list for information and value. They want information that helps them. They didn’t join your list to keep buying products so that you make sales and commissions.
So, provide value to your list often. Be generous and give them tools, tips and your time if you can. Answer all emails that come from your people on your list. Go out of your way to help them.
When you do this well, just intimating that you have a great product on offer will be enough to get their attention and they’ll buy what you recommend. You will not need to send 10 emails a day or hard sell them the product.
You attract flies with honey and not vinegar. Use these 5 tips and make your list like you like a friend they’ve always known.
If you want to know more about nurturing your list after they have opted in, check out the featured resource below where you can get a free report about simple list building to expand your knowledge further. If you do download it, please read it and take action and good luck 😊
4 Ways To Increase Sales Right NOW
Are things not going the way you’d like? Want more sales? Feeling kind of helpless?
You’re not alone. As marketers, sooner or later we’ve all been there.
The important thing is to DO something. Any action is better than paralysis, because it gets you moving. You can always course correct as you go.
I’m sure you have heard of the phrase “fail forward” and it is a good mantra to stick to when running an online business (in fact, any business really).
Don’t let fear of failure stop you from taking action because that is a sure fire way to fail.
OK, with that being said, here are 4 ways to increase sales and increase your income right now.
You might balk at one or two of them. All I can say is try them before you pass judgment.
1: Get More Affiliates
And I mean LOTS more affiliates. How much time do you spend creating products? Or getting new people onto your list? This is also how much time you should be spending on recruiting more affiliates, and especially GOOD affiliates.
If you can afford it, I highly recommend getting an affiliate manager. If you can’t yet afford it, then become your own affiliate manager. Watch launches and see which affiliates do well, as well as which product owners are building a list that’s perfect for your offer.
Recruit bloggers who are list building. Ask your list and especially your product buyers if they want to be affiliates.
Every where you go within your own niche, watch for people who might be your next affiliate, even if they’re not currently doing affiliate marketing.
Then cultivate relationships with these people. Don’t just approach them and forget them. Send them personal emails, comment on their blogposts and act as though you are friends, because that’s the best way to MAKE friends.
And don’t discount little affiliates, either. I once had a new affiliate who made exactly ONE sale. However, that sale was to a super affiliate who contacted me, asked to promote my product, and sold 420 copies in one week. You just never know.
2: Grow Your Lists
Yes, this is obvious, isn’t it? We all know that the money is in the list, right?
Well, I know marketers who aren’t aggressively list building, and they wonder why they’re not making sales.
On a typical list, you’ll have attrition. And I don’t just mean people unsubscribing, either. The person who is hot to buy your product today will have forgotten who you are in 6 months, or they moved on to another interest, or whatever. You have to be continuously building your lists – all of them.
This includes your email list, your Facebook group and any other list of potential prospects you’re building. Be continuously building, because if you’re not, then your list is shrinking.
Do more guest posting, more webinars for other people’s lists, more JV’s and anything else that will further fill your lists with prospects.
3: Increase The Number Of Marketing Messages You Send To Your Lists And Prospects
If you’re placing ads, place more and better ads. If you have a Facebook group, send them more marketing messages. If you’re doing webinars, do more webinars for your lists.
And by all means send more marketing messages to your lists. A lot of people are scared silly to email their list more than once or twice per week, but here’s what happens when your list doesn’t hear from you every single day:
They forget about you.
They even forget who you are and why they subscribed to your list.
Plus, just about no one on your list is going to open every email you send. It just isn’t going to happen. You might have to send 4 or 5 emails on the same offer before some folks will open even one of them.
Yes, you will get a few more unsubscribes from your list when you email daily, or even twice per day.
But that’s okay, because you will also keep the rest of your list engaged and interested, and you will likely double or perhaps even triple your sales.
Email daily. Email twice a day if you can keep it interesting. But only do this sparingly and if you are email marketing correctly i.e. you are providing value upfront before ever promoting anything to them.
And here’s an alternative if you don’t want to write two different emails in one day – send the same email twice. The second time you send it out, only send it to those who didn’t open your first email. Nearly every email program now gives you this option, so take it.
Some marketers take this to extremes during a launch and do a “crush campaign” which really hammers your poor subscribers when they get 5+ emails the same day about the same promotion. I don’t treat my list like this but there are those who do; I normally unsubscribe when I get hammered like this because I don’t think the marketer really cares about their subscribers by doing this.
4: Raise Your Prices
If your sales page is converting well, then raise your prices and see what happens.
Even if you wind up converting at a lower rate, you’ll likely still be making more money because your prices are higher. Consider a $20 product converting at 7%, versus that same product priced at $35 and converting at 5%. You’re looking at $140 versus $175 per 100 visitors, or a $350 increase for every 1,000 visitors. It adds up.
In addition, by raising your prices you automatically rebrand your product into a higher-perceived level of quality. This is why – oddly enough – there are times when an increase in price can actually result in an increase in sales.
When you raise your prices, some of your steady customers will stop buying. But you’ll also get new customers who want to pay for quality, and you will make more money.
