Lessons

Lesson Info

Selling Through Email

Email marketing has this reputation of being sort of like the used car salesmen of internet marketing it's so not it's so not here's why? Well, kenna, you are not alone forty four percent of email recipients made at least one purchase last year based on a promotional email forty four percent of email recipients made at least one person last year based on a promotional email that's a huge percentage of consumers and that's just sales what else did email marketing do for the other sixty six? No fifty six, fifty seven, fifty six percent it grew awareness of the brand it told their story it's brought that brand top of mind again maybe it didn't cause an online sale maybe instead it caused someone to get in the car, drive to the mall or drive to a craft show or, you know, find some other way to purchase an item. Email marketing has so many possible results, but forty four percent of email recipients made at least one purchase last year based on promotional email yeah, sasha well, just I've ...

been in conversation with terror now for about a year and I had tremendous resistance to doing this and same reason I mean, I just felt absurd, actually, but what I found is that people call it my newsletter like it's developed an identity on its own that I didn't even really call it a newsletter and they talked like it's a thing actually and it's been hugely important and and I've learned a lot about email marketing in terms of making a conversational asking questions and, you know, really welcoming responses from people and so it's a fascinating journey email marketing yes, what we're hearing from youtube because people have seen it kind of take on a life of its own or have given it a life what does that mean? They're finding immense value in what you're sending out by email on I think that's it's just like what happens when we when we take money and invest in a product of course we assign mohr value to it when you hand your email address over to a marketer, you are investing more energy and assigning mohr value to that those e mails then that come in and certainly to that company as well you're giving them really a lot of clout in terms of your own your own attention span yeah, yeah email marketing okay, we're not done with a whore. All right? So this is this is a great statistic to twenty seven percent of consumers were more likely to say that their favorite companies should invest in mohr email that means more than a quarter of recipients said companies should send them mohr email more than a quarter of people said people companies should send them war email who knew who know I did no seriously I think people get so concerned I don't wantto I don't want to send too many e mails to my customers they don't really want to hear from me yes yes they d'oh the people who are invested in your brand of the people who are excited about what you're doing the people who stand behind you the people gosh who just want toe buy from you when you put out a new product they want to get more email from you they think you should invest more money invest more time invest more energy in putting together valuable content for them by email twenty seven percent of people thought companies should invest mawr in email all right I've got one more before we dive further into this this's the best one brace yourselves people who buy products marketed through email spent one hundred and thirty eight percent mohr than people who did not receive email offers people who buy products marketed through email spend one hundred and thirty eight percent mohr than people who do not receive email offers more than twice as much more than twice as much so do you think it's valuable to get as many people on your email list as possible do you think it's valuable to make your email opt in form a key piece of real estate on your web site do you think it's valuable to be sending people to that opt inform every single day you bet it iss because those people are likely to spend one hundred and thirty eight percent mohr with you the people who get on our e mail opt in our email marketing less are our most valued customers. They're the people most likely to spend money with us they're the people who are most likely to understand the value of our products, they're the people who are most likely to be behind our purpose. They're the people who are most likely to share what it is that we do with their friends, their family, their network and so growing your email marketing list equals having a whole list of most valued customers who want to hear from you often who want to be sold. Teo, wouldn't sales be easier if you were on ly selling to people who want to be sold? Tio would selling feel easier if you were selling to people who want to be sold? Teo yes, that's why we get uneasy about sales because we're afraid we're afraid people don't want to hear our message, we're afraid people don't care, we're afraid they're going to be put off when we give them our pitch when we tell him about our product when we share the purpose behind our business, not the people on your email list, these people have given you their most valuable piece of property online, their email address email is the first place when it comes to the internet so if home is our first place in the an alive world and work is our second place, email is our first place online. Facebook is our second place, but email is our first place how many of you check your email first thing in the morning? How many of you check your email before you get out of bed in the morning? Yeah, most of the time I do teo, it may not be healthy, but gosh it's what we dio that's our habit, which wouldn't you love your business to be in bed with your best customers? E I want my business to be in bed with my best customers, all right, let's, talk a little bit more about how we go about doing that. So are we ready to dive into actually getting this email marketing together first, I'd like tio what get into this, but I'd love to get a share from online how many people have email lists set up already and how many have not set up email lists and I will come back to that in just a minute. Let me tell you a little bit more about email sales and marketing email is unique in that it is a social medium that actually converts to sales here's the thing about twitter facebook, instagram, pinterest those media rarely convert to sales you won't get people buying from a link on twitter it used to be thie strategy used to be teo automate your etsy shop listings out over twitter so that every time you posted something new toe at cia tweak sent out and said I posted something new toe etc yeah that doesn't convert that doesn't work and conversion I'm sorry means people taking an action that then leads to another action in this case to a sale all right so people clicking a link and then turning into a buyer that's a conversion as in far as faras we're talking now uh but email does email actually converts to sales as its building relationships as people are engaging in conversation with you via email, they're also buying much much more than the all of the other social networking platforms also email is unique in that it works for both b to c and b to b sales what does that mean business to consumer? You're the business your buyers of the consumers or b to b business to business sales in this case wholesale you can create an email lists of email audience that is your whole sailors or your wholesale prospects and you can market and sell to them through e mail as well. So email does this beautiful double duty helping you build both your retail business and your wholesale business email is very unique in that as well and finally email enhances what you're already doing through social media so we spend so much time building our social media profiles, getting more followers, connecting with people, broadcasting, listening and, you know, while