The Newsletter Pro April 2018

The Newsletter Pro April 2018

#343 in the 2016 INC. 500 | #120 in the 2015 INC. 500 | 2016 & 2017 Best Place to Work in Idaho | Marketer of the Year | 24K Club Winner

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INSIDE THIS ISSUE:

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Build Deep Moats and Tall Walls

What the Bruce Law Firm Has to Say About Us Down-and-Dirty Email Copy Critique and Tips ‘Thinking in Bets’ Will Improve Your Decision-Making Skills Today PAGE 6 An App Worth a Thousand Typos PAGE 7 Meet Amber Barrett PAGE 8 Sam Calagione: The Most Interesting Man in the Beer Business

TRANSFORM MORE LEADS INTO PROSPECTS ULTIMATELY BUYERS &

So, What’s the Answer? That depends — doesn’t it always? You will get a better response if you send daily emails, as long as you can add value and keep them interesting. If you can’t, you will have a bunch of pissed off prospects. Let’s break down the options. Daily: Do prospects really want 365 emails from you per year? Are you a disciplined writer who produces engaging content? If you are, you can do well with this approach. If not, this option should be avoided. Personally, daily is a bit much for me, and I will unsubscribe even from things I’m interested in with daily emails, but I have heard of them working for other audiences, so it may be worth a test for you.

Weekly: In my opinion, this isn’t frequent enough. Unless all you’re doing is sending offer emails, this just isn’t going to move the needle for a prospect unless they are hot. Furthermore, it will be difficult to get someone excited about your products and services if you mail weekly, because even if they do gain interest, nearly all of that excitement will have evaporated within seven days. Monthly: This is crazy. Right now, it takes 16 touches for someone to even be aware of you. So, unless you want to wait years to make a sale, this is not a smart option. Don’t do it. For most businesses, none of the above strategies will be good enough. Continued on page 2 ...

At the end of January this year, I gave a presentation on growing your business to a room of more than 200 entrepreneurs. I laid out marketing tactics for getting more leads to convert to prospects and prospects to buyers. Let’s look at one of those tactics in this article so you can swipe it, deploy it, and grow sales in your own business. What to Do With Leads Once You Have Them There is a lot of noise about when to email and how often you should contact a prospect or client. Emails are yielding fewer and fewer results today, so some people advise sending daily emails to get the same results you previously got a few years ago. Others advise sending weekly emails, and a few people think once per month is the right number.

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COVER CONTINUED ... Here Is What We Do at TNP

facts, so the prospect has the info they need to make a logical decision. In the “fear” section, we talk about how things may go bad if they don’t take action, and we talk about the loss of bonuses or other items of value for not responding. What Do You Do When They Don’t Respond?

mad because they’re receiving the same stuff. Nothing could be further from the truth for 99.7 percent of prospects. The reality is that most people aren’t even paying attention to you, especially via email. Even if the prospect did opt-in, it’s unlikely they consumed the lead magnet and all the emails. If they were fully engaged, wouldn’t they have bought from you already? Let’s look at it from this angle: How many times have you downloaded a report, MP3, or webinar without watching, listening to, or reading any of it. Or maybe you started it and didn’t finish it. This is a common practice for most people. If they don’t buy when you have a product or service that can help them, you have to assume they simply aren’t paying attention. Plus, I have seen people watch three webinars, open every email, and get my newsletter for a year before they decided to buy. At the end of the day, people are ready to buy when they’re ready to buy — not when you’re ready to sell to them. This is why you need a solid online and offline follow-up strategy. Bonus Tip: If you really want to crush more sales, take everything I just shared with you and add in a print newsletter. Don’t just send it to customers; send it to prospects, too, and use an FSI (free-standing insert) for prospects to support the offers made in the emails.

We mail in 45- to 60-day cycles about two to three times per week for promo-based emails. In addition, we send whole-list emails, like our Weekend Reading email, which hits every Friday afternoon, and our HTML newsletter sent the first of every month. We’ve found in the B2B space that this frequency is just right. We average about 0.5 percent opt-out per month, but that’s on 50,000 emails sent. HowWe Structure Our Prospect Emails

Most of your prospects simply won’t respond, which sucks. So, what do you do?