When marketer Dan Kennedy advises any business owner on how to increase revenue, the first thing he tells the owner is to raise prices. Nearly every time the business owner will balk and tell Dan it’s a terrible idea. And nearly every time it results in a MAJOR boost in revenue.
And there you have it – 4 ways to increase your sales and revenue right now. These might not be for the timid, but I can tell you from experience that they work.
Using Personalisation To Get Higher Conversions
It’s amazing what a little personalisation can do.
Quick example: You go into a store looking to buy something. A salesperson helps you, but you leave without making a purchase. You go back a week later, and the salesperson greets you by calling you by name.
How do you feel? Maybe respected, appreciated and memorable? And do you want to do business with someone who cares enough to remember your name? Of course you do; it makes you feel special doesn’t it?
When Coca-cola introduced Coke bottles personalised with people’s names, sales jumped 2%. Now I know 2% might not sound like much, but to a company as big as Coke, it’s huge.
Personalisation – when used properly – can double your conversions.
Here are 10 ideas on how to personalise not just words, but actual images – and how you might use these ideas in your own business…
1: Inactive Customers Or Subscribers
Re-engage with customers and even subscribers who are no longer active.
For example, for customers who haven’t made a purchase in 90 days, or subscribers who haven’t clinked a link in a month, send them a photo of you in front of a whiteboard looking sad.
The whiteboard has a simple mathematical equation with your business name, minus their name and a frowny face, like this:
Your Business Name – Your customer’s name = ☹
2: New Customers And Subscribers
Create life-long customers and communities by taking the time to welcome someone when they join you. For example, you might send them a picture of you holding a sign that says, “Welcome Paul!”
Many people know that emails (even with their first names) are hardly personal so by going out of your way to send them a picture like this will make you stand out.
Is it a little cheesy? Perhaps, but it does work so why not give it a go?
3: Product Sales
When your customers buy a product that you are shipping out, keep them engaged by sending them an email with a picture of their package.
This keeps them excited and tells them it’s on the way.
Bonus: Get a clear shot of the address label, and it will help them to confirm their shipping address before it’s too late.
You could even do this with a digital product such as a course. Most courses will have a generic welcome video but you could easily personalise this and welcome them to the course by name. How cool is that?
4: Webinar Attendance
Get people to show up for your webinars by sending them a personalised reminder email in the form of a photo of a handwritten note, or of you standing next to a whiteboard with the written words, “Are you coming to the webinar, Joan?”
This will capture their attention, be far more memorable and do more to get them on the webinar than the standard email that webinar services send out as reminders.
Once again, this takes a little effort (but not much) and it really does make a difference.
5: Cart Abandonment
If someone goes to buy one of your products or services but doesn’t check out, you should be following up with them as soon as possible to try to save the sale.
Send out a photo of an empty box with their name on it, such as, “Order for Bob Smith.”
This emphasizes the sense of loss in not ordering and will get some of your customers to come back and finalize their purchase.
Remember that you don’t know why they abandoned the cart; it could be that their internet connection dropped, doorbell rang, any number of reasons that had nothing to do with your product or service so you lose nothing by following up.
6: Text Messages
If you use text messages for following up with customers, how about adding an image of a newspaper that features their name and the reason for the follow up?
Guaranteed you’ll have their attention.
This may not be as easy to do as some of the other methods but that is why it can be so effective.
Also, text messages and instant messaging services just feel more personal than email so if you aren’t using them in your business, perhaps it’s time you looked into adding them to your arsenal.
7: Customer Anniversaries
Send out a personalised image that contains congratulations on their anniversary – perhaps the anniversary of purchasing a product, subscribing to your list, joining your membership site, etc.
You’ll make them feel special and important.
8: Upsells
This is a brilliant idea that can put serious money in your pocket almost immediately – send out an image letting your customer know they forgot something.
It might be a picture of the upsell they didn’t take, along with words such as, “You forgot something John! (It’s our best offer).
Remember it’s much easier to convince someone who has already bought from you once than it is to convince someone who hasn’t bought from you yet so it makes sense to try to increase the average order value as soon as possible.
9: Certificates
Do you offer any kind of courses or online training?
Send out personalised and official looking certificates of completion with their name, the training level achieved, the date, signatures and seal.
You could also use gamification in your courses too.
These may appear gimmicky, but they do work to encourage buyers to actually log in and consume your content.
If they do that, they are more likely to get results, and if they get results, they are much more likely to buy from you again!
10: Online Order Confirmation
When someone places an order, send them a photo of you and your team (if you have one) with a sign that welcomes them by name. It might say something like, “Welcome to the family, Aaron.” Make sure everyone in the photo looks especially happy.
Now then, you might be saying: “Sure, this is all well and good and I can see how it will help me to retain customers and make more sales, but who has time to do all this?”
Good question. The answer is, you do – if you get PicSnippets.
PicSnippets creates personalised images for marketing, sales and customer follow-up. You can create your PicSnippet and use it on nearly any platform such as ClickFunnels, ManyChat, Convertri and more.
Just go to PicSnippets.com and register today.
OK, so there are 10 ways you can use personalisation to boost conversions and if you want some other strategies to boost your conversion then grab a free Conversion Boost report by clicking on the “Featured Resource” below.