a lot of that does create relationships, it creates awareness what happens next? We don't know and also the answer is not much, but when we take social media and we add email marketing to the equation, we suddenly get something that actually works. We can have a conversation on social media, bring it back to email remind people what we were talking about remind people what's happening on the fly, maybe they missed our conversation on social media, we can use that to follow up and then make the sale or then get the action get the share so email marketing can enhance what you're already doing through social media. It doesn't have to be a oh my gosh, how am I going to fit this in? It can simply be an easy follow up to what you're doing on twitter, facebook or on your block. We ask people if they are, you have email lists or not and there's a great conversation going on. I would say that there are, well maybe it's fifty fifty I expected I want to say that there are more people that do have them, but of those people, a lot of them are saying I'm not really using it are but we also have I loved the comment that said what's the worst that can happen people unsubscribe right? Yeah o r again people saying, you know, I really of getting over the fear of doing it just like we were talking about earlier yeah, and then everybody is sharing the different ways and platforms that they have keep their context and do email marketing great, which is great so if you're not in the chat rooms right now, you might want to join in because there are great conversations going on, but but again, it's really interesting to see the successes that people are having to fantastic awesome I'm so glad to hear it yeah, and just like money talking about money helps us get over fears with money talking about email marketing helps us get over field fierce with email marketing so yes, having conversations please join in in the chat and have those conversations debt practicing to get over all that fear. All right, let's talk about what this actually looks like how do we get started with email marketing on dh? You know, for those of you who have already got this started, this is a good review to make sure you've checked these things off your list and in fact in your workbook on page thirty one there's actually a little checklist there for you so you can think about that, and if you haven't gotten started yet with email marketing, this is a really simple primer tow how you been do exactly that. So the first step in getting started with email marketing is to choose an email marketing service provider and e m s what does that mean? Here's the thing you can't send mass marketing messages through a platform like gmail it's not legal it's against fcc regulations, email marketing has to include a number of different things in the footer of the email, including an easy way to unsubscribe and some of your contact information. And also gmail is a terrible way to send mass marketing messages, because when you send to all you know, when you send two, two hundred people on your contact list, your deliver ability goes way down, email marketing service providers trade in deliver ability. What does that mean? That essentially means whether your email ends up in someone's spam folder or not. So email marketing service providers are going to help you get through that spam filter and actually get in people's inboxes where they want you to be all right, so you must choose an email marketing service provider I use male chimp and I I highly recommend male champ I love them as a platform I loved them as a company they are funny they are easy to use their extremely responsive in the service department and best of all, they have a fur free for life account for micro businesses so definitely something to check out their other great services are a weber mad mimi gosh, the rest of them are kind of constant contact, but male chimp and a weber are seemed to be the top two in terms of small business use, so I'd highly recommend you starting off with one of those too, but do your homework maybe there's a local provider that you'd like to use. There are lots and lots and lots of companies that offer email marketing services so that's that so you have to choose a company first create your account, get started, then you need to create a list on this is essentially going to be where people are signing up or what they're signing up to will get to the where they're signing up in just a minute that's what people are going to be signing up too so most likely you will have a customer's list so you might have in an apple customer list you might also consider setting up more than one list, so you might also have an an apple wholesale list or retailer list where you can keep in touch with retailers you know, remind them about holidays, you know, let them know about deadlines for ordering things like that where you're wanting to communicate with with retailers on mass so you have to set up that list here's what you can't do with your list, you can't add people manually, you can't add people manually that is a big, big, big no, no, so what you can do is if you've been in a craft fair and people have opted in on a list that's okay, they need to have given permission and you need to have some a record of that permission, but you can't just go through your gmail contacts and find people who you think might be interested and add them to your list. Another thing you do not want to dio is add influencers like bloggers are journalists to a list manually either to a general marketing list or to a influence our media list that is also a big no no, you're communicating with bloggers and influencers as you should be. Those need to be personal emails sent from your personal email account or from a company email account one toe one toe, one toe one not on moss again um let's see, did I cover all the known owes for that? Yes, just let me say it again don't add people manually to your email list yes, and so I have a clipboard that I had that I take to my shows and then I have my little incentive at the top and then they first name and email do I needed did you say I need to keep that physical coffee because when I put it in male chip male chimp I enter the e mail and then I click the box that says this person has given me permission yet then I shred those papers I would not shred them I would okay I mean I'm not gonna tell you you're not gonna get yeah okay, so you're gonna go to trouble but I would keep them from here on out you're on the other thing if you're already using male chimp male champ how's this awesome ipad app that is actually a gateway that you khun like somebody do something like yeah, yeah, you can put it on your cross show booth okay have people signed up through the double option right there so that totally covers your butt. Okay, okay, but yeah, in case I would definitely keep those records. All right, thank you. Uh, any other questions that's far on this. Okay, next thing at an opt in form to your web presence at an opt in for him to your web presence ofyou five how many of you have email opt informs on in a prominent position on your website three of you win, okay, good. I'm going to get you. You get a pass because you're still starting all right. Awesome. Yes, you must add an often form to your web presence. Here's the other thing, it must be super duper prominent. This signing up to your email form is the number one thing you want people to be doing on your website. It doesn't matter that you want them to be going and buying something because here's the thing most people don't buy on impulse the first time they visit a website, what do they dio? They sign up for email lists, and once you've got someone's email, you can follow up with them and we're going to get to the follow through in just a minute, but yeah, so that's what's so great you need to get their permission to keep reminding them that you