Lessons

Lesson Info

Email Plan as Part of Launch Cycle

I don't want to beat a dead horse, but the thing about following up is that it's not a dead horse because very few people do it oh are very few people beat it I don't know three benefits of following up one you demonstrate you have content to offer outside of the pitch okay that's one of the great things about following up is like you like what I had before I've got more you're not going to just hear pitch after pitch after pitch from me I've got more to offer you like jessica said earlier add value add value, create value, offer something and continue offering it throughout the follow up like I said the f a q e mail the testimonial email the what to do next email the here's why I developed this email each of those emails in its own way adds value outside of the main pitch I also mentioned that following up comes after the last chance email as well you should really should be planning now for what you're going to say after the last chance email is a great time to kind of remix a recycl...

e old content so you might have a block post or siri's of post maybe an old campaign that you've had sitting on the shelf for two years it's still on your blogger it's the emails or tucked away in your system somewhere it's a great time to bring that back remember if only thirty percent of your people are reading your emails and or thirty percent of people are only reading an email and you sent that two years ago when your list was thirty percent of the size it is now do the math. Nobody read that post not nobody but maybe not anyone on your list right now. Bring it back, bring it back so if if the stress of launching keeps you from following up afterwards, plan ahead for plan ahead for it, follow up with people with content that you already have on the on your plate that you can use to off offer something else later on down the line. So it's a great way to just offer lots of stuff outside of the pitch following up also allows you to present your offer multiple times if you don't follow up, they only see the pitch once once is not enough to get most people to buy. Most people need to see the offer over and over and over again to purchase ah, you can create different messaging as time goes on. So there was a question yesterday about what what happens if you realize you have the wrong messaging, like halfway through a launch or on a sales page or wherever following up allows you to shift it a little bit all right, so you could actually realize that maybe think people are really getting caught up on this other idea you have that's not your key insight following up allows you to explore that email there, that idea, and so you might not follow the ideas of the f a q and the testimonial and what to do next emails. Instead, you might craft different content around a different key insight and shift that messaging a little bit and try and recoup on on your lunch. Okay, so fifty five on a scale of zero to five. How comfortable are we with planning a launch? Email lunch. We've got fives in here. Great. I'll check back with john marie in a minute. Can I automate some of this audience? Yes. You can automate some of this. Take a siri's, take a product. Think about whatever product it is. That's most easy for people to purchase as soon as they are starting that relationship with you, starting the consumer provider relationship with you and and create an auto responder campaign. I mean, that goes through this launch process and ends in a pitch and a short follow up for that product. You'll get money coming in the door, uh, kind of under the radar, without any effort, that's what we do with kickstart labs so as you enter my particular email marketing campaign, you get it. Siri's of emails that lead you to the key insight of being independent shouldn't mean being alone and getting that pitch and so on an almost daily basis we get new people signing up for kicks start labs it's pretty great all right pretty great fist a five online this's funny we've got five five seven we have five plus five which is ten another five five squared awesome I'm so glad it really just worms my little marketers heart to think that there are ah ha a whole bunch more people out there who feel comfortable creating email marketing campaigns this really is gold I mean this is money in the bank getting this stuff done I cannot put it any more simply than that so that makes me just so ridiculously happy all right, we're going to bring rachelle up now and we're yeah we're going to build rochelle's email marketing campaign come on down rachelle so michelle well my still out and sit down for a moment all right? Uh tell us who you are where we can find you online and what your next big thing is ok, I'm rachelle and you can find me at the red scorpio dot com and I'm also the the feature designer for a flourishing thrive academy right now so if you check out our academy dot com you'll see me and uh what was the other thing? Oh my next thing is it's not really a thing but it's like the holiday so I'm going to do like a holiday a long holiday line excellent this is perfect all right so we can plan your email marketing for the holidays that sounds pretty good. Yeah sounds cool amazing. So let's think about timing first since we're specifically thinking about the holidays I would say so do you know what you're shipping deadlines gonna be yet for december? Um well shipping is probably going to be a post holidays no no before the holiday before the house yes um I would say like they're more like a week before christmas so that I sent priority but myself is