3 Winning Sequences... for Using Email to Drive Traffic to Your Website
I want to rant a bit here. I have been to six networking events in the past month and when I tell people about Solo Biz Hacker and that we help people use marketing automation to build online businesses… I get asked the question…
So… Meredith, what autoresponder should I choose?
And, although I want to be helpful and recommend Active Campaign (of course – I’m a certified partner) – I know in my heart of hearts they are asking the wrong question to start out. I hate to say this (since I LOVE playing with email services) – but here’s the truth of the matter…
If you have an audience, the email service you choose really doesn’t matter.
There are many many services out there and, frankly, 85% of them will meet your needs. As long as the service allows you to segment your list, and it delivers your email, you are golden (honest!). If you outgrow what you start with – you can always move up. Do not let this stop you from getting started. (The majority of people I know with great ideas who never launch get stuck in this early tech-deciding phase. Just remember – content and consistency are what drive success. Most tools will work.
But what if I don’t have an audience?
The important thing to understand with autoresponders is that they are an opt-in technology. This means that the person you are emailing has to have agreed (opted in), to receive your emails. If they haven’t then it is spam. And nobody likes a spammer, right?
If you don’t have an audience then you need to build one – ie. get people to opt in, usually by offering something in return (see below). However, you can still email people personally – one-on-one – even if they haven’t opted in to receive them – that’s “personal” email. There are services that will allow you to mass email people (cold email), that makes it appear to be a personal email – just don’t use your regular email to do it!
That is a way to get started if you have no other connection with a prospective client or customer. But your aim should be to get people to opt-in to a legitimate service as soon as possible – and there is no reason why they shouldn’t, IF you have something they really want. That is why messaging the right person is key. Sending messages to people who are not interested in your product or services is not only a waste of your time, but it is also going to harm your reputation, especially with your autoresponder company as your lousy results are going to impact theirs – and that they cannot allow! The more time you put into finding the right prospects to message the better your results will be.
So – Here’s what you SHOULD really be asking?
Before you start worrying about which autoresponder to use to send your messages, you need to know the answers to the following questions:
Once you’ve answered these questions, you are ready to start building your list. The key to building a healthy list is consistent action. Day after day taking small steps to make your list grow. You can get these steps for free on the Solo Biz Bites Email Challenge Podcast available on Anchor or your favorite podcast client.
It is not just email
Remember, the advice above does not just apply to email. For sure, email is the best way to reach a prospective customer because it is almost guaranteed that the prospect will see it in their inbox (Note: deliverability is an important factor in choosing an autoresponder – and is why all good one’s are very concerned how you get your list, how many unsubscribes you get and how many people open your emails). But your email inbox is the one place everyone goes, every day – if not several times a day. If you want to get your message across then email is by far the best method for doing so.
However, the same principles apply to any technology you use to try to connect and build a relationship with prospective customers, whether it is messaging someone through LinkedIn or Facebook Messenger, DMing someone on Twitter etc etc. It is about building relationships – building that all important ‘know, like & trust’ – over time and with the right people – ie. people who have a problem to which you have the solution.
What does email have to do with website traffic anyway?
They seem like two separate parts of the funnel. You blog on your website to get people to your email list - from there you use email to get them back to your site to push the buy button on your sales page. Once you have people on the list - they don't need to go back to the blog... or do they?
Email is a Powerful Driver of Web Traffic
Actually, email can be a powerful driver of traffic to your website. Email is second only to organic search in driving traffic to your website. In fact, according to this research, 51% of people discover new websites through email marketing. But, beyond helping your community discover new resources, there are some definite advantages to having your community visit your website regularly.
Adding Value, Building Trust...
A typical sales funnel starts with content and ends with a sale. A good funnel is not that linear - customers are moving back and forth between your offers and content. Customers buy from people they know, like and trust. Providing consistent value to your community through your blog is an excellent way to build that trust. You can also use your content to help segment your audience. Finally, sending your audience to content is training them to click your links and take action (even if that action is not always buying something new from you.