exist, that you have a product that they can thought about valuing that they thought about purchasing. All right, so that's why your email opt in form needs to be the most prominent thing on your website doesn't necessarily need to be like the pal part of your website. You know, like yesterday I think I mentioned toe lin a a featuring the braille necklace right on the top, but I'd have a opt in form right underneath that slide show, so slideshow often form that weigh people's eyes are, you know their attention is caught by the slide show, and then immediately underneath that they have an opportunity to put their email address in, because, again, they're probably not going to purchase the very first time, they say see something people need to see things seven to ten times before they're willing to purchase that well, how can you ensure someone sees your brand your product seven to ten times through the course of seven to ten emails that would work right? All right, so make sure your opt inform is extremely prominent on your web presence. If you have your own website, you khun, go and copy and paste each to al form. They make this super easy plopped that on your web site somewhere prominent. If you're using an etsy shop or another online marketplace, you can create an opt, inform, you know it works on male chimp, it works on a weber. It works on all the other service provider's, you can create a link that is just your opted for money can include that link in your profile or other places, depending on the policies of those different sites, all right, and then finally you want to develop your incentive strategy, develop your incentive strategy, what does that mean? Lots of information marketers have an incentive strategy that involves giving out a freebie. No doubt you guys have seen this. In fact, you know, kenna has been great about mentioning my email free view at terrace until e dot com splash maps if you want an idea of how that works would check that out it's, terra gentilly, dot com slash map and you can download my freebie, my incentive strategy right there, which is the perspective map, which is a really, which is my go to marketing and product development tool on some audio training that goes along with that on dso that's. One way that I'd deliver value in exchange for receiving someone's email address, you will might do something different. You might offer a free shipping coupon when people sign up for your email address, you might offer a discount coupon when people give you their email address or you might do something very simple like say, I send out exclusive updates of new products to email subscriber's email subscribers are the first to know about limited edition prints, emails subscribers are the first to know when I'm going to have a special event, you can make the incentive something as simple as that. In fact, on example of this that I absolutely love to use is lulu lemons incentive strategy. On their website it's super simple their optimum bar runs the ones runs length wise across their website and it simply says be the first to know be the first to know here's why that's important lululemon creates pretty limited runs of their clothing especially the stuff that's you know that changes a lot more casual clothes the wraps, the sweaters, the stuff I like to buy and so yes, I do want to be the first to know because I don't want to see that this amazing sweater is on ly available in extra small I'm not extra small all right, so I give them my email address and then every tuesday they send me an email simply with the highlights of what's new no more content than that there is no block post there's no essay there's no article there's no you know here's five new yoga positions you could try today just what's new what I might like to purchase and so every tuesday I click through to their website and go through all the new stuff and about sixty every six to eight weeks I buy something and so I'm not the best customer they've ever had by any long shot but I use their email marketing and it's extremely valuable to me I want to get those emails I love getting those emails and all the optimum incentive that they used was simply be the first to know and so that might be a great email often incentive for you as well. All right, I want to find out if there's any questions about be set up of your email marketing, and then I'm going to get to the follow through right after that questions in here about setting up your email marketing. So a question from miss rose ten and may have missed this, but how do we make an email list if everyone goes through our sites like facebook or etc to communicate right? So I'm going to get to this a little bit later, but one thing that you could dio ti get people on your email list is actually to use social media to promote your list. So some of the best conversion that I get at terra gentilly dot com slash map is when I post that link to facebook or when I post that link to twitter because I can say one hundred forty characters or less why that incentive offer is such a great value. I can say this is my go to tool for myself and my clients sign up here and get it free that's all you need to do and having a landing page like that in terms of set up is another great way to make sure you can get people easily on your list and use social media to promote it. On dh also, you know, with your speaking live or if you're across show, you could give people that landing page address set of just your general home page, where you have less control over their action. It's so yeah, so just a direct people directly to your opt in form and that and use social media to do exactly that. Sahar I was wondering if it's okay to personally email someone to be they can you sign up for my mom? I would say that that's okay for your close friends and family, but I wouldn't do that with past customers or people that you've met at shows that you don't have an established relationship with email etiquette is really important, and so I would say this is why the set up is so important because you wanna have those systems in place so that instead of meeting to follow up with someone you can say at a show or when you're having a conversation with someone hey, go to jenna dot com and sign up for my email list, and I'll make sure you know about all the new stuff that I'm putting out the events I'm going to be at, you'll learn more about my brand and how I do what I d'oh all right? Would that be easy? Yeah, so that's why mom is easy yeah what do you want to get this set up real way want to get really down? Sasha share I imported an old list and male chimps just shuts you down because the failure rate is too high so just offering that is even if they opted in years ago don't just put that list in there because it won't work yeah, sometimes it does sometimes it doesn't it it does depend on how old the listed health form and it is I switched back and forth trying out a couple different men email service providers in the past and I've been fine within porting double opt in lists but yeah, it could certainly be touch and go in terms of importing lists okay, so if you were taking mailing list you have a little million listing at a craft show but then you have a pile of them that you haven't done anything with for quite a while which I'm not naming names but how old a list do you think that you khun youse can you send an email that says, hey, you might meet a craft show and you signed up? I mean, can that be like the general and that absolutely kanye so one thing is I would say I don't know the complete letter of the law on the regulations and I don't know if there is sort of like time limit high element for that but I'd say probably in the last year you're pretty safe okay on so if you would do that if I would have them to a list and then if you've got if you're adding them to an existing list I would segment that group out that you just