The Website Lead Magnet and Automated Email Sequence Workshop

The Website Lead Magnet and Automated Email Sequence Workshop where you will master the techniques to nurture your leads into clients Also Introducing EVERYDAY CREATIVITY and putting yourself into the PLACE of MOST POTENTIAL Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 1

SECTION ONE: THE SALES AND MARKETING PROCESS An old and simple definition of MARKETING is: - Supplying the customer what they want, when they want it, at the price they want to pay (and at a profit) The essence of Marketing is a transaction - an exchange - intended to satisfy human needs or wants. BUSINESS MARKETING involves Finding out what the customer wants. Planning and developing that product. Finding the best way to price, promote and distribute that product. Marketing touches us every day of our lives. A formal definition of Marketing:- Marketing is a total system of business activities designed to plan, price, promote and distribute want-satisfying goods and services to present and potential customers. Marketing is a comprehensive concept - the total of what we will discuss. An American definition of Marketing is : - The process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 2

WHAT IS A MARKET? A market is people with :- Needs or wants Money to spend it A willingness to spend it SOME MARKETING HINTS : Know your market Keep in touch with the market place Be aware of what changes will influence the behaviour of buyers and potential buyers Understand buyer behaviour and dynamics What business are you (really) in? When someone asks you that, you may answer we sell drills, but what you are actually selling is the benefits those drills provide. No one really wants a drill - they want the hole it provides. What business are you in? - Consider these :- Company Production answer Marketing answer Film Studio Cosmetic Co. Optus Air Conditioning Ski resort Builder We make movies We make cosmetics We operate a phone co. We make air conditioners We run a ski resort We build houses Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 3

Marketing and Sales are two terms which most people believe are the same. The contrasts between the two are: MARKETING Emphasis on customers Company determines needs and delivers appropriate product. Management is profit orientated Planning is long term orientated, in terms of new products, tomorrow s markets and future growth SELLING Emphasis on product Company makes and then tries to sell product Management is sales volume orientated Planning is short term, for today s products and markets After we identify what business we are in there are some basic questions we need to ask. Who are our potential customers? - be very specific; - how are they segmented? How do they perceive their needs in relation to the type of service we provide or could supply? How can we meet those perceived needs? What is the best way to communicate with the target audience. The Following Sales Cycles will help you understand the psychology of Sales Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 4

The 4 Step Sales Pitch Formula 1. Grab Their Attention; 2. Make An Irresistible Offer; 3. Prove That It s True; 4. Ask For An Action. The 5 Step Sales Letter 1. Identify A Problem; 2. Aggravate The Problem; 3. Solve The Problem; 4. Prove Your Claim (Testimonials); 5. Call To Action. TIDE STAIN RELEASE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lttwiowpct8 Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 5

REASONS WHY PEOPLE BUY: SPACED THE SIX BUYING MOTIVES S _ P A _ C E D _ The start of the sales cycle is one, which carries a significant impact on whether the customer will leave or hang around. Do not underestimate the importance of early positive intervention. The interest can be created by the customer locating your website or by you, the seller, releasing bait. This bait can be in the form of advertising, whether online or offline. Whatever methods you adopt ensure you attract the right people. Be AWARE that they are nibbling and you are in the Create Interest cycle. Positive phrases, statements and attention grabbers are important and so is allowing them space and freedom. Why People Buy Perhaps you already know why people buy, but do you know all the reasons? The more of these you know, the better you'll be able to market. Geoff Ayling, in his superb book, "Rapid Response Advertising," provides fifty reasons why people buy. There are really far more than fifty, but I have a feeling that these fifty will get your creative juices flowing. People make purchases for these, among many reasons: 1. To make more money even though it can t buy happiness; 2. To become more comfortable, even a bit more; 3. To attract praise because almost everybody loves it; 4. To increase enjoyment of life, of business, of virtually anything; 5. To possess things of beauty because they nourish the soul; 6. To avoid criticism which nobody wants; Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 6

7. To make their work easier a constant need to many people; 8. To speed up their work because people know that time is precious; 9. To keep up with the Joneses there are Joneses in everybody s lives; 10. To feel opulent a rare, but valid reason to make a purchase; 11. To look younger due to the reverence placed upon youthfulness; 12. To become more efficient because efficiency saves time; 13. To buy friendship I didn t know it s for sale, but it often is; 14. To avoid effort because nobody loves to work too hard; 15. To escape or avoid pain which is an easy path to making a sale; 16. To protect their possessions because they worked hard to get them; 17. To be in style because few people enjoy being out of style; 18. To avoid trouble because trouble is never a joy; 19. To access opportunities because they open the doors to good things; 20. To express love one of the noblest reasons to make any purchase; 21. To be entertained because entertainment is usually fun; 22. To be organized because order makes lives simpler; 23. To feel safe because security is a basic human need; 24. To conserve energy their own or their planet s sources of energy; 25. To be accepted because that means security as well as love; 26. To save time -- because they know time is more valuable than money; 27. To become more fit and healthy -- seems to me that s an easy sale; 28. To attract the opposite sex never undermine the power of love; 29. To protect their family tapping into another basic human need; 30. To emulate others because the world is teeming with role models; 31. To protect their reputation because they worked hard to build it; 32. To feel superior which is why status symbols are sought after; 33. To be trendy because they know their friends will notice; 34. To be excited because people need excitement in a humdrum life; 35. To communicate better -- because they want to be understood; 36. To preserve the environment giving rise to cause-related marketing; 37. To satisfy an impulse a basic reason behind a multitude of purchases; 38. To save money the most important reason to 14% of the population; 39. To be cleaner because unclean often goes with unhealthy and unloved; Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 7

40. To be popular because inclusion beats exclusion every time; 41. To gratify curiosity -- it killed the cat but motivates the sale; 42. To satisfy their appetite because hunger is not a good thing; 43. To be individual because all of us are, and some of us need assurance; 44. To escape stress need I explain?; 45. To gain convenience because simplicity makes life easier; 46. To be informed because it s no joy to be perceived as ignorant; 47. To give to others another way you can nourish your soul; 48. To feel younger because that equates with vitality and energy; 49. To pursue a hobby because all work and no play etc. etc. etc.; 50. To leave a legacy because that s a way to live forever. All of these reasons and others can be summarised in this handy table of 90 Emotional Triggers. Use it to determine why your customers buy. 1. Achieve Comfort 2. Add Fun To Life 3. Appreciate Beauty 4. Attract The Opposite Sex 5. Avoid Criticism 6. Avoid Effort 7. Avoid Embarrassment 8. Avoid Physical Pain 9. Avoid Trouble 10. Be A Good Parent 11. Be Among The Leaders 12. Be Efficient 13. Be First At Something 14. Be Healthy 15. Be In Fashion 16. Be In Style 17. Be Independent 18. Be Liked 19. Be Loved 20. Be Lucky 21. Be More Beautiful 22. Be Popular 23. Be Praised And Admired 24. Be Proud Of Possessions 25. Be Recognized As An Authority 26. Be Sociable 27. Be Strong 46. Fulfil A Fantasy 47. Gain Confidence 48. Gain Freedom From Worry 49. Gain Knowledge 50. Gain Pleasure 51. Gain Prestige 52. Gain Self-Respect 53. Gain Social Acceptance 54. Get A Better Job 55. Get A Surprise 56. Get On The Bandwagon 57. Get Rid Of Aches And Pains 58. Get Something For Nothing 59. Have Security In Old Age 60. Keep Up With The Jones 61. Live In A Clean Atmosphere 62. Live Longer 63. Make Money 64. Make Work Easier 65. One-Up Others 66. Overcome Obstacles 67. Own Attractive Things 68. Own Beautiful Possessions 69. Prevent Unemployment 70. Protect Oneself And Family 71. Protect Reputation 72. Protect The Future Of A Family Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 8

28. Be Successful 29. Be Up To Date 30. Be Your Own Boss 31. Bring Back Pleasant Memories 32. Collect Valuable Things 33. Do Things Well 34. Emulate Others 35. Enhance Enjoyment 36. Enhance Leisure 37. Enjoy Exotic Tastes 38. Enjoy Health 39. Escape Drudgery 40. Escape Shame 41. Express A Personality 42. Express Creativity 43. Feel Clean 44. Feel Important 45. Find New And Rare Things 73. Relax 74. Relieve Boredom 75. Renew Vigour And Energy 76. Replace The Obsolete 77. Resist The Domination Of Others 78. Satisfy Ambition 79. Satisfy An Appetite 80. Satisfy Curiosity 81. Satisfy Sexual Desires 82. Satisfy The Ego 83. Save Money 84. Save Time 85. Seek Adventure 86. Take Advantage Of Opportunities 87. Win Acclaim 88. Win Advancement 89. Win The Affection Of Others 90. Work Less What Are Your Website Visitors Looking For?/What Do They Look Like? What questions do they commonly ask? Are they experts in their field, or mums and dads trying to find information for the first time? What language would they use to describe the thing they are looking for? How old are they? Are they mainly male or female? Business or domestic? What are they afraid of? What problems do they need addressed? The answer to these questions comes from a wide range of sources. Back up opinions with statistics and evidence. Check numbers on who is searching for what on Google. Which terms get the most traffic? Check out forums and answer sites to find common questions (and who asked them) about your industry. All of this forms a fairly detailed identikit picture of your customers and their needs/wants/questions. Workshop Activity: Know Your Intended Customers Workshop (What Are Their Fears, Concerns, Needs and Desires) Here is an Activity which will help It s called MAPPING. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 9