Once the first email cycle has been completed and no action has been taken, we give a small break in the emails (typically one week). Then, we drop the prospect into a new lead generation campaign and attempt to have them opt-in for new information to re-engage with us. During the re-engagement campaign, we provide additional value and run the “gain, logic, fear” campaign again based on those emails and that lead magnet’s offer. Once you’ve created four to six of these campaigns, you can simply cycle prospects through them. This will allow you to educate and provide value at the same time, which has the added benefit of building trust if prospects read and engage with the emails. Trust is a must for any sale to happen.

Of course, the next question follows logically:

Still not sure any of this will work? This morning, I got an email, and this email is what inspired me to write this article. Here is the email from Stephanie Holmes of

What Do You Do When Someone Has Completed All of Your Campaigns? This is where people get stuck the most, but let me share what we do. (And it totally works.) We simply start the campaigns over and offer to let them opt-in again, even for the same lead magnets they already opted-in for. Sometimes, when I share this idea of restarting the campaigns, people think the prospects are going to be

An example of our monthly HTML newsletter

TheMoneyFinder.ca. On a side note, if you’re a financial adviser in the United States or Canada, you need to know Stephanie.

During this email cycle, we typically use a “gain, logic, fear” sequence — in that order. For example, if this were a “gain” section, we would talk about all the benefits of taking action and how the prospect’s life or business would be positively affected by taking action. We may send five or eight emails in the “gain” section. In the “logic” section, we talk numbers, stats, and “ The reality is that most people aren’t even paying attention to you, ESPECIALLY VIA EMAIL.”

Hey Shaun,

Just wanted to send you a little thank-you! We’ve been using a lot of what you shared at the last

Momentum. We’re running a 45-day everyday campaign with a pattern of gain-logic-fear ... and it’s working! We put nearly 3,000 people into it. We’re at day 12 ... ZERO unsubscribes, a ton of opens, new free trials, and conversion!

You had some great advice to share at Momentum, and I just wanted to say

Continued on page 3 ...

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say thank you and tell you we’re having some good results so far.

This is a simple idea that you can have up and running in short order. Even if you’re not the best copywriter, who cares? Done always trumps perfect, because perfect never seems to come.

prospects and convert more of them to customers? Wouldn’t this be worth a day of your time?

–Steph

–Shaun

You want to know the real lesson from this email? Stephanie sent this to me three weeks to the day after I gave this presentation. She didn’t wait six months to try something — she was on it that weekend, and in just nine days, she had kicked off the campaign. Can you imagine how much larger your business would be if, starting now, you took action and completed one idea per month? Even if two-thirds failed, how much better off would you be with one-third of the ideas working and bringing in more business? FYI, though, if two-thirds of the ideas you’re implementing are failing, we need to talk about either how you’re implementing or where you’re getting your information. But those will have to be conversations for another time.

Here is a list of the items you’ll need to run this campaign:

P.S. If you need help with email copy, one of the other articles in this newsletter is a critique of some email copy I recently received, so make sure you check out that article.

• • •

One lead magnet (you may already have this)

15–20 emails

One editor (outsource this so you don’t have bad grammar in your emails) 30 minutes to load the emails into your CRM (you can outsource this, as well) One landing page and copy (don’t forget to also edit this) One newsletter (schedule a chat with my team at NewsletterPro.com/schedule to see how to get a newsletter set up for your business)

•

•

P.P.S. Do you want to scale up your business? I have a few more spots in my mastermind group. If you’re running a million-dollar business and want my help in both a group and one-on-one setting, go to NewsletterPro.com/apply and get the details to see if the group is a fit for you.

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The good news is this is a four- or five-hour task, tops. What if you could get more engagement from

QUICK BUSINESS TIP

WALLS TO THRIVE

BUILD

&

MOATS

In 2001, Apple did something crazy: They started opening retail stores. At the time, the critics called them out-of-touch and gave them a tongue-lashing for entering a dying sector. Everyone knew that the world was going digital, and pretty soon, the retail store was going to be a dinosaur that our kids would only experience via virtual reality. But once again, the media was wrong. Apple has created one of the most profitable retail spaces ever. They currently operate 501 stores around the world and are seen as one of the most valuable anchors a retail space can have. On average, all Apple stores

combined get over 1 million visitors per day and average $5,546 in sales per square foot. To put that into perspective, Tiffany’s and Co. has only $2,951 in sales per square foot, and lululemon has $1,560 in sales per square foot. While Samsung — Apple’s main competitor — has 23.3 percent of the overall smartphone market share, compared to Apple’s 14.7 percent share of the market, Apple remains the world’s most profitable company. This is largely due to their retail presence. You see, what everyone missed (including Samsung) is that brick and mortar isn’t dying. It’s the middle class that is dying. Brick and mortar is thriving in the low-income and affluent markets.

easy; if Samsung wanted to compete, it would take a decade or more to gain traction.