added and send them exactly the email that you just said hey, we were at you met me in a craft show within the last year you know, here's a little smattering of my work to jog your memory I would love to continue updating you with new work with you know, you know, the virtues project that you started talking about yesterday yeah but if you don't want to receive these emails here's the unsubscribe link and just make it super easy for them know that you will probably get a pretty high unsubscribe rate on that initial on that initial ad might also get a few complaints on that initial ad that's okay, you just don't want to repeat that over and over again email service providers understand that every so often you know we send out a campaign that gets a really high unsubscribe rate every so often they understand that we get a few complaints you just don't want to make that a pattern of behavior because then a sasha said they will close your account yeah and that's not pretty so we don't want that all right let's keep running through so let's talk about the follow through what do you do when you get people on your email list? I can't tell you how many times I hear from people well I've got about two or three hundred people on my list but I have never sent them an email oh my gosh. Okay well here we go I'm going to give you a bunch of ideas for what you could be sending to your customers and I believe all of these questions are in your work books on page thirty two and thirty three and on dh so I would say jot you know jot down not only what I'm teaching in terms of what these questions mean but jack down the ideas that are coming to you right now so you can go home with a list of emails gosh you could get your email marketing done for the next year in the next fifteen minutes that would be pretty fantastic all right the follow through first of all what do I mean by that? Once you get people on your list you have to email them you have to email them otherwise what's the value of them being there here's the thing about email marketing the longer you go without emailing people the more likely they are to forget your brand and therefore unsubscribe or complain which means market is spam your e mails when they do come through so the longer you go between emails, the more likely people are to forget your bra on and then therefore either unsubscribe marcus spam emails when they do get them so I highly recommend emailing one one time a week toe one time every two weeks once a week toe once every two weeks anything less than that and your customers will forget you and then they won't open your emails they'll unsubscribe they'll marcus spam and then where are you so I am giving you this homework once week toe once every two weeks alright harry to me I won't want to hear from me every once a week yeah do you remember those quarter people more than a quarter of people who wanted to hear from companies more often? I know I know and that's not to say that all of your subscribers are going to read every single email that's not necessarily the point the point is you just want them to remember your brand and so even if they open half of your emails earth a third of your emails that's fine they just you just want to keep them remembering that they're on your list and that your brand was a brand that they're really interested in I know it's finger you we'll get through this together okay? So one way you could ensure that your emailing new subscribers regularly is through what's called an auto respond er siri's we're getting technical now an auto responder siri's all in auto responder is is simply an email that goes out out automatically based on a certain event. So most auto responders thie event is the list sina and the auto respond er goes out or is triggered after a certain amount of time passes after that. Sign up so you can send an auto respond er one day after people sign up, you can send an auto responders out one week, one month, one year, five years after people sign up to your list it's all on auto responder is an all auto responder siri's it's just a serious of emails that go out automatically based on that event. So I highly recommend that all businesses set up auto responders siri's for at least the first month or so of a new subscribers life cycle with your company. Because email subscribers have a very limited life span, they're generally only active in the first three to six months of signing up for your list. After that six month mark, most people drop off, they quit opening emails, they subscribe now, certainly you're gonna have people who are active for years and years and years, I've got them, I love them, they are my favorite people. But you can expect that if someone's going to take action with your company, in other words, if they're going to buy something from you, it's gonna happen in the first three to six months. And so we want to take advantage of that very first period, when people are most active with our list and setting up an auto responders. Siri's allows us to do that automatically without having to send out e mails. Constantly do you could even send up an auto responders siri's that happens over the first three months, if maybe you on ly have time to send out quarterly emails or emails around holidays are typical gift giving seasons. All right, so what do you put in these auto responders? That's, what everyone always wants to know. So, first of all, this is a great opportunity to introduce people to the purpose behind your business. So one of the first emails I liketo have people send out is what does your product mean? Teo u what does your product mean to use alone, eh? You've got this great story behind that braille necklace that's what I want people to get the day after they sign up for your email list I want to know what that product means to you why you chose to create it what the story is and it doesn't have to be long it might be one hundred or two hundred words on a big beautiful picture of that necklace and then you know a link to where to buy it but it doesn't even have to be a hard sales pitch it just you know if you care ifyou're interested here's the link okay, so that's your first email that's everybody's first email the next question is what does your product mean to your customers? This is about the v word again value what's that change what's that feeling what's that what's the use behind the product how are people using your product? So this is a great opportunity teo highlight a customer story so sasha here in your second email you could send out one of those great stories you have about people discovering that there corky alone or discovering that they're in a quirky together relationship highlight a customer story here and they'll do the hard work for you of describing what your product means to them the next question is why is your product unique among the competition and, gosh, this could go all sorts of different ways, but why is your product unique among the competition? It could be the materials it could be the design it could be about a misconception that people have about your industry or the products that you create it could just be the attitude of your brand, and that goes back to the values that we talked about yesterday. Maybe your values as a company as a brand as a product designer makes you unique among the competition that's a great opportunity to highlight any number of those things and then finally in your auto responders siri's you gotta make the ask what does that mean? You have to ask people to buy you have to say here's your opportunity to purchase this here's your opportunity to purchase the braille necklace here's your reminder to purchase the brown blacklist here's your opportunity to buy quirkyalone the book here's your opportunity to work with me one on one to find your quirkyalone self, make the ask now. I've outlined four ideas here because that makes me ask needs to