Email Autoresponder Series

Hire a copywriter, spend some money.

its all in the subject line and then next its the presell of your body with a call to action.

Your wasting your time with emails. It is too over saturated and they don't even get to be seen anymore unless you have a giant list and a big top guru in the industry. The only way a average person will get results in this business, get sales, you have to switch to building your list with SMS text messaging platform. Mobile marketing is the future. Its the only way you will survive in this game. It will take you years & alot of money to build a big email list today. Plus it's a dying breed.

First, what autoresponder are you with? Because a lot of the prominent ones have some amazing resources on effective email marketing. And it's not all contrived, some of it is quite useful.
If your service doesn't provide such resources, do a search for effective email marketing. You want to focus on 3 key areas: subject line, content, and call to action. Research these until you're tired, then research some more. You'll find some recurring themes.

Short and sweet, while being compelling and engaging. Not always easy, but really effective.
Hope this helps!

I agree with you Joe & Jassen if you know how to do it properly. Most people don't thats the problem. Thats why 97% of the people fail online. Jassen as far as SMS being regulated thats only for those one way texts like text 555 or something like that. I am talking a true 2 way texting platform that people ask to be on your list. That's the future boys.

Guys like Frank Kern has been in the biz for years and have huge lists. I am not talking about people like that. I am saying for the average marketer. I am glad you guys are doing well with it, but for 97% of the people it doesn't work for them.

Mobile marketing is the next big wave, where could you have a list with 200 people on it and generate over 6K a month. You can't do that with emails. SMS gets right infront of your customers and you are able to build a relationship with that person right away. Emails can't get those results.

There are a few keys to having a successful auto-responder series that seem to fit in well with this discussion:

1. Provide your content in a way that people simply can't wait to receive and read your next edition! It has to be that good.

2. Know that sales conversions can happen 25, 30, 40 editions down the road. So, you have to plan a longer term outlay of content.

3. Both #1 and #2 above happen by giving people surprises they didn't expect. A free report, a link to a new video only accessible to subscribers, an interview with an industry expert, coupons as a reward for getting that far in the responder series.

Creativity (not always just professional copywriting) will keep your subscribers opening the emails.

Hi

You are looking too deep in the funnel. The emails don't start arriving until after they went through the funnel and opted in.

If you are getting no sales from any opt-ins and are relying solely on your email series, you are facing a tougher sell. Especially if there was no product in the funnel and you have a list of 'freebie seekers'.

You want to look at your sales funnel to see why your offer is not selling to the traffic you are sending and how effective the upsell/downsells are.

You want to increase sales and conversions by tweaking the funnel itself, instead of waiting for people to join your list.

Ideally the opt-in and sales conversions on the funnel should cover your costs before people get your first email.

Once on your list, there are a lot more barriers: Open rate, click thru and conversion on the offer.

If you have a 30% open rate and a 30% click through rate then less than 10% of your opt-ins are even getting to the offer.

Mahlon

I am actually creating a WSO on this very topic but Joe basically hit the nail on the head in his first paragraph!

Most folk do not take the time to understand who their list is…very little research is done and emails just pitch.

No wonder they don't get opened.

Add to that if they come in via a blind squeeze from a solo ad, then the issues worsens.

Email is not dead, folk that say so are scaremongering, or trying to push something else on you.

It is just a skill that takes time and effort to master, hence why many cannot be bothered.

Hi,

It isn't that email marketing is dying.

It's that so many start doing it without the proper training and guidance
on how to do it correctly.

Once you've built that initial trust with your people then it doesn't matter if
you send them emails every single day.

They'll still respond to you time and time again.

They want you to help them and are willing to reach out for that help.

You've just got to show them that you're there to help them every step of
the way.

All the best guys,
Gavin

Whether it is SMS or email it is all about know like and trust. You have to have a funnel set up after the initial optin and you have to build a relationship with the people on your list but even before all that you have to know where your market is. It is a long and winding road but there is a gold pot at the end if you do it right.

wow 200 subs 6k u must be doing somthing right ....

Hehe il still to list building tho for now .... till the era changes ..

Let me ask you this...

When was the last time you bought an ebook, course or software through an Adwords ad?

How about the last time you saw a course about getting free traffic through ezine articles actually promoted by free ezine articles?

How many times have you rushed off to Google to find and purchase the latest software, SEO product or tool just because you saw a Top 5 listing for it at Google?

