If you don’t do this you are losing sales
Ben Settle
Last week I talked to Ben Settle, one of the world’s leading email marketing specialists and editor of the Email Players Newsletter.
Before I go into his advice, I urge you to look at his website and sign up for his newsletter where he gives daily tips for doubling your sales using email.
Mandy: You send out an email every day, and recommend that others do that too. How do you keep your emails interesting?
Ben: The most popular movies are the ones with the most ominous villains. Nobody remembers the hero, but they remember the villain!
You can do this with your emails. List all the villains in your customers’ lives. List all of the problems they face in life, and then write about those problems one at a time.
That will give you a lot of material for your emails, but also guarantee that they won’t be boring. Because you’ll be speaking their language. You’ll be in their world.
My dad lives in the same town as me, and he has gophers in his yard. They’re always popping up. He could read an email every day about gophers, and never get sick of it. Because it is a problem that he’s trying to solve.
Mandy: What techniques do you use to get people to read your emails?
Ben: I try to stay away from techniques and gimmicks. Instead, I just focus on the problems that people are dealing with.
Mandy: What would you say to someone who has a company but has yet to sent out a single email?
First of all, you need an opt-in list.
You can’t just export an Outlook contact list and start emailing people. When people opt-in they are giving you permission to email them every day.
There are so many email services out there. There’s Mail Chimp, Infusion Soft, Constant Contact. Most of them have websites and 30-day trials. I recommend going to all of them, trying them out, seeing what the interface is like, and choosing the one that you feel the most comfortable with.
Then when you have your email service, set up a web page (or outsource it . . . it’s easier that way) where you collect names. Drive traffic to that page. When you get some names on your list, start emailing them.
Mandy: How else can you do to keep your readers engaged?
Ben: It’s what I call “Infotainment”.
Sending emails every day is like having your own talk show. People will listen to talk shows for hours because they get information, but also because they’re entertaining.
You can be like that, too. Think about what you’re like when you’re at a bar, hanging out with a good friend and talking. Be that person in your emails.
It’s all about building the relationship.
If you want to find out more about writing emails that sell from Ben Settle, go to his website www.bensettle.com. There you can sign up for his list. He will send you a PDF version of the first issue of Email Players for free (normally, the newsletter is a hard copy that comes in the mail). If you like it you can subscribe for $97.
If you want to find out more about email newsletter, click here to check out my interview with Heather Robson. The article is called, “How Small Businesses Can Increase Repeat Sales With Email Newsletters.”
