That’s quite a bold title and so I feel that I should start this post by quantifying it. What I mean is that this is the most powerful method I have so far found.
We’ve just finished running a one month test to one of our biggest mailing lists. This test was to send promotional emails every single day.
The result…
We significantly dropped our click-throughs, although the open rate remained the same.
The unsubscribe rate didn’t increase and neither did the spam rate.
Which shows that sending promotion emails regularly doesn’t necessary devalue the list but rather changes the nature of it.
Previous to this we provided regular high quality content and mixed in a few sales emails.
So it was a big change.
Although the click-through rate dropped significantly, due to the increased amount of promotions we actually sent more clicks to sales pages over the course of the month than we would do normally.
But, the conversion rate was not as good.
And that’s to do with trust!
Using our primary method of promotion, which I’ll share with you shortly, we would generate less clicks (only slightly less) but the conversion rate would be incredible.
The decision of which route to pursue came down to a decision between:
- Degrading the trust with the list by promoting regularly but increasing a more standardised rate of sales which makes planning a lot easier.
- Promote less frequently and get bursts of sales but maintain high trust levels with regular free content and a different sales approach.
For me the decision was easy… option 2.
But that’s not to say that option 1 doesn’t work. I’ve worked with many companies who use option 1 and do very well from it. In fact, I’ve even advised it to some companies.
For my own business though it doesn’t work for one simple reason…
I like to get to know my readers and provide them with unique content.
Which means that option 2 is best suited to me personally and promotions need to be done in such a way that takes this into account.
Now, I promised to show you what method I used to promote. This approach has not only provided me with the best conversions, we’ve made one hundred sales from a list of 750 using this, but it also gets your readers to send in thank you emails for letting them buy off you.
It’s what I call educational promotion. Most often it’s made up of three emails and here’s how you do it.
- Look at the product your promoting and find out what it’s missing. It’s very rare that a product will contain all the information required.
- Choose something that you want to educate your readers on that’s missing from the product.
- Write an email to your entire list asking if they’re interested in learning about what you’ve chosen to write about.
- If they are then either ask them to optin via a new squeeze page or add them to a new list.
- Send them the first part of your email sequence immediately. This email explains why you chose to put this series together, because of the product you’re promoting, and why you think the product is good. Then go on to explain what they will get over the next three emails. This includes something that’s very important, and not taught in the product, how it works, and how to implement it. In the first email you then go on to explain what it is your going to teach them how to do.
- The second email teaches them whatever you have chosen to teach them, with a soft sell at the end. Selling in a P.S. can work very well here.
- The third and final email brings everything together and shows how they can implement this within the strategy, the rest of which is found in the product, and then finishes off with a harder sell for the product.
This is possibly the most powerful method of promoting a product and gaining trust from your readers at the same time.
Give it a try and see if it makes a difference to the results of your promotions!
What do you think?