MAPPING In the centre circle, define briefly what problem you are solving for the website visitor. In the sectors of the large circle, write the name of each important person or group. Write down each person s or group s needs. What motivates him/her, based on the previous questions? Write down each person s or group s concerns, fears or anxieties, based on the previous questions? Be prepared to change the statement of the issue, as your understanding of it evolves through discussion or to draw up other maps of related issues that arise. Who : Needs : Concerns : Needs : Needs : Who : Concerns: ISSUE Who : Concerns : Who : Needs : Concerns : Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 10

READING YOUR MAP LOOK FOR Common Ground New Perspectives and Insights Hidden Needs, Concerns and Pay-offs CONSIDER Which needs and concerns are held by everyone? That hadn t been seen before? What stated needs might be masking : deeper needs and concerns; or unstated intentions or pay-offs Special Concerns Leads What are particularly difficult areas that need attention? What have you noticed that is worth following through or finding more information? Highlight the major needs of each participant. Now develop options which incorporate as many of these needs as possible. Here are some main points you may resolve by using Mapping Understand what this is really important to your website visitors; Unravel what information they crave and will leave their name and email address for. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 11

SECTION TWO: WHAT DO I GIVE AWAY? From the previous session it is crucial to identify what information your website visitor craves. After you have identified this the next step is to identify what you wish to give away. This could be in the way of a: A Free Report; An E-book; A Video; A Course; A Chapter Of A Book; A Coaching Call; and Many other like items. The following URL s will give you an understanding of what is given away. Don t focus on the optin boxes and placement of them on the page just yet. That will come in a later workshop. For now focus on WHAT is being given away. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 12

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Planning and Designing Your Free Giveaway Workshop: Begin With The End In Mind. What is your final product and work back what you give away to entice website visitors to leave their name and email address. What makes your product/service unique? Why should your prospect choose your business over any other? Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 15

SECTION THREE: OPTIN BOXES Best Practices: Designing an Email Sign-Up Box By: Kevin Gao, CEO & Founder of Comm100 and Kurt Johansen www.kurtjohansen.com For soliciting your existing customers to join your email marketing list, most of the work can be done when they purchase or register. However, if you're advertising your email list on a search engine or other website or if you are soliciting visitors on your website or social media channel, you'll need a well-designed email sign-up box. The difference between a well done email sign-up box and a poorly designed email sign-up box can be the difference between healthy email list growth and slow and tedious email list growth. In this section, we'll cover the best practices of designing an email sign-up box. Use a White Box for Text Entry It's possible that, as you are surfing the internet looking for examples of email sign-up boxes, you'll see a number of "trendy" email sign-up boxes where the field in which a user enters his or her email is shaded grey or another colour that "snaps." While that colour usage may draw attention to the area of the page where the email sign-up box is located, most case studies reveal that users are more comfortable with entering text into a white box and also recognize a white text box as an area where they are supposed to enter information. If you want to use colour or design to draw attention to the area of a page or landing page where users enter their email address, use best practice webpage and email graphic design elements to draw a user's eye to the correct area of the page. Do not, however, use a colour other than white for the actual field in which a user enters his or her email address in the email sign-up box. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 16

Show a Sample Email Format It may seem as though all users understand what format they need to enter their email address in. However, this isn't actually true. It may prove beneficial to provide users with an example of what their entered email address should look like either within the text box itself or below the text field. For example: Enter your email address above (ie: kurt@emailprofits.com.au) Make the Submit Button Large, Clear, and Near the Text Field The most important part of your email sign-up box or form is the submit button. Not only does it need to be clear and easy-to-spot, it also needs to actively encourage users to click it. Consider the use of graphic arrows and even animation surrounding your submit button. Colour is one of the most important elements of any action button on a website, and your email sign-up box is no exception. If you have a standard website colour palette in which a certain colour is consistently used to indicate that a user should take an action by clicking a button, use that colour. Otherwise, select bright, attractive, action-oriented colours. In some case studies, red has been shown to be particularly effective in a submission button. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 17

Finally, make sure that your submit button is big, easy to spot, and near enough to the text field where users enter their email address that there is a clear mental relationship between the button and the text field. While experimenting and testing various elements of your email sign-up box is important as a whole, you may want to take extra time and resources to test the colour, text, positioning, and placement of your submit button early on in your email collection process. What Should Your Submit Button Say Keep the text on your email submission button short, clear, and friendly while also telling users exactly what you want them to do. Popular and effective phrases include: Join Now Join Free Begin Receiving Offers Now Submit Your Email Register Keep Everything Above the Fold Not unlike any web design practice, if you want to experience the best optimization from your email sign-up box, make sure that all elements of it are above the fold. This is true if your email sign-up is a module on your website or if you have made an entire landing page dedicated to capturing emails. The value proposition, email entry field, privacy assurance, and, most importantly, the submit button, should all be placed well above the fold in a standard web browser layout. The most effective online marketing solicitations always happen above the fold. Assure Privacy This best practice applies any time you solicit uses to join your email list, regardless of their previous relationship with you. Be sure to ensure users of your commitment to your privacy policy and that you will not share, sell or rent their email. Information has become the currency of the internet, and users are increasingly aware that they want their private contact information to remain private. Be sure to give them that assurance beside your email sign-up box whenever you are asking for an email address of any kind. Offer a Clear Value Proposition Users who do not have a previous relationship with you will need a strong incentive to actively join your email list. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 18

After all, our inboxes are all very crowded these days and many people simply don't want extra "junk email." Be sure to give potential subscribers a clear value proposition for why they should allow you to include them on your email list. This may be exclusive offers and discounts, useful information, early access to new products, monthly contests, or a host of other features that can encourage users to join an email list. The best value proposition for you may require some research and some email testing. However, once you determine what it is, you'll see an increase in individuals joining your email list. Don't Ask for Too Much Information The more information that you have on your email subscribers, the more you can segment your email list and the more effective it will be in returning results. However, the moment when a user joins your email list is not the right time to ask them for a great deal of information. You want to make joining your email list as painless as possible. The more information that you ask subscribers for, the more likely they are to abandon the process of subscribing to your email product. Keep the information required to join at a minimum. If it's possible, only ask for their first name and email address. It's often also fine to ask only for an email address and a first name. If you want to collect additional information, you can do so in a follow-up or on a second screen after you have captured their email information. Adding a name to the database without detailed information is better than not adding a name to the database at all because your potential subscriber became overwhelmed with the length or size of your email sign-up box. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 19

Keep the information requests to a minimum when initially capturing an email address for your database. Check for Email Format or Duplicate Emails If it is possible for you to do so technologically, check for proper email format or duplicate copies of the email in your database at the time of email submission. Checking for email format will ensure that, if you require a double opt-in, your new subscriber actually receives your confirmation email. If you do not require a double opt-in, it ensures that your potential subscriber double checks his or her email and then enters the correct one. This not only means that you are more likely to actually contact your subscriber via email, it also means that you will be sending out fewer bad or "bounced" email addresses. Every time you send to a bad email address, you risk your email sender reputation. Checking for duplicate emails in the system helps to control instances where a user may previously have marked you as spam and inadvertently joins again, only to mark you as spam again. The more that you can check and confirm email address quality at the time of sign-up, the healthier and better your email list will be. Display a Confirmation Page Regardless of whether you are using a single opt-in or double opt-in email sign-up form, after your new subscriber has entered his or her email address, be sure to display a confirmation screen confirming that you have received the subscription request. Otherwise, your new subscriber may continue to click the "submit" button, generating site errors for you. If you are using a double opt-in sign-up system, use the confirmation screen to remind your new subscriber that he or she needs to check his or her inbox (including the spam folder.) for the confirmation email and should add your email address to his or her contact or address list. A confirmation screen is also an ideal opportunity to present users with other actions to take, such as purchasing opportunities or social media links. Don't waste any opportunity to interact with your new subscriber, and that includes the confirmation page. Use Landing Page Best Practices Finally, whether you are developing a landing page that is entirely devoted to email capture or whether you are incorporating an email capture box onto a webpage that includes other content, be sure to use all the key practices of web design and landing page design. No matter how compelling your email offers are, if you use poor landing page or web design, you won't be able to convince users to sign-up for it. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 20

Creating a compelling email sign-up box may seem overwhelming, but if you simply follow the above listed best practices, you'll be able to create a high converting email sign-up box. Of course, always remember that all marketing modules, including email sign-up modules, should be tested with various looks, designs, copy and positioning in order to find the best performing solution. No matter what email marketing strategy you are taking, the first step to ensure a successful email campaign is to choose a reliable bulk email software solution. This will be covered in the next section. Planning And Designing Your Optin Box Workshop: Design your optin box including wording etc. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 21