custom so you cannot wait until the right way to think the last day to buy them for the holiday season is going to be o well see that's the thing that I'm hoping it will be well before christmas because my plan is to have so many orders that I have to shut off orders and said hey sorry you should have you know struck that iron while it was still huh yes so you'd like to say take december off yeah or at least off from actively marketing and to really able to do your thing yeah take time for family kind of be on your own schedule and b this a slave to your inbox? Yeah and kind of create demand actually I mean also just a kind of an aside the idea that I would be planting for people right now is I anticipated really busy holiday season and I'm not sure when orders they're going to be cut kindof but I'd say get your orders and before thanksgiving yeah okay that's a good idea okay, so that might be a ps you start putting on emails in the next couple weeks okay? Because then you're starting to plant the seeds and so even if you're not in that active part of your email marketing campaign you're still gonna mentioning and it warming people all right? So tell us specifically about your product since your next big thing is the holidays tell us more about your product and kind of how you've been thinking about approaching it from the before and after key insight hypothesis okay, my I do make just statement jewelry bold statement jewelry and that I saw matty shop but what I specialize in is custom photo jory with your own pictures these are my children this is actually a wedding picture of me and my husband awesome and that before um I want to say that most people buy them as gifts. Okay, so people will buy the um the statement jewelry for themselves but most people by the photo jewelry as a gift okay, so before is that you're tired of buying average gifts and you want to wow someone and make an impression and especially during the holidays because you don't, you know you want to give something with meaning yeah, I would even maybe make it even more specific and say you don't want to just give average gifts, but you don't want to give any more cheesy photo gifts, right? Because I think when people think custom photo stuff, they're really used teo the typical like shattered fly cap, maybe write a picture. Yeah, I'm to stick your picture on this mug and call it a christmas gift, right? No fan steady when he does that and also there's a new trend of personal jewelry, which is not personal, in my opinion, with hand or bracelets and now origami owl like it's personal but it's, just like you're choosing from charms that are readily available. So controversial is that you're not making the components your own. Yes, absolutely yeah, okay, great, so you have a real limited choice in the personalized gift jacket and you don't have things that are kind of really innovative or hot or new things you don't have a lot of access to things that most people aren't going toe already have or where they've seen and they've not bought them for a reason, right? Yeah, okay, cool, great before with the after, um thie after is that you you're giving gifts with real meaning, and you're making some one happy and then anna gaming this idea to give gifts that give you goose bumps. I love that, yeah, and being known as a someone who gives gifts that gets goose bumps. Yeah, because I think a lot of times with gift giving and and I talked about this, and my first creative live workshop is that one of the things about gift giving is actually the feeling that we get from it if you want to be come as a gift giver. So I love that beautiful fantastic as someone who gives these as gifts all the time, it is an amazing feeling when someone opens it up and I swear they almost always put it on right away, are you? Yeah, it feels great. Fantastic. So so one thing I want to note here is that how simple your before and after is that we weren't stretching for something that was like your bracelet save people time and money saving marriages that we're not stretching and that's that's kind of the thing with product maker product designer um, application of this is that simple is fine. Simple is beautiful, people are looking for simplicity in what they consume, but what they're also looking for his meaning and purpose and he's got that covered. And it might save your marriage if you usually give like a toaster or something stupid for a holiday yeah yeah that could be a charted and e mails check your e mail list nobody wants a vacuum for christmas all right, what did you what did you come up with your for your hypothesis? Oh my gosh. We'll see when you were explaining it to the service provider I totally got it but when you're I couldn't figure out what my I bought this is okay great so I would I just have like taglines so I would say your product is actually kind of your key insight because your product is is also a service like me is the idea right? Can you hold your rest up one more time? So just the idea that you could wear your children on your wrist or that you can customize a piece of jewelry with photos that really mean something to you that's a key insight that the idea is the idea behind the product but it's also the idea behind the marketing as well they're one in the same they often are okay so again simple it doesn't have to be overly complex I'll give that back to you so your key and your hypothesis then is you know when you create aagh wearable meaningful photo jewelry you become a rock star gift giver who gives people goose bumps okay, awesome so that simple just like with that tom's