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The statistics all show that email marketing is still the most valuable tool for direct selling online. After all, almost everyone has email – not everyone is on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. And, most everyone has conducted some type of business transaction via email. Whether it’s purchasing something directly from an email offer, or negotiating a price on an old couch that’s being sold on Craigslist, many people have done it.
Yet, email marketing is changing quickly, with open and click-through rates going down due to an overwhelming amount of email and other information sources. Because of this, we have to be better to survive and thrive with email marketing.
So here’s a simple process to sell via email without coming off as ‘salesy,’ and so that your subscribers continue to want more from you.
Step 1: Get in the Habit of Giving Value
Don’t make offers all the time. If that’s all you do via email, then your subscribers will either start completely ignoring you, unsubscribing or moving your email to the trash. Give away pure content that helps them in some way – that could mean it’s informative or educational, or it could just be entertaining and interesting. Either way, it has to deliver value.
Step 2: Begin Putting That Value on Your Blog
Send your subscribers to your blog. If you don’t have a blog, set one up. A blog is a powerful tool for traffic and conversions (that’s why we’re talking about it here.). Make this the place that you send your subscribers for that valuable content you’re going to give away regularly.
Step 3: Use Video on Your Blog
People love watching video and most prefer it to reading a big chunk of text, so take advantage of it. Video doesn’t have to be fancy or high production, but it should be clean and clear, if at all possible. The message is more important than the production value, in most cases.
Step 4: Make Your Offers via Video on Your Blog
Now that you’ve conditioned your subscribers to click through to your blog to get a valuable video with great content, put your offer in one of those videos, created just like the others that you’ve already published. Write your email just like you did for the pure content videos and sell the value of what’s on the blog, not the offer or product. But, plug the offer in the call to action at the end of your video.
Once you’ve developed a level of trust through the repetition of this process, subscribers will be eager to watch your video. When you do make an offer, they’ve already received some great content from you, so they don’t feel like they’re just looking at an advertisement.
Emails directing consumers to video blog messages can work at an incredibly effective rate because it’s very subtle selling, walking them through a process they’re already comfortable and familiar with.
Give it a try and let us know your results.