SECTION FOUR: Connecting To An Autoresponder (Email Sending Program) What is an Autoresponder? From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia. An autoresponder is a computer program that automatically answers e-mail sent to it. They can be very simple or quite complex. Autoresponders are often used as e-mail marketing tools, to immediately provide information to their prospective customers and then follow-up with them at pre-set time intervals. How Important Are Autoresponders? Internet Marketing and autoresponders essentially go hand-in-hand. In today s online business world, you simply cannot succeed at Internet marketing without the use of autoresponders. Autoresponders are used to achieve many of the marketing tasks that are essential to a successful online business. Internet marketing can be very time consuming. Whether you do affiliate marketing or market your own products, an autoresponder is a big part of your marketing arsenal. Autoresponders are used to keep in contact with your past customers, and to develop a relationship with potential customers. An autoresponder can be used to deliver sales messages to your opt-in customer list. It can be used to deliver email courses, to send reminders, and even to help you build an opt-in list if you don t already have one. There are many creative ways you can use your autoresponder to make more sales and to build customer relations. Any successful marketer will tell you that there are two tools that are vital to any type of online marketing an opt-in list and an autoresponder. In fact, most marketers will agree that you could take away all of their other marketing tools, but they would fight to the death to keep the list and the autoresponder. Powerful Autoresponders Does Yours Measure Up? Autoresponders are very necessary when it comes to marketing or taking care of customers. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 22

But the power of an autoresponder, or the lack of power, can mean the difference between success and failure. When you use an autoresponder service, you must make sure that the domain that the autoresponder uses isn t blacklisted by the spam watch groups. If it is, your messages probably won t make it past the majority of spam filters, no matter how much you check it with spam checkers. Also, not having the ability to track responses can cost your business. If you can t track response rates, you won t have any way of knowing whether your messages are doing you any good. A good autoresponder will provide the ability to track responses. If yours doesn t, you might want to shop for a new autoresponder. The ability to add and remove names to your autoresponder manually is vital. Often, people will contact you without going through your autoresponder. These people need to be put on the autoresponders mailing list. If you are moving your list from one service to another, you need the ability to import names and addresses to your list. Again, if your autoresponder service isn t powerful enough to allow this, look for a different one. Using Free Autoresponders If you ve looked at the prices of autoresponders that are available online, you may have decided to search for and use a free autoresponder for your marketing needs. Using free autoresponders is acceptable in certain situations, and in the world of Internet marketing, any autoresponder is better than not using an autoresponder at all. Your first option for a free autoresponder should be the one that comes with your webhosting account if you have a webhosting account. These autoresponders can easily be set up through the control panel of your website, and they do not contain advertisements from the autoresponder company or webhosting service. If you do not have a hosting account, or your hosting account does not include autoresponders, there are other options that you can pursue. There are many free autoresponder services to choose from. These services are free, because the company makes their money by placing a small advertisement in each message that your autoresponder sends out. These advertisements may appear at the top of your auto responses, or at the bottom, depending on which company you use. Many paid autoresponder services offer a free version as well. These free versions may or may not include advertisements in the outgoing messages. These lighter versions of the paid autoresponders typically do not include many of the powerful features of the paid versions. But if you don t need the more advanced features, this is a great choice. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 23

Most free autoresponders have a limit on the number of subscribers you can have. Many people start out with the limited free versions, and then upgrade to the paid versions once their lists are large enough to exceed those limits. Many marketers don t feel that the expense of the autoresponder is warranted until the list that they are building is turning a profit. From a business standpoint, this makes sense. As the owner of a business, you are the only one who can decide whether you need a paid autoresponder service, or if a free one will do the job. If your list is small, a free autoresponder should do everything that you need it to do, but as your list grows, you should definitely consider upgrading. However, having the small advertisements that the free services place in the outgoing messages may present a problem if the ads compete with what you are trying to sell. They may even pose a problem if they do not directly compete with your product or business. Again, this depends on what you are trying to accomplish with your autoresponder. Using Your Autoresponder to Generate Leads Autoresponders are one of the most important marketing tools that you can have if you are doing business online. In fact, the only thing more important that the autoresponder is your opt-in list. But all autoresponders start out without a list the list doesn t exist until your autoresponder mailing list starts filling up with names and email addresses. The easiest and fastest way to build up an email list is to give things away for free. Some marketers will tell you that this is a waste of time and if you already have a list of one hundred thousand people that you can market to, then it probably is. But for those who do not already have a list, this is the way that it gets built. You simply pay for advertisement to promote your freebie. Don t think of this as lost money, think of it as an investment in future earnings. Give away an e-zine, free reports, free e-books, free access to private websites, or anything else that you can think of. The object is to get people to sign up to receive that freebie, and to agree to receive email from you in the future. It is a win-win situation for everyone, but you get more than anyone else in the deal. The person gets a freebie. You get their name and email address, and permission to email them in the future. But if you do it right, you get even more than that. The freebie that you give away should also be used to promote your products or services. Even if it just has affiliate links for Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 24

products or services that are related to the topic of the freebie, it is a way to generate extra revenue. Then, when you send email in the future, you can again promote your products or services. Just be sure to include valuable information in the email as well, or you will have people dropping off of your autoresponder mailing list like flies. Using every opportunity that is presented to you in the world of Internet Marketing is vital to your success. You have the opportunity to earn money in the freebie that you create, you have the opportunity to earn money when you send the thank you email after a person has requested your freebie, and you have the opportunity to earn money every time an autoresponder message is sent out to that list in the future. Don t waste those opportunities, and put it all in automatic mode with the use of an autoresponder. Build Interest With Autoresponder Messages If you are using your autoresponder to sell a product or service, you must be very careful as to how you approach your potential customer. Few people like a hard sale, and marketers have known for years that in most cases, a prospect must hear your message an average of seven times before they will make a purchase. How do you accomplish this with autoresponders? It s really quite simple, and in fact, the autoresponders make getting the message to your potential customers those seven times possible. On the Internet, without the use of autoresponders, you probably could not achieve that. Too often, marketers make the mistake of literally slamming the potential customer with a hard sales pitch with the first autoresponder message this won t work. You build interest slowly. Start with an informative message a message that educates the reader in some way on the topic that your product or service is related to. At the bottom of the message, include a link to the sales page for your product. Use that first message to focus on the problem that your product or service can solve, with just a hint of the solution. Build up from there, moving into how your product or service can solve a problem, and then with the next message, ease into the benefits of your product giving the reader more actual information with each and every message. Your final message should be the sale pitch not your first one. With each message, make sure that you are giving the customer information pertaining to the topic free information. This is what will keep them interested in what you have to say. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 25

This type of marketing is an art. It may take time to get it exactly right. Use the examples that other marketers have set for you. Pay attention to the messages that you receive from other marketers. Start a swap file, and keep those messages. Use some of the better sales copy for your own autoresponder messages just make sure that yours doesn t turn out to be an exact copy of someone else s sales message. Remember not to start with a hard sale. Build your potential customers interest. Keep building on what the problem is, and how your product or service can solve that problem or fill that need. If you are doing this right, by the time the potential customer reads the last message in that series, they will be convinced enough to make a purchase. Give Potential Customers A Preview With Autoresponders Building customer interest and excitement is the first step to successfully marketing many products. Autoresponders play a vital role in building this interest and excitement. For instance, if you were developing an e-book, you may want to start telling your website visitors and opt-in subscribers about it. Start building interest; tell them what this product will do for them, and how soon it will be available. Do more than build interest by telling them about it. Use an autoresponder to let them preview your product. Even though you will be selling the product, you can allow your potential customers to preview the information. Have you ever seen previews for movies that will be playing in theatres soon? It is the same concept. Load one chapter of the e-book into an autoresponder, and put a form on your website where your visitors can enter their name and email address to receive the preview chapter free of charge. This gets their name on your list of potential customer. Each week, send a reminder email, letting them know how close the release date is, and what they can expect from your product keep building interest and excitement. Finally, a couple of days before you are ready to launch your product offer those that received the preview the option to buy a pre-release copy. You can opt to offer a discounted price, or leave the price as it will be on launch day the choice is yours. Take a look at the list of people who signed up to receive the preview. How many of them are still subscribed to that list? They ve had the option to stop receiving notices about your product, but they chose to keep receiving the information you were sending. These are highly targeted prospects for your product. They have already shown you that they have an interest in your product, and a large number of those people are simply waiting on the autoresponder broadcast message that will let them know that it is time to pick up their copy of your product. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 26

Isn t automation a wonderful thing? Using an autoresponder, you are able to see how much of a market there is for your product, and build a great deal of interest in it before it is ever released. This is the key to making sales on launch day. Use autoresponders to build the interest. Get your prospects excited about what is about to come and on launch day, give them what they are waiting for and watch the sales pour in. Business Automation with Autoresponders Automation is important to all businesses. The less time we have to spend doing small tasks, the more time we have to make more money or we could spend that time doing something besides working. Putting an online business on auto pilot isn t difficult at all and it is all done with the use of autoresponders. Autoresponders can be used to get people to your website, or to promote products and services. Simply plug your sales message into the autoresponder, along with some valuable information that your potential may want or need, and advertise that autoresponders address. Once the person arrives at your site, and goes through your ordering process, another autoresponder kicks in. This autoresponder should send out a receipt, as well as information that will grant the customer access to whatever it is that they have purchased. Another autoresponder message should be sent out after this, thanking the customer for their business, and letting them know about similar or related products or services that they may be interested in. The beauty of this is that while all of this ordering is going on, and these important customer service emails are being sent, you can be off doing something else. The more automation you can integrate into your online business, the better off you will be. Email Courses and Autoresponders Offering free things to your website visitors is one marketing method that often results in a lot of sales. Free courses that are delivered via email are very popular, and people sign up for such courses on a regular basis to learn more about a topic of interest to them. These courses are best maintained and delivered with the use of autoresponders. An autoresponder can be set up to send out a series of lessons for an email course. The lessons can be set for distribution at specific intervals. You determine how often the lessons for the course are sent to the people who have signed up for it. Email courses are very different from traditional courses, web based courses, or any other type of course. There is no student and instructor interaction. The instructor writes the information out, puts each lesson in an autoresponder series, sets the timing for the lessons, and the rest is automated. You can opt to have lessons delivered daily, every other day, every three days, or any other time frame that you think works best for your email students. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 27