Click here to download my email sequences to use content to segment your audience
Crowdsource Your SEO
Other than just sending traffic to your site, encouraging your list to visit your content also helps your SEO in two important ways:
Creating Your Boomerang
The easiest way to create your email - website traffic boomerang is to start sending messages with content links to your audience. I've included some sample sequences for you to download in the box below.
Here are three times to use these sequences to send content:
Do you let your subscribers know when you’ve posted something new? Use simple two-email sequence to use to send traffic to your most important new blog posts and other content.
An easy way to get traffic to a website is to offer a free download for your current subscribers. You can do that as part of a blog post - or also just by using an existing opt-in and giving the download page link in the email (your people don’t need to resubscribe - they are already on your list. If you use Active Campaign or another autoresponder that supports tagging, you can add a tag when your subscriber clicks the link to the resource to further segment them.
Using emails with links to posts or resources about different topics is a great way to both get a feel for what your list is interested in while at the same time segmenting your list so that you can send your subscribers offers that are targeted straight to them. Here are templates to use with current members, new subscribers and people who haven’t opened one of your emails in a while.
Want to learn more about how to get traffic to your website? Check out what other experts have to say right here.
Are you looking for a funnel that goes “all the way
So without further ado… here’s some information about the Value Ladder Funnel.
The Value Ladder Funnel consists of 4 products, starting with a free product (opt-in) and proceeding with paid products ordered from cheapest to most expensive. Products 3 and 4 are upsells in the main funnel. So, the email return-path for each of those products lead into their own sales funnel starting with that product.
Let’s break it down…
An opt-in page is where you offer something of value (usually a digital product) for free in exchange for the visitor’s contact information. Typically, an opt-in page will ask the visitors for a first name and email address but you can require other information in your form such as: last name, phone number and so on. Just keep in mind that the longer the form is, the less likely visitors are to convert.
The opt-in page asks for an email address so that the free digital product (lead magnet) can be delivered. This is a very simple email containing a link to the lead magnet and few words to tell the recipient what the email is about.
The reason for delivering the lead magnet via email instead of on the very next page of the funnel is because the second page of the funnel in this plan will present the next product in our value ladder in the form of a sales page.
The sales page will present our second product. In this case, it will be the very first product we charge money for. The purpose of this low-cost product (also known as a trip-wire) is to get the visitor make a financial transaction. However… that will not happen on this page directly. The purpose of a sales page is to present the product information only. The buttons on the sales page will bring the visitor to the order page where the transaction is made.
The order page is where the money starts changing hands. It’s normally a very simple page consisting of the form fields needed to collect payment information (and shipping information, if necessary). It’s best if you can add some trust indicators here like: a company support contact information, testimonials, guarantee reminders and so on.
Upsell pages give you an opportunity to sell the next 2 products in your value ladder. One product is offered on each page and the customer can now add a product with the click of just one button, without needing to re-enter any payment information. Often, upsell pages contain very limited time offers (some even expire upon saying no to that offer and include a timer). These offers are also known as one-time-offers or OTOs.
The order confirmation page content is usually dynamically generated to show the purchase details at the end of the funnel, like an order receipt. This marks the end of the main funnel but there is still opportunity to sell the upsell products through an email return-path.
If your contacts did not purchase every product in the value ladder, you may wish to try again through email. The only issue is that you cannot link your contacts to the upsell pages in your main funnel because they will need to re-enter their credit card info in order to make any purchases (they left the main funnel and their cart has been closed). At the very least, you will need a new order page. It makes sense to use a new sales page in front of that too. Basically, your email return-path will be running traffic from your list into an entirely new funnel. This will happen twice (products 3 and 4) in this Value Ladder Funnel.
As you can see, there are many moving parts
You can get the official interactive and completely customizable plan right here.