email yes may he could be want one sentence could sell many, many, many, many units of your product right? One sentence and a call to action one sentence that is little traction yeah, absolutely okay, so fantastic. I love all of that. Thank you. So we did the content marketing earlier so let me start writing things down. What was your challenge? Peace what do you challenging people on what's a misconception on this conception? Well, first of all that people might not even know they exist. Okay assume that if you're out there on your list they know the product exists okay, um it might be hard to order okay, because you have theo you know you're not just picking something out of my shop you actually have to send me your photos and but that's really easy. Okay? Photo jewelry is hard tto order uh well is a misconception so let me actually make a photo is photo jewelry isn't hard to order in terms of thinking that people don't know the product exists. Where you saying thinking something along the lines of cause immediately where my brain went with challenge was photo jewelry doesn't have to be cheesy okay, so what once good okay, so that would be another idea here because I love your stuff I'll thank you and I think that plenty of other stuff like that is cheesy. So I mean that's that's where my mind goes, tio uh, anything. Did you have anything else with that? Just the comparison with pandora bracelets and origami like you can make it. Okay, so, it's uhm your jewelry can be truly personal. You could take any of these sentences and make them sexier, but this is great for now. Okay, expand. What do you thinking about sending out for your expand piece? Um, I'm not really sure. Testimonials from very happy customers, let's, make this ridiculously simple. What? I want you to send out an email. Here is either photos of people wearing your jewelry photos of people wearing jewelry. Or do you remember how I talked about the unboxing the hall videos about american girl, right? Oh my gosh, how fun would a little video of someone unboxing one of your pieces be alright? Because then you're a vision that you're expanding is both the gift giving and being the gift giver, right? Yeah, so five photos totally fired video in super high you could totally do both have to all right analyze what holds people back from buying more meaningful products by more meaningful jewelry. Maybe they just don't know how awesome it could be to get that reaction okay, I don't know are they wait till the last minute I mean oh yeah okay. So waiting till the last minute that's perfect actually it let's just do that waiting tio the last minute why is that perfect? Because the urgency of this launches that the holiday season is coming and going and you don't know when you're gonna have to stop taking corners. Okay? That's perfect that completely sets you out all right analyze and then deliver um here I would probably release like a holiday look look okay, okay? Or just even like a like a page of holiday images or a holiday pinterest board okay, you could do all sorts of different things or you could do something way more interactive and you could invite people to a google hangout with you like invite them into the studio where you take one lucky winners you get so you could do like a giveaway on then have people invite them into it everyone into a google hangout with you um and you could have that the winner of the giveaway send things in ahead of time and you could actually make their bracelet or their necklace on the spot. I can't do that okay, but it takes days ok look even show us what what one part of the process ismay be the finishing touches like is there kind of like a reveal point in what you're doing or is it more like take a posh kind of it's er resin well I mean that tuck yes so that doesn't work so don't do that I'm sure it would be an idea for somebody somebody else take that e I just totally do like a holiday lookbook it doesn't have to be a book but look couldn't be like a gallery page on my web site that I lately absolutely and so maybe you're just even if you're not released in new products for the holiday season you're essentially saying this is what I have for your gift giving needs for twenty fourteen okay okay and so I would say if uh just planning this out a timeline wise this is stuff you should start running within september yeah business stuff you should run with in october this would be a great email for the first week of november if you want people to order by thanksgiving then I've run with this almost immediately afterwards so maybe like in the same week okay and then we just need to plan your follow ups I'm gonna flip the chart because I really don't like stooping over too right? Yeah in terms of this as opposed to like a a service based lodge you're planning all of these emails out where your products are available for sale right now right? So there's never actually going to be that like doors are opened by now think is because she's going to be like having in there you can get yours now all the time yes she can actually build kind of more of just a low level urgency and yet there's there's maybe not a pitch well though there's there's totally a pitch because you're going to release that lookbook kind of men you're going tohave all release of some sort um something that's new something that's different something that's fresh that you're going to announce and then immediately after that I would follow up say this is um this is your six week holidays like six week christmas warning no um I think just thinking kind of more like subject lines but the pitch is