Email courses are commonly used to sell products and services. For instance, if you sell widgets, you might develop a course that teaches people how to use widgets or how to care for their widget. Experts agree that an email course can be written for almost any product that you can imagine if you put enough thought into it. Start by determining what your course will be about, and how long it should be. If the course should be delivered every other day for two weeks, you know that you would need seven lessons. Write the lessons, and load them in the autoresponder. Set the interval for each lesson, which in this case would be 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13. If the course is to be sent every day, set up by hours 24, 48, 72, 96, 120, 144, 168 after sign-up. This means that the first lesson would be delivered after a regular interval after the person has requested the course, and so on. The interval for each lesson is set for the number of days after the person has signed up. Make sure that everything is spelled right, and that your sentences are grammatically correct. You want the lessons to look and sound as professional as possible. Next, simply advertise the email address that will activate the autoresponder. Make sure that you run a test first, sending each lesson to yourself. This will allow you to see what your email students will see when they sign up. Articles and Autoresponders Writing articles to market a product or service is an excellent way to build business. The articles should be very informative, providing the reader with information that is relevant to a specific topic. The article usually includes a link to a webpage for more information. The webpage, of course, is designed to sell a product or service that relates to the topic of the article. These articles are commonly submitted to article banks, websites, and e-zine publishers. This is one of the most effective ways to market a service or product on the Internet, and it can become even more effective when it is combined with the use of an autoresponder. Begin by setting each of your articles up in your autoresponder. It is important that each article have its very own autoresponder address, so you will need an autoresponder service that will allow you to do this. Next, make a master list of your articles, with the autoresponder address for each article listed beside the title. You can even add descriptions of the articles on your master list if you want to. Advertising your articles one at a time can take a great deal of time but advertising one autoresponder address the one for the master list won t take very much time at all. Simply put it in your newsletter and on your website. You can even allow other e-zine publishers to use this is a free resource for their subscribers. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 28

Autoresponder Training Sessions Autoresponders work very well when it comes to training others. This is why autoresponders are the perfect way to conduct email courses. But there are other types of training that can be done with autoresponders as well. Even college professors have found a use for autoresponders. They can use them to remind students about upcoming tests, or to deliver study guides. Since the information in that professor s course is taught over and over again each time a new class comes in, this saves the professor a great deal of time. Autoresponders are also used by colleges to remind faculty and students about upcoming events. Because events are scheduled in advance, these autoresponder messages are set up in advance, and nobody has to depend on a secretary to get those notices out. Many businesses use autoresponders to keep their employees trained. When new equipment is brought into the office, and employees need to know how to operate it, an autoresponder can be set up with training instructions. No matter what kind of business you are in, there is a way that autoresponders can be used. The use of an autoresponder will save quite a bit of time, and it can also serve to make the people in your organization much for effective. Personalizing Autoresponders Have you ever walked into a store in your town, and been addressed by name? This has probably happened to you at stores that you frequent often. The shop owner knows your name, and uses it. He remembers you, and he wants you to know that he cared enough about you and your business to remember you. In the offline world, this is just one aspect of customer support. Customer service like this is almost impossible to achieve on the Internet, but some semblance of it can exist when you personalize your autoresponder messages. Autoresponder messages can be set up to address people by their first or last name or both. In fact, there is quite a bit of personalized information that can be added, depending on the autoresponder that you are using. The information is included in the autoresponder messages by using codes. Each autoresponder will use different codes to insert the information in your messages. You simply write your message, and put the codes where you want the personalized information to appear. For instance, your message may start out with Hello (code for first name) In this case, the person s first name will be inserted where that code is. Personalizing your autoresponder messages will most likely improve your response rate. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 29

Research has shown that emails that are personalized with the person s first name are opened more often, and those people are generally more receptive to the contents of the email message. It is usually very easy to do. You write one message, using the codes where you want the personalization, then, no matter who that one email is sent out to, their personal information will appear where the codes are. Of course, the autoresponder must collect the information first. This is done with the use of forms that activate the autoresponder. For instance, if you are giving away a free e-book, and you have your visitor fill out a form with their email address to receive the download instructions for the e-book by email, that form should collect any type of information that you want for personalization such as a first name, as well as the email address. If that information is not collected, the autoresponder won t have anything to insert where that code appears in your messages. Take a look around the control panel of your autoresponder, and find out what type of personalization you can add to your autoresponder messages. You may be very surprised at the improved results. Autoresponders The More You Know, The More Effective They Are If you have signed up with an autoresponder service, you need to take the time to read the instructions to learn how to use the service before you load the first word of your first message. Not knowing how to use the service will lead to many mistakes, and your customers and potential customers will most likely see every mistake you make. As soon as you have complete the sign up process, load one email address into the autoresponders mailing list yours. If there is a manual or help file for your autoresponder, read every word of it, and really learn how to use all of the features of the autoresponder. Work with it, sending messages to your own address, until you know your autoresponder service inside and out. This may take a little time, but after a few hours or so, you should know all that there is to know, and you will be able to set your autoresponders up much more effectively in the future. Taking the time to learn now, will not only save time in the future, it may also help you tweak and tune your autoresponder messages and tracking in a way that increases your responses. Autoresponder Access to Secret Pages People love to have access to things that other people can t get. It makes them feel special, and it is a marketing tactic that really works. Granting access to secret pages works well on the Internet. It works best when it is limited. For instance Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 30

you can grant access to only a lucky few, or you can have a time limit for accessing the pages. You can grant access to secret pages on your website with an autoresponder. The way this works is quite simple. You create a directory on your website that is password protected, with one login and password that everybody can use. You then create some valuable content for that directory. You can call this your secret vault or your private stash or anything else you want to call it as long as it sounds like something that your visitors may really want to get their hands on. i.e. ONE secret tool that saves me twelve a hours of my time week sending emails would probably entice many people who send emails to discover what the tool is. Once you get the directory and the pages set up, put the URL of the pages and the login name and password in an autoresponder. Write a sales page and distribute it to your opt-in list, or have other list owners distribute it to theirs. Make sure you limit the offer. Don t let people assume that you are going to share this secret information with the rest of the world they want to be the only ones with this special access. Keep access to the secret pages free. The goal is to get people to those pages, so that they can purchase your products or services. However, remember that you ve advertised a secret tool or secret information. Therefore, when they get to those pages, there must be something of value there for them to collect for free in most cases. Don t make the mistake of thinking that you will be losing money by giving something away for free you won t. In fact, you ve already gained by collecting the names and addresses of the people who were interested in your secret information. Again, this is a marketing tactic that really works, and it is a great way to use an autoresponder. Once people have requested the information for your private pages, you can email them periodically, using your autoresponder, to let them know about updates to the secret site. While you are updating them, you can also tell them about other specials or new products in your line. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 31

Customer Service with Autoresponders Ideally, when you perform customer service, it is done on a one-on-one basis with each of your customers. That works quite well in the offline world but on the Internet, that simply will not do. Your customers are literally all over the world, and there is no way that you can really deal with each one of them personally. That is where an autoresponder comes in. Customer service with autoresponders is quite simple. When an order is place, an autoresponder can send out the receipt for the sale, the information for accessing the product, and a thank you email. This happens whether you are logged in to your computer or on vacation in an exotic location. But customer service doesn t always end right there, and if you are away from your computer, you may be letting your customers down. i.e. an elderly gentleman sees your product advertised and places an order. Everything goes through just fine, and he receives the receipt, the download information, and your thank you email. Your product is an e-book, compiled into a PDF file. This particular gentleman doesn t understand what a PDF file is, and he has no idea what you mean by right click to download. He needs additional customer service for the product that he has purchased, and there is nobody available to help him nobody but an autoresponder. Set up an additional autoresponder that will send out a list of frequently asked questions or problems that deal with customer service or how to access the product. Also set up a support autoresponder. If he sends a message to support, he should get an instant message back letting him know that his message has been received, and how soon it will be addressed. This will give him some measure of comfort, and in most cases, he will wait that specified period of time for assistance. However, if he doesn t know how to download the product, and he sends a message to support, and nothing happens, he will most likely become very dissatisfied in a very short period of time. The difference between a patient customer and an irate customer is one simple autoresponder message that can and should be set up in under five minutes. Really think your ordering process through, and consider the potential problems that may occur for your customers. Get an autoresponder set up to address those problems, and you will find that your customers are more satisfied with your products, and extremely satisfied with your customer service all because your autoresponders handle their problems right away. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 32