Did your webinar not make as many sales as you expected? Putting on a webinar is hard work… from promoting the webinar, to creating your sales page, and then all of the tech involved in actually presenting your topic.
It can feel a bit
Why You Don’t Make Sales On Your Webinar
When you put
“The good news is – the reason you are not selling on your webinar – is usually not because of the webinar itself.”
Three Ways People Leave Money on the Table with Webinars
People leave money on the table with webinars in three main ways. If you can plug these holes in your funnel – you are likely to see your webinar revenue go up.
Need to to know which emails to write? We’ve made that easy for you… Click here to get starter copy for 5 emails that will easily double your webinar sales.
When it comes to your business knowing your numbers is what is going to give you control over your business. It can show where to concentrate your efforts (ie. where the money is), and it can show you where not to waste those efforts.
Knowing your numbers is at the heart of any sales training. And sales is the heart of any business.
If you need to make 4 sales per week and your closing rate is 20%, then you know you need to talk to 20 people to make those 4 sales. That’s 4 people a day. There’s your goal – and your plan is based on how to get those 4 phone calls a day. All businesses come down to that principle in the end. You might do better one week than another – you might work to improve your close rate – but at least you will have a target to aim for.
So getting those phone calls is where the funnel comes in – and a funnel is everything about the numbers – because it is about getting people who don’t know you to a sale. As the diagram above illustrates, only 3% of prospects are ready to but right now, and only another 7% are open to the possibility. That’s 1 in 10. The rest need careful nurturing over time.
There are 4 stages to the funnel – Awareness > Capture > Nurture > Sale
Awareness – very often in an online business that means Facebook ads (but can include content marketing, social media, messaging campaigns, etc) .
Capture – is the freebie you get them to sign up for in exchange for their email address. This is where the marketing truly begins.
Nurture – the email drip campaign that educates and nurtures people towards >
The Sale – either via a phone call or ecommerce click
Using the 80/20 rule you can estimate how many calls you can generate in our analogy above – so –
1000 people see your Facebook Ad (Awareness)
20% sign up = 200 (Capture)
20% are nurtured towards a sale = 40 people buy the VIP Day
20% who come to the VIP Day go on to by the Annual Coaching Program = 8
Knowing these numbers gives you the power and direction. It is no longer guesswork. It becomes predictable. You know that if you pay $XX in Facebooks ads you will get 1000 views = 200 signup = 40 VIP sales = 8 Program sales.
This is a good benchmark – but in order to know what YOUR numbers are you need to actually run some promotions to find out. Do you get more than 20% – do you get less? What income is generated when compared to the costs of getting those sales?
Test it – track the results – see what can be improved to get better results next time. See what doesn’t work and that you can drop. You don’t start off with this knowledge. It is only through trying things out that you find out what works and what doesn’t. But when you find out those numbrs you re golden, because then you know that if you spend $XX you will get $XXX in return. It is predictable.
Facebook ads are a good analogy. You don’t just throw a lot of money at an ad you think is going to work. You try 4 different ads, test them all with a little money, see which one delivers, and only then do you put the big money into the winning ad.
It is exactly the same with your funnel and your sales process.
The ultimate goal in any business is to have a predictable income, and you can only do that by knowing your numbers. Why do so many people abandon their business and go back to a job? Predictability. With a wage you know how much is coming in – each and every week. But you can do that in your business as well – eventually.
Of course, circumstances change. What worked last year might not work this year. But if you are tracking your numbers you will see precisely where there is a problem – sometimes even down to a particular email. Knowing there is a problem allows you to take action to fix it before any lasting damage is done, and improv the process towards predictability.
If your goal is to make $100K then how many customers is that – per year – per month – per week? Where are those customers going to come from? How much does it cost to acquire a customer? What is the average lifetime value of that customer?