going to be place your order now yeah. Countdown to christmas countdown to christmas kind of thing. Okay, so it's it's different but it's sue for similar okay, so there's your pitch uh so you might do in f ake you next ok? Yeah, definitely okay. Um that's fairly self explanatory what are some of the questions people have about your jewelry though? And just to give an idea of what this kind of e mail is gonna look like? Usually the question is, um how do I get the photos? Okay, how dio how do they send them d'oh I send you, uh photos that's another question um I don't really get a lot of questions because I have a page on my okay website that I spell it out and good so I would still be technical yeah, well, still just took a couple of the office and then just and then yeah, and then maybe in the e mails say if you had any other questions about order ordering photo jewelry from me um you can check out my fake page and place your order today, okay, if you've been considering placing an order but these questions are holding you back, right? Um, here are some of the questions that I answer on my f ake you pay it's okay, okay, um let's think testimonials because this is really super simple. So this you mentioned at sea feedback I was just I would take an email, probably a packet full of great feedback, so I'd do etc feedback I reduce the more customer photos um, any other, maybe longer form testimonials, maybe a great client story I may be wouldn't put a whole long story in the same e mail is all of this, but you've got all that opportunity and then your last chance email you send that out when you're ready to send it, this is it, I've got room in my schedule, all four five more orders, all right, something like that okay given number people love no work so well if there's any way you can build a number into your subject lines into your calls toe action it's gonna work really really well we understand how this works yes I do do you feel good about this? I do do you feel like you're ready for the holidays? Yeah ok d'oh good good you're all set thank you thanks for being my guinea pig. No problem and for making stuff alright that's how simple it khun b to plan out your email marketing and for our makers that's how simple it can be to craft a whole bunch of emails that are short and sweet let's actually take a look back on that first page these challenge emails that are going to be more wordy eso wouldn't make very long they could be one hundred fifty words and they could still be very visual this doesn't you don't have to as a maker you don't have to figure out how to do something the same stuff the way a service provider information marketer would do it you could do it you can use the same strategy and make it your own make it make sense with your product simplified make it visual make it tanja will make it feel real okay daphne brings a question in my mind about roughly is is one hundred and fifty words a good marker for the length in general, oh, no, uh um, I would say one hundred fifty words is definitely on the short side for someone who's going to be marketing mohr with it's written stories, you're probably looking at more like three hundred to five hundred words as a good benchmark. Less is fine, but you could same. Or if you use more words it's on dh, you know that so the market that you're kind of breaking into a cz I understand it is why are you targeting, like administrators or two? Who are you targeting? We're targeting all the education stakeholders in san francisco, okay sf usd plus all the nonprofit education programs that are in the city. Okay, gotcha. So you have people that are communicating with longform emails on a regular basis. So you, khun both use that you can use that in two ways one way you can use that is just communicating to them in the way that they're used to, which is they like things that are very well thought out that make points very clearly that answer concerns right up front and you, khun, send some really short emails that feel extremely welcome, right? So, like you could write one hundred fifty word email and just try and get them to take. Once teeny tiny action or to consider one teeny tiny idea and that hundred and fifty words and they're going to think in their mind wow, I'm just so glad somebody was that concise okay, so you could actually use that to your advantage and really play with it what I would suggest to is that you test eso even if you were considering maybe doing email marketing to start kind of one to one basis with people where it's more just direct communication than it is marketing thing um I would still suggest that you signed up with the service and build some sort of list organically because then you you'll have more data you just sent an email with gmail or or google aps you don't know who opened it you don't know how many times you don't know if they clicked all of those things, but if you use something like male chimp um then you can see all right when I write one hundred fifty word email, more people open it, more people click more people take action what I write a longer email less people unsubscribe less people also so click through, but hopefully that means that then they're also like kind of digesting the information just a za couple examples of how you might analyze that all right cool whitney so there's something that I'm hoping to launch in the fall but as I mentioned earlier, my emails on lee go to the people that have subscribed to my blogged, so my block post are going to keep coming out during this time in the eight to ten emails that you've outlined in this flow, is it okay