Autoresponders and Shopping Cart Integration When people place orders through your website, it is always a good idea to immediately acknowledge the purchase. One way to do this is with the use of an autoresponder that can be integrated with your shopping cart. In fact, many shopping carts that are available today have their own autoresponders built into the system. When you set up your autoresponder to send a message to someone that has placed an order, there are several things that should be included in the message. This is an opportunity to speak to your customer, and to let them know about other deals that you have or special items that you have available. You should not miss this opportunity. Do not try to get your thank you sales message on the same autoresponder as the customers email receipt. Putting the sales message on an email that is automatically sent to grant the customer access to their purchase is also a bad idea that would go better with the receipt. Make sure your thank you sales message is a message that is sent out all by itself, so your customer can focus solely on that. Thank the customer for their recent purchase. Tell them how much their purchase will help them, and then tell them about other available products that work well with the one that they just purchased, or that are similar to the one that they just purchased in some way. For instance hair conditioner works with hair shampoo. Vacuum cleaner bags or carpet powder works well with vacuum cleaners. Just let them know about the various products that you offer that will complement their purchase in some way. The important thing is to not let your customer get away without further contact. Think about being in a brick and mortar store. When you go up to the counter to pay, there are many items there for sale. These items are meant to be picked up as last minute purchases, or impulsive purchases. Your thank you sales letter serves the same purpose. Don t make the mistake of bombarding your customer. You can usually send them periodic information about your specials after they have made a purchase through you, but emailing them on a daily basis with your offers is not good business. Use your autoresponder responsibly. Make sure that your autoresponder is set up to handle automatic remove requests, and make sure that the information that you are sending your customers is of value to them. Invoicing with Autoresponders If you have recurring invoices that you send out, you can easily automate this process with autoresponders. Many business owners find that they spend a good portion the day sending out invoices, or trying to collect on unpaid invoices. This can easily eat into the time that you could be spending generating new business. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 33

If the amounts invoiced are the same each month, and due on the same day each week or month, you can easily automate the invoicing process with the use of an autoresponder. Many shopping carts that have autoresponders built in work well for this. Others may take a little time to set up, but in the end, they will save a great deal of time overall. Get extra usage out of the automated invoicing process by adding small messages to the invoices that alert these clients to new products or services that you offer. Think about your phone bill doesn t your phone company send out additional sales material with each bill? There is no reason you shouldn t use this same marketing technique with your autoresponder invoices. Formatting Autoresponder Messages Have you received emails that were all broken up? These emails have one or two words on one line, then eight or ten words on the next line. In some cases, one word begins on one line and ends on the next. These emails are very hard to read, and they appear to be very unprofessional. Is this what you want your autoresponder email messages to look like? If not, you need to learn how to format your messages. Start by reading the instructions for your specific autoresponder. Each one operates a bit differently in the way that it handles text. For instance, some autoresponder messages will be messed up if you do put a hard line break at the end of each line, while others will be messed up if you don t. Find out what the right option is for your autoresponder. Because each email client is different, you should not allow any line in your message to exceed 55-65 characters. The best way to be sure that your autoresponder messages are delivered in the correct format is to send them to yourself, before you send them to your list. Improper Uses of Autoresponders Autoresponders are wonderful. They can be used for a variety of things, but there are several ways that autoresponders should not be used. Using autoresponders in improper ways will make things a bit more difficult for other people, and it could make things really bad for you. Having one autoresponder respond to another autoresponder creates chaos, and in some cases, it can overload servers. This happens when you sign up for something, using your autoresponder email address. You sign up, and a message is sent to someone else s autoresponder, which responds to your autoresponder, which responds to that autoresponder and this continues on and on until it is manually stopped and straightened out. Some people use their autoresponder address on purpose when they sign up for discussion lists. In effect, this causes an their autoresponder message to be sent to the entire list, or to Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 34

one person on the list, each time a person sends a real message to the discussion list. Needless to say, discussion list members and owners frown on this practice, and the autoresponder owner gets banned. Avoid these problems and use your autoresponder in ways that it was meant to be used. Do not use the autoresponder irresponsibly. Not only will you create problems for others, but you may find that you get reported for spam. Using Autoresponders Responsibly In today s world of unsolicited email and spam laws, it is extremely important that you learn to use your autoresponder responsibly. Autoresponders make our lives much simpler, and they are very powerful marketing tools, but if they are used in a way that they are not intended, they can quickly turn your life into a nightmare. First, never add people to your autoresponder mailing list that should not be there. If they have requested information from you, they should automatically be added, and you should have a double opt-in method in place to make them confirm that they have requested the information. This serves to protect you and them. Each autoresponder message should include a link that the recipient can click that will automatically remove them from the mailing list. Without this link, you could l be breaking the spam laws, and you risk having your website, your ISP service, your email, and your autoresponders shut down. We all want to build a list of a million people, but you must do so responsibly, and it does take time. Don t get in a hurry and break all the rules and laws in an attempt to build a large list. This will only result in losing your list altogether. Getting Your Autoresponder Messages Through The Spam Filters In light of the spam problem, most email clients now have spam filters installed. These filters catch spam email and either move it to a spam folder or automatically delete it. After spending a great deal of time labouring over your series of autoresponder messages, it would be a shame to find out that the majority of the messages that are sent out end up in the spam folder, or are automatically deleted as spam. You can avoid this in two ways. First, when anyone signs up to receive information from your autoresponder, have them automatically redirected to a page that gives them instructions for white listing you. Email clients have an actual white list where the owner of the email client can add specific addresses that should never be considered spam. The other way to make sure that your autoresponder messages get through the spam filters is to check them using one of the various spam checkers that are available online. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 35

These programs are often web based, and free to use. They check your message for words or phrases that commonly trigger spam filters in email clients. Don t send out any autoresponder messages without doing a spam check first. Autoresponders and Spam What You Need To Know There are laws against sending spam. There are even laws that you must adhere to when you send out email that was requested. No matter what type of email you are sending out, the chances are good that the anti-spam laws apply to you in some way. In order to be in compliance with the anti-spam laws in various states in the US, each commercial email that you send must include your name or business name, your street address, city, state, zip code, and phone number. You must also include instructions that will allow the recipient to remove themselves from your mailing list. If you fail to do any of this, you are essentially breaking the law in various states no matter what state or country you live in. Protect yourself from spam complaints in any way that you can. Make sure that when a customer requests any type of information from you that an email is sent requesting confirmation before any other email is sent. If someone is placing an order from you, include a check box on the order form, asking for permission to send them periodic emails. Never use your autoresponder to send unsolicited commercial email. You can learn more about Spam Filters in my Kindle Book: How To Beat The Spam Filters Legitimately And Get Your Emails Delivered http://www.amazon.com/dp/b00avzzkze Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 36

There are many autoresponder services available to the email marketer. Here are four different types. If you are looking for this free autoresponder service you could sign up to: The autoresponder I use and recommend is SmartEmail: http://www.smartemail.com.au/kurt Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 37

Smart Email is THE software I recommend to all my clients and associates because of its: ease of use; accessibility, no matter where you are; storage of unlimited contacts names, addresses and information; ability to create customised templates, forms and messages; autoresponder capabilities enabling you to send emails even whilst you are asleep; creates optin box codes and double optin emails; ability to create customer surveys; and real-time statistics. PLUS It is owned and managed by Peter Butler in Perth who keeps a solid eye on who is using and what they are doing to maintain our clean email marketing status. You can take a quick tour at: http://www.smartemail.com.au/kurt What Should I Write - How Many? (My Email Sequence - Email Marketing Step Diagram) After you have decided on: 1. The Big Item you are trying to sell; or 2. The Free Item; you are giving away to obtain a website visitors name and email address, it is time to consider the number of emails to pre-load your autoresponder with. A tool to help with this is my Email Marketing Step Diagram. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 38

To complete this exercise decide on the TARGET and then work backwards and allocate an appropriate number of step emails and there timing. For instance If you are giving a free report which has seven tips in it then consider the number of emails you would need to send. This could be an email for each tip plus one an initial email and also one at the end. This makes nine emails in this sequence. Another way to consider how many emails is to send will be determined by an end date or time. Here is an email I sent to my lists as a schedule for Mother s Day. Hi (First Name) Are You Prepared For Mother s Day? Gosh, it s probably the furthest thing from your mind, with Easter coming up in a few weeks time. Yet if you don t start thinking about Mother s Day now you may miss out on this very important day in sales. You see, although retail spending has plummeted, I bet there will be an abundant amount of money gleefully taken out wallets and directed to keeping a very important person happy. Don t despair if you have not thought about Mother s Day yet. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 39

I am here to help. Use these dates to program your marketing. Firstly, you need to plan your marketing to finish on Mother s Day. In Australia, Mother s Day falls on the second Sunday in May (8th May) Let s call this your Email Marketing Campaign Finish Day. then You need to work backwards, weekly, and decide how many emails you may wish to send before the Campaign Finish Day. I like to commit to at least a minimum of a four five email campaign. For example If your Campaign Finish Day is the 8th of May (Mother s Day), then you have the week s commencing Monday 2nd May, 25th April, 18th April and the 11th April to send emails. If you wish a five email campaign, use the Friday before Mother s Day as a final reminder. Confusing? Let me help. If you wish to send one email per week the schedule would look like: * Email One send week commencing 11th April; * Email Two send week commencing 18th April; * Email Three send week commencing 25th May; * Email Four send week commencing 2nd May. * Email Five send the Friday before Mother s Day 6th May. All of these emails are to be centred around the theme, Mother s Day. So Kurt, what have you to offer your clients for Mother s Day??? Get to it and start planning NOW. If you leave it until the last moment it will be too late. Believe in Yourself Kurt Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 40