be a separate email, so I've outlined for ideas, but this could take any number of, you know you could expand this into eight emails or twelve emails what I would suggest is that for everything four five e mails you send out you do send out one direct sales email where the whole point of your email is to make the sale most often when I hear what I'm using email marketing but it's just not working for me it's not generating any sales I ask when was the last time you asked for a sale? When was the last time you sent out an email that was all about selling one item making the ask about a particular product and they say you haven't well that's why you're not making any sales through about marketing sasha do you mean one of every foreign five and other responders serious or just emails in general both so I would yeah so if you're planning out twelve part auto responders siri's after every fourth or fifth email id include a direct sales email but also well, you are kind of just doing your regular email keep up make sure that you're inserting those direct sales emails as well. So it's not just right around the launch of your next program or the launch of your next collection but that you're also reminding people that you're a business you know, just like the lululemon email send me just products to by make sure you're sending out e mails that include just products to buy as well all right, any questions about this initial follow through we're about to get go into the ultimate follow through but any questions about auto responders gonna make the ask email that seems like the scariest one but would it just be like an email that has images and then like you click the image and it will take you to you don't have to be like hey you should buy this thing that I made because it's really cool you know because it could definitely just be a postcard style email most email marketing service providers have templates for postcards style emails built right into their systems you just upload a big beautiful image maybe you put a little you know you photoshopped a little kind of buy now button on it or ah mohr information button on it to give him a cute little message not unlike what we talked about in the slide show yesterday yeah that could be all your email is for sure I'd include some text on the bottom because not everyone has their image is turned on in email right but yeah the big part of your email could be as simple as a postcard image okay sasha similar I'm just wondering like how do you dress up this email that's like hey in case you forgot you khun dio x y z yes for you I would probably recommend using a testimonial this is an opportunity for you teo instead of telling the whole story just giving that snippet in that customers words and say you know I love what I do I love the one on one coaching that I do to help people find their quirkyalone sells here's what brian in san francisco said about working with me boom testimonial if it's your time to discover your quirkyalone self, I invite you to sign up for a free consultation now yeah, it's really good and you really have to get comfortable with sharing prays that you received yes, I know e m I got like a wonderful email or something from someone and I had the temptation to put it on facebook or or the desire to put it on facebook and really run up against this whole how do people respond to you? I mean, I support bragging I think everyone should broad more u e o learned about that is like with the community, especially with the people that are like so into what you're doing, they want a piece of that too they want to achieve the same results on, so that was something I had to have with my conversation I had to I have with myself too it's like I just put all this like yea kind of stuff, but like that people want you have and they want to achieve that too yeah, I think another thing that can really help with this is that make sure the testimonials you're getting are about your customer about the work that they've done in the results they've achieved and not all about you I don't want to see it on e mail that's all our testimonial that sasha is the most wonderful coach in the whole wide world that doesn't actually tell me anything about you I want to find out what brian in san francisco did because he found his quirky alone self so that's I think that's another way to kind of take the pressure off and and feel like you're not bragging so much but instead, you know, using their experience to speak for itself it's a really good point um, so if you're using like if you're featuring a story of a customer or like somebody reviews you, they write a cool review on nazi or something like that do you need to email them first and ask them if it's okay to use it in your marketing campaign are great questions, so if they used it on let's, see if they posted a review on at sea in a public place or if they posted a public testimonial on facebook or twitter or something like that? I don't ask my policy is that it is long is its public it's fair day okay if they write you an email or if it's a story that you've heard say at a crafts show, then that's a case where I would ask mission on dh I try and ask permission on the spot so I'll get the email all respondents say thank you and can I have your permission? Teo keep this testimony on the file and use it you know, the next time I make a sales pitch so yeah so just I think the only thing you need to do is differentiate between public and private in terms of use. Okay, meghan there's just something really smokes. I know it might quote some people up I recently discovered when my partner signed up for male chimp out of respondents were no longer free. So it is pitons though, but I did kind of have to like twist his arm like it's two cents for e mail but I know some people you know, you mentioned that it was free. It is no longer the adama shonda is still free the auto responders siri's is not however yes, and I always forget that customer for years and years and years and years. So let's talk about the ultimate follow through. What do I mean by the ultimate follow through? This is these are the e mails you send to customers who purchased from you and most of the platforms you guys were using whether it's, etc rue commerce or just even pay pal integrate with the big name email marketing services so that when someone buys from you there name and email addresses automatically added to your roles because they've created a relationship with you and those services allow an opt out there so people can opt out of being added so you don't have to worry about there's no, I see fear here there's there's no there's no weirdness here it's included it says you know I'm going to be added to the list so they are opting in through the purchase and that relationship allows that to happen but all those different platforms integrate with the top email marketing service providers so that you can add customers to a list and I would recommend either having a unique segments or a unique list four customers who have purchased from you specifically so that you could do the ultimate follow through because here's why repeat customers spend an average of sixty seven percent mohr than new customers on our six to twelve times cheaper to sell tio repeat customers spend an average of sixty seven percent mohr than new customers and are six to twelve times cheaper to sell tio how much money is lulu lemon out? Because I am obsessed with their emails and and buy something for them every six to eight weeks yeah they're not out anything but I keep buying all right so repeat customers spend more money and cost you less so anyway we confined to get more repeat customers is a big big win for your business it's also a big big win for your customers because they're pretty pleased as punch or else they wouldn't be repeat buying so how do we encourage this through email first you can again set up an auto