Knowledge is power. Knowing your numbers puts you in control of your business. You won’t know when you start out, but going into each promotion with numbers in mind will allow you to build on each new funnel you try, building on what works, discarding what doesn’t. Knowing where you are in terms of the goal you are trying to reach.
Knowing your numbers will set you free!
New Year’s is a bit like Christmas for Entrepreneurs. The old year is ending and a new year is starting full of possibilities. It is easy to set “all the goals” for your business. When I get into “kid in the candy store” planning mode… I like to rewatch this video from Jay Abraham about the only three ways you can grow your business.
In the video, Jay Abraham outlines the following three keys levers for business growth. They are the key to the funnels we build for our clients in Active Campaign.
Increase the number of clients, convert more new prospects into paying customers.
This is where most people focus their efforts though lead magnets, Facebook ads, and webinars. Unfortunately, this is also the most expensive part of the sales funnel and the riskiest. Yes, you need to be bringing people into your funnel, but you are leaving money on the table by not paying attention to the other two growth levers.
Increase the average transaction, get each client to buy more at each purchase.
Upsells can significantly increase your bottom line. Instead of just offering a class, you can offer extras ranging from checklists and trackers to bonus time with you. You can also increase your profits by strategically raising your prices.
We’ve helped several clients to increase their product launch profits both by adding purchases earlier in the funnel with inexpensive paid webinars and at the end of the funnel with strategic upsells.
Increase the frequency that the average client buys from you, get each customer to buy from you more often.
One of the easiest ways to make money in your business is to offer your customers additional opportunities to buy. For example, we had a client who sold olive oil. We added an email sequence that was sent to customers 2 months after their purchase (about when most people re-order) offering a discount on a new bottle. This sequence was very successful in increasing sales.
Would you like to see how this could work in your business? Contact us to schedule a brainstorming session today.
Lately, I’ve been talking to community members, potential clients and others who are firmly in the “the more eyeballs the merrier camp”. The idea is that if you can get your message in front of as many people as possible then someone is bound to purchase. This used to be true – especially when the number of media outlets were limited and it was impossible to really target down your audience too much.
At that point, advertising was REALLY expensive… because we were paying for many. many eyeballs we didn’t need to attract.
I remember running a radio ad campaign to recruit people to join a local government business growth program. Because the local TV station covered three states, we ended up paying for thousands of people to see our ads who never would be opening a business through our program. It was nearly impossible for small businesses to compete because they couldn’t afford to get in front of enough people to make enough sales to grow.
Social media has changed all of that. You can now target the smallest possible slice of ideal clients for you. Small businesses (and even solopreneurs) can 100% compete with large companies, they just need to be very clear on who that ideal client is.
And, in my experience, this is the part that people tend to skip. It is very tempting to jump straight into setting up that lead magnet and running those ads. The problem is that untargeted ads are expensive and ineffective.
You really need to create a Buyer Persona. I could go on and on about how having a clear sense of who your ideal customer is will help your business. But, I won’t. Sharon Woodcock did a great job of doing that in a great post on the 8 Reasons Why You Need A Buyer Persona.
1. Determine motivators: goals, fears, desires, values, and needs
2. Know what their needs are at each stage of the customer journey
3. Create an effective marketing strategy that feels authentic to you
4. Get better and more qualified leads, who are a great fit for you
5. Communicate in language that connects, resonates and converts
6. Differentiate yourself from your competitors, and stand out in a crowded market
7. Create products and services that fulfill your ideal audience’s needs
8. Create content and stories that align with the customer journey(Check out her post for how to get started on diving into your dream clients)
Have you created your ideal buyer persona? Who are they? Share them in our Solo Biz Hacker Facebook group 🙂
In this video Meredith shows you how to discover specific segments of your audience using the segmenting tricks available in Active Campaign. Clever stuff! And very useful.
In this video Meredith shows you how to use the conditional waiting time settings in your automated sequences to encourage readers to click a link or reply to the email. Essentially it means offering some kind of reward for doing so.