What does all of this have to do with you?

You want to create your own barriers to entry, dig your own moats, and build tall walls. You want to find opportunities to build loyalty and repeat business. One way for a small business to do this is with media. When you own media — not rented or borrowed, but owned — you can use it to begin digging a moat and building tall walls. You can create loyalty and make sure customers come back again and again without ever giving the competition another glance. Like Apple, it takes time to build this, but you need to start soon. Like the old saying goes, “When is the best time to plant a tree? 10 years ago. When is the second-best time to plant a tree? Today.” Want help with an owned-media strategy that works? Schedule a call with a Pro today at NewsletterPro.com/schedule. –Shaun

These brand-building, profit- generating Apple stores create a massive barrier to entry — a moat and tall walls, in a sense — that allows Apple to thrive and build brand loyalty, as well as have a relationship with customers like no other. Opening 500-plus stores isn’t

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MARKETING HOW-TO

CLIENT SUCCESS

FIRM GROWTH WITH DIRECT MAIL

As a divorce attorney, Chris Bruce works with people going through challenging situations, so he’s happy to leave one part of his business up to the Pros. Since starting his newsletter last year, Chris’ firm has grown. He is so excited about how well direct mail is working for him that he’s been telling others about us. “I appreciate the work my team at The Newsletter Pro does, because they make it very easy for me. It’s an awesome company. I wish I could make other aspects of my business as stress-free as my newsletter! “I hear from so many clients and other attorneys who comment on the newsletter. They feel like they’re keeping up with me, even though I haven’t been able to be in touch with them personally. I’m staying top of mind for people who help my business grow. “The thing that’s been most impressive to me — in addition to the great writing — is that I was told during our initial call that it would require an hour of my time each month. That initial promise has been spot on. The results I get from that hour are far more than anything I could expect to get with my other business promotions, marketing, and subsistence activities put together. “I’ve told other companies and friends who are business owners that it is absolutely worth it.”

Some people simply don’t like to write copy. I get it — writing is not easy, and when you first start out, it can be downright frustrating. Below is a copy of a sales email I got and my rewrite of it. Email Copy Critique and Tips DOWN-AND-DIRTY

Here is the original email I got.

Hi Friend,

There are times in a person’s life when they react differently to things. Times like Valentine’s Day, Easter, and Christmas apply to people in general, and they’re good times to get higher response rates by making offers that relate.

OUR BOOKSHELF

ANNIE DUKE’S ‘THINKING IN BETS’ Is the New Handbook on Risk Assessment Annie Duke may be a world-class poker player, but “Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts” is by no means a book that’s going to teach you what to do at the tables. Instead, it’s a risk assessment guide that will benefit businesses of all sizes. In addition to winning millions (no joke!) at poker, Duke has studied at the University of Pennsylvania and consulted for numerous businesses. Her decision-making skills have been tested under the highest stakes, both in the boardroom and the poker room. When you think about it, poker is a perfect metaphor for the process of making business decisions. No matter how much information you gather, you’ll never know what your opponent is holding until the hand is over. The same goes for venturing into a new business practice or endeavor. You might be able to limit uncertainty, but you’ll never be able to get rid of it entirely. “Thinking in bets starts with recognizing that there are exactly two things that determine how our lives turn out: the quality of our decisions and luck,” Duke writes. She argues that we are prone to minimizing the effect luck has on outcomes. When something goes wrong, it’s because we made

– Christopher Bruce Bruce Law

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But there are special personal times in someone’s life, and they too are good times to market to an individual. At Moving Targets, we’ve been specializing in two of those times for over 25 years ... when people move and when they’re having a birthday. Most businesses miss those marketing opportunities because it’s not easy to make it happen. You need the >Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8

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