responders siri's or you can send out periodically e mails to people but I would highly again recommend an auto responders siri's that goes through some of these props so the first one would be toe ask for feedback what if customers got an email three or four days after they made their purchase or you know after you expect the item to be delivered with and asked for feedback how many more testimonials could you get? How muchmore could you learn about the way your customers are using your products? How much more could you learn about what they're accomplishing what's really valuable to them about your work so you could set up an email toe ask for free feedback and again the great thing about email marketing service providers is that when you send out an email the replies can come directly to you so there's nothing fancy here sure you could set up a form, but why do that? While there's lots of reasons but you can keep it really simple and simply say I hit reply and let me know what you loved about your item or let me know what else you'd like to see from bern of virtue are from quirkyalone so ask for feedback. The next thing you could do is direct customers to related content, direct customers to related content, so you have spent hours and hours and hours and hours writing a blogged about all sorts of things you've used all of those headlines that we talked about in the content strategy part of day one you have created, you know, gift guides for the media you've written about customer stories in the past. What if you send out an email or a siri's of emails that that took that content and reused it with new buyers? Because most of our content most of the stuff that we spend hours and hours and hours creating to market to our customers just sits in a little content graveyard on our web sites, and we can re use it in a nought a responder siri's to bring it back to life to give it a new life and to save you from doing all that extra work again, you could also direct to customers to related content may be on another site as well. You could just be a trusted source for great information on a topic that your customers and you hold dear, you know, so if you're an interior designer, you create housewares. And maybe there's something on a design blogged like design sponge or designed for mankind and you've got you want to direct people to it and maybe you've got a little bit of an opinion about it. You can use that in your auto responders siri's and deliver that as a piece of value to your customers of something that they might be interested in. You can also suggest an upsell so you got that necklace? Have you seen the earrings you got this necklace? Have you seen that necklace? You got that pillow? Have you seen this other pillow? Have you seen my slipcovers? Have you seen my scars now? That's getting that could be getting into a little bit more technical territory depending on how just very precise you want to get with that. But I think very simply again, just suggesting a popular item is a great way to follow up with your customers or, you know, including a new item that you haven't that maybe more people most people have not seen before and then you can also offer exclusive deals toe loyal customers. Yesterday I mentioned that while discounting has its problems, you can also use it for very specific goals and one specific goal that you can use discounting for teo you know, for a lot of for a lot of bang for your buck is to reward loyal customers so if you khun you know if someone made a purchase a month ago or two months ago, what if you send out a coupon for free shipping or maybe for ten percent off you know, two months later to remind them to come back to the store to say, hey, thanks so much for being a customer I'd like to offer this is a free gift to you now, so there's that as well any questions about the ultimate follow through in here? Yes, I have a question about look old stuff that you want to get rid of I think it would be a good idea to just gift it to those customers they're loyal customers or oh, is that is that none of you could I mean, I would pick your most loyal customers if you're going to do that. So people who may be purchased two or three or four things from you, you certainly could I'm not going to say that's good or bad, but it's definitely one way you could get rid of stuff and make some people very, very happy should you tell them like it that you'll get a gift or whatever? No, uh, well, I wouldn't use it as an incentive I would I would maybe look through your list your customer list, your customer rolls are database and see who's purchased the most and get in touch with them and say, you know, I've got some inventory to unload and I'd really love to send you a guest if that's alright with you or you wouldn't even have to say I've got inventory to unload, I would just tell them I've got to get to send you I'm working on what if I just write a letter like a personal letter, I just give them the gift without like even at you could certainly do that as well wouldn't it be more special than any other questions on ultimate follow through? No. All right, cool alright, I mentioned earlier enhancing social media activities again you guys spend a lot of time on the twitters on the facebook's on the instagrams on the pinterest ce how do you get the most return on investment for that time? Sure, you can be directing people to your latest block post. Sure you can be directing people to your latest shop listing you can let them know about your collection for your new collection your new line your big watch? Yes, you can let them know all about that stuff, but what if one of the key goals of your social media activities was directing people to your email opt in list so I mentioned the landing page earlier let me tell you just a little bit more about that again ah landing page for an email opt in form is simply a page on your website that's devoted to to helping your customers understand the value of being on your list this's a great psychological exercise for marketers for makers, artists and designers as well because you have to go through the exercise of figuring out what is valuable about being on my email list and so again, if you check out terror gentilly dot com slash map, you can see what I've done and mine is actually a little wordy I think the vast majority of you don't need nearly as much text you don't need nearly as much explanation it could simply be just be the first to know I send out new designs to email subscribers first they get first dibs on the latest and greatest from bird of virtue and apple studio me and you know maybe you show some images of your work and then you've got that email opt in form right on that page it's a quick short page it doesn't have a lot of extra links going out of it. I don't want to see a sidebar on it or any of that kind of junk just the value of being on your list and your email opt in form then when you're on social media every so often you can you know send that link out be the first to know see, when all my new stuff comes out, get on my list so that you know when my next launch is so that you see the new spring collection I want to know what's new for winter. Get on my email list, send the link out. All right, so that's all stuff you khun dio from those social media platforms that you are spending so much time on already and probably not getting a huge return on investment for this is one way to dramatically up that return. All right, let's, talk quickly about nurturing leads through email, and again, these questions are on page thirty three. Be there some more prompts for keeping people on your list, keeping them interested. So the first thing is that your goal here is to discover an insight your customers can use to help them achieve their desire. This is a great way to get a attention. Get their attention when you're sending out an email. So the quite one question