This week’s 2nd Act Entrepreneur Show gives you 3 tips to write compelling emails that make people want to buy from your follow-up email series.

In case you’re new, let’s backtrack for a minute and talk about the importance of using email marketing to grow your business.

Before we dive in, I have a juicy bonus tip for you toward the end of this episode so be sure to stay tuned for that.

I also created a free guide to help you write your welcome series so that you don’t have to be stressed out about what to say, how many emails to send, and how often you should send them. It’s all in this handy dandy guide that you can go download at alisaconner.com/emailguide.

Now, let’s dive into why use email marketing at all?

In 2020 an estimated 306.4 billion emails were sent and received every day. (according to this study by FinancesOnline)

And, according to OptinMonster 58% of users check email when they go online before conducting a search (20%), social media (14%), or the news (5%).

If that hasn’t convinced you in 2021 4 out of 5 marketers said that they would rather give up social media as a marketing tactic than email marketing. (Litmus, 2020)

There is a 4200% return on investment when it comes to email marketing. The highest ROI for any marketing tactic out there.

Why? Because it enables you to stay top of mind and in front of your potential and current customers so that when they are ready to buy they think of you.

This leads us to how to use email marketing effectively to create a relationship with your future and current clients.

First and foremost, welcome your new lead. Truly – throughout the welcome mat and show them some love.

How many times have you signed up for a free resource and either:
1. Received a single email with the resource and then crickets until they had something to sell or realized they needed to be emailing you or
2. Received a barrage of sales emails after signing up for the “free” resource and then ended up unsubscribing.

If that’s you, you’re not alone and how did that make you feel? Chances are it felt slimy like forgotten leftovers in the back of the fridge slimy.

Here are some ways to build that relationship so that they begin to know, like, and trust you.

First and foremost is consistency.

90% of the world’s troubles could be solved by just being consistent.

Regardless if you’re trying to lose weight and you need to be consistent with exercise and eating healthy.

Or if you’re trying to grow your business and you need to be consistent with marketing, sales calls, or in this case building a relationship with your leads.

Consistency in your email does two things. First, it reminds people who are and how you can help, and second, that you have something that they may need now or in the future.

The third thing that makes our hearts sing like little angels in the choirs of heaven is when they remember the first two and then tell someone else about us.

Second, don’t wing your email marketing.

Just like everything else with marketing your business, creating a plan will keep you on task, help you over the procrastination hump and most importantly enable you to measure your progress and success.
It’s much easier to pump out marketing emails when you know who you are talking to and what they are struggling with.

When you have the power to “read their minds” because you know them so well and you consistently show up in their inbox, that is pure gold.

And it’s a HUGE differentiator between you and the competition.

Third, write headlines that make people stop the scroll.
I get so many questions about headlines from my audience that I have covered just headlines in multiple pieces of training, podcast episodes, and events.

Headlines can be tricky. The best advice I have is to just start writing.

It isn’t unheard of that I will write 30-45 headlines for an email before I send it.

Truly practice makes perfect when it comes to headlines.

Plus testing. You won’t know what will work if you don’t test it first.

The bonus about testing your headlines is that you get to show up in your audience’s inbox more often (which leads us back to #1.)

Here are some specific things you can do to test your headlines:

1. Ask questions. Our brains can’t not answer the question. It is like a dog with a bone. If you ask a question relevant to your audience, they will not stop until they find the answer. So questions in your headlines work well.
2. Use emojis and characters. Pull up your email inbox. Scroll through the emails you received just today. Which ones pop out without you even searching them out? My guess is any email that has something different in the headline naturally grabs your attention. That’s the power of emojis and characters. Just don’t go wild because the SPAM filter will eat you alive.
3.  Count your characters. Think about it, if your headline is too long our distracted brains will either tune out or, the inbox will cut off the most important part. (because that’s what happens, Murphy’s Law)

Luckily, many email service providers like ActiveCampaign, Convertkit, or Drip have built-in headline character counters. If you go over, it will send you a message that says – “hold up there cowgirl, that headline is a little long.” (Okay so maybe that’s what it sounds like in my head.)

If you’re unsure, use a character counter like WordCounter.net. The best performing headlines have 11 words and 65 characters according to Hubspot.

Before we dive into the bonus and end this episode, just a reminder I created a free guide to help you write your welcome series (the first series your new subscriber gets from you) so that you don’t have to be stressed out about what to say, how many emails to send and how often you should send them. It’s all in this handy dandy guide that you can go download at https://alisaconner.com/emailguide.

Ready for that bonus tip?

Tune in to the entire episode here.

That’s a wrap for this episode on three tips to create compelling follow-up emails.

Thanks for tuning in and I’ll see you next week.

Now, go write some kick a#* emails,
~ Alisa