to interrupt that flow with other regular block post that aren't related to your launch? So if I yes so no, um, sort of like what I said with sasha, like, if that was the wishy washy ist answer I've ever given to any question ever. So, like what I said with sasha, if you are so moved to communicate something outside of the sequence that you just really want to get it in people's hands, do it. Otherwise these four pieces should be your block posts, but what I'm launching is such a small part of my overall business and it's two one small segment of my business that I worry about not maintaining mo mentum with all the other segment okay on the other thing that you could do is create a separate landing page for an interest list for this particular offer, okay? And then from there target those people and it's fine that they're still getting e mails from your block post, I would maybe do something where you're branding the emails. A little bit differently for the learn your ropes program, learn the ropes program s o maybe it says on the learn the ropes at the top maybe you have like a cute little graphic done for it and it's super simple, but it just lives at the top of the email and that way people are visually triggered that this is a particular conversation that I'm listening teo that's what I do with ten thousand feet me as well there's a little there's a small visual difference in the emails that go out there so that yeah, people are thinking when they see that email that's part of this conversation even they're not thinking it consciously, of course, but subconsciously I think there's something going on there thank you that's helpful you're welcome summary we do have a question from briana briana dick who says so if you're doing a limited availability launch, for example were shells what happens if your emails are so awesome that you sell out before you finish the sequence? Yeah then you just stop wait we call a quality problem briana also brianna's the person behind fist to five so I just want to give her another shout out but yeah, that's a quality problem you could just say I would still acknowledge it because it's a positive thing in any business to sell out what I would do when you acknowledge it is to say this, but you know what, guys? The program is full if you didn't get in this time and he wanted teo, I'm gonna be re launching the program or opening it up offering and again in three months to look for that announcement, then in the meantime, stay tuned for more good stuff for me, okay? Quality problems, it's they make me very happy. All right, so I just want to remind everybody of the pie of our strategy. Quiet power strategy from yesterday. Stories are service, the stories that you tell through your email marketing, the stories that you tell through your content, marketing there, their service, they're being of service to your people. You're helping them see transition or trans transformation after transformation after transformation. Whether that's something very special, relatively small, which seems silly to say, in the case of ah, of a product like a piece of jewelry, or whether that's something really different, like learning to cook for yourself, stories our service in the little bit of time that we have remaining, I want to go through a couple of examples of things that you other ways you might apply this email marketing launch. So how would you apply this to a video launch for an information product? Obviously it's pretty straight forward uh this is um I did a video launch for this particular information products so let me show you what I did I challenged a misconception in one prelaunch video I expand a division in the second prelaunch video I analyzed something else in a third prelaunch video and you guys are here for the delivery essentially it's also the pitch as jamari does excellently so we're doing those in tandem ideally I'll be following up with my audience over the next few days possibly with some faa cues saying hey, maybe you have questions about whether I addressed this particular problem during the creative live workshop and that's what's keeping you from buying let me tell you I did I might also get a testimonial so I could ask one of these lovely ladies to share their experience of being here live in studio that I could share again in a follow up with my audience ah and then last chance I might offer up right before the price goes from seventy nine to ninety nine makes sense all right une email on email launch for a photography offer and we've got lots of photographers in the audience so they might challenge their audience that uh let's say it's a headshot offer because I think this might be the easiest way to construct this head shots when someone thinks of a head shot they think of ah you know and a corporate executive with a suit and tie in front of that blue modeled background and it's really super choosy, right? And so they could challenge the idea that head shots are boring. Okay, your exciting head shot is a snap away is the shutter click away. All right, that could be the challenge. Email and expand email might show might be a gallery or a couple examples of great headshots this this photographer has shot over time analyze you might do a before and after here here's someone's, old head shot here's their head shot after I did it, let me show you a couple things that we made sure to dio we moved the subject outside because that was more in keeping with her brand. Instead of her hair pulled back, we let it down. Instead of wearing a suit, we let her wear home most favorite outfit that she feels most