As you can see by using the TARGET as the Mother s Day you can work backwards to program a series of emails. Buyer s Remorse - What is it and how do I overcome this for them. Buyer s Remorse is a sales terminology which refers to the feeling a person has after the emotion of the purchase or download has worn off. People buy for emotional reasons and then they try to justify it logically later. It is during this logical process that Buyer s Remorse becomes most prominent in a person s mind. To help them overcome this it is crucial in the first email they receive in your sequence to congratulate them on their decision to own/download/grab whatever you offered. This will make the person feel OK with their decision. Keep emphasising this point. Examples of Email Sequences: John Carlton one of the world s best copywriters has an automated sequence of emails for his Simple Writing System Training. Here are his four emails which are sent out automatically. Take a look at the way the copy flows and also the length of the email. Long emails sell. Don t let anyone else tell you otherwise. ================================================================== Simple Writing System Basics "Making The Sale" Lesson #1 How A Small Bit Of Market Research Can Save Your Butt, And Reveal The Hottest Target Audiences You'll Ever Find. From: John Carlton "The most ripped-off and respected copywriter alive." Howdy... Does your current Website suck? Don't despair. You still might do OK. How? Read on... To begin, I want to reveal a rather embarrassing little secret shared by all top copywriters: Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 41

A poorly written ad sent to the right market... will do better than a brilliantly-written ad sent to the wrong market. Seems simple, right? Don t try to sell ice to Eskimos, but do offer ice water in a desert. And yet, I see countless entrepreneurs make this very same mistake repeatedly. Take, for example, the story of a guy I met while doing "Hot Seat" consultations at a Dan Kennedy seminar. This dude had posted a gorgeous-looking Website and -- after several months of attempting to corner his market... was chagrined to get not a single blessed sale. "What d you pay to get the site up?" I asked, innocently. "Ten grand," he said, without blushing. "But that included getting the product produced." This guy was walking around like a wounded gazelle in hyena town. He was a one-man charity system for art directors, designers, web hosts and manufacturers. Don t be this guy. He had violated the most basic fundamental in business: Do the simple stuff first. As it turns out, I know something about the market he was after. In fact, I know a LOT about that market. And you know what? It didn t matter how good the deal was on his Website. It didn t matter how efficiently the site could capture visitors, or how easy it was to buy using the online ordering system. It didn t matter how gloriously wonderful the product was. And it wouldn t have made a difference if God himself descended upon earth and wrote this guy s sales copy. None of this was relevant. Because there was no market there. This guy spent ten thousand dollars to find out something he could have discovered for FREE. And it would have taken him all of about an hour too... instead of the months he spent creating the product, writing the copy, and wrangling with the website technology. It's called... (drum roll, please)... Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 42

Market Research. I cover a lot of ground in the Market Research section of my Simple Writing System for a darn good reason. It's the FOUNDATION of everything else you do to bring in money. But here's something you can use right now: Do not create the actual product until AFTER you get a pulse from your intended market. How do you do this? Here are just a few of the simple ways I can share with you: (1) Go to Google AdWords. You can "test" most online markets without even signing up for the service. It s easy, too. The system will automatically reveal to you how many hits certain words and phrases within your target market were registered. It will also suggest other words and phrases, based on what is actually getting the big numbers. This is free market research. Just figure out what a prospect might put into a search engine in order to be in your target audience... and see if the action justifies your foray into this market. If the words and phrases you come up with are not among the most used, Google will tell you, and help you find the better ones. And... if your AdWords best efforts come up with pitiful results... then you are fishing in an empty pond. Time to move on. (2) Get your hands on a copy of the SRDS. (That s "Standard Rates and Data Service".) These are the phonebook-sized catalogs of all the mailing lists available to rent, and all the magazines that take ads. Even if your business is strictly web-based, this is the book that -- once you take a few minutes to understand it -- will heap massive wealth and rewards on your head. Because this is the book that instantly tells you which markets are hot, and which are not. What s more, if you re too cheap to buy the service (sign up at www.srds.com and they will send you a brand new updated version quarterly), you can check the SRDS out for FREE at your local library. It s in the resource department. They re not hiding it. You don t even need a recent one, in most cases. If your prospective market has existed for a while, you can get your answer from even a years-old SRDS. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 43

Cuz all you need, at this basic stage, is a thumbs up or thumbs down on how "hot" the market you're targeting is. There s either a mob of cash-rich people who actively buy stuff in the market you re considering... or there aren t. That s all you re looking for right now. In this guy s case, he had decided to go after what he thought was a huge untapped part of an existing market. He didn t "need" to research it -- heck, his own common sense told him he on was the right track. See, everybody was already marketing to the men in this market. So he decided to go after... another big drum roll... the women. Genius! Except for the inconvenient detail that there WEREN T any women in this market. I checked it out myself, once I got back to the office. The SRDS had the goods on over a dozen magazines that catered to this niche. The subscriber numbers were huge... that s why the guy wanted to go after the market... but they were also 97% male. This detail is plainly revealed in the statistics of each entry. Just as telling, the available lists of direct response names had a premium of $12/thousand for male names. Female names were dirt cheap to rent. This is a blindingly obvious hint: The men in this market are the ones who buy. The women barely exist. Bang! Slam the SRDS shut, scratch the whole idea of going to that market. Research job is complete. Even if you had to take a bus across town to the library, your total time expenditure has been minimal. And you re not out any serious money, except for bus fare and lunch. Of course...... if your research had revealed that your target market was a profit-rich riot of unmet needs (with scant competition and lots of low-hanging fruit)...... then you've just identified a niche you can go after with the throttle wide open. This is how fortunes are made... and kept from being lost. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 44

This mini-lesson is just a "taste" of what's in store for you when you allow me to show ALL the tactics, secrets, strategies and inside unfair advantages I've mastered in 25 years as a top copywriter and marketing consultant. Don't forget to head back to www.simplewritingsystem.com/blog/. That's the place to pick up more free tidbits from my overflowing bag of tricks. Stay frosty... ================================================================== Simple Writing System Basics "Making The Sale" Lesson #2: How The Simple Addition Of Real Personality Can Bind Customers To You Forever. From: John Carlton Howdy... "The most ripped-off and respected copywriter alive." This lesson in advanced, "take no prisoners" style marketing may be the most powerful wealth-accumulation tactic you ever learn. It's simple, and it's basic: Your number one weapon in advertising, especially on-line, will always be superior salesmanship. This is the mostly-overlooked art of figuring out what your prospect desperately desires... earning his trust and establishing your credibility... and delivering your sales message in a way that nails his "passionate sweet spot of need." This should be common sense for all marketers... and yet it will be your secret weapon. Because most of your competition will forever ignore the fundamentals of good salesmanship, or screw it up (since they've never bothered to pay attention to the lessons). It's relatively easy to create an ad that gets a prospect to say "Hey, that sounds like a great product". But that doesn't mean they will become a customer. No. You want your prospect to say -- after experiencing your sales pitch -- "Wow! How do I get one of those?" All buying decisions are made in an emotional part of your prospect's brain. He may explain his purchase in rational terms, giving you reasons why he considered it a great deal. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 45

But getting someone to take money out of their wallet to pay for something is a much more complex process. You don't have to understand the biology or chemistry that goes on... but you DO have to realize that closing any deal requires a little skill. It's not difficult. But it's not something most people naturally learn to do. There are a few key secrets to salesmanship that -- once you master them -- will guarantee that EVERY sales pitch you create is empowered to close the deal. That's how fortunes are made. However, most marketers "sell from their heels"... meaning, they blow it when it comes down to asking for money. They mumble and stumble and often just blurt out the price, without helping the prospect position this purchase in his mind. The marketing graveyard is crammed with great products that failed because the advertising didn't elicit that all-important desire to buy RIGHT NOW. However, when you master the basics of great salesmanship, you can persuade a prospect to desperately desire a product he didn't even know existed before he came across your ad. Whatever results you're getting will instantly be multiplied many times, as soon as you apply the secrets of great salesmanship. Now, I was not a "born salesman." I had to learn the hard way, making embarrassing mistakes, blowing deals right and left... and going to outrageous extremes to find world-class salesmen who would teach me their tricks. I m going to share one of those killer tricks with you now. A proven multiplier of sales to use on your web pages and emails is... Personality! A good, solid sales page will bring you orders. Add some personality to your sales message, however... and sales go through the roof. I recently wrote a short note for a client who was emailing to his "inactive list", trying to stir something up. I insisted that the client personalize each note with the prospect s name. Here is how the letter starts out to, say, Bob Jones: Dear Bob, Just now, I was sitting at my desk going through some stuff, and I had a sudden thought. So I called out to my long-suffering secretary... Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 46

