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MINUTE BY MINUTE MARKETING, OR HOW TO MAKE MONEY FASTER USING E-MAIL TO SELL SCARCITYThe advent of e-mail has changed marketing forever. People who understand this, and know how to use e-mail, are already making money in the dawning Golden Age of Marketing. The rest of the pack is still trying to make a buck the old fashioned way, which is harder and harder to do.Consider this common scenario. Say you sell a service, any service. Your "marketing" consists of
1) selling scarcity and
Again, think back to the kind of traditional marketing now practiced in most businesses. Let's say that the business sells lawnmowers. They want to sell these lawnmowers in May. Ordinarily, they might develop a circular and send it out once. If the lawnmowers sell, fine; if they don't, that's life. Ordinarily it's just too expensive to develop another circular and send it out. E-mail marketing changes all this. Key Factors In E-Mail MarketingE-mail marketing starts from the proposition that everything that is being sold is limited and that the game (for that's precisely what it is) is to motivate a sufficient number of people to act within a designated period of time to acquire the limited number of goods and services available. The key is letting the designated market know that the supply of goods and services is dwindling so as to maintain the pressure on prospects to make a decision.Savvy e-mail marketers know that prospects are more likely to move if something they want is running out... than if they think there's an unlimited supply of it. Problem is, most marketers act like they have that unlimited supply, though in absolutely no case is this true. If you're an interior decorator you can only take on so many jobs at a time... if you're selling wine, there are only so many bottles of any given vintage.... if you're selling a card deck (like I do), there can only be so many advertisers per issue. In other words, in every single case, product and service are limited. It's just that with traditional marketing, the cost of letting prospects know the dwindling nature of supply has been generally prohibitive. Now that's just not true. The All Important E-Mail AddressThe key to profitable e-mail marketing is developing a house e-mail list by getting e-mail addresses. Let me start by making it absolutely clear that I am NOT talking about bulk e-mail here. That is, where you purchase a list of e-mail addresses stripped off the Internet; addresses of people who don't know you and haven't asked for your information. Bulk e-mail is invasive and highly controversial. Whether it is illegal or not is still for the courts to determine. Developing and using a house e-mail list is an entirely different animal. Here your prospects have given you permission to contact them via e-mail. Because of the critical importance of the actual e-mail address, you need to be creative in getting it. Here are just a few ways to do so:
Proper Storage For E-Mail AddressesJust the other day I talked to a publisher I know who told me he keeps all his e-mail addresses in a box. I was shocked! The place for an e-mail address is on your house e-mail list or lists. At the beginning, store the data in the "favorites" area of your e-mail program. If you're using a popular program like Eudora Light that's easy to do. The names are listed in alphabetical order. Having one list might seem inconvenient, but at the beginning you can pick and choose which names get which message. This makes target marketing very easy.As your list grows, you will find it more convenient to create multiple lists, such as prospects, buyers, buyers of specific items, etc. There are several inexpensive programs you can easily download for free off the Internet. Go to Yahoo or another major search engine and type in "email software". You'll find hundreds of email software programs to chose from. One good shareware program is WWMail. You can download a copy from http://www.wizardware.com. The cost to receive the registered version is $39.95. The important thing is that you log every piece of e-mail data as you receive it. Use These Data ImmediatelyData can only make you money when they're used. Thus, start using them immediately. Within literally minutes of giving you e-mail data, the person providing it should hear from you. To make this work, you need a series of templates about what you sell.Key Components Of Successful TemplatesTemplates work when they contain certain key marketing components:
BenefitsPeople want to know what they get when using the product/service being sold. It's your job to tell them. Whatever your marketing communication, traditional or e-mail, you must "lead with benefits, follow with features." That means, starting with your most motivating benefit first, the thing that will most transform the life of the prospect. Then follow with the second most important benefit, then the third, etc. In marketing you never lead up to the main point, you always start with that point.Complete Product/Service DescriptionsWhat, precisely, are you selling? Don't leave the prospect in doubt. One of the major benefits of e-mail is length. In traditional marketing, you pay more for sending more. That's not true in e-mail. Thus, make sure to give the prospect what he wants... complete details about what you're selling.TestimonialsQuote the benefits received by real people who have used the product/service. What results did they get? What did they have to do to get them? All people want to know just what kinds of benefits they can expect to receive from the product/service. Testimonials let them know, in the words of real people, people willing to stand up and say, "Look at what I got!"OfferAn offer is a proposition designed to stimulate faster response. "If you act now, you will get this thing that you will not get if you do not take immediate action." Offers are always important in sales, precisely because they get the prospect to stop in his tracks and take a good long look at what's being sold. Offers in