There is no shortage of things to do in your day when you’re an entrepreneur. You have hundreds of emails to answer, things to do for customers and clients on a regular basis, administrative stuff to handle every single day… oh, and you still have to squeeze marketing in there somewhere so that your business doesn’t die a slow death.
One is that is for sure is that in order to convert a lead to a buyer, that lead needs to go through what I call the trust ladder. They basically need to go through the process of
Know you -> like you – > trust you so that they will eventually buy from you if you present them the right offer for their needs.
So how, exactly, do you fit marketing into your already jam-packed schedule and start making money from your email efforts?
Simple- you create a strategy and then you automate it.
Here are 4 simple steps to get started with your e-mail marketing automation:
- Have a Welcome Sequence
Your marketing efforts need to be high touch so that people trust you and learn more about you and your product or service. But it really isn’t feasible for a growing company CEO to email every single person in their contact list individually on a regular basis. But it should feel like you are.
Make sure you have a simple welcome series that goes to every person that comes on your list. Ideally 3-5 emails that share some of your best blog posts, freebies. The purpose of this sequence is NOT TO SELL. It’s for them to get to know you and like you (and start to trust you even 🙂 ). This sequence is going to speed up the “get to know you” phase.
HOT TIP: This is a sequence that all new people should go through on your list, on top of the sequence they signed up for through your freebie.
2. Create Engagement Sequences for Your Freebies
Every freebie (A workbook, video series, e-book or resource guide that gives a sample of your work) on your website should have an opt in that automatically sends your freebie.
Once your freebie is delivered, you should create a few nurture emails to build that trust and when the time is right, ask for the sale so people can get even further benefit from your products or services.
- Segmentation
A technique that is a bit more advanced but very successful is list segmentation. Basically, you’re only sending emails to certain people based on interest (what they clicked on in your previous emails).
For instance, If they sign up to a freebie, then they are moved to an engagement sequence which nurtures them until you make an offer. You can then segment those who buy so that you aren’t offering them the same thing they’ve already purchased before. It’s customization at it’s finest! We recommend Infusionsoft to deliver your freebie and segment your lists but there are other options that work well too, depending on your budget and needs.
Implementing segmentation is certainly possible with tools like Mailchimp and Aweber to a certain but it becomes overly complicated. If you feel you’re not quite ready for Infusionsoft but have outgrown Mailchimp/Aweber, then Convertkit is probably a good fit for you.
- Always Follow Up
Would you ask potential customers or returning clients who are ready to buy from you to leave and never come back? Of course not! But most businesses lose a lot of clients (and money) because they simply don’t follow up with people enough- both before AND after the sale.
Following up regularly with people of all stages in the purchase process will allow you to make more sales (AND help more people), get valuable feedback, get new referrals, contract more work from the same clients and obtain testimonials. HUGE mistake to skip this step so be sure to build follow up into your automation process.
So you can see that automation of your marketing efforts can play a huge part in growing your business both now and well into the future and if done right, can really save you a lot of time and headache. Consistency is the key so setting marketing up on autopilot is the way to go.
If you need help setting up your automation, set up a free consult to see how we can help you.
Your turn: How do you automate your marketing? We’d love to hear in the comments below.