You have to look at the truth... wasn't it because you were bombarded by emails by affiliates for it?

Seriously, think about that for a moment.

There are many different ways to get traffic to your web site and the above traffic methods do generate traffic, but are any of those the #1 source of traffic?

Email Marketing is alive and well.

Best regards,
Steve Yakim

akhtar,

To answer your question: you can get e-mail templates from a variety of sources. Check out:

1. Ben Adkins' Followup Master Plan.

It's a sample of 5 different e-mail sequences for 5 different specific situations/scenarios. He not only gives you the e-mails but discusses the psychology behind them.

Ben is very, very good at what he does. Listen to him.

It doesn't look like it's available right now, but get on his list and hit up his help desk if you really want it. I have it and highly recommend it. You can find him at BenAdkins.com or search Ben Adkins on Facebook.

2. You can often get e-mail sequence samples from different courses teaching online marketing. Jeff Walker provides them in his Product Launch Formula, which I also highly recommend. (It's expensive, but excellent.) So does Ali Brown and Lisa Sasevich.

3. Get on the lists of others in your niche. Save all of their e-mails. Separate out the e-mails for a specific launch/sales sequence from everything else (like newsletters) and put them in a separate folder. Pay attention to the timing and structure.

And studiously IGNORE junk advice like paulydp gave you! It's absolutely WRONG.

E-mail works for more than just "gurus." (Plus, thinking like that is "victim" thinking. "It only works for the gurus, but not for me." *Sniff* *Whine*)

How do you think they got to be gurus??? Success leaves clues...

If you pay any attention at all to successful marketers, then you know that the fortune is in the followup! People rarely buy the first time they hear from you. And they also rarely buy on the spot during a presentation like a webinar or teleseminar.

In her "6 Figure Teleseminar Secrets", Lisa Sasevich pointed out that without a properly sequenced e-mail followup series AFTER the teleseminar or webinar, you're leaving 70% of sales on the table! SEVENTY PERCENT!

I certainly don't want to leave 70% of my sales on the table.

Dan Kennedy, direct marketing expert extraordinaire, built his career and reputation on multi-step marketing sequences. The Direct Marketing Association did a study some time back and found that people don't buy from you until they've receive 7-9 "touches", that is exposures to your business. 7-9 times!

So without a multi-step marketing sequence, you'll be lucky to stay in business at all.

Though text messaging can be an important part of a marketing campaign, but it can never replace e-mail marketing, for a number of reasons: 1) there's not enough room in a text to properly convey EVERYTHING you need to convey; 2) text messages are much more personal, "in your face", therefore there will always be a huge segment of people who will never give you their cellphone number; 3) there's even MORE danger of getting into trouble with SMS because you ticked off your subscribers with SMS messages than with e-mail; etc.

My text message space is very personal. I want text messages from my family and friends. I do NOT want my text messages cluttered up with "Are you coming to the webinar?", "Last chance for $500 savings!" junk. That's for e-mail.

Yes, there are some cases and markets where text messages are more important than others. But generally speaking, text messaging does NOT and will not replace e-mail.

E-mail can and often does replace direct mail, print and broadcast advertising. Text messaging can never and will never replace e-mail marketing because of it's limitations.

The key isn't to find some "new method" that gives you that coveted, miniscule (and temporary) edge over everyone else. The magic isn't in the method (e-mail vs. text, for example). The magic is in knowing your peeps and how to talk to them, building a relationship with them.

The key to successful e-mail marketing is in the sequence:

1. Warm up your subscribers with a pre-sell or introduction e-mail.
2. Host an event like a teleseminar or webinar. This gives your a hard date, the center of the entire campaign.
3. Give a hard deadline for the special offer.
4. Follow up with a series of e-mails until the deadline. Don't just pound your subscribers with a "Buy, buy buy!" message. Educate while you sell. This not only gives value just in the sales process, it builds trust.

Of course, there are other things you need like testimonials/case studies, etc. There's both art and science to writing a series like this. But fortunes are being made every day with skillful e-mail marketing.

As for mobile... Yes, mobile is big and only getting bigger. The beautiful thing about e-mail is that it's usually already formatted for mobile. People are either downloading their e-mail directly to their phones or they're reading it on webmail which is already formatted for mobile, like GMail.

So you only need to worry about getting that e-mail sequence written and sent out. Anything else is just noise and a reason to procrastinate.

Hope that helps!

Michelle