comfortable and deliver. You could do something again. I mentioned this with rochelle. He could do something where you bring people in on a google hangout and you let them see see you actually shooting someone in the studio or out of the studio? Sure, the logistics might be a little complicated, but I think it would be to complete plete ly worth it um you could also do something around the delivering peace around uh, how to get more out of your head shots session so it could be a tele class or a webinar here four things you could do differently the next time you get your headshots taken make this pose do this thing with your face don't wear this kind of makeup all right, so that could be your delivering peace again f a q testimonial last chance again any of these things could be visual as well. Let's dio oh, yeah, okay, this is a good one will end here email marketing plan for a combination sales conversation for a service and what I mean by this is that saved these three emails are something that is mass it's done its scale, you said sasha sends them out to her whole less just and then there's a call to action at the end of the analyze email that says contact me for your free session for your breakthrough session deliver the deliver peace is that breakthrough session she could answer some of those faa cues in that session she could for follow up with them after the session with a personalized here's why I developed this email and then seven would be you know, I mentioned to you that if you decide in this period of time it's at this cost just wanted to let you know a quick reminder that dais today if it if it's for you I'd love to get your next session scheduled and if it's not that's fine too and maybe I'll check back with you in a couple weeks okay? So there's there's an example of just three very different ways you can apply the same strategy personalized launch for a beta offer again this is someplace where instead of maybe making a instead of making individual uh pieces of content here you could actually tell a story that starts with a challenge creates an expanse of the virgin of the vision analyzes some different things that go wrong and then delivers cem some actionable steps and you could do that in a personalized way in that you could kind of create the base content and then go out and actually email your individual prospects people who've said yeah if you've ever develop if you ever develop something like this I'd really like to get in touch I'd really like for you to get in touch with me about it that's an invitation to deliver this kind of content to them and maybe you do it all at once because that kind of personalized conversation dramatically reduces the need for you know step by step by step launch kind of process and again just like following up with the example I used for sasha you could hop on the phone with them and answer any questions they have about the offer that you're developing the beta offer you could follow up with them and say hey, even if you decide this beta offer isn't for you this time here's what I think you should do next and then a last chance before you kick it off it's that easy why got through all of them fist to five you understand how to apply this to your own business? Fantastic. All right, I got another share for everybody. What piece of this plan are you most excited to develop? Audience will go with you first atsuko um so I'm a cross cultural marriage quote on I'm moving to japan next month so I was thinking what I could deliver the dead every possible this is and I just like hit me like one thing I could do that I've been thinking about doing a live event which I've been wanting to do for a long time so I will be moving to tokyo so there'll be lots of japanese women wanted to meet known japanese get married what? Not so, um I guess I could totally use this former to drum up the excitement for the meet up and then my question is I guess um would you recommend it to just one thing for that ever uh okay, so then get one thing one result all right, yeah, so super simple, right? So one thing but a different format on not really like whatever thinking like, oh yeah, yeah, you can totally do a different format so you could do some content marketing you know, I think probably the best way to do that is kind of networking and meeting some people I'm assuming you are you guys already know people there, but kind of activating your network, building up your local list of people that you can invite to this using the first three steps of the puzzle that way and then yeah, you're meet up is a deliver peace, maybe it's a live workshop that you dio maybe it's a meet up slash live workshop where you present for twenty minutes and then you have everybody mingle and talk and, you know, just kind of get to know each other and find out what you know frustration people have it be a great opportunity for you to listen in, hear what other local opportunities there might be for you. So yeah, I think that's great and mixing media is is actually a really great idea. It's not something you should shy away from. Thank you. Okay, yeah, yes way how we have fresh start here who is ready to write emails and move forward with the auto responders and then we also have other people coco las vegas is ready to do the emails on dh then let's see here. Actually, meghan cane says, I'm less than a week before my lunch, and my analyze email is going out on sunday. My expand email this week doubled the size of my interest list for the product. This stuff works. It does. I know, megan. Well, that is awesome. I'm so glad to hear those results.