e-mail are absolutely vital. The entire thrust of e-mail marketing, and its fast moving minute-by-minute marketing subset, is to stimulate the fastest possible action. Offers do just that... which means when you seriously want to market by e-mail what you send must always be distinguished by the most client-centered offer you can come up with.Thus, never just send out information... always e-mail an offer that rewards immediate action. Personalizing Your TemplateJust before sending your template, personalize it with a short note at the top of the form, thus "Bill, given the fact that you cannot meet until after 5, I'd be more than happy to schedule an appointment then at your convenience. Here's the information I promised you. I'll call you tomorrow to see just when it will be convenient to get together."Follow Up AppropriatelyYour job is to keep control of the marketing process. If you need an appointment with the prospect to move to the sale, gather all the information you need and let the prospect know you'll be calling her! If the prospect buys directly from the information you've sent him, then don't just acknowledge the purchase by e-mail, send additional information designed to stimulate another purchase. Once a prospect purchases, you have a glimpse into what really interests him. Make an offer so that he'll want to purchase other, related goods and services NOW!If the prospect doesn't buy, send out another message in 48 hours, asking where the prospect stands on what you've sent. Is there anything else she needs to make a decision? In other words, use e-mail to keep yourself and your offer squarely before the prospect at all times. Never leave the game in the prospect's hands. When you've got e-mail you're the captain of the ship, sitting at your console, keeping all the marketing reins in your hand, sending out both introductory and follow-up messages at a brisk pace, always reminding prospects of the benefits, never letting them forget that you have these benefits to distribute... if only they take action NOW to acquire them! Full Speed Ahead: Minute By Minute MarketingNow you're ready to be introduced to the highest form of e-mail marketing, what I call "Minute by Minute" Marketing. Here you determine how many units of products/service you have to sell in what period of time; in other words, you set the objective. You then develop all the templates you're going to need, including both your introductory message and follow-up communications. In other words, you plan before you execute. This means understanding that while some people will buy from the first communication... most people will not. Either way you must be ready.Say that you're selling discount cruises. You have 29 of them in inventory. Your introductory e-mail communication makes the benefits clear, provides a smashing client-centered offer, AND lets prospects know just how many there are. Send this offer to your entire list. Given the nature of your offer, you may well get responses within minutes of the transmission hitting. Indeed, one of the first things you'll notice about e-mail marketing is its quite astonishing speed. Whereas traditional marketing could take days, even weeks, to generate response, with e-mail marketing, you get responses within hours, or even minutes. Obviously you'll do what's necessary to sell as much of your existing inventory as possible. This means attending to your prospects promptly, taking their questions, moving them to an immediate sale -- in other words, looking sharp and staying on top of the situation. You're not just doing this, of course, to make that immediate sale... you're doing it to lower the available inventory and so increase the pressure on prospects that comes from dwindling inventory. Crucially, this dwindling inventory, and increasing pressure to act, must be communicated to your prospects as soon as possible. Thus, have you sold one or two units within a couple of hours? Why, then, send out your second e-mail transmission to the remaining prospects saying so; (note: make sure people who have already bought the item are deleted from subsequent prospect mailings). These people must understand how popular your products/services are... how quickly they're moving... and so understand that if they snooze, they lose. Note: your second transmission need only be the first appropriately modified with the new information on the top about how many units have been sold, how many remain. In other words, you don't have to develop an entirely new communication. Someone Will ComplainAs you increase the number of transmissions, you're virtually certain to get a growling response back from someone, someone who say "Don't call me. I'll call you," or worse. Shrug it off. Marketing is and always will be to a considerable extent a numbers game. You are not going to be loved by all the people, so not to worry. The objective, remember, is to reach your objective. If a few people along the way complain, why, that's just to be expected. Simply tell them you'll be deleting them from your list and that, sadly, this means they won't be receiving advance information about your specials anymore. Whoa! That's not what they wanted! You'll find under these circumstances that many of the complainers will stay put, on the off chance that they'll want the next special coming down the line.Last WordsI've been experimenting with "minute by minute" marketing now for sometime, particularly selling cards in my quarterly card deck. During the critical two weeks in every sales cycle when the bulk of the deck gets filled, I send out 5 e-mail marketing messages a week to the same targeted prospects, often more. Not even 1% of those receiving my very punchy, pointed and pushing sales messages say, "Quit it!" More importantly, this focused e-mail selling fills my deck faster, with fewer problems, and more cash. In short, I'm never going to stop using these techniques. They just work too well! As you'll see for yourself as soon as you start implementing them.Resource Boxhttp://www.worldprofit.com/ |