you can ask yourself is, what misconceptions does your customer have about your product? What misconceptions does your customer have about your product? Let me give you an example. I'm going to use anna because anna is super easy the misconception about your product, your product in general, your product, cat, it category is that all baby clothes look the same, they're all cute c they're all pink or yellow or blue they're all pastel and everyone carries the same old companies so that's the misconception you come at that with baby clothes don't have to look like that they could be fun and hip and quirky and they can remind you of what you love about life and so therefore, you know you've hit them on this misconception that they've had probably one of the main reasons that they've gotten on your list or become interested in your brand to begin with and you've got an opportunity to shift that perspective for them and make your brand top of mind okay, next question what's standing in the way of your customer achieving their desire, what's standing in the way of your customer achieving their desire. So on monday and also upon monday hunt friday and also yesterday we talked about what vision our customers have for themselves, who are they becoming who was the person that they are becoming so what's standing in their way right now? Maybe, you know, I meant I've been talking about megan's jewelry a lot, and I've been talking about how it's helped me to become the person that I am now and to have the image of myself that I have now maybe what's standing in what was standing in my way before was, you know, just a lack of ability to understand that what I had in my closet was already awesome and that her jewelry was a way to take outfits that were all right and turn them into something fantastic. So I identified what was standing in my way, and I used a product to bust through it. You can do that with your products as well. Uh, this one got cut off somehow. What idea or knowledge could help your customers achieve their desire. So this is something where you might need to teach them a new skill. You might need to teach them how to put together an idea you might need to teach her how to put together an outfit you might need to teach them. How tio put together a really a baby gift basket that's full of personality. You might need to teach them something about embroidery. You might need to teach them something about themselves to help them find their ability to even become quirky alone. So there's all sorts of knowledge that we can pass on to help people become mohr ready to purchase our products as well. All right, couple more ideas here before we wrap up this segment. This is sort of more aboutthe wen off when you're going to be sending out e mails on a regular basis so outside of that auto respond, er serious when are you going to be sending out e mails? Why are you going to be sending out e mails and what's going to be in them so first you could think about what circumstances make your customers go looking to buy this is easy I need to buy a gift I need a new piece of jewelry for an event I need a new outfit because I'm speaking on stage I need new pillows because I'm redecorating my house what circumstances make your customer go looking to buy all of those different things are viable email marketing campaigns what seasons is your customer most likely to be ready to buy? People generally don't buy scarves in the middle of summer, but they do when the weather starts to change in september. So think about what seasons are you know uniquely related to your product sasha you know when two people start looking for self help for personal development january the new year that's when all everyone is keyed into making themselves better, making them helping themselves grow so all sorts of different products have different seasons that relate to them. What would make your customer purchase your product as a gift again thinking about circumstances? Lynette had a great example of this that you've mentioned a couple times and that that that you're targeting fifth year anniversary's assuming five years this wood yeah, no that's perfect s o that's one reason your customers might be looking to purchase your product, but what are all sorts of other reasons that people would purchase your product as a gift, make a long list and then finally don't forget to consider this on the wholesale side so earlier I mentioned that email marketing can work b two b or b to c u could use email marketing to stay in touch and encourage your retailers to buy from your wholesale side of your business. All of these reasons are things your customer wants to know how your wholesale customer wants to know as well. So if you know that five year anniversary's our good times to buy your jewelry, you better make sure your wholesaler or your retailers know that story so that they can relate it so that, you know, when joe schmo comes walking into the boutique and he says, well, my honey and I have a five year anniversary coming up and you know, I'm I'm looking for a great piece for her a great gift for her that retailer can come in and come into the conversation and say, oh my gosh, have I got the product for you? Five years is wood and this jewelry is fantastic. All right, so then you've equipped them with a sales device right there makes sense uh okay, what do you think is a good open rate? Yes, okay, and you send a lot of long e mails that are really thoughtful and have a lot of content and then and sometimes I do the same and then I get the impression I might be overwhelming people or I'm just sort of divided on that, you know, because sometimes I feel like people see my email and they think it's so deep and they don't have time, you know? Yeah, great question so what's a good open range, it depends home a lot of things. First of all, you're open rate will go down, the more people you have on your list, I don't know why, but that's just the way it isthe, so my open rate right now is around thirty percent, but I also have, you know, quite a number of people on my list. I find a lot of times the businesses that have one hundred, two hundred, five hundred people on their lists have open rates of fifty to sixty percent, and that they start to panic when it gets much below that. You know, other people have open rates of twenty five, twenty, fifteen percent, and that works for them. S o I think in terms of open rate, you should be looking at trends and not necessarily numbers, you know, I do think for small businesses, you should expect thirty to fifty percent open rate fifty percent is definitely way on the high side depending on how big your list is, but you know you do want it to be higher than industry average and your email marketing service provider can give you those numbers are often just volunteers those numbers to you? Uh, yeah, but then you just want to look for trends is your open right going down for some reason is your click through rate going down for some reason? Is it going up? My gosh, what if I've been doing differently? I want to make sure I keep doing that. So that's something to think about to your other question about sending out long e mails? I sent out long emails because I tend to send out the entire article s a block post that I've published on my website for that week in an email part of the strategy there is that it's leveraging my brand image part of my brand image is being strategic, thoughtful, full of information and so sending out long emails while I know it does reduce my open rate or it keeps my open reign by open rate evolves very slowly so maybe ten to twelve percent of people open it right away, but over three or four days I find my open rates shoots up because people saved my emails until they have time but the the quality of my email in terms of the how it's put together what it is is all about representing my brand image and so I make some