"Hey Barb! What the heck happened to Bob Jones?" As far as we know, Bob, you re still alive and kicking. But we haven t heard from you... Now, let s dwell on this opening for a second. Most advertisers -- if they had the sense to email inactive former customers at all -- would have adopted a holier-than-thou tone that reads like the warning label on a bottle of medicine: Dear Mr. Smith, It has come to our attention that your account has become inactive blah blah blah... Yeah, I wonder why that customer stopped paying attention. Now go back to what I did. I created a scene, complete with some drama and script and -- very important-excellent use of the guy s name. It s lighthearted, yet still brutally-effective salesmanship. It also doesn t go on and on. Just a brief, personalized little dash of slang-driven personality. Now here s the kicker: If you can inject some personality into your emails and web pages and letters... you ll be light years ahead of the competition. The client above took the leash off me years ago, and I have created a personality in his copy that keep readership at astonishingly high levels. He s a funny guy anyway, but he s not a writer, and has never attempted to translate his own personality to his marketing. So he pays me a fortune to do it for him. When people on his list get an email or letter from him the response is not "Oh, yuck, another sales pitch", but... "Hey! Let s see what outrageous story he s got to tell me today." Personality works. It will multiply your sales. People are inundated with SPAM and boring websites and bad radio, TV and print ads all day long. It's good salesmanship to put yourself in the shoes of your prospect. Most people live lives of quiet desperation. They don't get to do anything interesting, go anywhere interesting, or hang out with interesting people. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 47

Yawn. So that's your opening: Be the ONE thing he reads today that really gets his blood moving. Be the one marketer who says something worthwhile and exciting... and your customers will reward you handsomely. This gives you the opportunity to become the "go to" guy in your niche -- the dude who knows what he's talking about, and talks about it in interesting ways. People don't want to deal with anonymous corporations, or marketers who sound like they have a bug up their butt. Trust is a hard thing to manufacture -- but it's a heck of a lot easier when you allow your prospect to see that he's dealing with someone who shares his passions, understands his situation, and communicates without nonsense. People like to deal with people. Especially people who have a little personality. Think of the emails you get each day -- there are surely some people in your world whose emails you open immediately, happy to see them in your inbox. And probably, it's because you enjoy reading email from those people. They have something to say, and you enjoy hearing from them. This is personality in action. That s it for this lesson. Don't forget to jump back over to www.simplewritingsystem.com/blog/. There's a lot more specific info -- including tactics you can use -- waiting for you. And it's the place where you'll learn how and when you can immerse yourself in my Simple Writing System. Stay frosty... ================================================================== Simple Writing System Basics "Making The Sale" Lesson #3: How To Sneak Past Your Prospect's Natural Skepticism And Reluctance To Buy. From: John Carlton "The most ripped-off and respected copywriter alive." Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 48

Howdy... I've long since misplaced it, but I once owned perhaps the sneakiest and nastiest "how-to" book I'd ever seen. It was all about getting revenge. Safely and without paying any consequence. I shudder to think that book is still in print somewhere. Lord knows we already have enough psychopaths out there nursing grudges. Still, it was a pretty fascinating read. Most of the tactics involved non-lethal methods that would only wreck your enemy's marriage or get him fired. You know, like planting phony love letters where your opponent s wife would find them... or having disgustingly raunchy magazines sent to your rival s office in his name. That sort of thing. I've never used any of these dirty tricks... but I'm glad I'm aware of them. Because a new wave of this type of terrorism is upon us. And knowing how the slicksters operate gives you the best defense you'll ever have. Consider this: A close friend just recently had some twerp send him threatening emails under a stolen identity. This is where knowledge is power. What could have been a truly confusing and nasty situation was defused, because my friend was hip to this possibility, and had an uber-geek track the real culprit down following the cyber-trail of the email. The guy was flabbergasted at being caught. And the person whose identity had been stolen never knew the drama was even taking place. So there's a practical side to having otherwise unhealthy interest in dirty tricks. Which I do. (There was a TV show on cable that featured hidden video that people took of their roommates and friends and spouses and such... and it will shatter your world-view seeing what otherwise normal people do when they think no one else is watching.) (Yes, they do look through your stuff.) Anyway... one of the least obnoxious tricks I read about in that "revenge" book was to give someone a $50 gift certificate... toward a brand new Cadillac. If you do this for the right kind of guy, you can ruin his life from that point forward. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 49

Because some people will see that Cadillac as "almost" theirs (at least the first $50 of it)... and bankrupt themselves trying to come up with the other $32,950. That's sneaky. And it's almost a great marketing tactic. In fact, here are 3 variations based on it: First variation: I ve just put $50 in your account here. I ve used this as a headline for quick messages to house lists. Instead of discounting the product by $50, or half-off, or whatever... I just convince the client to open a special account for everyone on their list. And into this account, put a $50 (or whatever) credit. Which can only be used for products the client sells. It s also perfectly legitimate to make the "money" good only for the product you re trying to sell at the time. Put a time limit on it. The "money" is only in the account for the next 11 days, say. Then it s gone. If you act fast, you get $50 off your order. And if you dawdle... you lose it. Now, that's an All-Star bribe. It's also a prime example of the "take away" tactic that all great salesman use. Here's another version... Second Variation: I have one set aside here in my office with your name on it. If you can, put the prospect's actual name on the box or the product. It's earmarked for ya, Bucko. Got your name on it. Sitting here. Waiting. But there is such a limited quantity, that... if you don t call in and claim it (and pay for it) within, say, 11 days... well, we ll have to take your name off of it...... and give it to the next guy down the list. Imagine a friend calling you and saying he's just put a thick, juicy fifty-buck imported Kobe steak on the barbeque for you... and it's yours, everybody there knows it's yours... but there are 15 other people at the party and not enough meat to go around. So, if you aren't there in 11 minutes, he'll be forced to give your nice, juicy, succulent, mouth-watering steak to someone else. That's dirty pool. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 50

And great marketing. Third Variation: "There s just one small catch to this offer..." This is a classic paragraph that many top marketers insist on putting into every pitch. What this wording does is to provide a small, reasonable, and non-hassle "condition" to the offer. Which serves to make it all the more believable. See, when non-world class marketers create an offer, they often go too far. They remove all risk, make the price as low as they can, and guarantee everything under the sun. Which, when read by a skeptical prospect, can sound "too good to be true." There is genius, however, in taking the promise down a notch. So it, very suddenly, isn't too good to be true. This "catch" or "caveat" is usually a version of the take-away: "There s just one small catch to this offer. It s a small matter, and very reasonable. But it may affect your decision. You see this deal is not for everyone. If you are afraid to..." And then you list all the reasons many people would, logically, not be "right" for the offer. Scaredy cats, cheap bastards, cynics, and looky-loo s, for example. The "take away" is one of the most powerful tactics you will ever have in your bag of tricks. It's just stunningly effective at riveting the reader's attention. "Hey," You want him to say to himself. "If I don't get on this, like, right freakin' now, he's gonna give it to someone else!" Can't have that, can we. Okay... That's plenty for this lesson. I hope you've gotten a good, healthy taste of what I offer people who come to me for advice in marketing and writing. Don't forget to jump back over to www.simplewritingsystem.com/blog/. There's a lot more specific info -- including tactics you can use -- waiting for you. And it's the place where you'll learn how and when you can immerse yourself in my Simple Writing System. Stay frosty, Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 51

================================================================== Simple Writing System Basics "Making The Sale" Lesson #4: How To Figure Out What To Charge. From: John Carlton "The most ripped-off and respected copywriter alive." Howdy... Hey, it s 10 pm. Do you know where your cash-flow is? Because of sheer lack of marketing savvy, entire populations of businesses voluntarily shut down the profit spigot, and willingly allow dollars that were headed their direction...... to suddenly flow back away from them. Yes, this is insane. But it s common. Why? Because it "seems" to make sense. After all "everybody does it." It is invisible robbery, and there isn t an accountant in the world who will warn you away from it. Here s what happens: You re selling widgets at $39 a pop, and you re doing well. Then, for whatever reason, sales begin to drop. You decide your widgets need a dramatic rescue to perk up sales again. So you do what most marketers do and... Slash The Price! And it murders your bottom line. You know what I tell clients to do? It s simple: Don t slash the price. Rather... increase the perceived value of the deal by sweetening it with a ton of free goodies. So instead of a widget at $39, your customer now gets (for a short time only) the widget, plus a free report on how to use the widget like a pro, plus an recorded interview with Mr. Widget from the famous TV show... plus a 2-for-1 coupon for dinner at a local hotspot...... PLUS a free tee shirt with a cool widget logo. All for just $49. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 52

That s right - we actually raised the price ten bucks. The tee shirt and the free dinner alone are worth twice that. It s a bargain. What did it cost to add all this free stuff? Almost nothing. The free report is paper and ink. The mp3 audio recording is downloadable, and Mr. Widget did the interview for the PR value. The dinner coupon offers the restaurant fabulous advertising, so you get them free. The tee shirts are a couple of bucks, maybe. I m using these items as examples only. To make a point: Your product is worth what you convince your customer to perceive it s worth. People respond to free stuff. They love getting things they would never otherwise be able to find (like Mr. Widget s autograph). Especially when there s a story attached. ("Mr. Widget is really a nice guy! He was kissing babies and everything! But he s shorter than he looks on TV..."). I like information-based freebies best. You can pile them on like crazy... and it will cost just pennies to create. Offer ten free reports on something closely related to your product. Selling garden equipment? Add reports on growing prize winning roses, getting rid of gophers, designing decks and fountains and weed-free lawns. Selling a diet? Add info on finding cheap-but-expensive-looking clothes for your new figure... tips on getting free airfare to the Bahamas (because you can now wear bathing suits again)... and maybe a list of little-known places to meet your future soul-mate. Selling insurance? Add free reports on how to organize your important papers in a simple but easy-to-navigate home-made system. What to do when you can t find crucial phone numbers. How to get the best mortgage rate in the country using the Internet. What to put in an emergency kit in your garage to fix plumbing, electrical and structural problems until the contractor shows up. A thousand and one ways to use duct tape. Get the idea? None of this will cost you a cent, if you can write it yourself. Even if you have to hunt down someone who knows stuff you don t, you can often convince them to do an interview (which you can transcribe) just for the exposure. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 53