compromises because of that and it's not something that I do all the time but it's what I do most of the time so for you that might not work out for you you might need to write a short introduction to a block post for your email and then send out the link and that might be a way that people feel better about opening your email so I would think about that in terms of your brand and just what's works for you and what works for you your email list that is going to be very different for every single business owner I said that you should e mail once or once every two weeks once every week or once every two weeks um what's not to like every day seems crazy to me so what's too much what's too much in a week yeah again this depends on the business there are some businesses that are built around emailing on a daily basis for instance my friend amanda steinberg's company daily worth which I highly recommend to everyone is a daily financial email for women so that's their whole company model that's how they make their money that's what keeps people x sighted about their brand also some of the big blog's they're publishing multiple post it's per day, or even just posting every day send out daily e mails. I would not recommend that generally for makers, I think, honestly, I think for most maker, artist designer businesses, more than once a week is probably too much you're going to do a little bit more than that. Maybe if you are in the holiday season, if you're leading up to a big sail, a big event or, you know, a big kind of a launch of a new collection, you might do two or three times over the course of one to two weeks two or three times per week over the course of one to two weeks, but yeah, generally I think more than once a week is too much for this type of business. Thank you. Well, some questions from our way, we can just take a couple before we go to break perhaps cassandra tanja what's the best day of the week, too send out email uh, great questions, so let me give you some kind of generalities or generalisations for that, and then I'm going to tell you first and foremost, look at your own statistics you can look to see on your email marketing service provider when you're open, rates were better when you click through rates were better, and you can chart that by the day generally speaking, monday's stink for email marketing because no one wants to read your email marketing on a monday when they don't really want to be at work in the first place same thing goes for fridays for the opposite reason everyone's checking out of work they're checking out even of their personal email friday's generally don't work so tuesday wednesday thursday tend to be really good days saturdays are really good for some types of messages and sundays are also really good for some types of messages, so check your own statistics and then just avoid mondays and fridays most of the time okay, great thank you so many questions coming in, but well let's just do one more before we go to break this a couple people have asked suzanne g and clever and bright similar question I have trouble trying to differentiate the content that I post between my blogged my facebook, my emails because they don't feel like I have enough to post about but would like to be different outlet too be somewhat different from the other. How important is it to not repeat the same news in different places or is it okay and clever and bright had also said if you're sending out an exclusive look through exclusive product through one outlet like email, how long should you wait before doing it on social media? Great question, so for this one already it is not important to differentiate your content among different channels people subscribe to your content in the way that they most want to get it so there are certain people who will on ly ever like your facebook page because that's how they love getting content there are other people who will on ly follow you on twitter because that's how they like getting an organizing content but the people who are most likely to buy from you are the people who are excited to subscribe to your emails that's the channel of content delivery that they choose so for me I send my block post out over email I don't differentiate at all and then I send links to those block posts out over facebook and over twitter the content itself is what's important email facebook twitter they're just content delivery channels on people subscribe to what makes them happy and you'll be happiest with your email subscribers I guarantee you that on but was the second part of the question I'm sorry about you I think we talked about doing exclusive guest sort of looks how long should you wait in your email before putting that out there elsewhere yeah I think that's something that you can feel out personally in your business but I would wait three four days maybe you can build it into the launch and you say this limited edition print is on ly available teo email subscribers for the first week that it's available and that after that week, if there are any prints left, I'm going to open it up to the rest of my network, on facebook and twitter and on my website. So that's one way you could handle that, I would just build, you know, pick your poison and then build it into your message to create some urgency. Thank you, yeah, alright, terrible, we are going to take our fifteen minute break let's talk about what we're going to do when we come back from break, so when we come back from break, we're going to do some more hot seed a I'm going to talk to all of these lovely ladies about their own email marketing campaigns, what they want to work on in terms of sales, distribution, on getting their products in the hands of people with the right messages and the right kinds of content. So I'm a rock your worlds again, hope awfully said maybe we can come back to some of those questions from online this well, but I know people are loving these examples in our studio audience sounds great. Well, I have a couple of assignments for people to do right now over break, okay, one is make sure you go and download the indie course guide the indie craft guide for creative lies first in the crap show here that is going on right outside the doors here this gives you all of the information about all the different artists that we have over in the show as well as our artist here in the sea studio that way even if you don't have time to watch and shop now you khun support these artists later that are part of the creative I've community for your holiday shopping but I encourage you now tio over break tow hop on over teo are other channel channel four you can see the link when you go to the drop down menu at the top of the page where jean marie is talking teo all the different artists out there and we're getting a sense and seeing what they are shopping what they have there for us to buy so check that out there on break too but they'll be back just in a few minutes so great time to hop over to that channel over break and terra what what? I realised what we talked about earlier we talked about resistance and I really just I felt it in the room when we started to talk about email marketing and this resistance tio selling our work yeah still there yeah email marketing brings it out really does yeah because crap shows khun feel like just having a conversation with a friend but email marketing I think really cuts to the core of all of our hang ups around sails on dh that's. Why? I like talking about it, which is really, really awesome. I mean, truly, if we can get past that resistance, each and every one of us to where we remind ourselves, like we've been talking about for the for the past three days, that we're actually doing a service, two people who value what we're creating and not think about it as we're spamming them, or they don't want to hear from us. Reframe that, and you're good to go. Thank you, tara. Thanks, everyone.