And that means you don t have to rely on cutting prices -- just like every other podunk business in town. Now here s another cunning way to widen the gap between you and the competition. Most of us have competition. And the natural urge is to trash them to your customers. To impugn their integrity and worth. To suggest criminal nature and evil intent. Anything to stop the customer from ever dealing with them. Don t do that. You don t have to. There are 3 ways to trash the competition... and only the last one makes any sense to the savvy marketer. Check it out: First method: Outright slander. "Don t deal with them. They have shoddy merchandise, and cheat people." Saying things like this only makes you look jealous and out-of-control. And it can have the opposite effect you desire: Think of a teenager being told not to listen to rock and roll because it s evil. That same day, he ll be smuggling CDs of Eminem up to his room. It s just as bad to feign superiority: "No one with any taste at all buys from them. We re the only store in town with the real thing." I actually had a guy in a shoe store pull this on me once. It only made me eager to see what the competition had that was pissing him off so much. Second method: Damning with faint praise. "Ah yes, that other store. Well, they certainly sell a lot of products... to kids." The implication being, you don t wanna be seen as a kid, do you? The ol backhanded compliment is the way to go. "Sure, they re a good choice, if all you care about is saving a few bucks right now." It s a decent psychological tactic... but if you really do have a good product, with substance and value, take a page from the master salesman s manual and use... Method Number Three: Insist on a side-by-side comparison. "Hey, they ve got a fine product over there. And sometimes it s hard to judge the value without a direct comparison. That s why we urge you to give their product a trial run... at the same time you give one to ours. After all, you re the best judge of quality." Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 54

Very cool technique. Claude Hopkins (the legendary hero of direct response advertising) himself used it, when he knew he had a great product that would withstand all comparison. It s not a cocky, in-your-face stance -- just a confident suggestion, made sincerely. Most people won t bother with the "field test". All they re looking for is a reason to buy - a reason they can explain to themselves, to their wives, to their skeptical buddies. And every time someone does the comparison, and chooses you... you have another compelling testimonial to use. You are in such a powerful position when you have substance and value, it is pure foolishness not to use that power. Honest confidence sells. That s it for today. Don't forget to jump back over to www.simplewritingsystem.com/blog/ to what else we've posted. I'm giving away a large amount of specific, useable information there for free. And it's the place where you'll learn how and when you can immerse yourself in my Simple Writing System. Risk free. Action is ALWAYS the next step on the successful person's schedule. I know you've probably got a LOT on your plate right now... and you may even be a tad overwhelmed just with the ideas triggered from the videos and quickie lessons I've given you. But that's where staying in touch makes perfect sense. I love shortcuts. It's how I soared to the top of the heap in my career, and shortcuts are the foundation of my teaching style. The best way to get "un"-overwhelmed... is to start taking full advantage of the opportunities out there. So head back to the blog -- www.simplewritingsystem.com/blog/ -- and feast on more of the free specific tactics and advice we're posting there. In the meantime... stay frosty... ================================================================== Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 55

How Do I Get My Sig-Ups To Buy? (Call To Actions) (Yahoo Small Business Advisor and Kurt Johansen) If you re trying to get more leads and sales from your website and blog, the first thing to consider is your calls-to-action. Strengthening the call-to-action (CTA) on any given page or post often makes a bigger difference toward your number of leads and customers than tweaking the design or any other changes you could make. So, what is a CTA, exactly? 7 Effective Call to Action Examples and Why They Work Wikipedia defines a call-to-action this way: A call to action, or CTA, is a banner, button, or some type of graphic or text on a website meant to prompt a user to click it and continue down a conversion funnel. It is an essential part of inbound marketing as well as permission marketing in that it actively strives to convert a user into a lead and later into a customer. CTAs are critical for achieving any results online, because traffic, subscribers, and followers don t do you any good until they become leads and eventually customers. That s why calls-to-action can be used in more places than just your website. They should also be employed in your: Blog; social media; email blasts; pay-per-click campaigns; guest articles; anywhere else you publish or market online. It takes practice to craft the perfect CTA for a given offer and page, but there are a few guidelines to keep in mind that can help you. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 56

First Rule of Effective CTAs: Alignment First and most importantly is alignment. The call-to-action must match both where it lives and what it leads to. If the page the offer lives on (e.g. a blog post) doesn t match where the call-to-action takes the visitor (e.g. free offer download), that disconnect confuses the visitor, making him or her more likely to leave than become a lead. This is why keyword and customer research is so vital. HubSpot, the marketing and software company that popularized the concept of inbound marketing, is known for its well-aligned CTAs at the end of nearly every blog post. Here are a few call-to-action examples that demonstrate perfect alignment: 15 Phenomenal TED Talks You Need to Watch Today ~ If a visitor is willing to discover and watch 15 videos from thought leaders in various segments of the marketing industry, it s very likely they ll want even more quotes on marketing from the big names in the field. In addition to being very well aligned, this CTA also uses the power of numbers, namedropping, and questions to convince prospects to click. A Step-by-Step Guide to Flawless On-Page SEO [Free Template] ~ The people at HubSpot knew their prospects struggled to keep track of everything they had to do to maintain strong on-page SEO, so they created an Excel template to help them. Then they wrote this special blog post to introduce it and show readers how to maximize it. Your CTAs don t get much more aligned than this. Second Rule of Effective CTAs: Value The next important rule of effective CTAs is delivering value. Before visitors will click the call-to-action and become a subscriber or download your ebook, they have to believe they will get some value out of doing so. Consider the top 2 or 3 Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 57

benefits of your offer. Choose the most important one, and then try to distil it in as few words as possible. That helps you emphasize the value of your offer and strengthen its alignment. Many social media sites do a great job of showing the value of their service on their sign-up pages. LinkedIn, for example, uses customer testimonials to show the importance of growing your professional network. This call-to-action example also promotes the convenience and speed of creating an account (it s free and takes less than 2 minutes to set up), and hints that doing so can help you do your job better. Copyblogger does an excellent job selling the value of the membership portion of their site. Look at everything they offer to prospects: the chance to excel at content marketing 14 ebooks about various content marketing topics 20-part ecourse to help prospects build a strategy an index to the best content on the blog And it s all for free. How much more valuable does it get? Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 58

Third Rule of Effective CTAs: Urgency Another rule of powerful calls-to-action is urgency. When your CTA gives visitors a reason to act immediately, they re more likely to follow through. This is why so many offers have seasonal sales or limited availability. Some of the best call-to-action examples effectively using urgency are webinar registration pages, such as the one below. Although the advertised webinar is past, it s easy to see how the countdown, prominent calendar date, and use of words like now convince a prospect to complete the desired action, especially when combined with alignment, value, and good design. Fourth Rule of Effective CTAs: Clear, Specific Copy Something else to keep in mind is to make your calls-to-action as clear and specific as possible. Vague, ambivalent language decreases the value of your offer and makes you seem less credible and confident in your own product. On the other hand, clear and specific CTA copy with numbers and strong verbs cements the value of your offer, builds prospects comfort and confidence in you, and guides them exactly where you want them. A good example of a clear and specific call-to-action is this after you download the Dropbox app on your phone. Between the subject line, the first sentence, and the CTA button itself, you will know exactly: what to do next (claim additional storage space) what you get by doing it (48 GB of space) and why you should do it (it s free). Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 59

More Call-to-Action Examples and Resources Using these basic rules will help you craft more powerful calls-to-action that actually convert visitors into leads, but there s plenty more to creating an effective CTA. Here are a few more resources to help you master the nitty-gritty details: 10 Techniques for an Effective Call-to-Action from Boagworld http://boagworld.com/design/10-techniques-for-an-effective-call-to-action/ How to Create Effective Calls-to-Action ebook from HubSpot http://offers.hubspot.com/how-to-create-effective-calls-to-action The 10 Best Resources to Improve Your Call-to-Action from UnBounce http://unbounce.com/conversion-rate-optimization/best-cta-resources/ Call to actions are essential to the email marketer and should be used to direct the email recipient what to do next. What Happens After My Email Sequence Finishes? The emailing of your list should not stop just because your autoresponder sequence has. It is important to continue to keep in contact with your lists on a weekly basis. Over the years I have sent daily, twice weekly, weekly emails to most peole who have signe dup to receive information from me. I have no evidence, neither do any of my email marketing buddies that people will unsubscribe from you because you send too many emails. As long as the emails contain useful, worthwhile, meaningful and valuable information yur email recipients can use. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 60

Workshop: Planning Your Email Sequence Creating your Action Plans- Use the Email Step Diagram to help. Kurt Johansen: The Email Marketing Guy - www.kurtjohansen.com Page 61